We all know at this point that there’s a lot more to being a writer than just, you know, writing. Promotion takes time, you guys, a freaking lot of time. Cons and signings, events, ads, social media, cross-promotion with other authors. Given half a chance, these activities could take up my whole entire day.

If I let that happen, then I sure as hell hope the books that are out sell because I’d never write another one. And that would be a shame because I have a lot of ideas, you guys. I’m hoping to publish three more books this year alone. I mean, I want to be a writer to write. If I wanted to be a saleswoman, I’d have stayed in retail.

But I have to do all of this, don’t I? I mean, if I want my books to sell, I’ve got to get them out there. How is anyone going to read them if they don’t know they exist?

Yeah, I do have to advertise. I talk about my books at the end of my posts. I post on four social media accounts. I attend cons and plan signings. I do all of this social butterfly, come look at me, don’t you want to read this book I have here things they say indie writers are supposed to do. I have guest posts on other people’s sites and I host their guest posts.

So, how do I do it?

I actually don’t. I take all the freaking shortcuts I can find. I spend about half an hour a day on social media, and I do that while I’m watching tv with my kids. I spend one day a week working on business and promotional stuff. Anything that can’t be done in five minutes is done on that one day a week. And if I can’t get it done during the five hours my kids are in school, then it’s going to wait until next week. Do you know why?

Because if it doesn’t get done, I don’t care.

My word of the year, if you’ll remember from January, is Create. I’m spending this year focusing on Creating. So whatever it is, books, short stories or comic book scripts, I always want to be creating something new. So that comes first. Well, actually it comes third after my family and my own emotional well being. But it surely comes before social media obligations.

Six days out of the week, I do nothing more than fill up my Buffer account before devoting all other writing time to content creation or editing. I simply put it first, because that’s where it’s supposed to be.

Come see me! And check me out on Facebook as I’ll be updating through the day, and every day of the Con.

I’ll also be hosting two (not so hostile) takeovers during the con.

On Saturday, I’ll be taking over the science fiction page at 6:00. In addition to some serius science fiction talk, I’ll be giving away a free e-copy of You Can’t Trust The AI.

On Sunday, I’ll be on the Scifan Facebook page at 5:00. I’ll be leaving links to both of these events on my own page. Here’s a link to that.

I’ll also be having a question and answer session on my PBW Facebook page. You can jump on there all weekend and ask me about anything. Writing, Paper Beats World, Station 86, Woven, anything.

Finally, here’s a link to my Author’s Showcase for Station 86!

Click here to get to the B2B Con site.

Have you seen Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog? It’s this awesome film from Joss Whedon. Nathan Fillion was in it, as was Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day. I love this movie like nothing else.

I learn about writing from everywhere, or at least I try to. So when something comes along that captures my imagination as much as this, I have to ruin it for myself. You know, by picking it apart to see how it was made. I actually intend to do this more often on here, as it’s actually a great practice.

Now, directors have all kinds of tools we don’t have. Sad to say, Neil Patrick Harris and Liev Schriber are not here to act my stories out. I also don’t have Danny Elfman to write a score for me. But there are still things to learn from the writing and character building.

The characters

I fell in love with Dr. Horrible/ Billy right away when watching this movie. He’s a real person, which I’ve mentioned before is kind of a big deal for characters. He gets mad and bitches. He’s not a lovable klutz who stumbles into success, but neither is he a superhero for whom everything comes easily. He’s a self-obsessed dork, disillusioned but somehow still hopeful. A pessimistic dreamer, which I think we can all relate to. He wants the girl, the world and the cool job in the Evil Leauge of Evil. He knows he should have those things, and is trying desperately to achieve them. And yet he’s full of doubt. Not in himself, but in the world.

We see all of these aspects of him through the way he speaks to the people around him. He plans things out. He refuses to meet with someone because he feels that they’re beneath him. He talks, openly, about being defeated by Captain Hammer. He does a million subtle things that show us how he’s feeling.

Bad guy, good guy

The protagonist of this movie is a villain who calls himself Dr. Horrible who wants to be a super villain. He wants to join the Evil League of Evil and work with Bad Horse. (The Thoroughbred of sin.) He has a Ph.D. in horribleness and wants to rule the world.

He also refuses to have a fight at a park because there are kids there. He’s respectful of Penny, the female lead. Even though he’s in love with her, he’s honest with her. When she asks him to sign a petition to help homeless people he does, but he also tells her that he thinks she’s treating a symptom of their society. He wants things to be better for everyone. He’s smart, honest and works hard. He’s interested in his friend’s lives, taking the time to ask them about what’s going on with them, dispute being a little self-centered. He’s felt failure, boy has he ever, and keeps trying anyway. At several moments, he proves that he’s not capable of killing someone in cold blood for his own personal gain. Or for any reason, really.

The antagonist is Captain Hammer, a superhero with hammer like strength. He’s loved by the community and has an adorable little group of fan girls and boy who stalk him and cut off pieces of his hair when he’s not paying attention.

He also has sex with Penny just because he knows Dr. Horrible likes her. He pays lip service to her cause of helping homeless people. He makes a point of beating the hell out of Dr. Horrible, just to make him look like a loser. He’s narcissistic and stupid. He makes a show of helping the homeless just for more praise. When he fails, he falls apart. And he proves that he’s got no problem, at all, killing.

While I do love the bad guy protagonist motif, (as seen in Dexter, Santa Clarita Diet and Ray Donovan) this isn’t what’s happening here. As we can see, the super villain personifies qualities that we would associate with a good and noble person. The superhero is the actual horrible person. (See what I did there?)

Everything you ever, and 1+1 Vs. 2

When you watch Dr. Horrible, you hear the same phrase over and over. Everything you ever.

Everything you ever what? Wanted, deserved, dreamed of? It never actually says, which leaves the viewer to finish the sentence themselves.

This is the clearest example I’ve ever seen of a lesson I learned from a Ted Talk by Pixar writer Andrew Stanton. By the way, if you haven’t seen his talk, The Clues to a Great Story, here’s a link. Fantastic talk. But the lesson is this.

Don’t give the audience two, give then 1+1 and let them figure it out for themselves.

And this is something I’ve struggled with so much. I want my stories to be clear, to be obvious. I have a habit of saying “Look! Here is the moral of this story! Here is how she’s feeling, here’s why he did that thing! I know you’ll never be able to put it together yourself, and I’ll be damned if I’ll be misunderstood. So I’m just going to tell you what I want you to get our of this. I’m not going to let you extract something from this that I didn’t intend!”

Which, as I write this, I realize is a horribly selfish way to write. It is not our jobs as writers to tell people how they should feel about our writing. It’s our job to tell a story. A real, honest, story.

Finally, I’d like to tell you my favorite Joss Whedon quote about writing.

“Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”

Comedy works well in Dr. Horrible. You’re laughing so much at the absurdity of it all that you don’t see the dark ending coming.

If you have any movies, tv shows or books that you’d like to see picked apart for writing lessons please ask. Send me an email at nicolecluttrell86@Gmail.com or comment on this post.

Hey, guys. I wanted to warn you, if you haven’t gotten around to reading You Can’t Trust The AI, you might want to do it soon. Because I’m going to be pulling it from PBW in two weeks.

As soon as I do pull it, it will be available as a KDP Select book. So, if you have Amazon Prime, you can read the whole thing for free. That will include the last episode, that is not on this website.

Here are links to all of the episodes.

Episode One

Episode Two

Episode Three

Episode Four

Episode Five

Episode Six

Episode Seven

Episode Eight

Enjoy, and have a great day, guys.

I keep telling myself, every month, that I’m going to have a calm month. Then God laughs and says, “Nah.” Best laid plans and all.

In fairness, I set myself up for a lot of this, and most of it is good busy not hustling to survive busy. I also have all sorts of exciting announcements to share with you.

Where my writing is right now.

I finished two major projects in March. The rough draft of Virus is done and in hibernation until May. It’s the first Station 86 book that’s an actual, you know, full-length book. So while it’s going to be at least November before you get to see it, it’s twenty episodes long. I know some tv shows that didn’t have twenty episodes in their last season. And, you won’t have to wait as long for Virus as, I don’t know, Tamora Pierce’s book about Numair that I’ve been waiting to read since I finished Battle Magic in two days! Yes, I know she has a different book coming out in October, but it’s not the same.

Anyway, that rant aside, I also finished the second draft of Missing Stitches. I did both of those in the same day, actually. It was really a pretty bomb day for me. Now that the second draft is done and I have to let it sit, I get to do something pretty fantastic.

Woven is a long series, but the first story is done in Missing Stitches. There will be more books about that cast of characters, but they need a rest for now. So, now I’m starting on a two book story. It’s still in the same universe, and it takes place after Missing Stitches. But it’s a whole new cast of characters. (By the way, if you haven’t gotten Broken Patterns yet, here’s your link.)

This, of course, means I’m rough drafting again this month, and probably next month too. I’m digging deeper into the people of Calistar and the stories they can tell. I’m having a lot of fun, is what I’m saying.

National Poetry month

Of course, National Poetry Month started today. Don’t forget to check me out on Instagram and Facebook to follow along in the fun. Or, you know, mock my terrible poetry. That’s totally fine, too.

B2B Con

B2B stands for Brains to Book. It’s an online con, and the first con I’ve ever attended! I’ll have an Author Spotlight booth in the Science Fiction series, if you want to stop by and see me. Here’s a link, and the awesome poster they put out for us Sci-Fi writers. I love that it’s an online con, which is nicer on my budget and calendar. Oh, and I have a really cool announcement for the con.

You Can’t Trust The AI is available for Pre-Sale now and will launch on April 7^th, the first day of B2B Con!

I actually rushed the launch a little bit because I wanted to be ready for the con, but it is ready to go! Just like with Seeming, there is a special, not available online episode. Do you want to know what’s going on with Godfrey’s dad on Earth and get a teaser for Virus? Then you need to get this book, my friend. Here’s a link to the pre-sale page.

Oh, and then, of course, there’s Easter, two family birthdays and a ton of gardening to do. Probably also a ton of reading on my back porch to do, too. I’m excited to see the second quarter of the year start. How about you?

What are you planning this month that you want to share? Let us know in the comments below.

Butler PA is an old steel town. We’re about 45 minutes away from Pittsburgh, the best freaking city on the planet. There are more churches than literally anything, most of them some sort of Catholic. Roman Catholic is pretty big. We’ve got a decent population of people from places like Hungary, where my family is from originally. This is my home town, where I’ve lived the vast majority of my life.

Every job I’ve ever had has been here. My daughters were born here. My husband and I got married in Diamond Park, right in front of our historical court house that is still in use. I walk through my memories every day, glimpsing ghosts of the girl and woman I’ve been. I could write a book, and might someday, just of the memories that come back to me when walking Main Street.

Here’s just one of them.

I was walking to the coffee shop one day when a woman walked towards me. She looked pretty hung over, not walking a straight line by any means. She stopped me, and to this day I have no idea why. Maybe because I was a friendly face, or maybe she just needed another woman to be honest with her right then. Maybe she thought I was someone she knew. I don’t think I’d ever seen her before. But she stopped me, and said, “Can I ask you a question? Does my makeup look alright?”

I looked at her, wanting to give her an honest answer. “Yeah, it looks fine,” I finally said.

“Good, because I am so hung over and I’ve got to go to work,” she said, and continued on.

I think it’s fair to say that I have an interesting relationship with my hometown. On the one hand, I really hate it. I’m a liberal, this place runs red. It’s a small town run mostly by small minded people.

But that doesn’t take into consideration the people who live here.

I love my hometown, too. It’s steeped in history, as well it should be. We have one of the oldest theaters in America, Butler Little Theater. My kids and I go see plays there. We have a Main Street full of indie restaurants and coffee shops. I’ve posted pictures of Cummings in my Instagram feed a lot, because it’s such a great looking old building.

There’s a great sense of art here. The symphony does well, there are three music shops, one of the oldest book stores in the state and a great museum of Japanese and Chinese art. (The Maridon. If you’re coming into town, check it out.)

Here’s the best thing about this town, though. It loves the people who live here. When I do a book signing, people ask me where I’m from. I tell them, “I’m from right here in Butler.” And they love that. They love that a girl from Butler is doing something with herself.

As much as I would love to live in Pittsburgh, and someday I will, I don’t know that I could ever really pull away from my love of this place. I’m from here, and that’s never going to change.

If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out Days and Other Stories. It’s my first short story collection, and it’s totally free. Get it here, on Gumroad.