artwork – Page 2 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Desert Stars cover is finished!

Here it is, guys! What do you think?

I played around a little bit with the text this time, coloring it and putting in some noise to give it a hint of texture. The title and subtitle font is LilyUPC, and the author name font is Alpha Centauri (from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri–best empire building strategy game ever).

If no one points out any glaring errors, I’m going to make the ebooks right now and upload them to Kindle, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble sometime tomorrow. I’d do it tonight, but it’s getting late, and I’m starting to come down with cabin fever.

After all these years, it’s finally happening! Yay!

Desert Stars cover art is in!

I just got the final version of the cover art for Desert Stars, and it looks great! Here’s a preview:

Many thanks to Hideyoshi, who also did the art for Genesis Earth.

I’ll finish the cover and upload the ebook over the weekend. By Monday or Tuesday, it should be up for sale across all sites.

Squee! I’m so excited!

Worldcon 2011: Thursday

Wow, the last couple days have been packed with awesome con-stuff, but I’ve got a short break so I thought I’d blog about it.

Thursday was great, attended a few panels but mostly just wandered around meeting people. I’m a little surprised with how many people read this blog. Got Brandon to sign my Kindle, and he was really supportive about my decision to epublish. I seem to be one of the only Utah writers going full-steam with indie publishing, but a handful of others are considering it, though for now they’re in the minority (which surprises me).

Anyhow, Thursday had a couple of really notable panels. The first was on faith and science fiction, and had both Eric James Stone and Moshe Feder on it, among others. Excellent discussion, though a couple of the commenters tried to derail it.

I found it surprising that the panelists didn’t have a good answer to my question: how do you reconcile far future sf with millenialist religions? That’s exactly what I’m trying to do with my Gaia Nova universe–create a far future epic that isn’t incompatible with the major western religions (Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc). From the after-panel discussion, I got a strong recommendation to read C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, so I’ll definitely be checking that out soon.

The other notable Thursday panel I attended was on ebook art, and featured John Picacio and Lou Anders, among others. John feels pretty strongly that indie writers are seriously devaluing cover illustration, and within the first ten minutes someone in the audience literally told him to f___ off! Wow, talk about tension–but even though it almost fell apart, the panel turned out to be very enlightening.

Let me just take a moment to say that I’m very impressed with what Lou Anders is doing over at Pyr. While the rest of the publishing world seems to have their heads in the sand when it comes to the ebook revolution, Lou is one of the few who sees it more as an opportunity than a threat. I’m not currently looking for a publisher, mostly because I’m waiting to see how things shake out, but I would be very surprised if Pyr is one of the publishers that goes under.

The parties in the evening were pretty good–as always, the Tor party was literally packed. Brandon saw a group of us clustering together, so he broke us up and sent us off to talk with editors and agents. He tried to point me out to an agent, but…you know, I’m not really looking for one right now. Brandon keeps telling me not to believe DWS when it comes to agents, and while I’m certainly not fundamentally opposed to them, I feel that I can better build my career by going in other directions. At some point in the future, maybe, but for now…not so much.

Speaking of Dean, I spent the whole evening hunting for him, then gave up around midnight only to find out the next day that he showed up at the SFWA suite fifteen minutes after I left (nooo!). And now that it’s 9pm in Reno and the parties are just getting started, I think I’ll cut this blog post here and recap Friday sometime later.

See you around!

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!

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.

😀

Disappointment and a shift in direction

So the latest round of judging for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award came out today…and Genesis Earth didn’t make the cut.

Oh well, at least I made it to the quarter finals. Most of the reviews were encouraging, though the one from Publisher’s Weekly made me wonder if the reviewer had something against science fiction in general (or was perhaps underpaid and overworked, as seems to be common in traditional publishing these days).

I did notice that none of the previous years’ winners (or finalists, so far as I could tell) were science fiction–which is not to put down their quality, or the quality of the semifinalists. It does make me wonder, however, whether part of the reason Genesis Earth didn’t move on was because of the tastes of the audience.

I’m not discouraged though. My novel has garnered a lot of positive feedback, not only from alpha readers, but from agents and editors as well. I know it’s got potential; just hasn’t come into its own yet.

The thing is, Genesis Earth is a YA science fiction romance novel, and the YA market is much harder to break into without an agent than adult sf&f. I could probably find an agent if I queried around long enough, but after reading Dean Wesley Smith’s series Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing, I’m convinced not to go that route.

At the same time, ebooks are revolutionizing the publishing world much faster than anyone had predicted. We may pass the 50% mark in the next few months, if indeed we haven’t already. Combine that with increasingly unfavorable contracts with traditional publishers and some disturbing accounting discrepancies at the major houses, and self-publishing is looking better and better every day.

So I’ve decided to put up Genesis Earth as my first indie published novel. Expect to see it sometime this summer, probably in June or July.

If you’re an editor and would like to hire out your services, send me an email at joseph [dot] vasicek [at] gmail [dot] com. I’ll send out a few test pages and ask about your rates (preferably per word). I don’t have a whole lot of money, but I’m willing to pay for professional quality work.

If you have any ideas for cover art or a cover artist, let me know as well. I’ll be spending a lot of time trawling Deviant Art and old Leading Edge issues, as well as analyzing traditional book covers to get a feel for that end of the business. I’m a firm believer in the tradition of high quality science fiction and fantasy art, and want my own work to be a part of that, even if it costs a little extra.

I felt uneasy with going indie a few months ago, but right now it seems, if nothing else, like a very smart calculated risk. The worst that can happen is that it takes a long time to find its audience, leaving me out a few hundred bucks in freelance costs until it does. The potential benefits, on the other hand, are tremendous.

In the meantime, I’ll keep blogging about the process to share what I’m learning. And if you want to support me, feel free to pick up one of my short stories on the Kindle and review it / blog about it / share it with a friend. The links are on the sidebar. In the next couple of weeks, I’m going to put them up on Smashwords and B&N, so if you prefer those formats, they’ll be available soon too, I promise.

In unrelated news, my cousin Angela just got a publishing deal for her poetry chapbook! Awesome! I’m glad to see that someone else in the family is having some publishing success–good luck!

(Image courtesy postsecret)

Go to Tor.com and read this.

Brandon Sanderson’s story of how he decided to become a writer is very interest. It goes back to elementary school, when he hated books and reading in general. A wise teacher put a copy of Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane in his hand, and it started a chain reaction that led to him becoming a bestselling writer.

As one of Brandon’s students, I’ve heard the story several times. However, I had no idea how significant a role that Michael Whelan, the illustrator of that book, played in it all. Tor commissioned Michael Whelan to do the cover for Brandon’s next book, The Way of Kings. In response, Brandon wrote a blog post at Tor.com explaining how significant it is to him that Mr. Whelan was chosen to do the cover art for The Way of Kings.

It’s an awesome and moving blog post. You should check it out.

In unrelated news, I am 110 pages into outlining Bringing Stella Home 3.0 and enjoying the process immensely. I’ve got some awesome first readers. Even with all the honest criticism, I’d much rather be writing than doing office work at my internship. Ah, well, April 15th will be here before we know it.

As for graduating and finding myself in the real world…not quite as thrilled about that. More like scared s***less.

I’m published!

That’s right–my first published story just came out in issue 58 of The Leading Edge. I am happy to say that after three years of formally pursuing my career as a writer, I am now a published author!

The story is titled Decision LZ1527, and it’s about a guy asking a girl out on a date–as told from the point of view of the little men inside his head piloting his body like a starship. I really like the tagline in the table of contents: “A man, a woman, and a whole crew of matchmakers.”

Full disclosure: I submitted this story after I joined the staff as a volunteer slushpile reader. Most of the editors for this issue are pretty good friends of mine (including the Production Director, who’s one of my most trusted alpha readers). I submitted it under a pseudonym, however, so most of the staff didn’t know it was mine until after they’d accepted it.

The Leading Edge is known for the excellent quality of its illustrations, and I’m happy to say that I lucked out with with the artist the editors picked for my story! Josh McGill is a graphic designer and aspiring children’s book illustrator. He’s done art for issues 53 and 55 of The Leading Edge. The picture on the right is the one he did for the front page of my story. I must say, I’m impressed!

The Leading Edge is a semi-professional small press science fiction and fantasy magazine affiliated with BYU. It’s been in publication since the early 80s, when Marion K. “Doc” Smith’s famous “class that wouldn’t die” got together and started it, along with Quark and LTUE. If you would like to support the magazine (and read my story!) you can purchase a copy of issue 58 at the following link:

Issue 58: “Redemption Songs”

Lot’s of people dream about getting published, but it takes a lot of hard work and rejection to actually make it happen. As writers, though, we tend to be harder on ourselves than we ought to be. It took almost four years for Decision LZ1527 to find its way into print, but it did. That’s enough to make the rest of the process worth it.

Let’s hope it’s the first of many!

First personalized rejection!

Okay, I’m taking a quick break from the Final Fantasy 6 Werewolf tribute posts to mention some exciting news.

This might sound counterintuitive, but I got an encouraging rejection letter a couple of days ago from Krista Marino, one of the editors at the BYU Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers conference! This is what she said:

Thanks for giving me a look at Genesis Earth. You’ve got a great concept and storyline worked out. Unfortunately this just doesn’t feel like a book for teen readers. All best, Krista.

In publishing, from what I understand, personalized rejections are a significant step above the standard form rejections. Once you start getting personalized rejections, your writing is generally at or near publishable, and you’re not too far from breaking in.

What’s more, it seems that her reasons for rejecting the ms had more to do with audience, genre, and her personal tastes as an editor than problems with the story or my writing. That’s very encouraging–it tells me that when I find an editor/agent who’s a good fit for this kind of story, I have a decent chance.

Or I could be wrong and it’s generally standard for editors/agents to give personalized rejections to conference attendees; I’m not sure.

Regardless, it’s a step up from a form rejection. I should probably send a thank you postcard to her in the near future.

I also need to start looking for other places to submit Genesis Earth. So far, I’ve only got three partials out right now. I’ve been putting more effort into finishing the 4th draft, but I plan to finish that this week (one way or another, inshallah), so at some point in the near future I need to crack open Writer’s Market and just find a bunch of places to submit.

Also, just tonight I got a peek at the artwork for my story coming out in this month’s issue of Leading Edge. It looks REALLY good! I lucked out with some awesome art! I don’t yet know who did it, but I’ll be sure to post a link to the artist when I find out.

Also, once the issue goes to press, I’ll be sure to post a link where you can buy it. Currently, the only way to buy copies of Leading Edge is through a mail-in form that you print out (lame, I know), but they just got a new volunteer webmaster so that’s probably going to change in the near future.

(Man, somebody read my story and illustrated it! Drew pictures of it! And they’re good! I can’t get over that!)

🙂 🙂 🙂