Joe Vasicek

Writing is like tending an orchard

So I was hiking the Y tonight, pondering various things, and the thought occurred to me that writing is a lot like an olive orchard.

First, you’ve got the land, both cultivated and wild. Cultivated land is like your conscious mind, where everything fits neatly into order and you have control over what you create. The subconscious is the land beyond the fence, where things grow wild.

Ideas are like seeds; they’re everywhere, but only a few ever take root and sprout. Those that do need to have new sprouts periodically grafted into the old, in order to preserve the entire tree. These grafts may come from the cultivated ground of your cultivated mind, but more often than not they come from the wildlands of the subconscious.

Each novel is like an individual olive tree. It takes a lot of time and work to grow one to maturity, but once you do, it can live for a long, long time. The fruit itself is like the earnings you get by licensing copyright; if you prune the tree carefully (aka do a good job managing your intellectual property), it just keeps on producing.

Of course, in order to make sure your trees grow properly, you need to be constantly enriching the soil of your mind. That’s where education and life experience comes in.

Since trees sometimes die, you have to maintain several trees at once in order for your orchard to succeed. And even though it’s a hell of a lot of work, over the long run the returns are enormous.

For the ancients, olives were a major staple crop. In Greek mythology, Athena was chosen as the patron goddess of the city of Athens because her gift of an olive tree was considered more precious than any other. And just as good books help us expand our minds, better understand and empathize with others, and generally rise above the boredom and mundane-ness of our daily lives, so also the fruit from this metaphorical orchard is truly of great worth.

Anyhow, those were some of my random ponderings, climbing down the mountain. Someday, I want to have an orchard that covers an entire hillside and produces thousands of pounds of olives! Just thinking of it makes me hungry. Mmm, olives…

…WHUT

So this morning when I was getting ready for church, I realized that I couldn’t find my Kindle. Anywhere. Remembering that I’d left it at a Quark event in my apartment’s lobby, I started frantically calling people and knocking doors. Unfortunately, no one had seen it.

A few hours later, after combing every place I could have possibly left it at least four or five times, I have to admit it’s completely lost. I have a very good idea when and where I lost it, so the only remaining possibility is that someone picked it up. The aggravating thing is waiting to see whether they return it, or whether they decide to run off with it. ARRRRGH!

The amazing thing is how attached I’ve become to that device in the last month since I first got it. I’m not a particularly voracious reader, but right up until I lost it I was carrying that thing around everywhere. It’s so amazingly convenient–instead of lugging books around, I can read almost anything I want on a device that fits in my back pocket. And the interconnectivity is really cool, too, although if I end up having to replace it, I’ll probably go with the more expensive 3g version, since hunting for wireless is a major pain.

But yeah…it’s lost, and I can’t currently afford to replace it. I’m saving up for Worldcon 2011, so finances are tight; I’ll probably have to work this temp job through most of August just to be able to go.

However, all is not lost. Yesterday, Genesis Earth got a stunning review on a book blogger / fellow indie writer’s blog. My favorite part:

This is space opera of the highest caliber. There are grand, sweeping ideas, the discovery of a new world, first contact with an alien species, an examination of the nature of humanity, the nature of the human mind. Yet it’s always a personal story. No matter how epic the backdrop, you are always reading about engaging, fully-realized characters.

It certainly qualifies as an adventure story, and keeps you wondering what will happen next. Yet it’s also much more. Genesis Earth will broaden your mind even as it delights your inner ten-year-old. It has a kick-ass premise, executed with enviable skill, full of thought-provoking ideas couched in a thoroughly-entertaining story that’s just plain fun to read.

I kid you not, I stood up and did a little dance when I read that. Someday, I’ll probably have a wife who will secretly videotape a moment like that and embarrass me by posting it to youtube or something…hehe. Anyhow, the whole review is awesome, so check it out!

In other news, I finally got around to publishing Genesis Earth on the Nook: you can find it here. And I don’t know whether I mentioned this or not, but I’ve also published it to smashwords, so if you live outside the US/UK and want to avoid the nasty $2+ surcharge that Amazon tags onto its international sales, you can find it there.

As far as the epublishing goals I set at the beginning of the week, I’ve accomplished all of them except the blog tour index and the 3+ guest posts…better get on top of that. This week, here is what I want to accomplish:

Publish the short stories to smashwords for $0 and get Amazon to price match (since giving them out for free will *hopefully* drive readers to my novels).
Figure out how how the Kindle book forums work.
Query artists/illustrators for Bringing Stella Home cover art.
Send out Genesis Earth to another 5 review sites.
Write another 3 guest posts for the Genesis Earth blog tour.
Put up the index for the blog tour.

Oh, and one more thing…FIND MY &$%! KINDLE!!!

<< sigh >>

Hmm…short stories?

Kris Rusch has another excellent Thursday post up on her blog, and this one deals with the effect of the ebook revolution on the short story format. Synopsis: short stories stand to EXPLODE in the next few years, and this is good for everybody, especially indie writers.

Getting a story published in a magazine 1) builds a writer’s cred, 2) attracts new readers to the writer’s other works, and 3) pays decently well without giving up copyright for longer than a couple of years. Basically, it’s like getting paid to advertise.

I have to admit, I’m not much of a short story writer, but if Kris’s predictions are right (and they sure make a lot of sense), I might have to take some time and rework my short form game.

To start, I should probably read short stories voraciously. Fortunately, I have like twenty back issues of Leading Edge on my shelf (the best short story I have ever read is “When She Grows a Soul” by Patrick Weekes in issue 46; I reread it on my lunch break today and it made me cry. Seriously). I’ve also subscribed to Clarkesworld magazine, which is only $1.99 per month on the Kindle.

Once I’ve finished the current draft of Desert Stars, I may or may not take off some time to focus on writing short fiction. I’m a little hesitant to do that, though; novels are my first love, and will probably be my bread and butter as this writing career takes off. Still, I need a lot of work on my short form, so maybe it would be worth taking a month or so…not sure yet.

In any case, I discovered via the Kindle Boards that if you release an ebook/estory for free on a competing vendor’s site, Amazon will price match and drop the price to free. Since I probably won’t be able to sell the short stories I’ve epublished, I figure I ought to give that a try. I never really planned to make much money off of them, and “selling” them for free will hopefully attract readers who will buy my novels.

In the meantime, I really should get back to writing. Whether novels or short stories, my bread and butter lies with putting words to paper–electronic or otherwise.

Another publication in Leading Edge!

That’s right! My poem “Zarmina,” dedicated to Gliese 581 g (the first exoplanet discovered in its sun’s habitable zone) is published on page 98 of issue 61 of Leading Edge!

Also included in this issue is an excellent essay by Brandon Sanderson, in which he introduces his second law of magic systems. It’s an excellent essay, and has made me rethink how I do FTL systems, especially for the Gaia Nova universe. I’ll have to do a post a little later on that.

Besides this landmark essay by Brandon Sanderson, this issue features stories by Dan Wells and Dave Farland, as well as an interview with Howard Tayler. And as always, it includes a number of excellent stories and illustrations. Check it out!

(Full disclosure, I volunteer as a slushpile reader and occasional copy editor for the magazine. However, my work always goes through the submission process under a pen name, where only the head editor knows who I am until the decision on whether to acquire the story has been made.)

In other news, Genesis Earth is now up on Goodreads, so go check that out as well! The nice thing about Goodreads is that you can give the book a # star rating without having to write out anything else. If you’re so inclined, I would very much appreciate an honest review–but if you do give it a rating, please be honest. Don’t worry; even if you give me less than five stars, I won’t hunt you down like this crazy author (hint: get some popcorn and read the comments).

So anyhow, that’s what’s been going on here. Desert Stars is coming along slowly but surely, and I’m working on getting some cover art for Bringing Stella Home. If you have any ideas or suggestions on the art, please let me know. I’ll probably go through my back issues of Leading Edge to search out good sf artists. For some reason, I’m having a hard time finding anything that clicks on deviantart. My goal is to epublish that book by the end of July.

I need a productivity boost

Yeah…today wasn’t that great. I revised through about 2k words in Desert Stars, but none of it was new material, and I only worked on it for maybe 3 cumulative hours. I’m working full time now, but even so, I can do better than this.

My self-imposed deadline for Desert Stars is July 9th. That needs I need to do three chapters per week, and last week, I only did two. Some of the later chapters are going to require tossing out everything and starting from scratch, but for the next four or five, I probably just need to shuffle scenes around without changing too much. Hopefully, I can get through three this week, perhaps even four.

Genesis Earth continues to do well, though. I checked it at work, and saw that 69% of the people who view the Amazon page end up buying the book. That’s huge. Some glitches over the weekend have made sales updates sporadic, but it’s still selling a good 1.5 copies per day. So to all of you who have bought a copy: thanks so much!

There’s still a lot I need to do for Genesis Earth on the epublishing front, however. Here’s my to do list for this week:

Send GE to +5 review sites.
Publish GE to the nook.
Get GE listed on Goodreads.
Do 3 guest posts / interviews for the blog tour.
Create an index for the blog tour.

Should be pretty straightforward…if I can balance writing time with non-writing publishing/promotion time (along with full time job time). It’s going to be tricky, but I think I can do it.

Here’s my plan: I’ll get up at 6:30 each morning and write for at least half an hour, exercise, get ready for work, etc. When I get home at 5:30, I’ll eat a quick dinner and then devote myself to writing until about 7:30 (I have events going on every weekday evening that start at 7:30). In the late night, I’ll maybe write a little, but that won’t be my primary writing time (since I never get much done when it is).

So anyways, that’s my tentative plan for this week. Hopefully, that productivity boost will kick in soon, and I’ll be writing 3.5k words a day again.

In unrelated news, Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing posted an awesome interview of Kristine Katherine Rusch up on their podcast yesterday. To all my writing friends: you really should check it out and listen to it. Kris is an amazing veteran professional in the sf&f field, and has loads of good advice. I read her blog religiously and recommend that all other aspiring writers do the same.

Which reminds me: Robin Sullivan was interviewed last week on another podcast, and this one is also very much worth checking out. Robin runs a small press called Ridan, which is embracing unorthodox business practices and doing surprisingly well in today’s publishing climate. I’ve said that I’m on hiatus from seeking a publishing house for the next three years…but if I could get into Ridan, I would in a heartbeat.

Finally, let me end this post with a cool trance song I discovered the other day. Way mellow, with sweet vocals that fit surprisingly well with my current WIP.

The Swords of Night and Day by David Gemmell

A thousand years ago, a young warrior named Skilgannon helped the princess Jianna escape an attempt on her life. They became lovers, and when she retook her throne, she made Skilgannon her chief general. When she ordered the abject annihilation of her enemies, he loved her too much to refuse her–and thus became Skilgannon the Damned.

Now, the wizard Landis has recalled Skilgannon back from Hell to defeat the tyrant queen known as the Eternal. For hundreds of years, the Eternal has ruled the world, using the arcane arts of a fallen civilization to achieve immortality and crush all who oppose her.

When the Eternal learns of Landis’s treachery, the only hope for freedom lies with Skilgannon, the axeman Harad, the huntress Askari, and the Drenai ranger Alahir. But how can they defeat an enemy who commands nearly all the armies of the world? Who has lived a dozen lifetimes and simply steals the bodies of her clones whenever she is killed?

But most of all, how can Skilgannon defeat the Eternal when she is none other than Jianna, his beloved?

The Swords of Night and Day is a direct sequel to White Wolf, the first David Gemmell novel that I read. I have to admit, I wasn’t particularly impressed with White Wolf; it meandered a lot and didn’t seem to have any clear direction.

That is most certainly not the case with The Swords of Night and Day, however. I was hooked from the very beginning, and could hardly put it down until the shocking, mind-bending twist at the end. It tied up all the loose ends from White Wolf and completed Skilgannon’s character arc in a surprising yet satisfying way.

One of the reasons I think I love David Gemmell so much is because he captures so perfectly the experience of being a man. In that, I suspect that Gemmell is to me what Jane Austen is to most women.

But even though Gemmell’s characters might be crass, vulgar, chauvanistic, and downright detestable at times, there is always something heroic deep inside of them–something worth redeeming. And when he does redeem them, it surprises me how powerful it is–even when he redeems someone I don’t want him to.

With The Swords of Night and Day in particular, one of the things that particularly fascinated me was the fictional cosmology of the Drenai universe. With magic that can resurrect people’s spirits from hell, the story must inevitably deal with questions of the afterlife. Yet even so, there’s still enough ambiguity and latent potential that it never felt stilted or labored. If anything, it felt a bit like Tolkien’s cosmology in The Silmarillion, where all the stuff about gods, angels, and the undying lands only added to the sense of wonder.

I love just about all of David Gemmell’s books, but this one in particular was well worth the time and experience reading it. I wouldn’t recommend starting with this one, though: better to read Legend, White Wolf, and The King Beyond The Gate first. But if you’ve read and enjoyed those ones, you will DEFINITELY love this one. I certainly did.

The blog tour rolls on

I’m writing this post from Leading Edge (the internet is down at my apartment), so I don’t have much time, but I did want to take care of a few items of housekeeping.

First, my next guest post in the Genesis Earth blog tour is up, this one at Charles Millhouse’s blog. Charles is a fellow sf writer whom I met on the Kindleboards, and the post basically explains my writing routine since last year. Of course, since I’ve technically been unemployed since graduation, my routine is a little wacky, but I think you’ll find the post interesting. Check it out!

Desert Stars is coming along. I took yesterday off to finish drafting the revision notes, but I’ve still got the last three chapters to go. It’s going to be awesome, though–I’ve got so many ideas for how to improve the story. Many thanks to all my first readers for your feedback! It’s been immensely helpful.

Also, I decided to take down “From the Ice Incarnate” from Amazon. I still think it’s a good story, but I don’t want someone to buy Genesis Earth, love it, then buy the story and feel ripped off. Also, I think I might have more luck with my short stories if I send them out to print markets instead. I’ve submitted “Decision LZ1527” to Escape Pod; if it sells, hopefully that will drive readers to my ebooks.

And on that note, if you’ve read Genesis Earth and enjoyed it, I would like to ask you to please post a review on Amazon. I don’t want to be one of those guys who secretly boosts his stats by coercing people to write fake reviews, but if you did enjoy the novel, I would appreciate it a ton if you would take the time and share your experience. At this point in my career, that’s probably the thing that would help me out the most.

So anyways, that’s what’s going on here. Hopefully, the internet will be back before the weekend. See you around!

First Radio interview and other such stuff

Dude, check it out–my first radio interview just went live on the Dungeon Crawler’s Radio website!

I met these guys at CONduit last month, where they had a booth and were recording all sorts of authors and artist. They were way cool when I talked with them, and when they found out I was a writer invited me on!

Hehe, considering how many big name authors they have on their show, I think I totally bombed–but it was still awesome. The guys who run the show were really great, too; it was a ton of fun hanging out with them. So thanks, guys, for having me on!

In other news, I just uploaded Genesis Earth to Smashwords, and I think it’s already live. So for all those of you who want to get it from somewhere other than Amazon, it’s now available! I’m still working through all the formatting kinks, so if you buy it and find some errors, let me know and I’ll send you a fixed copy.

Also, the cool thing about Smashwords is that you can generate coupon codes and even give the book away for free. What I’m hoping to do is print up a few business cards with the code for a free book, then distribute them at conventions like Worldcon. Hehe, imagine walking up to an editor and being like “hey, want my book? Here you go!” Or even just dropping off a stack at the freebies table; I think it could be an awesome way to get exposure.

Man, there’s so much exciting stuff going on! This is a great time to be a writer.

On the writing front, I’m making excellent progress on my current WIP (work in progress), Desert Stars. I’ve read through all the feedback from my first readers, and have a ton of fantastic ideas for how to make this story really shine. I revised through about 2.1k words this morning before work, and I’m hoping to do at least two and a half chapters before this weekend.

Also, a couple days ago at work, I was trawling through tvtropes (one of the advantages of doing data entry is that you can afford to feed the addiction, hehe), and I had a SUPER awesome idea for the next book in the Gaia Nova series.

Since Bringing Stella Home is basically the Mongol conquests set in space, the big story to conclude that arc would be the battle of Ayn Jalut, where the Mongols suffered their first decisive defeat. I did a little bit of setup for that in Into the Nebulous Deep, with the remnants of the Gaian Empire gathering at New Rigel.

Well, here’s what I’m thinking: I’ll bring back Danica’s team of mercenaries from Bringing Stella Home, make Roman a viewpoint character, and have Rina from Desert Stars join up with them as a quiet little girl in black who seems painfully shy, but is actually a deadly effective assassin whose weapon of choice is a bowcaster.

Oh yeah, I think this has some crazy awesome potential.

In any case, I should probably get to bed so I can get up early and write tomorrow. I hope to finish Desert Stars 3.0 by July 10th, and even though it’s going to take a lot of work, I think I can make it happen.

And after that…well, things just keep getting more and more awesome. I love writing!

Ebook update

As many of you know, I epublished my first novel two weeks ago, and three short stories a few months before that. How has it been going?

First, let me point out that I have another guest post out as part of the Genesis Earth blog tour, this one on my friend Gamila’s blog. Gamila reviews YA and LDS fiction, and is a big proponent of clean reads. For my post, I wrote about the place of LDS writers in science fiction and fantasy and the unique things we have to offer these genres. Fun stuff; you should check it out.

So now that that’s out of the way, how do the numbers look for my epublishing venture? Not bad, actually. In two weeks, I’ve sold twenty copies of Genesis Earth and gotten two five star reviews on Amazon, only one of which was from someone I know. Not bad–I’m looking to get at least $50 from Amazon come September, which should be very nice.

The short stories have not sold nearly as well, however. Part of it probably has to do with the fact that I’m not a super stellar short story writer, but another part probably has to do with the lack of promotion. The review of “From the Ice Incarnate” by Red Adept Reviews did lead to a few extra sales for all my stories, but only about half a dozen or so. Nothing spectacular.

Part of it also has to do with the sampling system, I think. With ebooks, you can download a free sample (usually the first 10% of the text) and decide whether you want to buy it or not. For Genesis Earth, that amounts to the first three chapters and then some; for the short stories, maybe a couple of paragraphs and that’s it.

So what’s the takeaway? I think that novels work out much better as ebooks than short stories. For one, you can justify charging more for them (I haven’t seen anyone selling short stories for more than $.99), and thus get the higher royalty rate. For another, they work much better with the sampling system; readers are much more likely to get hooked on the first 10% of a novel than the first 10% of a short story. And lastly, I’d say that you need to figure out some kind of way to promote yourself and get your work out there. Still working on that.

All in all, not too bad. But here’s the really cool part (and I mean really cool): at my current cost of living, I estimate that I need to sell only 15 ebooks per day to break even financially. At a consistent average of 25 books per day, I could justify quitting my “day job” (150% of all monthly expenses).

How is that exciting? Well, get this: starting out the gate with very little platform or exposure, I’m averaging a little over 1 ebook sale per day. If I could boost that up to 3 sales per day for 5 books, I’d be breaking even. At 5 sales per day for 5 $2.99 books (~800 total ebook sales per month), I’ll be making a living.

See why I’m excited?

My goal now is to get up to 5 full length novels / novellas out before the end of the year. Believe it or not, that’s very achievable.

First, I’ll be epublishing Bringing Stella Home sometime this summer, hopefully in time for worldcon. Shortly thereafter, I hope to publish Sholplan as a $.99 novella.

My current WIP is the third draft of Desert Stars, and I bet I can have that ready before Christmas. While I’ll put the whole thing out as its own novel, I like Emma’s idea of splitting it into two books as well. I’ll probably title them Dome and Desert and Sand and Stars, and make the first one available for free just to get more exposure.

And at some point in between all that, I’ll finish compiling all my travel journals from the 2008 BYU Jordan study abroad and put that out as its own work. That one should be fun, and a good way to experiment with in-text photos and illustrations.

That’s my plan. The more I put my work out there, the better my chances at making it big. And even if I don’t, if I have enough titles out and they all sell more or less consistently, I can still leverage that to make a full-time living. And that’s my dream.

So yeah, I’m extremely excited.

That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made by Eric James Stone

When Harry Malan’s work transferred him to Sol Station deep inside the sun’s core, he didn’t expect to become a Mormon branch president over more than a hundred alien converts to the faith. The Swales, ancient sun-dwelling beings with their own history and culture, travel the universe by naturally teleporting between stars.

When Harry learns that one of the members of his congregation has been raped, he determines to take it up with the chief Swale. But at several thousand meters long and more than a hundred millenia old, the chief is revered by the Swales as a god incarnate. To make matters worse, the only other eligible female on the station is an atheist xenoanthropologist determined to stop Harry from “polluting” the Swale culture.

In an alien society millions of years older than humanity, where gods were dwelling among mortals long before the birth of Jesus Christ, is there a place for those who convert to any of the human faiths?

This story was awesome, and I’m not just saying that because I’m a practicing Mormon. The story concept was brilliant, the alien world was fascinating, and the issues raised were dealt with in a very balanced way. This is a must read for any Latter-day Saint science fiction writer–or for aspiring writers of any religious faith, for that matter. In fact, Eric James Stone has it available right now on his website for free–so check it out!

My only issue was that the story didn’t feel fleshed out enough. The Swales were so fascinating, I wanted to spend more time with them–I wanted to explore their culture, learn more about their history and evolution, etc. I also wished there were more detailed descriptions to make me feel like I was there.

I think that has more to do with the shortcomings of the medium than anything else, though. The piece is an 8,000 word short story / novelette, so there isn’t a whole lot of room to flesh things out. Still, the world is so fascinating, can you blame me for wanting more?

All things considered, “That Leviathan, Whom Thou has Made” definitely deserves the Nebula Award which it won earlier this year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wins a Hugo as well. It represents a significant milestone in LDS literature, and is an excellent mainstream piece as well. Whether you’re Mormon, Christian, Muslim, or whatever, if you’re a religiously devout writer of science fiction, this is a must-read. And even if you’re not, it’s still a great story. Highly recommended.