Star Wanderers – Page 7 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

What I’ve been up to lately (besides short stories)

It’s been a while since I did an update post, so I figure I should do one of those to let you guys know what projects I’m working on. There are quite a few of them, and I’m happy to say that the writing is going quite well! If I don’t post on this blog very much, it’s probably because I’m busy writing.

Anyhow, here’s what I’m working on (and what you can expect to see in the coming months):

Sons of the Starfarers
Book II: Comrades in Hope

This is the project that’s been taking most of my attention. What started out as a novella has grown and morphed into a short novel–I expect it will top out at just under 40k words. I’m just past the 2/3rds mark now, where it’s still a slog but I can just about see the end. I was hoping to finish it this week, but now it looks like I’ll be pushing it back into April.

That’s okay, though, because my second big project is:

Sons of the Starfarers
Book III: Strangers in Flight

I’ve been itching to start this one for a while, and last night I finally opened up and started it. In the first book, Brothers in Exile, the two starfaring brothers Aaron and Isaac find a beautiful girl covered in henna tattoos and frozen in a cryotank on a derelict space station. In this, the third book, the girl finally wakes up and we get to see things from her point of view.

With the way I’m writing Sons of the Starfarers, it’s going to be structured in a series of three book arcs. Since I want to release the books in each arc fairly close to each other, I don’t want to publish Brothers in Exile until Comrades in Hope and Strangers in Flight are both complete. So even if I end up taking a break from Comrades in Hope for a little while, if I’m working on Strangers in Flight, it’s not putting things off since I’d have to write that one first anyway.

I am really, really excited about these books, and when you read them, I think you will be to. I’m trying to think of ways that I can share them, since it’s hard to talk about something if it’s not actually out there for you to read. Maybe if I posted a series of short excerpts from the first book, no longer than 400-500 words each? I generally skip over blog posts where authors sample their own books, but maybe if they were shorter excerpts, that wouldn’t be as much of a problem. What do you guys think?

So that’s what I’m working on writing-wise. Here’s what I’m working on publishing-wise.

New Star Wanderers covers (and print editions)

So the cover designer I’ve been working with for Star Wanderers told me this week that he’s overextended himself by taking on more work than he can handle and that unfortunately he has to drop some clients. That’s unfortunate but understandable–we all have limitations, and things come up in life that we can’t always plan for. We’ve parted amicably, and he’s promised to get me the files I need to pick up on the cover work where he left off.

I’m really anxious to get the new covers done, though, and would like to find a good cover designer as soon as I can. If you guys have any recommendations, please let me know. Ideally, I’d like to find someone who I could work with long-term, since there definitely won’t be a shortage of work anytime soon!

Because of this, though, I’ll probably keep the original space art covers for the POD books at least for the foreseeable future. The omnibus editions will feature the new art, though, and I’ve just bartered with a friend of mine to do the typesetting for those. I’m not sure when they’ll be out, but it will probably be sometime in the late spring / early summer.

As for the print edition of Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII), that should be out approximately whenever I get around to it, which would be sooner except that I’m so busy writing Sons of the Starfarers. I’m not sure how many of you are waiting on that one–the print versions for the individual novellas have been selling better than I’d expected, though still at a trickle, so that’s not quite at the top of my priorities right now.

Blogging A to Z Book

Last year, I did the Blogging from A to Z challenge and had a lot of fun with it! The topic I blogged on was science fiction, with a new post each day in April starting with “A is for …” “B is for …” etc. Well, I’d like to do that again this year, but first I’d like to put together last year’s posts into an ebook. It shouldn’t take too long–probably no more than a week at the longest–so I’ll probably take care of that next week or so.

For this year’s challenge, I’m going to blog about publishing. I already have the first few posts planned out: “A is for Amazon,” “B is for Big 6 (now 5),” “C is for Contracts,” etc. These posts aren’t meant to be advice, more just sharing my perspective and experience, since hey I’ve been indie published for 3+ years now, which might as well be 3+ decades what with the way the industry is changing. So even though there’s a lot I’m still learning, I do have a few things to share.

That’s just about it. Better grab some lunch now and head out to write. See you!

SW: TALES OF THE FAR OUTWORLDS is now out!

Well, it’s been a few days since I uploaded Star Wanderers: Tales of the Far Outworlds (Omnibus V-VIII) to the various retail sites, and I’m happy to report that it’s up on just about all of them! You can now purchase it for $3.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and Kobo. In just a week or two, it should be up on iTunes as well.

This omnibus edition gathers Parts V through VIII all under one cover, with an author’s note that I’ll post here as well. So if you’ve bought or downloaded the individual parts already, there isn’t much of a point to pick up this one unless the omnibus keeps your library uncluttered. But if you have already read them, I would appreciate any honest reviews.

If you’re on Goodreads and want to add the book to your library, you can do so here. I need to get better about posting my reviews and to-read list to Goodreads, because it also helps to boost visibility. I’ve noticed my overall Goodreads author rating creeping slowly up, so apparently more and more of you are enjoying the Star Wanderers books. Thanks!

This omnibus ties up the main series, but I’m thinking very seriously about bringing the characters back for a full-length novel. It’s still in the pre-writing stages, of course, but I’d probably set it 15-20 years after the events of Tales of the Outworlds and bring back all the major characters, as well as their children. I even have a titled planned for it: Children of the Starry Sea.

This is actually a project I’ve had on my mind for a while–I first blogged about it here–but I’m thinking a lot more seriously about it, and will probably bump it up on my writing to-do list. It would certainly be fun to bring all the old characters back for another adventure. And I have the beginnings of a plot, too. I can’t say much about it, but it would probably revolve around Salazar, the exiled pirates, and a couple of things from Sons of the Starfarers.

So yeah, even though Tales of the Far Outworlds represents a closing point for now, it probably won’t be the end of the whole series. But I have no idea when anything else will come out, or even if Children of the Starry Sea will be the next book. I could quite possibly write a couple more novellas.

tl;dr, I have no idea what I’m going to write until I actually write it, but there’s probably going to be a full-length novel after this one. So keep an eye out, either here or through my email newsletter. I’ll be sure to keep you posted!

STAR WANDERERS Omnibus 2 cover reveal!

Hey guys! Guess what? I’ve got a new book coming out! This one is a new Star Wanderers omnibus, and includes Dreamweaver, Benefactor, Reproach, and Deliverance. Derek Murphy of Creativindie Covers did the cover design for this one, and this is what we came up with:
Star Wanderers: Tales of the Far Outworlds will be out in ebook format in a couple of days–basically, as soon as I can format and upload it. The only content in this one is the Author’s Note, which I’ll post soon to my blog, so if you’ve already got parts V-VIII, there’s no need to buy this one (unless you’d like to have them all consolidated into one ebook).

I’m not sure when the print version will come out, but I’ll definitely mention it here and in my email newsletter when it does. In the meantime, keep an eye out for the ebook version, because it’s coming out very soon!

My current publishing to do list

This is what my current writing space looks like. It’s hard to see, but there’s a board taped to the wall with the label “Publishing To Do.” Even though that board is right next to me whenever I’m working on stuff, I hardly ever look at it, and the tasks just keep piling up. So to put a little pressure on myself to get them done, I thought I’d list them here.

For those of you who are just curious, consider this a look behind the curtain of a working self-published writer.

Publish Star Wanderers: Tales of the Far Outworlds (Omnibus V-VIII) — I actually haven’t bothered to write this one down, but since it’s the top priority task, it’s the one most likely to get done. Everything is finished except the book cover, and I’m finalizing that with the designer right now.
POD Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) — “POD” means “print-on-demand.” All the other Star Wanderers books are out in print now, except for this one. Coming soon!
Optimize keywords — There are a bazillion things I need to do to optimize my keywords on Amazon, as I learned just recently. Better get on that.
Optimize categories — Same as above. Starting here.
Upload books to DriveThru Fiction
Figure out how to format PDFs for DriveThru Fiction — I hear that customers at DriveThru Fiction like to buy PDFs that they can print out and bind as books themselves. I have no idea how to format that sort of thing, so I need to find out from someone more knowledgeable than me and figure out how to do that. For all of my books. Blargh.
Upload books to ARe/Omnilit
Upload books to Xinxii
Upload books to Google Play — The main reason I haven’t uploaded my books to these sites is because I’m going to be getting new covers for all the Star Wanderers books soon. Why do something twice if you only have to do it once? But yeah, I should probably just take a day or two and upload all the current versions anyway.
Update Amazon Book Descriptions via Author Central — This is made complicated by the fact that there are separate Author Central pages for each Amazon store. AARGH.
Figure out Amazon Affiliate Program — I am probably leaving a fair amount of money on the table by not putting those affiliate tags on each of my Amazon links, so yeah, better get on that.
Donate books to the Provo Library — I’m not sure if they’ll take them, though. My roommate says they won’t, but my brother-in-law’s father works there, so maybe he can help me find a connection.
Donate books to the HBLL — Since I’m a BYU alum, I’m pretty sure I can convince them to take my books. I’ve seen other self-published stuff in there.
POD Star Wanderers Omnibuses — Since I need to get new covers for all the individual ones first, this one falls kind of low on the list.
Figure out distribution on Xinxii — I heard from somewhere that they do free ISBNs now. Then again, that might have been a holiday deal. Either way, it’s something to look into–after I upload all my books there, of course.
Fill out Smashwords interview — This will probably be the funnest thing to do on this list.
Add books to Find Read Love — As well as any other book sites that are awesome.
Get active on Goodreads — If there’s any social media site that isn’t a waste of time, it’s probably Goodreads. I should try to be a more active user of that site, not just as a writer but as a reader. For starters, I should transfer all of the stuff from my book review section and join some groups that look particularly interesting. I’m already a member of Sword & Laser, but I haven’t done anything more than introduce myself on the forums. I listen to their podcast, though, and really love it.

That’s the list, more or less. I would absolutely love it if I had an assistant who could take care of this stuff, but I’m not currently making enough to hire one, and it would just be weird to take on an intern. Besides, the main reason I haven’t done any of this stuff yet is because I’m lazy. If I did a bit here and there, I could probably knock it all out in a couple of months. Maybe if I made a new personal rule to do something from this list before logging on to Steam? Hmm … that might actually work.

In any case, that’s what the publishing side looks like around here. When you’re self-published, you more or less have to do all of this yourself. It can be a chore sometimes, but it still beats writing personalized query letters. 😛

Juggling projects (and trying not to drop them all)

Many, I wish I could write faster. I probably can, but there are times when writing is an uphill slog, and you can’t put your foot on the accelerator too hard or your tires will spin out.

Right now, I’m about halfway through Star Wolf (formerly HEART OF THE NEBULA), and I’m in the part of the manuscript that needs the most work. I’ll probably be throwing out 60%-70% of what’s in there now and rewriting it from scratch, at least until the last five chapters. That’s not the hard part, though–the hard part is untangling the storylines that need to be kept from the storylines that need to be thrown out. I’ve already outlined the basic structure, but for the next couple of chapters, I’ve decided to abandon my revision notes. Now, everything is murky.

So that’s what I’ve been up to in the last few days. Star Wolf is a novel in the Gaia Nova series, and will probably end up around 120,000 words or so. That’s around the same length as Bringing Stella Home, or perhaps a bit longer. Definitely a change of pace from the novellas I’ve written in the last couple of years. As much of a slog as it is now, though, it’s got a lot of good stuff in it. Action, adventure, political intrigue, hard moral choices–not to mention space battles, generation ships, and cryonics gone horribly right.

But really, I want to get this one finished so that I can work on Sons of the Starfarers Book II: Comrades in Hope. I’m so excited about this one, I’m thinking about putting Star Wolf on hold for a few weeks so that I can just write it. Of course, a few weeks will probably turn into one or two months, and by the time it’s finished I’ll want to move immediately on to book 3.

Which actually might not be a bad thing, since I want to launch Sons of the Starfarers as soon as I can. It seems like you guys have really enjoyed Star Wanderers, so I think that you’re going to enjoy Sons of the Starfarers even more. I’m already getting the feedback from my first readers for Book I: Brothers in Exile, and while there are a few minor fixes to make, the story itself seems pretty solid. And the places I want to go with this series … man, it’s going to be awesome.

Just to give you a taste, here’s an excerpt from the first chapter of Brothers in Exile. Isaac and Aaron have just arrived at a derelict station on the fringes of settled space, light-years away from the nearest human being.

“So this is Alnilam station,” he mused as he peered out the forward window. The station’s hull was a dark gray, the beacons at the ends of the antennae a deep flashing red. Though it shone a little as it reflected the stars, their light was too dim to give anything more than the basic shape of the structure. On the inside of the wheels where the windows should have been, there was a blackness as dark as the night on the planet below.

“I’m picking up something,” said Aaron.

“Is it a transmission?”

“No, it’s something else. Radiation signatures, concentrated mostly at the hub.”

Isaac’s heart fell. “That would be one of the station reactors, probably leaking fuel or coolant internally.” Proof that no one’s alive in there after all.

“Well, it can’t be that big, since the wheel engines are obviously still working. And I’m only picking up radiation immediately around the reactors, so it’s not like it’s leaked down to the rim. If anyone’s still alive—”

“They can’t be. If they were, they would have fixed the leak.”

Aaron bristled. “How do you know that? For all we know, the engineers are gone and none of the survivors knows what to do about it.”

“If there are any survivors, why haven’t they hailed us?”

“How should I know? All I know is that it’s possible. You can’t refute that.”

I guess I can’t, Isaac thought. Instead of admitting that, though, he kept silent, peering at the ghostly derelict as if lost in thought.

“We should dock and go in there,” said Aaron. “Peek inside, take a look around. Even if there aren’t any survivors, maybe we can at least find out what happened to them.”

“Are you crazy?” said Isaac, his heart beating a little faster at his brother’s suggestion. “We have no idea what’s in there. For all we know, the place is infested with some sort of disease.”

“So we go in EVA suits and take a quick sterilizing spacewalk before coming back. No big deal.”

“It’s still a dumb idea. We’re not going.”

Aaron scowled and rolled his eyes. “So what, you just want to turn around and leave? Abandon this place without finding out what happened?”

“That’s right. We know that the station is dead, and that’s enough.”

“But we don’t know that,” said Aaron, raising both of his hands. “We don’t know hardly anything. All we know is that no one has answered our transmissions and there’s a small reactor leak at the hub, but everything else looks fine.”

It does not look fine, Isaac thought to himself. His palms felt clammy, and he was already beginning to regret his decision to come to this system at all.

“Listen,” Aaron continued, “even if there aren’t any survivors, maybe we can find some fuel and supplies to make this trip worthwhile. It’s more than a parsec to the nearest settlement, and even if we go straight there we’ve already burned through so much that we’ll have to sell half our cargo hold just to resupply.”

That much was true. Even with the credit they’d built up around this sector, they’d be dangerously low on fuel if they turned around now. The Medea was a small ship, and it could take them almost a year to make up their expenses if they cut their losses now. Still, the thought of setting foot on that derelict made Isaac’s skin crawl.

“It isn’t safe,” he muttered. “Whatever happened here, we shouldn’t get involved.”

“But we are involved,” said Aaron. “We’re involved just by being here. And since we’re already involved anyway, we might as well find out what happened to these people so that we can get their story out. They deserve that much.”

That’s right, Isaac thought. They certainly do.

“Okay, I’ll bring us up to one of the rimside docking nodes so we can go in. But I want you to stick with me, Aaron—understand? No running off—we do this together.”

“Yeah, yeah. Together. Got it.”

I hope you do, Isaac thought as he stared out the forward window at the derelict station. Down below in the planet’s atmosphere, lightning flashed silently, illuminating the tempest for a single instant before the lifeless world returned to darkness.

Oh man … so much awesome stuff to write! When the first three books are written, I’ll publish the first one, and publish the other two soon thereafter. I don’t want there to be a long gap between releases. But between book 3 and book 4, there will probably be a bit more time, since I intend to organize this series in groups of threes.

That’s just about it. Tomorrow, I’ll probably spend most of the day working on short stories, since there’s a story idea that’s screaming at me to be written. With short stories, you’ve got to move fast, because they will get away from you if you don’t write them immediately. But if I get a chance I’m probably going to start Comrades in Hope, because that’s the one I really want to be writing.

So many projects to juggle … I just hope I don’t drop them all!

Experimenting with prices

So now that the last Star Wanderers novella is out and I’m hard at work on the next book, I’m thinking very seriously about experimenting with my prices. I haven’t done a lot of price experimentation, especially since writing became my main source of income about six months ago. I just recently landed a job to save up some money, though, so that gives me a little more space to try things out.

Right now, I’ve basically got three pricing tiers for ebooks: novels and omnibuses at $4.95, novellas at $2.99 (especially Star Wanderers), and short stories at $.99. My best sellers by far have been the Star Wanderers novellas. Now that Part VIII is out, though, I’ve noticed that fewer people who start the series are going through and finishing the whole thing. I’ve also got a fair amount of pushback in the reviews, saying that the $2.99 price for the novellas is too high.

The tricky thing is that at any lower price point, my royalties take a huge hit. At $2.99, I get a 70% royalty from Amazon and a 65% royalty from pretty much everywhere else. At anything less, I get a 35% royalty. That means that at $1.99, I have to sell three times as many books to make the same as I would from one $2.99 sale. At $.99, I have to sell six times as much.

But wait, it gets trickier. The general consensus (inasmuch as there is a consensus about any aspect of epublishing) is that $1.99 is a dead price point. In other words, a book priced at $1.99 will sell so many fewer copies than a book priced at $.99 that they earn less revenue. A $2.99 book may also sell less than a $.99 book, but the increased royalty rate makes up for the shortfall.

Up until this point, my pricing strategy has been to maximize revenue, so that I can have more time to write. That worked fairly well: I put out one novel and four novellas in 2013, finished up the Star Wanderers series, and started a number of other projects that will hopefully bear fruit in 2014. But now that Star Wanderers is complete, I think it might be time for a change in strategy.

What I’ve learned in the past month is that readers will drop out of a series early if 1) the series is long, and 2) the individual parts in the series are priced relatively high. A lot of readers either drop out after Part II or pick up the omnibus, but the ratio of sales between Part II + Omnibus I-IV and Part VIII frankly isn’t that great. From Part V to Part VIII, it’s almost 1:1, but a lot of readers are dropping out right at the beginning–a lot more than when there were only four parts.

Part of this may be that the story just isn’t engaging that many people, but another part may be that the price has become something of an obstacle, especially as readers look ahead at all the other books in the series. Length probably also plays a role–my Star Wanderers books are fairly short, leaning more toward the low-end of the novella spectrum. Combined with the fact that many full-length sci-fi novels are now priced at $2.99, that probably only makes readers balk all the more.

I want to see what will happen if I drop the price low enough that it ceases to be an obstacle. Will fewer readers drop out after the first couple of books? Will more of those readers move on to my other books? Exactly how much of a hit will my revenue take?

For all of these reasons, I’m going to drop the price of my individual Star Wanderers novellas to $.99 for a month to see what happens. To keep the omnibus price competitive, I’ll drop it to $3.79 and release the second omnibus at $3.79 as well. I will raise the list price of the print editions, though (mostly to shoot for extended bookstore distribution), and probably raise the price of my novels from $4.95 to $5.99.

I have no idea how this is going to turn out, which makes me kind of nervous. Since I want to move on to other projects, though, including a spinoff series that I hope to launch later this year, I think it’s more important to encourage readers to read through Star Wanderers as a whole without putting any potential obstacles in their way.

So yeah, that’s the plan. We’ll see how it goes. I’m open to any feedback or ideas, so if you have any thoughts to share either as a reader or as a writer, please don’t hesitate.

Lindsey Stirling, Nichieri, Susan Boyle, and thoughts on discoverability and greatness

I saw a couple of things on Youtube that made me think recently about the importance of quality work, especially in the arts.

I’m a casual fan of Lindsey Stirling–I’ve watched most of her videos, put them on in the background from time to time, and get a kick out of following her career. For those of you unfamiliar with her, she’s a Youtube sensation who combines violin music, dance, and dubstep/electronica, often in some interesting and beautiful places. This is her most popular video, and probably her best work so far:

Her career is interesting because it follows a path very similar to a lot of self-published authors. She started by putting out videos on Youtube, built up a huge following that way, turned down a number of deals from traditional record labels and put out her first album herself. Now, she’s touring all over the world, collaborating with a bunch of other Youtube artists, and doing a lot of other amazing stuff completely independently.

The other day, I was really surprised that she was on America’s Got Talent back in 2010. Apparently, this was before she got really big, and the connections she made while on the show helped her find success later on:

Two things stood out to me from that video. First, the judges were right–even though she was pushing herself, this was not her best work, and it showed in a way that was rather glaring. I hate to say that because I like so much of her stuff, but it’s really true–her performance fell short.

The second thing that stood out to me was her response to the criticism. It must have been incredibly painful to stand up there in front of everybody and get hammered like that, but she still managed to smile, be gracious, thank the judges, and focus on the positive without being confrontational. That takes class.

When I was in Georgia, I watched a lot of TV, especially on the Rustavi 2 channel. One of the most popular shows is Nichieri (ნიჭიერი), a talent competition show set up much like The X Factor or America’s Got Talent. Even though I didn’t really understand anything the people were saying, I could still really tell when a contestant did some truly amazing.

There’s something about greatness that makes you sit up and pay attention–something that makes it stand out on its own. It’s something timeless and stirring, something that drives you to keep coming back to it, or at least to remember it long after it’s passed. With poor quality stuff, like bad writing, clumsy performance, or the like, you tend to forget it (unless of course it’s a spectacular failure, which in a weird way gains a sort of greatness of its own to a certain extent). But good quality stuff sticks with you–indeed, it’s almost like it becomes a part of you. It certainly becomes part of the culture.

When it comes to talent shows like Nichieri, The X Factor, and America’s Got Talent, the greatest moment has to be Susan Boyle. Everything about it is just perfect, from the awkward, homely way she started out to how she blew everyone away with her stellar performance. She didn’t look like she had it, and she certainly didn’t act like she had it, but she did, and she knew it. She didn’t settle for anything less than her best, and she didn’t let anyone else put her down.

In a lot of my discussions with other indie writers, we talk a lot about discoverability. We’re all anxious to be read, to be heard, to be discovered–to get our shining moment. The thing is, though, that moment is not enough if you don’t have quality work. It’s not going to keep you down or “ruin” your career, necessarily–Lindsey Stirling has come a long way since her disappointing performance on America’s Got Talent. But that’s only because she produces quality work.

I think I need to spend a lot less time trying to boost my discoverability and a lot more into producing the best work that I possibly can. The thing to remember, though, is that quality is subjective and you can’t please everyone. As Lindsey later said, “A lot of people have told me along the way that my style and the music I do … is unmarketable. But the only reason I’m successful is because I have stayed true to myself.” You can’t compare yourself against others, either–you can only really compete against yourself.

How do you know when you’ve done your best? That can be a little tricky, partly because it’s a moving target. I think Genesis Earth and Bringing Stella Home represent my best work at the time, though when I look back at those books I see things that could be improved. I tend to think that Desert Stars is my best work to date, though I’m not so sure anymore. Do I only think that because I struggled so much and for so long with that book? Just because something is a joy to create doesn’t mean that it’s any less than something you toiled and suffered over.

Star Wanderers was both a gift story and an experiment. The novella format was new to me at the time, so I did a lot of learning on it. Outworlder, Dreamweaver, Homeworld, and Deliverance came to me in a white-hot creative heat, but Sacrifice and Reproach were a real struggle. Is there a discernible difference in quality between them? Not that I can tell. I do think that the later stories hold together better on their own, though. I didn’t really hit my stride with the novella format until I started branching off into other characters’ viewpoints.

This is all on my mind because my next big project, Sons of the Starfarers, is something that I really want to do right. I don’t just want to write it for the sake of putting it out there (though I recognize that writing quickly doesn’t always mean sacrificing quality). I don’t just want to put it out so that I can make my work more “discoverable,” though that’s certainly a motivation. I don’t even just want to do my best. I want to improve my writing and storytelling so much that this becomes the best thing that I’ve ever written.

At LTUE a few years back, Tracy Hickman said that as writers, it is important for us to believe that we have not yet written our best book. That’s so incredibly true. You have to always believe that you can do better, not to make you depressed when you look back, but to make you enthusiastic as you look forward. Imagine what would have happened if Lindsey Stirling thought that her performance on America’s Got Talent was the best that she’d ever do! Her career hadn’t even dawned yet.

I think it’s the same with me. I’ve gained a little exposure, suffered a few setbacks, and experienced a small measure of success, but the big stuff is yet to come. And even though I may not want to be the next Brandon Sanderson or Orson Scott Card in terms of popularity, I do need to shoot high in terms of quality. Before I work on my discoverability, I need to make sure that I’m putting out some truly amazing stuff. I need to shoot for greatness.

STAR WANDERERS: DELIVERANCE (PART VIII) is now available!

Well, guys, it looks like I’ve gone and published another book! Star Wanderer: Deliverance (Part VIII) is now live on Amazon, Smashwords, and Kobo, and will soon be up on Barnes & Noble, Sony, and the iBookstore. In the next couple of months, I’ll probably put it up on Google Play and DriveThru Fiction as well.

This is the eighth Star Wanderers book, and more or less brings the series to a close. That doesn’t mean that I’m finished with this universe or these characters, though. I plan to bring a lot of them back with Sons of the Starfarers, a spinoff series that will follow Mariya’s brothers, Isaac and Aaron, as they fight to keep the Outworlds free from Gaian Imperial domination. That series will also tie everything in with the Gaia Nova novels, and show the origins of the Hameji. So be sure to look out for those!

Also, I’m happy to report that the print editions of Outworlder (Part I), Fidelity (Part II), Sacrifice (Part III), and Homeworld (Part IV) are now available on Amazon! Each costs about $5, and is between 75 to 100 pages. The print versions for Dreamweaver (Part V), Benefactor (Part VI), Reproach (VII), and Deliverance (Part VIII) will hopefully be out before the end of the month!

A note about the print editions: I’m currently using the same covers as the ebooks, with the generic NASA space art. However, I recently made an agreement with Derek Murphy of CreativIndie Covers to redo the book covers for the entire series. This includes the print versions, so once I have the new covers, I will replace them and the old versions will be unavailable.

If you want the best looking print book, it’s probably best to wait. Derek did a really awesome job on Part I: Outworlder, and I expect that the rest of the covers will be just as stunning. However, since there’s only going to be a limited number of the original versions, there is a chance that they might become more valuable if these books really take off. I can’t make any promises about that, since I really have no idea, but if you would like to get the original versions, they will only be up for a couple of months as I gradually replace them. I will have matching versions for each book in the series, though, so if you want to collect a complete set with the original cover art, you’ll definitely be able to do that.

That just about does it. As always, thanks for reading!

Resolutions and such for 2014

Yes, I know this post is a couple of days late. Yesterday I was busy publishing Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII), though, and the day before that I was on the train, and today I had to renew my vehicle registration … enough! On to the resolutions.

1. Publish something every 6 weeks.

One thing I really need to get better about is publishing new work. So this year, I’m going to do my damnedest to follow a regular publishing schedule. I don’t know what I’ll be publishing, exactly, but I have a pretty good idea, and surprisingly enough it actually works out to a lot less work than you’d think:

WEEK 1: SW-VIII: Deliverance (already done)
WEEK 7: SW V-VIII: Tales of the Far Outworlds (the second STAR WANDERERS omnibus–basically, I just need to write the Author’s Note and get a cover, since the stories have already been written).
WEEK 13: Science Fiction from A to Z (a book version of last year’s A to Z blogging challenge, released just in time for this year’s A to Z, for which I’ve already thought of an awesome theme).
WEEK 19: Heart of the Nebula (rough draft already written, just need to rewrite/revise).
WEEK 25: Sons of the Starfarers Book I: Brothers in Exile (already written).
WEEK 31: Sons of the Starfarers Book II: ??? (this one I still have to write).
WEEK 37: Sons of the Starfarers Book III: ??? (also need to write, but both of these are novellas so they shouldn’t take too long).
WEEK 43: Open slot–maybe I’ll publish Lifewalker in this slot.
WEEK 49: Sons of the Starfarers Omnibus I-III (just in time for Christmas).

Of course, this is all just a tentative schedule–I could definitely change it depending on which stories you guys want me most to write. The point is that it’s doable–surprisingliy doable. I might even break the schedule once or twice to release a surprise project, depending on how things go.

Then again, I might need the extra writing time in order to finish my second resolution, which is:

2. Write at least 2 short stories per month and submit them to traditional markets.

In other words, Operation Short Blitz. Since I’ve already outlined my goals and objectives for that one, on to resolution 3:

3. Read a book every week

Or at least 50 books before the end of the year. This is a recurring one that I’ve never quite been able to do, but I really need to read more, so I figured I’d bring it back. It’s also a good excuse to get more active on Goodreads, which I’ve been meaning to do for some time.

Now for some non-writing related resolutions:

4. Keep a detailed weekly personal journal

I’ve kept a journal off and on since 2nd grade, but in the past few years I’ve been really lax about it. My excuse was that the blog counts sort of as a journal, but that’s not really true, because there are things in my life that I would never want to talk about publically on this platform. At the same time, I’m not a teenager anymore–I don’t need to keep a super secret diary stashed beneath my mattress in order to cathartically vent my hormones and thus maintain my sanity.

So for this year, I’m going to completely redo the way I do journal writing. Instead of free-writing, I’m going to keep it deliberately structured. Instead of writing it only for myself, I’m going to write it for the benefit of my future kids and grandkids. I’ll include some private stuff in there, but nothing I wouldn’t mind being read years later.

Honestly, I still haven’t figured out exactly what I’m going to do for this goal, but I plan to at least write in it every week. In any case, it makes for a good Sunday project–not just writing in it, but figuring out exactly where I want to go with it.

5. Get to the point where I can run a mile ever day.

Writing is a sedentary activity, and I definitely need to get out and be more active. My grandpa got fit and lost a lot of weight later in his life, and one of the things he told me that was key was to run a mile a day. Currently, I can’t quite do that–I tried that about a month ago, and I pulled something on the third day that put me out for about a week. But it’s definitely something I can work up to.

My brother-in-law is a runner, and he advised me to start by walking. Walk at least a mile a day for a week, then the next week walk two, then the week after that walk for most of the days but throw in a running day somewhere in there. Gradually work up until you’re running more than walking, then soon enough you’ll be running every day.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m starting out with the two-mile walks, since the one-milers are way too easy. Maybe I’ll hike the Y a few times before I start running, just to build up muscle strength. And when the snow melts, I’ll definitely be climbing some mountains.

What I’d really like to do is get a treadmill desk. Those things are expensive, though, and there isn’t much room for them where I’m currently living. In any case, the best resolutions are the ones that don’t require a huge monetary investment or a massive shift from your current lifestyle, since those are the ones that are most likely to get done.

And just for the heck of it, here’s a crazy impossible stretch goal:

6. Finish hiking the 7 peaks.

Those of you who have been following me for a while probably remember that last year, I made only one resolution, and that was to climb four of the seven peaks here in Utah county. Well, I only got to two of them: Spanish Fork Peak and Santaquin Peak. And guys–they were amazing! Real adventures. Santaquin peak especially was just spectacular–without a doubt, the most perfect hike of my life. But then things got busy and I never got around to hiking the other two, blah blah blah lame excuses.

So this year, I want to revisit that goal, and since four is a lame number to stop at, I figure I’ll just shoot for all seven of them. It’s going to be tough–Cascade Mountain is a beast, and from what I’ve heard, Lone Peak has some cliffs that are especially harrowing–but by golly, I’m going to do it!

And if I hike Mount Timpanogos this year, maybe I’ll finally break the curse that is keeping me trapped here in Provo.

In any case, those are my resolutions for 2014. What are yours?

SW-VIII: DELIVERANCE coming out in January

So when I left for family vacation in Iowa last week, I thought I’d put the cover files for Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII) in my dropbox folder. It turns out, I didn’t–it’s still on my desktop back in Provo. Since I don’t get back until late on New Year’s Eve, that means that it won’t be coming out until January.

Sorry about that, guys! I hope you don’t mind the wait. Everything else is coming along fine–if all goes well, I should be able to hit “publish” on January 1st, with the print version coming out later in the month. The print versions are already up for most of the other books in the series, though Amazon hasn’t linked to all of them yet. When they’re all up, I’ll post the links here on this blog.

Christmas has been really great this year. I’m here in Iowa with my whole family–mother, father, sisters, brothers-in-law, niece, and nephews. The kids got a bunch of new toys and have been playing with them all week, while the rest of us have been reading, chatting, cooking, and playing lots and lots of Settlers of Catan. That’s more or less the family game now. I’ve won two rounds so far: one with the 5-6 player expansion, another with 4 players on the old board (which is hard!).

I didn’t have much on my Christmas list this year, but I did get something I’ve needed for a long time–a new laptop computer. I’ve been using an Asus eee PC since 2008, and it’s held out extremely well, but 1 GB of RAM just isn’t enough to cut it anymore. Plus, the battery and adapter are both generic replacements, and if I try to charge the battery while the computer is on, it switches from wall-power to the battery and back again every second or so, which is annoying.

My new machine will be an Asus X200CA, with 4 GB RAM, a touchscreen, and an 11.6″ screen. I wanted to keep it small, so I’d be able to use it as a travel machine. It comes with Windows 8, but I ordered a 128 GB solid state hard drive to replace the one that it comes with, so I’ll be installing Ubuntu on it instead (probably 13.10). I’m a little bit nervous how that will work with the new UEFI, but from what I can tell it seems that Ubuntu should work fine with it. I’ll just go in and turn off secure boot before I replace the hard drive, so I can install the new OS from USB.

My roommate just got a solid state drive for his operating system, and now his desktop boots up in about six seconds. Hopefully, it will be the same once I get this machine up and running. 128 GB isn’t a whole lot of space, but it should be plenty for all my writing needs. I want to get out of Utah and do some traveling in 2014, so that’s going to be important.

That’s just about it from here. There’s something cooking downstairs and it smells delicious, so I’d better get going. See you guys later!