Hameji Cycle – Page 23 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Blurb for Bringing Stella Home and thoughts on Borders

One of the essential elements for a successful in epublishing is a killer book description, and I think I’ve got a pretty decent one for Bringing Stella Home. However, I could use some feedback, so if you could read it and tell me what you think, that would be great. Here it is:

It is a dark time for the galactic empire. Rebellions at Tajjur and the New Pleiades sap the empire’s strength from within, while hordes of spacefaring Hamiji warriors from the outer reaches sweep ever closer to the Imperial capitol, slagging entire worlds in their wake.

When the Hameji forces conquer his homeworld, young James McCoy runs away to rescue his older brother and sister, Ben and Stella, from their grasp. Though he faces an enemy undefeated in battle and feared throughout all of inhabited space, James will stop at nothing–not even death–to get his brother and sister back.

Things start to look up when he meets Danica Nova, a Tajji mercenary captain who takes him in and becomes his mentor. James reminds Danica of her own brother, whom she failed to protect when the empire slaughtered her family years ago. Now, she hopes to find some redemption from her demons by saving James from his own.

Unfortunately, neither of them realizes that Stella has become a concubine to the main Hameji overlord–and that Ben has been brainwashed and made into an elite shock trooper in the empath squadron sent to hunt them down.

So what do you think? Too long, too confusing, too cliche, or too boring? The genre (if you can’t tell) is space opera / space adventure, so I’m hoping it will appeal to fans of Orson Scott Card, C. J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold, Star Wars & Star Trek, etc. It’s also got a slight military science fiction bent to it, though I wouldn’t presume to be qualified to write true military sf.

In unrelated news, I recently did an interview with Charlie of Playground51, which appears to be down for some reason (the link is on my Blog Tour page above). Topics discussed include how I got the idea for Genesis Earth, which parts were inspired by real life, and thoughts on book promotion. Hopefully the site will be up again soon!

Also, I’m thinking it’s time to do a major overhaul of my blog template. As much as I love the current one with the purple stars and nebulae, I need something with two sidebars so that my books don’t push everything else to the bottom. If you have some ideas for a good WordPress template that still keeps the sci-fi feel of this one, please let me know! I’m very much open to suggestions.

Finally, since the Borders liquidation is all over the news, I thought I’d share my $.02. It’s sad, certainly, but I don’t think that the fallout will be nearly as gloomy as Joshua Bilmes claims.

Corporate-run big box stores are certainly on the way out, but there will always be a market for good stories, and in many ways the new ebook technology is causing that market to expand at a wonderful rate. So while the predictions of the print death spiral appear to be coming true (David Gaughran did a great post recently on that), new models will emerge–indeed, are already emerging–which will fill the vacuum.

The thing that gives me great reason to hope is that these new business models give so much power back to writers. Instead of relying on the mercies of large media corporations to build a viable career, we can now make a living by publishing independently or going with any number of small independent presses. Readers have more choices and writers have more options. It’s glorious.

If anything, the Borders bankruptcy has confirmed to me that I’ve made the right choice to go indie, rather than wait for New York to anoint me before launching my career. Will I ever go with a traditional publisher? I’d like to someday, but I no longer feel dependent on the old system to accomplish my dreams. Instead, it’s my readers who will decide my fate, and that’s exactly as it should be.

So thanks for reading!

Desert Stars 3.0 is finished!

That’s right; after almost exactly two months of writing, the third draft of Desert Stars is now complete!

This is the first draft where I feel that things are truly coming together the way they should be, where the story is transforming into something that not only works, but is actually fairly awesome. I’m probably not the best judge, though, so I’ll have to send it out to another round of first readers to get their reactions to it, but I don’t think this will need more than one more draft before it’s ready to go to a copy editor.

Anyhow, here are the stats:

ms pages: 505
words: 108,468
file size: 246 KB
chapters: 22, prologue & epilogue
start date: 16 May 2011
end date: 18 Jul 2011

And the Wordle:

The most influential song in the writing of this draft comes from an mp3 cd of Arabic music that a friend in Jordan gave me while I was studying over there in 2008. The title is فرحة عمرانة بالدار, which apparently translates to “The Joy of _____ in Casablanca.” I know absolutely nothing else about it, other than it sounds very Arab. Since Desert Stars is essentially about a far-future Arab society, it resonated quite well.

The hardest part of writing this draft was probably at the very end, when my daily routine fell to pieces and I completely lost my stride. This seems to happen a lot whenever I’m trying to finish something, which reflects in my daily word count charts.

But the ending itself was not particularly hard to write; in fact, it was quite fun. A bunch of previous changes came together in a way that just clicked, including some spontaneous ones that I hadn’t planned for at all. As a result, I’m really excited about this draft and hope to get it out as an ebook before Christmas.

One question, for those of you who have read the previous draft: do you think I could justify splitting the story into two separate novels and selling them each at a lower cost? I hate books that end on a cliffhanger, but one of my first readers thought that this might work, and it would certainly give me more stuff to epublish.

Also, if you haven’t read a previous draft and would like to be a first reader, please let me know. I only send my rough work out to people I know in real life, however, so if our only interaction has been online, please don’t ask. I’ll probably start the fourth draft sometime in September, so you’ll have until the end of the summer (and possibly a little more) to finish it.

Next project? Publishing Bringing Stella Home and putting together the spin-off novella Sholpan. Shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks. After that, I think I’ll start the indirect sequel that I mentioned before. In the meantime, on with business as usual.

Teaser: cover art for Bringing Stella Home

Not too much news today; just plugging along in the final chapters of Desert Stars and working full time at the warehouse. Liva just finished with the cover art, so without further ado, here it is:

Pretty sweet, eh? I’ll figure out the typesetting tonight; what fun!

I’m hoping to have the novel out before the end of the month, depending on when I get the edits back and how much stuff life piles up on my plate before then. But I will definitely have it out before Worldcon.

I’d share more, but I’ve got to go. Stay tuned–more to come!

Q2 roundup

For those of you who don’t know, I keep a spreadsheet with my daily writing word count and use that to help set personal deadlines for various projects. In order to keep myself honest, I do a report every quarter on how I kept up with my writing goals in the past three months.

So, without further ado, here are last quarter’s numbers:

The red line represents daily word counts, the blue line is simply a running total of the past 7 days. Because I’m a discovery writer who often does the heavy work of shaping the story in the revision process, I include revision notes and second / third / fourth drafts in these counts. I do not include proofreading, though, or sentence / paragraph level revisions for basic errors.

In April, I was plugging through the middle of the first draft of Into the Nebulous Deep and working a temp job full-time doing data entry. I had just indie published my first three short stories and was still trying to figure out how the system works. Despite this, I was able to keep up a pretty consistent word count for most of the month, though 10k per week is lower than I would have liked.

Endings are probably the hardest thing for me to write, so at the end of the month things came to a head and my word count dropped significantly. This was also the week before my youngest sister got married, so that threw a kink in the works. The job also caught up to me, so in the last week of April my productivity took a real hit.

In May, however, I took time off from the job to “pursue a freelance project” (aka epublish Genesis Earth). My boss had told me he’d like to have me back once the freelance project was finished, so I felt pretty good about taking the month off.

It took a while for my editor and cover artist to get back with the final product, though, so I spent most of May working on Desert Stars. This was the third draft, so I was WAY stoked to work on it. Outlined my revision notes for the first half in a matter of days, which led to the huge peak around the 19th, and launched right into the project full steam ahead. It was glorious.

When my editor and cover artist got back to me at the end of the month, however, I put Desert Stars on the back burner for about a week to go over the copy edits for Genesis Earth and give it one final proofread. That’s why things dropped off again toward the end of the month.

In June, I went back to the temp job to save up for Worldcon. Fortunately, I was able to strike a pretty good balance between writing and work that lasted for the rest of the quarter. If I didn’t have to juggle a full time job with my full time writing, I probably would have written more, but at 15k per week I was able to keep up pretty well with my personal deadlines.

So yeah, it was a pretty routine quarter. Nothing too spectacular, though there were some ups and downs. If you count Bringing Stella Home, I’m on track to complete two polished books this year once I finish Desert Stars. The latest draft is pretty good, but I think it will need at least one more run through with first readers to make sure the changes to the story are good (and I’ve made a LOT of changes to the story). Still, I’m averaging about two months per draft per book, so I’m optimistic about getting it out in time for Christmas.

My next project after Desert Stars will probably be the sequel to Into the Nebulous Deep. I’ll work as hard on that until it stalls, then spend a couple of weeks to put together Sholpan, a novella with the events of Bringing Stella Home told entirely from Stella’s point of view. I’ll probably put that one up for $.99 or so to generate interest in Bringing Stella Home.

So yeah, that’s what things look like for the immediate future. Still working, still saving for Worldcon, but the writing is coming along and I should be publishing a few more ebooks in the near future. So stay tuned!

Teaser: Starmap from Bringing Stella Home

First off, let me get some business out of the way. I did another post for the Genesis Earth blog tour, this time on my friend Cavan’s blog. The subject: how and why I decided to become an indie published writer.

Also, if you live in Europe, it may interest you to know that Genesis Earth is now available on XinXii, a European ebook retailer website. The price is 2.99 USD and I believe that is VAT inclusive, which should make it much less expensive than Amazon and other American sites.

Finally, an update on my upcoming novel Bringing Stella Home. I’ve commissioned the cover art from Līva Šmaukstele, an artist from Latvia. We just got the sketches finalized this week, and I am very excited to see the final copy! My copy editor, Josh Leavitt, is finishing up with the edits in a couple of weeks, so if all goes well with the art Bringing Stella Home should be up before the end of the month.

And now, the teaser: I spent a couple of hours this afternoon putting together the starmap for Bringing Stella Home. This will appear in the front, just before chapter one. Check it out:

Pretty cool, eh? I might touch it up a little before publication, perhaps lighten the background a tad. I did it in B&W so that it would work better for the Kindle. Many thanks to Logan Kearsley for help with the stellar classes; it really pays to have geeky friends who know so much.

And yes, the Good Hope Nebula will be in the cover art. Yes, it’s going to be awesome. Expect another teaser to come out soon.

😀

Deciding on the next project

First, you know how I said I’d raise the price of Genesis Earth as an experiment? Well, after thinking it through a little more, I figured that it’s more important at this point to build a following, and to do that I should probably have at least one novel at the $2.99 price point. Since Genesis Earth is the only novel I have out right now, I decided to drop the price, where it will probably stay for a while. Flakey, I know, but so be it.

More importantly, I’m coming up on the end of the third draft of Desert Stars. It’s going to be a push, but I hope to finish it by the end of the week. It’s an awesome book and I’m way excited with it, but it leaves me wondering: what next?

I’m currently torn between two projects. The first one, Edenfall, is the sequel to Genesis Earth, and the second in the trilogy. It’s been kicking around in my mind for a long time, and I’ve already got it all outlined and ready to go.

But…the flashier, more exciting project to me right now is the next book in the Gaia Nova series, an indirect sequel to both Desert Stars and Bringing Stella Home, which I hope to epublish later this month. Even though I have a ton of ideas for it, I have absolutely NO outline whatsoever. Nothing. All I know is that it’s basically the Battle of Ain Jalut in space, with Rina from Desert Stars and Danica, Roman, and the other mercenaries from Bringing Stella Home. Oh, and Stella and Qasar’s son, a Hameji prince who makes an appearance in Into the Nebulous Deep. That’s it.

And yet…I am sooo excited to work on it. You have no idea.

So…should I go with the safe, reliable project? Or the sexy, mysterious one? There are good reasons to go with either. Edenfall should be fairly straightforward, taking no more than two months. With the first in the series already out and selling, I should probably write it sooner rather than later. However, the Gaia Nova series is much more expansive, and since I’m already immersed in that universe from working on Desert Stars, it would be much easier to jump right into it.

Right now, I’m leaning more toward the second project, but knowing my personal writing process, I’ll probably get stuck somewhere in the middle and switch to Edenfall. But hey, if it works, it works. That’s how I’ve written all of my other books so far: start the rough draft with a frenzied burst of creative energy, then let it sit for a while and move on to other projects before coming back and finishing the first.

Either way, I’m not going to pull a Rothfuss or a Martin. My goal is to finish my next project in 8 weeks or less, which will be tough with my current job, but not impossible. Which reminds me of yet another reason why I never want to be salaried (unless I’m the one running the business). Not that I plan on ever being pregnant…

Craving another retreat

Last night, I got together with an old friend from last year and went camping down in Sanpete county, in the Manti-Lasal National Forest. Even though I didn’t get a whole lot of writing done, it was a much needed change of scenery.

Man, southern Utah is so different from the Salt Lake and Utah valleys. More rural, more laid back, more of a back-country attitude but not in a California kind of way…I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I like it out there. It feels like the kind of place you’d pass through on a road trip, that mystic old-time Americana that always feels like it’s just out of reach. Part of me wants to settle down in a place like that someday, while the other part doesn’t want to settle down ever.

Spending time away like that gives you a renewed perspective. I wouldn’t say that I feel more “centered” now, but getting out in the wilderness certainly made me see the daily grind here in Provo a little differently. It’s so easy to get caught up in a routine, where the weeks and months go by until suddenly it’s summer again and you don’t know where the last year went. Unless you take the time to step back, you can never get perspective.

Unfortunately, in order to save up for Worldcon this August, I’m going to need to work 40 hours per week almost right up to the convention weekend itself. I’m not complaining; I feel blessed to have a steady source of income right now, especially in this economy. But as a writer, it’s hard when your job takes so much time and energy away from your writing time.

Lately, I’ve only been spending two or three hours a day writing, and a lot of that time is filled with interruptions. Part of it is just procrastination, but another part is that my day is so split up that the only periods of unbroken free time are from 9 pm to 8 am. That’s tough, because I need a big chunk of writing time to do my best work.

Even though I’ve been making decent progress on Desert Stars, I feel like I could be doing so much more. If I could take a week off for a retreat where I did nothing but focused on my writing, I could probably finish this draft in a matter of days, with time to start a bunch of new projects. In fact, I already have about a half dozen stories in embryo, with scenes and characters just begging to be written. Once this latest project is finished, I don’t quite know what I’ll be starting next.

Since I should be writing right now instead of posting to this blog, I’ll wrap up by saying that I really wish I could take some time off for another retreat, this time to focus solely on my writing. But since I can’t, I’ll do my best to carve away large periods of unbroken time for writing, and unplugging myself from distractions both online and off in order to make the most of it.

It’s a difficult balance, one that’s a constant struggle to maintain. Right now, I feel like I’m on the losing side of the battle, which means it’s time for a change of routine. Thankfully, taking some time off in the wilderness has helped me to better see what I need to do. I only hope I can maintain that perspective in order to break out of this stifling routine.

<sigh> One of these days, when writing is my primary source of income, this will not be nearly so difficult of a problem. You have no idea how much I want to make that happen. In the meantime, back to work.

Civilized internet trolling and things to look out for

The Genesis Earth blog tour rolls on; just recently, I did an interview with Cindy Borgne of Dreamer’s Perch. She’s been showcasing a number of other indie writers on her site, and the interviews are quite interesting, so check it out!

Also, Moses Siregar is up to an interesting new project called Indie Author Rockstar. I’m not sure exactly how it will work, but it’s basically a community book blog / monthly book contest. Genesis Earth will be participating in that, so be sure to check it out once it goes live (and also check out the site’s twitter feed)!

Finally, I got embroiled in a somewhat heated discussion with Howard Tayler on the comment thread of the latest Writing Excuses podcast. The question we circled around was: “is traditional publishing still safe?” I’m not totally sure what ‘safe’ means in this context, since writing has never been truly ‘safe,’ but it was an interesting if somewhat exasperating discussion.

Fortunately, it ended well, meaning that I didn’t get banned (though I think Howard was contemplating it). I don’t think either of us ‘won,’ but several onlookers came away feeling enlightened–and most of them agreed that the discussion was generally polite. So if I’m a troll, at least I’m a civilized one. If that’s even possible.

So that’s what’s going on here. Genesis Earth is still selling at a slow but steady pace, and the revision of Desert Stars is going very, very well. This is going to be such an AWESOME book–I can’t wait until I’ve got it up for you guys to check it out!

In parting, let me leave you with this amazing trance song I discovered while working data entry. That’s one of the advantages of doing boring computer work all day–it frees you in some ways to do other things. Enjoy!

…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 >>

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.