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Kobo Writing Life Director Mark Lefebvre interviews authors Sean Platt and David Wright about their Collective Inkwell properties which include the highly successful serial thrillers Yesterday’s Gone, White Space and Available Darkness.

Mark chats with Sean and Dave about the following:

Collaboration between writers – tools used, the logistics of how they do it and the importance of honesty with each other (ie, not pulling punches when something “sucks”)
Writing a serialized story and Dave’s behind-the-scenes inspiration from the old TV series “Cliffhangers” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliffhangers_%28TV_series%29)
Communication with readers, reader feedback & responding to fan email
Budgeting writing time, email time and the Sanelater email filter (Sanebox - http://www.sanebox.com/)
Sean’s 5 sentence email rule
The importance of the duality of Mr. Sunshine and Mr. Cynical
A mention of Unicorn Western (co-written by Sean and Johnny B. Truant) – Free First Book and Full Saga (Books 1 to 9)
Writing an evil character like Bericio Wolfe (favourite “bad guy” from Yesterday’s Gone) First Episode – Free, Full First Season (Episodes 1 to 6), Full Second Season (Episodes 7 to 12), Full Third Season (Episodes 13 to 18)
Keeping track of timelines and Dave’s favourite tool – Scapple (a brainstorming tool from the makers of Scrivener.
Advice to writers just beginning on their path: which includes the importance of patience, trusting your instincts and the rabbit-hole of distractions that can steal an author’s time
Teaser talk about the sci-fi series The Beam (co-written by Sean and Johnny B. Truant) – Free First Episode or Full Season (6 Episodes) eBook
The thrill of hearing from new fans who are Kobo readers. (And Dave’s love of Canada and Canadians)
Being real, being human and being honest
Sean’s perspective on the importance of speed, genre hopping and how he’s like a monkey
How sharing so much via their weekly podcast (Self-Publishing Podcast) keeps them honest
The importance of giving yourself permission to suck in your first draft and keeping at writing, ideally every day

OTHER NOTES

Mark talks about Kobo’s “open, social and collaborative” nature and the concept of embracing all retailers and making your work available everywhere – how certain retailer’s exclusivity programs are akin to asking ALL your customers to only shop at a single bookstore. Not always a realistic option.

Q&A Answer to: Do I need an ISBN to publish on Kobo Writing Life? Answer: No, you don’t need an ISBN. You can certainly BYOI (bring your own ISBN) or, if you don’t we’ll assign a “dummy” ISBN – with a note on some of our retailer partners that don’t ingest dummy ISBNs

MISC LINKS

Self-Publishing Podcast (which Sean & David co-host with Johnny B. Truant) - AKA SPP

http://selfpublishingpodcast.com/

[SPP Episode 57 – With KWL’s Mark Lefebvre as guest: http://selfpublishingpodcast.com/57/]

Listen to the audio version of Yesterday’s Gone via the YG podcast

http://collectiveinkwell.com/category/podcast/