Joseph Rhea's Journal

Being an author means having to be brave enough to put your writing out there for the world to read, and judge. The first part is what most of us strive for, while the second is what many first-time authors dread. They say you have to be "thick-skinned" to be an writer, and that's true. The best way I've found to handle negative reviews is to look at the reviews of any of your favorite authors. Do they only receive glowing, 5-star reviews? No. You honestly can't please everyone, nor should you even try. However, after a dozen or so reviews, a pattern should start to appear, and that pattern ought to tend toward the positive side. In other words, you can brush off a few negative reviews, but if most readers are having a problem with your book, then it's probably time to reexamine your writing. Is it poorly-edited? Is the plot incoherent? Are your characters flat and lifeless? Is your dialogue stilted and predictable? If you honestly have to answer yes to any...

Some people spend their free time building model airplanes, watching TV, or washing their cars. A decade ago I spent the better part of two years building my own "Artificial Life" simulation inside a computer, using my own "simplified" versions of genetic algorithms. I called it "Cyberdrome" and eventually wrote a science fiction novel of the same name, loosely based on this "game." Here's a flashback to some of my notes from that period, that were posted on my very first website back then. 20 October 1999 Work has resumed on the Cyberdrome Simulator, our 3D digital recreation of Cyberdrome's Infected Program Zone. Our current version contains 36 memory sectors, with each sector covering a scaled area of 25 square miles, for a total of 900 square miles of cyberspace to explore! In addition, each of the 36 sectors now contain up to 1000 independently moving Artificial Life forms, which means almost 36,000 new enemy programs are n...

Two years ago, I remember a period during a 99c sale (which was rare back then) when my book was selling something like one book every hour, and I was elated. 20-30 books a day was spectacular, but I spent all of my time watching the sales rank, worrying about every little change. Then six months ago I stopped having sales, stopped most social networking, and tried to concentrate on my writing. As expected, my sales eventually died off, down to something like a book every few days, but I was actually content, because I had sold something like 4,000 books and thought maybe that was it. Time to let the other Indies have the spotlight and get my next book out. Then, just as an experiment, I decided to join Amazon Select last week and try a 2-day giveaway. After an astounding (to me) 11,000 free downloads in 48 hours, I assumed my book--now priced at $3.99--would return to never-never land like so many others. But it was not to be. Since then my book has been selling 5-10 copies every h...

When it comes to giving your novel a title and a cover, sometime what you, the author, envision is not what your publisher's marketing people come up with. For Indies, the job is both simpler and more difficult. Simpler, in that you have full control of every aspect of the book, including cover art and title. More difficult, in that what you think is "perfect" might not actually draw in that many people. Or worse, potential readers are actually driven away by either the title or artwork. I bring this up because a few days ago I tweaked the title of the Kindle version of my book as a test, and already I am seeing increased sales, especially overseas. Basically all I did was change my one-word title, "Cyberdrome" to "Cyberdrome (a science fiction thriller)." I don't know if this change helps it show up in searches, or what, but it does seem to be boosting sales right now. I probably should have done this originally with the paperback because ...

There was a discussion on KindleBoards.com recently regarding how we name the characters in our stories. Some writers replied that they put a lot of effort into them, while others preferred "plain" names with no real significance. Like the former, I spent a fair amount of time coming up with names for the major characters in my scifi novel, Cyberdrome. This was especially true for the hero, Alek Grey: Alek is short for Alexander which means "Defender of Man" (appropriate for a person who is quite literally risking his life to save humanity.) Grey comes from Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" Why? Central to my story is the possibility of experiencing many years within the space of a few hours (connected to a virtual reality environment) which ties into the theme of Dorian Gray (he sells his soul to ensure that his portrait will age rather than himself). Also, the main "love interest" is named Maya, which "in Indian religions...

When I finally went to see James Cameron's movie, "Avatar" back in Feb of 2010, I saw firsthand what many reviewers had been telling me since it opened. There were so many similarities between Cyberdrome and Avatar that realized that my chances of ever getting a film deal were nearly zero. Anyone reading my treatment would say, "been there, done that--by Cameron!" Similarities include a protagonist in a wheelchair (who uses an avatar to escape his confinement and ends up wanting to stay in his new body), an interface room that is nearly identical in both design and function from what my brother and I created 10 years ago, and Pandora's inhabitants look like a cross between my Blue Sentinels and a cat-like creature I call a CeeAut. Other similarities include a aircraft called a Dragon, and a drop ship that is functionally identical to one of our aircraft. There are numerous others, but you get the idea... Now, I'm not saying that James Cameron--or o...

Cyberdrome Deleted Scenes Part #7 - Aleks original encounter with Klaxxon Background In Chapter One, after Alek's encounter with Stacy, he meets an old ally named Klaxxon. In the original version, this meeting was much longer and takes place in virtual reality. I gave up this version because it made readers think this "primitive" version of VR was what Cyberdrome was all about, while in fact it was more of an homage to previous cyberpunk novels. I hope you enjoy this final deleted scene from Cyberdrome... Deleted Scene As the neural override ramped up to full power, sensory data from the headset computer quickly overrode the normal signals coming from his eyes and ears to his brain. As the digital signals became stronger than the biological versions, Stacy and the coffee shop receded from view, quickly shrinking to a tiny dot. Floating in the blackness that surrounded him, he felt the usual sense of vertigo, but his hand on the table back in the coffee shop steadied ...