Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.
I’m getting ready to fly to Texas for the weekend, so before I forget, there’s a Goodreads giveaway running right now for Genesis Earth. If you would like a chance to win a print copy, be sure to enter in the next few days! The giveaway ends April 25th.
Thanks for reading!
Every few months, an article about the “death of the novel” makes the rounds on the internet. This subject, the impending doom of one of literature’s most enduring forms, is a perennial favorite for bookish handwringers everywhere. If it isn’t ebooks that’s going to kill the novel, it’s millennials, the internet, our dwindling attention spans, or one of a hundred other things.
As a professional writer, though, I am awestruck by the timelessness of the novel. Think about it:
From its origin with Don Quixote in 1605, the modern novel has endured through social and political upheaval, global pandemics, the collapse of numerous societies, the most devastating war the world has ever seen, genocide and holocaust on an industrial scale, and rise and fall of half a dozen global empires. The world today would be unrecognizable to a person from Cervantes’ time, yet the novel has endured.
Movies didn’t kill the novel. Television didn’t kill the novel. Video games didn’t kill the novel. On the contrary—numerous franchises from Star Trek to Halo have a thriving line of novel tie-ins. When the ebook revolution was just getting started, people thought that so-called “enhanced novels” would dominate the marketplace. They failed to realize that all of the added audio-visual content was a distraction for most readers. Plain text is not a bug, it’s a feature.
It’s important here to make a distinction between novels and other literary forms, such as novellas and short stories. The other forms have endured as well, but not with anything approaching the popularity of the novel. Short stories are great for exploring an idea, but not so good at immersing the reader into another world. Novellas are great for telling an intimate story about two or three characters, but not nearly as good at conveying scope or intrigue.
There’s something about a novel-length story that captures the imagination in a way that other forms just can’t. Whether it’s the large cast of characters, the intricate world-building, or the interplay of numerous subplots, novels are more immersive, and therefore have the capacity to be much more satisfying. Little wonder, then, that the novel has endured.
I’ve seen this in my own books, too. Over the years, I’ve done relatively little to promote my full-length novels, and yet they still chug along with a steady month-to-month trickle of sales. When I do promote them, such as with this month’s free run of Genesis Earth, the results are astounding. My full-length novels also tend to receive much higher reviews.
In my second year of self-publishing, I got impatient and switched to novellas. While I don’t think that was a mistake, it did not provide the foundation for a lasting career. The Star Wanderers novellas did well for a couple of years, but I don’t think they’re going to endure in their current form.
I love writing novellas, but the books that I’m proudest of are all novels. Where novellas entice, novels satisfy. Where novellas tell an intimate story, novels possess greater depth. As such, I think it’s time for a change.
In the next couple of months, I’m going to prune back my catalog a bit. The Star Wanderers series will still all be up there, but I’m going to remove the individual novellas from sale, keeping the omnibus editions instead. This will pave the way for a sequel novel, Children of the Starry Sea, which I’ve already started work on.
I will probably remove most of my older short stories, and some of the derivative works. I don’t want to clutter my book pages with my earlier practice work, or anything that looks too obviously self-published.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do with Sons of the Starfarers just yet. I’ll definitely finish the series, but I’m not sure whether to do the other two omnibus editions or to just release each individual book in print. I’m toying with the idea of releasing the last four books in rapid succession, to build some momentum for the series, but it would take some time to write them, which means that Patriots in Retreat (Book VI) would be delayed for maybe a year.
I’m definitely going to turn Genesis Earth into a trilogy. No idea when the next book, Edenfall, is going to come out, but I’m going to do as thorough a job with that book as I did for Genesis Earth, which means it may take a while.
Novels take a lot longer for me to write than shorter books, but the end result is generally worth it. The trouble is that without a busy release schedule, sales tend to dwindle as you fall out of readers’ minds. I’ll try to make up for that by upping my marketing game and running more free and group promotions. In the meantime, anything you guys can do to spread the word would help!
I’ve got a couple of really awesome projects that should be coming out before the end of the year: The Sword Keeper, Gunslinger to the Stars, and a bunch of other stuff that’s really going to branch out my catalog. I’ve also got a couple of short stories that should be appearing in some new markets soon. Be sure to keep an eye out, and let me know what you think!
For the last five years, the conventional wisdom among most indie writers has been to write short books in sequential series and make the first book permanently free. It’s a strategy that works, to a certain extent. It’s what got me from making pizza money on my book sales to making a humble living at this gig. However, I’m starting to question that wisdom.
I have two books available for free this month: Genesis Earth and Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I). Genesis Earth was my first indie published novel, a “standalone with series potential” (specifically, a trilogy) written according to the conventional wisdom for breaking into traditional publishing. Outworlder is a very different book: the first in an eight-book novella series, strong enough to stand alone but short enough to leave the reader wanting more. And for several years, it was perma-free.
Outworlder was the first of my books to make it big. It’s gotten tens of thousands of free downloads and driven thousands of sales (I don’t have the exact numbers because I haven’t yet collated all of my sales reports from the past five years, but that’s something I plan to do). It was largely on the success of Outworlder and the Star Wanderers series that I built my early career.
But over time, downloads of Outworlder slowed to a bare trickle, and sales did as well. I could give it a short-term boost by running a few strategically placed ads, but it would always fall back down to a baseline that was simply unacceptable.
Also, when you have a book that’s permanently free, it tends to accumulate a lot of negative reviews. It’s strange, but some people seem to feel more entitled to XYZ when they get it for free, as opposed to paying for it. Or maybe these are the people who try to go through life without actually paying for anything? Who hoard everything, even the stuff that they hate, so long as they can get it for free? I don’t know.
Certainly, that’s not true of everyone who reads free books. But when you have a perma-free book, it tends to accumulate more of the barely-coherent “dis buk sux” kinds of reviews from people who probably weren’t in the target audience to begin with. And over time, that tends to weigh the book’s overall rating down, which unfortunately can be a turn-off for people who are in the book’s audience.
Contrast that with Genesis Earth. I launched it at full price with a blog tour (which I put together myself, among writer friends whom I knew personally and who had readers who would probably enjoy the book). It sold about a hundred copies in the first ninety days, then slowed to a very low trickle—maybe one or two sales each month, if that. Things continued like this for several years.
Then, back in December, I made it free for one month. Downloads immediately shot up, and continued strong throughout the entire month. Even without any advertising, I was still getting maybe 50 downloads per day on Amazon, plus a constant trickle on the other platforms. For the next couple of months, sales of all my other books grew as well
For April, I decided to make it free again, just to see if I could duplicate that kind of success. I haven’t done any paid advertising for it, but I have submitted it to various sites and newsletters that will promote free books. The result? Thousands of downloads, with a baseline rate of more than a hundred downloads per day.
Genesis Earth has never been perma-free, but every time I set it free for a limited time, it’s like I’ve released the pent-up flood waters. In contrast, Outworlder struggles to get any downloads at all, even when it’s free for only a limited time.
Part of this may have to do with the reviews. Genesis Earth has a much better overall book rating, simply because most of the people who read it over the years were the ones willing to pay full price. This also means that the book has grown into its own niche organically, since the people who have bought Genesis Earth also tend to buy other books similar to it. Retailers like Amazon take note of this, and tend to associate these books with each other in things like also-bought recommendations.
This is all just speculation, but when all of this comes together, it seems to result not only in a higher download rate when the book is free, but more downloads from people who are in the book’s targeted audience.
The mos fascinating result of this is that when the book goes back to full price, sales get a small but long-lasting boost. I’ve seen this with Bringing Stella Home, which was free in March. It’s not a huge boost—maybe only five or six books a month—but it boosts all of the other books in the series as well, and lasts for a couple of months. It’s not just Amazon where this is happening, either—in fact, it may be boosting sales on the non-Amazon platforms even more.
Bringing Stella Home is different, though, because it’s a full-length novel (about 110k words, or +300 pages) in a series that can be read out of order just fine. In other words, more of the “stand-alone with series potential” that was the convential wisdom in the old tradpub world. Like Genesis Earth, it has never been perma-free.
So what’s the takeaway?
That maybe the convential wisdom among indies is all wrong. That perma-free actually taints books and makes it harder for them to stick in the rankings, or to grow into their natural audience. That longer stand-alone books with recurring characters set in the same universe may be better for gaining long-term traction than shorter, more episodic books. Also, that the more books you give away for free—not just first in series—the better that all of your books will sell.
My experience is purely anecdotal, and there’s a lot more analysis I need to do before I can say anything for sure. From what I can tell, though, it seems that the best strategy is to write longer, fuller books that satisfy more than they entice, and to use free as a marketing strategy for only a limited time.
In other words, the collective wisdom of KBoards is completely off the mark, and Kris Rusch (who regularly gets vilified on KBoards) actually knows what she’s talking about most of the time.
Like I said, this is all anecdotal and more analysis is required. But I’m very curious now to make some of my non- first-in-series books free for a month, just to see if it has a similar boost. With Bringing Stella Home, for example, a lot of readers seem to be jumping over books 2 and 3 to read Heart of the Nebula, the direct sequel (but book 4 in the Gaia Nova series order). It would be very interesting to see if Desert Stars has an awesome free run as well, resulting in more sales after it reverts back to full price.
Lots of interesting stuff to consider. It’s definitely going to inform my writing and marketing efforts in the future.
This is the first scene from the point of view of Alex Andretzek, the warrior tasked with protecting Tamuna until she comes into her own as the last sword bearer. The interesting thing about their relationship dynamic is that Alex was in line to become the next sword keeper, and because of Tamuna, that honor will never be his.
Tamuna, Nika, and Alex are the three major characters in the book. Nika is the lovable if slightly incompetant friend, and Alex is the highly competant one who’s constantly aloof, to the point where Tamuna wonders if she hates him. He doesn’t, and he’s actually very loyal in his own way, but as you’ll see in this excerpt, he has a lot of stuff to work through.
To set up this scene: Tamuna and Alex leave the village under cover of dark and are immediately pursued by a band of horsemen led by the evil bearer of the bloodstone blade, Araste. They narrowly escape and run into Nika, who has left by an alternate route in order to catch up to them. Miffed, Alex decides to take them to the nearest town, Kutaisa, where at least they will be safe in the short term. It is now a few hours before dawn, and the three of them are walking along an empty but well-worn country road.
The sword has chosen a bearer, Alex thought for the hundredth time as he crept through the moonlit woods. And the bearer is a tavern wench.
Even now, he still found it difficult to believe. Years of training and months of trekking through the high Kevonas had led him here, to this insignificant Kevonan backwater—and for what?
So the sword had chosen its final bearer. That was worthy news, even if it meant that he would never have the honor of being the sword keeper. With the prophecy already in motion, he could expect to see some major events soon. But a tavern wench? One who could barely even lift the sword, let alone wield it?
He still remembered, as if it were yesterday, the first time he’d laid eyes on Imeris. He’d been only sixteen at the time, one of the youngest novices to ever be initiated into the order. After passing all the tests and receiving all the rites, he’d finally been given a chance to draw the blade.
“Remember,” Master Ivanar had told him, “Imeris has not taken a bearer in centuries. If he refuses you, it is no dishonor.”
“I know,” Alex had said. “And whether or not it chooses me, I swear to serve and uphold the blade, even for the rest of my life.”
Master Ivanar nodded. “Do you remember the prophecy?”
“This sword IMERIS,” Alex recited eagerly, “though last to be forged, certainly shall not be the least. For in the days when the order is broken and darkness sweeps across the face of the land, he shall await the one who will wield him in truth and wisdom to free the world of men.”
“That is right. You are a worthy initiate, Alexander Andretzek.”
Master Ivanar took the sword from the table behind him. The other monks in the circle bowed their heads, and Alex knelt in reverence.
“Arise,” said Ivanar, holding out the emerald-studded hilt. Alex rose to his feet, his heart pounding with nervous energy. He stared at the sword ancient for several moments. The workmanship was extremely fine, with every detail perfectly wrought and every adornment beautifully fashioned. The emerald gleamed in the flickering candlelight.
“If Imeris chooses me,” he had asked in a subdued whisper, “how will I know?”
“You will know,” Master Ivanar had assured him. “The blade will leap into your hands, and you will feel a bond with it the likes of which you have never experienced. He will speak to you in your mind and in your heart, and you will know, without a doubt, that you are the foretold bearer.”
Alex had nodded and swallowed. His hands felt cold and clammy, but he closed his eyes and wrapped them tenderly around the handle. It felt strangely warm against his skin, as if the sword itself were alive—which indeed it was. For a brief, hopeful moment, he almost imagined he felt something. But one moment turned into two, then three. The cackling of the fire broke the solemn silence, and his stomach sank as doubts crept into his heart.
Before letting go, he gave the sword one brief, ineffectual tug. For years afterward, he’d wondered if this had been his downfall—the reason the sword had refused him. It couldn’t have been his lack of faith, or an unwillingness to serve. But patience was a virtue he lacked, and arrogance was a vice he possessed in great abundance. Either way, he’d spent the next few years running the events of that day over and over in his mind, picking it apart until there was nothing left but an awful sinking feeling he could barely choke down.
But at least he was slated to be the next sword keeper. At least that honor would one day be his.
Until now.
And of all the people more worthy than him, the sword had chosen a tavern wench?
At least she knows how to step softly, he thought to himself. The peasant boy, on the other hand, was louder than lovers in a hay loft. Between his blundering and her chattiness, it was a wonder that Araste hadn’t made quick work of them already. No doubt his brothers in the order were hard at work, leading the enemy away.
The forest soon gave way to fields and vineyards. Out in the east, the sky was just starting to grow blue, while the moon set behind them over the mountains. The road was now wide enough for two carts, with large river stones for pavement. The people of this country were too poor to build proper roads, but that was only a minor annoyance. The main city shouldn’t be more than five or six miles away. At their current rate, they would make it in a couple of hours.
He glanced over his shoulder and rolled his eyes in disgust. The girl was leaning on the peasant boy’s shoulder, drunk with sleepiness. She yawned and blinked as she steadied herself, but it was clear that if they stopped, even for a minute, she wouldn’t wake up until well past dawn.
“Can we stop and rest for a minute?” the boy asked. “Tamuna is tired.”
Alex narrowed his eyes at him. “Are you trying to get her killed, boy? If you knew what hunts her, you wouldn’t dare let her rest.”
The boy clenched his fists. “My name is Nika.”
“And mine is Alex. I’ll call you by your proper name when you’ve earned my proper respect.”
They went on for a good ten minutes in silence. The air was thick with dew, and not quite cold enough yet for frost. It was interesting, how these mountainous lands could be so full of moisture. In the alpine forests just below the treeline, moss dangled from tree branches like tattered clothes on forgotten clotheslines. Up where the wolves and bear were plentiful, fresh mineral springs gushed out of the rocks like untapped fountains.
“Where are we going?” the boy asked, shattering his half-bored thoughts.
“Kutaisa.”
“Kutaisa?”
Alex didn’t have to look back to detect the frown in his voice.
“That’s right. We’ll reach the city just before dawn.”
“But—but I thought we were supposed to go over the mountains to Aramand.”
Alex turned on his heel and planted his finger squarely in the boy’s chest. “If you want to get us all killed, then say that a little louder. The only reason we’re still alive is because our enemies haven’t yet put that all together.”
The boy shrank and blushed. Next to him, the girl shook her head and yawned.
“Wha—what’s the matter?” she asked.
Alex didn’t grace them with an answer. He walked off down the moonlit road, not bothering to check if they still followed him.
If I keep doing what I’m doing, writing and publishing my books, and building a steadily growing readership, eventually I’m going to come into some money. My readership will reach a critical mass, one of my books will hit the market in just the right way, and I’ll find myself riding the rocket to career heights that were previously unthinkable. Writing is very much a feast or famine thing, and the feast years will come if I keep at it long enough.
When the money comes, I will invest it in something more stable, like a rental property. Provo is a college town with a high demand for student housing, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find a couple properties and improve them myself. The DIY aspect is crucial, because everything that comes next will build on it.
Once I’ve got a couple rental properties that are producing a steady income stream, I’ll use that money to buy some cheap land. This land will be deep in the mountains a couple of hours southeast of here, far enough to be in the middle of nowhere, but close enough to grow in value as the cities along the Wasatch Front expand. The land will be pretty much useless for anything except future development, which will actually make it fairly valuable in fifty or so years, so long as things go well.
If things don’t go well—if the economy collapses and the country falls apart, our runaway national debt catches up to us, a fascist tyrant comes to power, a war devastates us, cyber-terrorists take down the electical grid, or a massive pandemic breaks out—if any of these things happen, this property will be an ideal place for a bug out location. That’s important. When crap hits the fan, I want to be like the father in Farnham’s Freehold, with a cool-headed plan. I want to be able to rebuild civilization with my family if I have to.
Of course, in the event that things don’t get that bad, it will still be really great to have a vacation home way up in the mountains. This home will also double as a cabin for writing retreats and weekend getaways. When I die, my kids can either keep it in the family or sell it for a tidy profit, after all the improvements I intend to make.
The first year, I plan to build a small hangar shed and dig a well. I’ll install a thousand gallon tank, which I’ll use for storing water until I can build a proper cystern (at which point I’ll probably convert the tank into a septic tank). I’ll plant several fruit and nut trees, since the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago (but the second best time is today). I’ll build a modular watering system and plant at least ten trees each year thereafter.
In either the first or second year, I’ll buy some heavy earthmoving equipment and keep it in the shed. I’ll use that equipment to start improving the property, laying the foundation for things to come.
The first thing will be a tiny house, maybe 200 or 300 square feet, with solar power, a composting toilet, a small water tower hooked up to the well, and another tower for cellular internet. This house will have a loft for mom and dad, roll-out cots for the kids, a living/kitchen/everything room, and shelves built into the walls for food storage. In a lot of ways, it will basically be the dream house I wrote about here.
There will be several garden plots, though they will probably lay fallow unless crap hits the fan and we have to move in permanently. If I can afford it, though, it would be really cool to set up some self-regulating aquaponics systems, with computer monitoring that can alert me remotely if anything goes wrong. The property will be close enough for a weekend visit, so it won’t be hard to make a trip up if I have to. However, the idea is to design it in such a way that it can be mothballed until needed.
When the tiny house is complete, my dream will be mostly realized. However, I don’t plan to stop there. With the skills I’ve learned from improving the rental properties, and with help from some of my contractor plans, I’ll use the heavy equipment to build a proper house. This house will be off-grid just like the tiny house, with solar powers, well-water and rainwater collection, a root cellar, a greenhouse, a couple of freezers full of game meat, etc. etc. It will be the ideal mountain cabin, serving not only as a bug out location, but as a place for weekend getaways, writing retreats, long family vacations, and perhaps even a retirement home.
I plan to be as self-sufficient as possible on this property. Everything will be designed with self-reliance in mind. Rainwater collection, greywater reclamation systems, solar power, a wood-fired oven and furnace—it will be rustic and self-sufficient, satisfying all of my family’s needs.
I don’t know how bad it’s going to be when crap hits the fan. There are some scenarios (Yellowstone caldera) that kill everyone pretty much instantly. Others are so long and drawn out that the sheltered elites may deny that it’s even happening (sounds like the Great Recession, eh?). Regardless, it will be good to have a castle that I can retreat to, along with my family.
That’s the dream right now: to make it big enough to get the ball rolling on this project. It’s going to take decades to reach full maturity, but even after just a few years, it will start to bear fruit.
And who knows what will happen in future? If you’d told me fifteen years ago that I’d be where I am today, writing for a living and selling books all over the world, I’d get all bug-eyed just thinking about it. A lot can happen in ten to fifteen years.
Whatever else happens, I’ll still be writing.
There are two kinds of people in the world. No, not those who can count and those who can’t. No, not those with loaded guns and those who dig. Stay with me for a minute, because this is important. In fact, it may be the most important realization I’ve ever had.
We have a tendency to see the world in terms of haves and have-nots. This is because it’s so easy for us to see the difference. The haves tend to live in nice houses, drive nice cars, and have (hence the term “haves”) lots of nice stuff. The have-nots, on the other hand, tend to scrape the bottom of the barrel just to get by.
This distinction between haves and have-nots, while real and present, isn’t actually that useful. Why? Because it doesn’t get to the crux of the issue: it doesn’t explain why some people have and some people have-not.
Sometimes, a have-not is just a have going through a downturn or temporary setback. Sometimes, a have is just a have-not who won the jackpot and is spending himself back to poverty as fast as he can.
This doesn’t just apply to socioeconomics, by the way. A writer who “lacks talent” may just be the next Kevin J. Anderson writing his way through his first million words. A bestselling author may just be a one-hit wonder who hit the current zeitgeist in just the right way. This also applies to personal virtues and character traits: there are haves and have-nots of honesty, compassion, generosity, charisma, etc etc.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter at any given moment who has and who has-not. What matters is what you—what anyone—chooses to do about it. And that’s where we get to the heart of the matter.
There are two kinds of people in this world: the makers and the takers. A maker, when presented with a narrow slice of the pie, immediately thinks “I should go make more pie,” while a taker grabs the knife and tries to re-slice everyone’s piece.
Makers recognize that there isn’t a fixed amount of wealth, or success, or happiness in the world. They don’t feel threatened by another person’s success because they know that it doesn’t take away from their own. They are confident in their ability to go out and create, knowing that their only limitation is their ability to innovate and solve problems.
Takers, on the other hand, are obsessed with fairness and equality. They view wealth as a finite resource that need to be redistributed in order for everyone to get their “fair share.” They are threatened by other people’s success and feel that it diminishes their own. This often leads them to sabotage their relationships, leading to things like gaslighting, manipulation, and abuse.
Makers believe in freedom; takers believe in control. Makers judge people by what they do; takers judge people by what they are. Makers pursue opportunity; takers try to shut other people out. Makers are pioneers and entrepreneurs; takers are parasites and thieves.
I’m deliberately oversimplifying this in order to show the two extremes. Of course, no one is 100% to one side or the other. There are areas in our lives where we are makers, and other areas where we are takers. Humans are complex variables that don’t fit neatly into any equation.
What isn’t gray is that making is a virtue and taking is a vice.
So what does this have to do with writing and self-sufficiency? In the age of indie publishing, just about everything.
The publishing industry today is full of both extremes. In the contract clauses of traditional publishing, we have some of the most eggregious rights grabs that have ever been penned. Non-competes, rights reversions, right of first refusal—it’s a minefield out there, littered with the bloody, dismembered limbs of broken dreams.
On the other end of the spectrum in indie publishing, there is a perfect confluence of opportunity for makers to do what they do best: make. In the indie world, you have no one but yourself to blame for your failures, but your successes are all your own. Yes, there are a lot of failures—but there are also a hell of a lot of successes.
In other words, publishing is the wild, wild west right now. And just as the west was notorious for robbers and bandits, it also saw some of the greatest pioneering the world has ever seen.
Do you want to be self-sufficient as a writer? Do you want to be able to live off of your writing through the good times and the bad?
Be a maker, not a taker.
When you see an author outselling you with a crappy-looking cover and a blurb/sample rife with grammar and spelling errors, don’t fall prey to jealousy. Don’t be petty about it. That book is not preventing people from reading yours. That author’s success does not diminish your own. Don’t try to take his success away from him; go and make success of your own.
When you’re talking shop with other writers and things get into an argument, don’t throw down the gauntlet by demanding that everyone share their sales numbers. Don’t turn it into a dick measuring contest. The only circumstance in which sales numbers prove one side right is a controlled A/B test, where everything else is constant except for the thing that you’re trying to test.
Again, it’s not about the haves and the have-nots. Just because another writer doesn’t currently have as much success as you doesn’t make them wrong. Be a maker: strive to learn from everyone.
Avoid your toxic writer “friends” who seek to diminish your success because you haven’t hit such and such bestseller list, or won such and such award. Don’t attach your emotional well-being as a writer to the opinions of other people. Hell, don’t attach your emotional well-being to anything that isn’t in your control. Be independent, not codependent. Cultivate self-sufficiency by making your own success.
Don’t obsess about book piracy. If your books are fairly priced, DRM free, and widely available, a pirated book is almost never a lost sale. Instead of playing whack-a-mole with takedown notices, focus that energy on finding new readers who are willing to pay for your books.
Don’t obsess over book reviews. Don’t try to control every little thing that people say about your books. Let readers freely and honestly express what they liked and didn’t like about your books, without any interference from you. And if it turns out you wrote a stinker, learn what you can from it and write a better one next time.
Be a maker, not a taker.
Only makers are truly self-sufficient. When the takers run out of haves to take from, they inevitably tear each other apart. If you’re in a writing group or online community where that is currently happening, don’t let yourself get caught up in that. Leave.
A maker is someone who can leave everything behind and start over with nothing. It’s never easy, but when it has to be done, you will always be better off for it. The self-sufficient writer recognizes this, and strives to live and writes in such a way that they can start over if they have to.
Being a maker is a choice. It is something that you can always control. Even as an indie writer, there are a lot of things you can’t control. You can’t control how well your books will sell. You can’t directly control how much success you experience, or how soon you will experience it.
You can’t always choose to be a have or a have-not. But you can always choose to be a maker instead of a taker.
Be a maker, not a taker.
I was really bad about updating this blog last month. My goal was to post something new every Monday and Thursday, but that fell through and I’m not sure why. It’s not like life got super complicated or anything, more like blogging was just the ball that got dropped last month.
No excuses, just getting back on the horse. I’m hoping to build up a buffer of interesting posts before the end of the week, which should make things more consistent around here. I’d also like to put together an old-school blog tour for the release of Captives in Obscurity, just to see how it goes.
In terms of writing, things are coming along well. I’m currently in the middle of the first draft of The Sword Keeper, which I hope to finish before the end of the month. There are a few non-writing things on my plate (selling car, rebuilding computer) that may interrupt my progress, but writing is my top priority and I’m getting it done.
New free books this month, just waiting for Amazon to price match so I can update things and send out the email to my mailing list (by the way, if you haven’t already subscribed to my mailing list, you can do so here). Also, I’m redoing the print edition for Genesis Earth and the first Sons of the Starfarers omnibus. Just got the first proof for Genesis Earth, and the new cover looks pretty freaking fantastic (same art, just tweaked a little).
In terms of the blog, I’ve got another Self-Sufficient Writer post in the works, which may be a bit political (though not directly partisan). It will almost certainly offend the perpetually offended, but more importantly, it should also be pretty interesting. A lot of thoughts have been coalescing in my mind for some time, and this is the result.
Other than that, I plan to do a blog post on my new scooter in the very near future, which is going to be a lot of fun. Also another tvtropes post, and maybe another WIP excerpt.
I also had a crazy idea to put together a promo page kind of like Patty Jansen’s, except with buy links for all of the stores, not just Amazon. It’s going to take a LOT of work to put it together, though, so don’t expect to see that soon. Hell, I haven’t even done the preliminary research yet! Still in the crazy idea phase—but let me know if you think it’s a good idea.
That just about does it for now. Good things are happening, and now that I’m back on the horse, more of that should make it to the blog.
This will probably come as a shock to most of you, but I’ve decided to give up writing. It was a good run while it lasted, but the time has come to pack it away with my other childhood dreams, like living on a houseboat or becoming a paleontologist.
Why did I give up writing? Because frankly, I just don’t have any new ideas anymore. Whenever I manage to come up with one, it turns out that someone else has already done it. Accidental marriage in space? Firefly. Trek across a desert planet? Dune. Colonizing an unexplored nebula? I don’t know off the top of my head, but I’m sure it’s been done before.
Even if I could come up with an original science fiction idea, I’d be woefully unqualified to write about it. I mean, I’ve never even been to space, much less piloted a starship or visited another planet. They say you’re supposed to write what you know, which pretty much limits me to stories about struggling writers.
Which would be perfect, if I were trying to break into literary fiction. But even there, it would never happen, not only because my politics are wrong, but because I’ve (gasp!) self-published. What was I thinking? The gatekeepers of publishing will never take me seriously again, and I have no chance of ever turning this writing habit into a career.
But even if none of that was an issue—even if I had great ideas and enough life experience to write them well, with the means to get my stories out to market, who am I kidding to think I can make money at this? There are MILLIONS of books published, and the best ones are all free! Why would someone pay to read one of my books when they could get Tolstoy or Dickens or Austen on Project Gutenburg for nothing? Even if they’re looking for something published recently, they can always go to the public library. And don’t get me started on book piracy!
Point is, it’s just stupid to think that this writing thing could ever go anywhere. It was fun while it lasted, but the time has come to close up shop and go into something practical, like sanitation or accounting. Science fiction is basically just talking squids in outer space, and I’m an adult now. It’s time to give up these escapist fantasies and start acting like one.
Besides, does anyone even read books these days?
About a year ago, while doing research for prepper-type stuff, I came across this interview of Ted Koppel, discussing his book Lights Out.
It piqued my interest, especially since Ted Koppel is not the kind of person I’d peg as much of a prepper/survivalist. The part about the Mormons sounded interesting too, so I reserved the book from my local library and checked it out.
I was not disappointed.
The infrastructure of the power grid is highly dependent on the internet.
This dependence has created a series of vulnerabilities that could destroy large portions of this infrastructure.
The private sector has failed to reliably safeguard against these vulnerabilities, mainly because the companies at the failure points have little incentive to develop the safeguards.
State and Federal agencies cannot impose sufficient safeguards because of lobbying efforts and privacy concerns.
Because most of the infrastructure is generations old and not standardized, it would take months or even years to replace key components in the event of a successful attack.
The Russians and the Chinese already have the capability to bring down our power grid, and with the proper expertise it is fully within the capability of rogue states like Iran or North Korea, or non-state actors like ISIS, to do so as well.
The Federal government fully expects an attack on our power grid in the mid to near future, but the various agencies do not have a clear plan for how to deal with such a contingency.
The general US populace is woefully unprepared for such an attack, except for certain communities such as the Mormons. They would not be able to provide for everyone, however, and would probably use force to defend themselves in the event of a collapse.
The only way our society could survive an attack is if everyone who can afford it would store three to six months of food, water, and emergency supplies. Otherwise, if the power grid went down, a collapse would be swift and catastrophic.
Freaky stuff. What was really freaky was the way that people who should have been taking more responsibility, such as the CEOs of major power companies or the directors of Federal agencies such as the DOD or DHS, all seemed content to pass the buck and give Ted Koppel the run-around. He described in detail some of his interviews, and the way in which various officials passed him off to one another like a hot potato.
And then he got to the Mormons.
I have to say, the chapters about the Mormons were some of the more fascinating parts of the book. Ted Koppel only expected to get a phone interview, but instead, Elder Henry B. Eyring flew him out to Utah and gave him a personal tour, including the welfare farms, the distribution centers, the canneries and home storage centers—they even found a local Utah family to cook him a food storage dinner! The gold-ticket treatment definitely impressed him, and that shines through in the book.
Of all the books about Mormons written by non-Mormons, I have to say that Lights Out gives one of the fairest treatments I’ve ever seen. Ted Koppel touches only lightly on church history and doctrine, but he makes it clear how these things tie into our emphasis on self-sufficiency and preparedness. While his impressions are quite favorable, he doesn’t shy away from asking the difficult questions, such as whether we would take up arms to defend our supplies if roving hordes threatened to take them from us by force. As he points out, there’s a great deal of constructive ambiguity from our leaders on that point.
If you’re as interested in potential doomsday scenarios as I am, or in emergency preparedness and self-sufficiency, this is a great book. It raises some frightening concerns without being too alarmist or devolving into sensationalism. For those who are concerned about this sort of thing but don’t have much experience with preppers or prepper culture, the book offers a fascinating look at this growing subculture and the motivations that drive it. Definitely worth a read!
I may not have blogged much in the past couple of weeks, but I have been busy.
First of all, I’ve renewed work on The Sword Keeper, and this time I’m going to finish the damn thing. Too much time has passed already, and the story is too good to let it languish on my hard drive(s) any longer. As of now, the goal is to finish the 1.0 draft by the end of April. I haven’t put up a progress bar yet, but I will in the next few days.
Second, I’ve been busy writing some new short stories. On Monday, I finished “Lizzie-99XT,” a hard military SF piece about a starfighter pilot whose intelligence merges with the AI of her starfighter, giving her a very different perspective on space, time, and the heavens. And yesterday, I finished “Time and Space in Amish Country,” an Amish Sci-Fi Time Travel Romance that’s been sitting unfinished on my hard drive for a long, long time.
I’ve been thinking a lot ever since writing that post about making a living as a short story writer. While long-form fiction is still my bread and butter, I would like to work on my short form and make that an important part of what I do. Towards that end, I’ve set some new goals.
My biggest goal at this point is to write a new short story every week, on top of my other writing. If I can keep that up for a year, that’s 50 short stories that I didn’t have the year before. Even if most of them aren’t any good, the exercise will help to make me a better writer.
Writing short stories takes a slightly different skill set than writing novels and novellas, but there’s enough of an overlap that the two can feed into each other. In my experience, it’s a little bit like the difference between driving a car and riding a motorcycle. In some ways, they’re very different, but fundamentally they’re both driving. In a similar way, writing short stories and novels is still just storytelling.
My other goal is to read at least one short story every day. I didn’t realize this until recently, but almost every major SF magazine publishes all of their stories in full online (except for the two oldest ‘zines, Analog and Asimov’s—go figure). It takes only half an hour at most to read a short story, and because there are so many available online for free, I can read them on my phone from just about anywhere.
So that’s the plan. I’ll probably review a couple of short stories from time to time, as I find the really good ones. Should be something interesting to blog about, which is something else I need to be better about. Expect to see more posts in the near future.
