For/From Indie Authors: Jack Wallen

Jack Wallen has been many things during his psuedo-adult life. Among those many things, Jack has been an actor, hair stylist, computer engineer, and of course a writer. Over the past decade Jack has written thousands of technical articles (mostly about the Linux operating system), theatrical scripts for young audiences, as well as thriller, horror, and other forms of fiction. Jack now concentrates on horror and thriller fiction as well as his cult-favorite Shero (sequel coming soon!)

Jack lives with his incredibly wonderful wife, various step-children, and six (count 'em...six) cats! For his inspiration to begin reading and writing, Jack thanks the ever-incredible Clive Barker for words that words can not describe.

Advice:

• Formatting As a self-published author, one of the single most important things I do (after writing is complete) is format the document. Each distributor will have different requirements and you must pay close attention to these. What is really important is to develop a style and a standard for yourself that can do two things: Follow the guidelines of the distributor (such as Amazon DTP or Smashwords) but give your book at bit of "pop". That doesn't mean use funky fonts or odd paragraph formatting. Instead do simple things like Underline your Chapter headings or create different ways to name your chapters. If you are writing a sci-fi or cyber-thriller book, instead of using the standard Chapter One, do something like "...1.0...", "...1.2...", "...2.0...", etc.
• Covers As a rule you do not want to use more than three fonts on a single design. If you go beyond that rule the design will be messy. I tend to use two fonts. The first font is the stylistic font that speaks to the books content, theme, mood, and feel. This font should not be a standard font. The second font is used for catchy snippets such as "From the writer of..." or "The second in the...". And make sure the text of your cover is actually part of the design and doesn't work against that terrific cover you have created.
• Inspiration for writing A writer's muse is a very personal thing. Some writers need no muse as words seem to flow out of them as if they were writing nothing more than a stream of random thought. Some, however, depend upon their muse. If you are still searching for that magic "thing" that will inspire you to great heights, never close your eyes to anything. Inspiration can come from the most insignificant artifact or moment. For myself, my muse is music. When I listen to music I almost always have my writer's hearing turned up high, because within the words of the song or the ebb and flow of the melody, something will strike me as a perfect moment in my current story (or even inspire a new idea for a story). The world is filled with inspiration just waiting to shed it's brilliant light upon your writer's mind.

Links:
I Zombie I
A Blade Away
Gothica