blog tour – One Thousand And One Parsecs

New guest post and blurb for Desert Stars

First of all, my latest guest post for the Bringing Stella Home blog tour is up at The Villain’s Worst Nightmare. In it, I discuss where I got the idea for the Hameji, and how I world-builded (world-built?) their culture from the ground up. Good stuff; you can find it here, along with another giveaway of Sholpan.

I just submitted a proposal to Kickstarter for Desert Stars. I hope to raise at least $500 to help pay for editing and cover art, but the experience running the campaign should be useful too. I’m a little bit nervous, but we’ll see how it goes.

One of the things they asked for was a description of the project, which is funny, because this week’s Writing Excuses was about pitching. There’s a lot of good stuff in that episode, in case you haven’t heard it yet. I don’t have a good blurb worked out for Desert Stars just yet, but this is what I came up with:

The short version

A tale of homecoming, intrigue, and romance on the fringes of an interstellar empire that has forgotten its holiest legend: the story of Earth.

The longer version

Jalil Ibn Sathi Al-Najmi wasn’t born in the desert; he fell from the sky when he was just a little boy. Now that he’s grown, he wants nothing more than to find his true home among the stars. But when the tribe that raised him conspires to shame him into a marriage that would keep him at the camp forever, he has to choose between honor, family, and the girl he loves.

Yeah, they both need work. The short one isn’t short enough, and the long one has absolutely NOTHING about Mira, even though she’s arguably got the stronger character arc. For those of you who’ve read the novel, what do you think it needs? And for those of you who haven’t, does it interest you to read more, or not?

In other news, I revised through almost 15k words yesterday. Man, it’s so nice having time to write again. I’ll have to polish up my resume and start looking for work again sometime next week, but I’m glad I took the time off to work on Desert Stars. I’m on track to finish this draft by the end of next week; after that, it shouldn’t need much more than a quick run-through before sending it off for the copy edits. Needless to say, I’m excited. 🙂

Coming along nicely

First things first: the latest post for the Bringing Stella Home blog tour is up over at Michael Offut’s blog; you can find it here. Michael asked me to blog about Brandon Sanderson’s English 318R class, so I recapped some of my experiences, including the best advice Brandon ever gave me. Go check it out!

The revisions for Desert Stars are coming along nicely. It’s funny; for the past three months, all I’ve wanted to do is work on this novel, but it turns out that taking a long break from it was probably the best thing I could have done. The distance has helped me to take a fresh look at my prose and cut out all the extra trimmings that were just bogging things down. For example:

Draft 3.0

Jalil paused before walking down the narrow aisle of the train, rows of lights tracing a pair of parallel lines down the dark blue carpeted floor. The place felt oddly familiar, and not just because of the similarities with the trains in Aliet Dome. In fact, this one was much smaller and narrower, so that he and Mira practically had to walk sideways just to get down the aisle. The seats all faced forward, too, instead of alternating like they had in Aliet Dome. And the way the interior of the cabin was curved like a pipe, so that the ceiling blended into the walls and floor–it brought back a memory of him staring out a window at a glowing blue horizon, with the sky dark and starless overhead.

Draft 4.0

Jalil paused briefly in the door of the train, staring at the parallel rows of lights running down the dark blue carpet. The place felt oddly familiar, like something out of a dream. Perhaps it was the way he and Mira had to step sideways through the narrow aisle, or perhaps it was the way the walls of the cabin curved naturally into the ceiling and floor. It brought back a memory of him staring out a window at a glowing blue horizon, with the sky dark and starless overhead.

Just from simple stuff like this, I’ve cut almost 5k words so far; I wouldn’t be surprised if I get this baby down to 90k-95k by the end. Even though the story is pretty solid, the distance has helped me to take a fresh look at my prose. And hopefully, my writing has gotten better in the meantime.

So Desert Stars is coming along nicely. I plan to have this draft finished by October 21st, and publish it *hopefully* before Christmas. The main thing holding me back is funds; I’ll probably have to drop around $750 for editing and cover art, with maybe a month to get it put together in ebook form.

So how to come up with $750 before the end of November? One possibility I’ve been toying with is doing a fundraiser like my friend Anthon did for his Danakil expedition. $5 would get a copy of the ebook with special mention in the acknowledgments, $10 would get that plus one or two other ebooks, $25 would get that plus all of my releases over the next 18 months, etc. Or something like that. If you’ve got any good ideas for the upper donation levels, please let me know.

Once Desert Stars 4.0 is finished, I plan on jumping straight into Star Wanderers 0.3. Heck, I’ll probably start that project tomorrow! After that, I’d like to do a companion novella for Desert Stars. That shouldn’t take longer than a month. And don’t wory, I haven’t forgotten about Edenfall; it’s kind of gotten pushed onto the back burner, but I fully intend to finish it at some point. If all goes well, it’ll be up and published before the end of next year. As if that wasn’t enough, the BSH blog tour is making me want to revisit the sequel, Into the Nebulous Deep. I finished that project back in May, so it’s definitely had enough time to stew. And then there’s the New Rigel novel–gah!

Okay, first things first: Desert Stars, then Star Wanderers, and while my first readers are working on that, I’ll write the DS companion novella. Once I’ve gotten back the feedback, I’ll revisit Star Wanderers, submit the first part to Writers of the Future, and then finish the novel. That should keep me busy until Thanksgiving; anything after that, I’ll figure it out as it comes along. Oh, and some point in there, I need to find a new job.

So much to write, so little time in which to write it. Fortunately, things are going very nicely right now; if that holds up, this is going to be a very productive month.

🙂

BSH blog tour and other random updates

Just a few things to get out of the way before returning to other things:

I’ve started the blog tour for Bringing Stella Home, and the first post was on my friend Kindal’s blog; you can find it here. He asked me to blog about music and writing, so I shared some of my thoughts on that, as well as some of the songs that helped me to write Bringing Stella Home. Kindal is an aspiring writer like me, and he’s got a lot of good stuff too, so you should definitely check him out!

Also, as part of the blog tour, I’m giving away free copies of my novella Sholpan at every stop along the way. If you would like to pick one of those up, feel free; the coupon code on Kindal’s blog is good until next Thursday. And for other updates and periodic giveaways, be sure to sign up for my newsletter in the sidebar.

I plan to keep more of a schedule for this blog tour, with posts going up every Monday and Thursday. This coming Monday is at Mike’s blog, who is a frequent commenter here, and the blog after that is The Villain’s Worst Nightmare, where I’ll discuss the Hameji. Good stuff–I’m looking forward to it!

I’m booked for the next couple of weeks or so, but I’m still looking to expand the tour, so if you would like to have me on either for an interview or a guest post, please let me know! I’d love to come on as a guest blogger, no matter the size of your blog.

Also, for those of you who agreed to be first readers for Star Wanderers part I, I actually have a few changes I’d like to make before sending it out to you, which I’ll probably get done before the end of the month. I’m almost a third of the way through another major revision for Desert Stars, so that’s taking up most of my energy now, but that shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks, and I want to get Star Wanderers ready to submit before the end of the quarter.

My next release, for those of you who are interested, will be a collection of journal entries and blog posts from the 2008 Jordan study abroad. I’ll probably do it under a pen name, just to distinguish it from my science fiction stuff; how does J. Michael Waszik sound? The original Czech spelling of Vasicek is Wasziczek, which is an insanely cool name but impossible for the average person to pronounce. It’s the Z’s–you can’t get enough Z’s in a name, especially an Eastern European name.

In totally unrelated news, I noticed that this blog just surpassed 1,000 comments…and I was the 1000th commenter. So yeah, I guess I owe myself a new car or something (but I’ll probably have to settle for a flashing GIF).

Anyhow, that’s it for now. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you around!

Plans for Edenfall

I’m trying something a little different with Edenfall: I’m writing the first draft entirely in longhand.

I first got the idea a couple of years ago, when I was camping in Moab. The beautiful landscape of southern Utah made me realize that I wanted to write Edenfall while experiencing that sort of connection with nature, and pen and paper seemed to be the best format in which to do that. This year, when I decided that I’d definitely write it, I ordered the notebook on the left and fitted it out for the project.

With every novel I write, I like to challenge myself in some new way. In Genesis Earth, I tried out a first person POV with an unreliable narrator. In Bringing Stella Home, I tried to write a believable female viewpoint character. I also like to experiment with my writing process, trying out different outlining techniques and writing schedules. Sometimes, these experiments fail spectacularly, but they also teach me a lot and keep me sharp.

The goal with this experiment is to see how divorcing myself from my computer (with all its myriad distractions) and getting out in nature changes my writing. I live a short bike ride from the Provo River Trail, and weather permitting, that’s where I’ll probably spend most of my writing time in the next few days. Besides, I want to see how much of a difference the format makes.

Books existed long before word processors, so I have no doubt that writing a novel longhand is entirely possible. How much of an adjustment it will be remains to be seen. My handwriting is messy, and I can’t write as fast as I can type, but that hardly matters since rough drafts are slow going for me anyways.

In any case, it’s going to be interesting to see how it turns out. It’s been a little slow so far, but that’s mostly because I haven’t settled into a routine yet. By the end of this week, I hope to be fully immersed in the world of this story.

In other news, I sent off the manuscript for Sholpan to my editor, and he just got finished with his first pass, so I’m hoping to get the edits back in a couple weeks and have it epublished by mid-September. More on that as things develop.

Also, an old friend from Brandon’s 318 class posted a favorable review of Bringing Stella Home up on Amazon. He was one of my first readers back when the story had a lot of problems, so I’m glad he enjoyed the final version. Thanks Stephen! And yes, I’ve got a lot more novels forthcoming in the Gaia Nova universe, including a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home. Will the McCoy family save the universe from the Hameji? Well…you’ll see. 🙂

Finally, I plan on participating in the Out of This World blog tour being organized by the SFR Brigade, which means you’ll be seeing some guest posters in the near future. That’ll probably wrap up the Genesis Earth blog tour too, since it’s been winding down for the last month or so. If I agreed to write a guest post for your blog and haven’t done so yet, let me know and I’ll do my best to get that out to you. Sorry to be a bit of a flake these past few weeks; I’ll try to organize my next tour a little better.

And that just about does it for now. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on how things go with Edenfall. Until then, take care, and thanks for reading!

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 >>

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.

New title and writing update

Just a quick update before I go to bed.

After much deliberation, I decided to go with Desert Stars as a title. Thanks, Megan, for suggesting it. It’s a little short, and doesn’t exactly wow me, but I’ll try it out and see if I grow into it. The most important thing anyway is what the readers think.

The last couple of days have been going slow, mostly because of stupid writerly avoidance things. It’s a lot easier for me to revise than it is to write new material, and the last couple of chapters have required a lot of new material. But I think I’m through most of it, and will hopefully make some good progress tomorrow.

Genesis Earth has been selling a lot better than I thought it would…which doesn’t say much, but at least it says something. For promotion, all I’ve done is the blog tour, a couple links on facebook, and general participation on the Kindle Boards. In any case, I’m betting that writing is more important than promotion, so that’s where I’m focusing my energy.

The temp job I’m working is pretty good. I listen to stories, writing podcasts, and lectures all day while doing data entry. One of the most interesting ones is this presentation from Gencon, all about story structure and the hero’s journey. Good stuff; it’s helped me figure out a lot of things with my current WIP (Desert Stars).

I’ve also been listening to a lot of trance music, especially Armin Van Buuren. I know my Dad will think it’s crap, but hey I like it! I think I’ll leave you with this track, where Armin teams up with the guy behind Owl City. I’d tell you how many times I’ve listened to it, but that would be embarrassing. So anyways…good night!