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Since the last time I updated you, here's what's happened (in no particular order):

1. M+B is dead, long live M&B.
I have sacrificed much in the effort to keep the book titled "Mind + Body." People would pronounce it "Mind Plus Body" and I'd say, "No, it's Mind and Body."

"Then why is there a plus?" they ask.
"Because it looks cool," I'd say, hesitant to explain my true rationale.

Y'see, before there was a book, characters, or anything close to a plot, there was a book title and a book cover. I was maybe 14 at the time, but when I first decided to turn this story in my head into a real story, I had a vision in my head of the cover. It would be a shooting range target with two sets of crosshairs superimposed: one targeting the brain (mind), the other targeting the heart (body). One of those crosshairs would make a + in the title, "Mind + Body."

That idea fermented and cemented in my brain for years and acted as the impetus for me eventually writing the thing. Once I'd actually written it, and had John make a cover for me, I tried to explain my vision to him and he produced something less cheesy and more quaint. By that time, though, the + wasn't even an option. That's how it always existed in my mind.

But feedback indicated that the + is stupid. People think it means "plus," and even if they don't, it still seems like something a 14 year old would think of (*cough*).

So now, when referring to the book, I format it as Mind & Body. Once I started doing that, I started getting responses to query letters.

2. Rewrites (times a thousand)

With some feedback from literary agents who read the thing, I've come to the conclusion that I'm an egomaniac who falsely assumes everything he does is perfect the first time.

As you may know, when I wrote M&B in the first place I was posting every chapter online on a set schedule. This turned it into a sort of online serial novel, and seriously affected the pacing of the story. Some days I wouldn't feel like writing, so I'd put up a chapter of filler. I was always worried about people not being able to keep up, so I was constantly going over past events in the story, and I wanted people to keep coming back every week so everything ended in a cliffhanger that I'd occasionally go out of my way to produce.

Basically, I wrote it like a TV series.

Foolishy I assumed that I could just wrap a dustjacket around all that and call it a novel. That didn't really work, though.

If you're reading a book, you probably read the previous chapter 14 seconds ago and so don't need a "previously, on Lost" recap, and you probably don't appreciate a chapter in which nothing happens.

I also realized a few other problems, like the fact that absolutely nothing happens in the second half of the story, and that the big shocking reveal in the middle of the story isn't that shocking, and it takes too long to get there. Also, in the last half I set up a mystery that's never resolved, as I intended that to be covered in the sequel. That's just cheap, though.

So I dropped my current plan of just tidying up the existing chapters with better writing and began a process that I'm referring to as The Rewrite.

I'm making some serious changes to move the story somewhere more appropriate for a novel. Essentially, I'm adapting Mind & Body from an online serial novel into a real novel.

This is a tricky process, but I'm actually having a bit of fun with it.

The basic story is still going to be there, and a lot of the original writing will be there. What I'm most interested in is adjusting the pace of the first half, and the direction of the second half.

For an example of what's going on with the first half, there are two separate chapters pretty close to each other where Chris and Amy basically do nothing but talk about what's going on. Nothing happens between these two chapters, so I just replaced those two conversations with one.

As for the second half, I'm changing a lot as far as what mysteries are resolved. The story has quite a few mysteries and surprises, and I think I was a little off-target when I decided which ones to unveil and when. Looking at the story with an outsider's perspective, it seems that the ending doesn't really address any of the mysteries from chapter one.

This is a product of my wonky writing style, which was largely improvisational. Now that I can step back and look at the story as a whole, I can see these holes, and do my best to fix them. This time around, there should be better resolution to the matters of the key mysteries.

All that, and generally removing a lot of clutter and filler produced (again) by my wonky writing style.

When this is done, I'll submit it to a few literary agents again and possibly get this monkey off my back so I can get started on something else, sequel or otherwise.

Comments: 2 Comments.

"YA books is where ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD is right now," a friend told me. A famous friend. One whose name I won't drop. It might be Wil Wheaton. It might not.

It is.

He's right, though. Juvenile fiction is BIG MONEY right now. Harry Potter, Twilight (god I love books about vampires), Everybody Poops, Lord of the Flies, Cats in the Hats... these are all huge franchises making billions of dollars.

So to capitalize that, and in the spirit of my personal role model Bill O'Reilly, I'm releasing a for-kids-only version of M&B: Mind & Body: For Kidz!!.

It's a completely rewritten version of the original, but with a more kid-friendly focus and with some of the more mature themes taken out.

For example, most of the killing and guns and poisons are removed. To fill up that space, I added some scenes about school bullies, saying no to drugs, the advantages of abstinence, and pinewood derby tips.

The character Amy was given HIV, to teach kids some tough real-world issues in a non-threatening way, in the vein of Sesame Street.

The storyline dealing with Chris's dead father and the mystery surrounding it has been removed. In its place is an exciting adventure-slash-mystery about stolen bake sale money. Chris (renamed Chris Awesome) causes some pretty hilarious hijinks, and even uncovers a vast conspiracy created by an evil cookie corporation, Schumer Confections.

In light of this sure-to-be-bestseller, I'm discontinuing Mind & Body (the original version) to bring the focus on MB4Kidz.

Please enjoy a sample from the first chapter:

I was seven, almost eight, the first time I punched someone.

It was kind of an accident, in the same way that Meowth is kind of a Pokemon (how come he can talk? lol). I hadn't set out to punch him, but I wasn't exactly trying not to, either.

Anyway, I got a cool red bicycle for my birthday.

Look for Mind & Body: For Kidz!! in bookstores next April 1st.

Comments: 1 Comments.

I've resisted this for a long, long time. Just because the book's about a 17-year-old doesn't mean it's for 17-year-olds, even though in roughly 100% of the cases, when a book's about teenagers it's marketed for teenagers.

The number of rejection letters I've gotten from literary agents combined with some advice from actual authors and editors have finally changed my mind. From now on, query letters to agents will refer to the book as a young adult, or YA novel.

This dramatically changes its genre and potential place in the market. It also endangers the public's perception of it. I think the story is perfectly accessible to adults, and classifying it as YA will probably scare a lot of them away.

I don't like it, but it's something I have to do if I ever intend to get this thing published for real.

The thing is, most YA books are written with the intention of being read by teenagers. They come off like after-school specials, stories about teenagers written by guys in their 40s, filled with 10-year-old slang and awkwardly inserted life lessons or morality tales.

"Yo, dog, you want to like, totally get high?" asked Scooter, looking up from his portable digital entertainment device.
"I don't know," Daeryk said, hesitantly. "I heard that's not good for you..."
"Don't be a square," Scooter replied. "It's totally rockin'."

Stuff like that.

In my case, the only possible reason to consider it a YA title is because its two major characters are under 18. If the story were moved from high school to college, or the characters were 26, suddenly YA wouldn't be an option.

That doesn't change the fact that the above does make it more likely that young adults will appreciate the book than adults will.

I guess the book could be refreshing for young readers. A Young Adult novel that doesn't try to preach or talk down to them. A grown-up novel for teens.

And now I resign to the fact that I'll still never get published. And if I do, I'll never be taken seriously, for all I write is crummy books for teens.

Comments: 6 Comments.

That is not the case.

In going through the book for the millionth time, I kept finding myself unable to ignore all of the flaws in the story and the language that I've been telling myself aren't that bad.

I've finally decided to do a proper revision. I'll be changing a few minor story elements and generally cleaning up some of the language. Once I'm finished with that, I'll post the revised edition online (I'll keep the current draft archived online for prosperity's sake), re-submit it for self-publishing on Amazon, and (most interestingly) send out manuscripts again and try to get it published for reals.

Once I'm finished with the revision, I'll describe some of the changes and the motivations behind them.

Until then, however, it's unable to buy in print. You can still download the current draft and read it online.

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Wherever you are, snow or not, Merry Christmas.

If you'd like to give me a bit of a Christmas gift, you could write a small review of my book, Mind + Body, at Amazon by clicking this link.

If you've read the book, just give it a star rating and write a few words about whether you enjoyed it. You don't have to have ordered it from Amazon to write a review, you could have read it online or downloaded it.

Customer reviews on Amazon are quite important for selling, and they help me understand my audience.

If you don't want to do that, or you maybe have something not-so-positive to say about it, you could email me. I appreciate all kinds of feedback, as long as it's honest.

Thanks.

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You can find all pertinent information like links to purchase and to download the book for free at the book's new official homepage:

AaronDunlap.com/MB

If you're one of the people who read Mind + Body as I was writing it, you may be interested to know that I completely re-wrote the first two chapters and the whole book has gone through an overall face-lift of corrected grammar and improved sentence flow.

Also, you people who read my book for free have essentially stolen from me, so if you'd like to restore balance to the universe you should probably buy 8 or 9 copies. It's in the Bible somewhere.

Either way, now is the time to bang on your friends and neighbors' doors to tell them to check it out.

Talking points for strangers might be that the book is a Bourne Identity for the digital age, including social engineering and technical espionage. Also, they can download and read the book for free.

Comments: 5 Comments.

(Thus begins a series where I point out the easter egg-like hidden references in Mind + Body to people or things that either inspired me or somehow made the book possible.)

I try to make it no secret that I never could have written Mind + Body, or anything longer than two pages double-spaced, if it weren't for the enormous success of my 9v USB charger kit thing. I made enough money from it and the company that I could take enough time off of real work and focus entirely on that. When the orders calmed down, I found myself with enough free time that I could actually hunker down and write the book I've been wanting to since I was twelve.

I can't take any credit for the success of the charger kits. I did very little to market them, they kind of took on a life of their own through word of mouth, blogs, social networking sites, and a few major magazines.

The first big break, the one that started it all, was on Digg.com.

It was from Digg that I got my first order, and from there it was discovered and featured on BoingBoing, where it was discovered and featured in Popular Science magazine. Digg was the first pebble in the pond that rippled out and changed my life forever, so I thought it only fair to give them a nod in the novel.

On page 184:

An hour later I was back in my hotel room, constantly checking my email and reading the news headlines at Digg.com.

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The larger a word is, the more often it appears in the text.

The fact that "Amy" is the largest is no mystery, her being the most frequently appearing character and considering that the word "I" is filtered out.

More interesting to me is how frequent the words "just," "like," and "something" appear. This just reveals the, like, certain way that I make the teenage characters talk, or something.

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Once I get an updated version of the cover from my designer pal, I'll be sending the book to the publishing company. After that, I'll be sent a copy to approve, and then in a few days it will be on sale at Amazon.

Only a year after I finished writing it.

The next one will be faster, somehow, I promise you that.

Since I'm not going with a major publisher, marketing will be up to me. I have a few clever ideas to get the word out, but I'll be relying pretty heavily on word-of-mouth. That means you people will have to tells your friends to tell their friends that reading is fundamental and reading my book is fundamentalist.

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