So Thursday morning, I came back from the gym after running 2.5 miles on the treadmill and promptly fell asleep for half an hour. Later that evening, I went for a walk and found myself out of breath after climbing a flight of stairs. For some reason, I was having difficulty getting air into my lungs. No other symptoms, though, so I chalked it up to the inversion and took an alka seltzer to clear things up.
Friday, I woke up with a complete lack of desire to go anywhere or to do anything. The day was mostly a wash, though I did get up to Salt Lake to see my sister who was attending Rootstech 2017. On the way, I started coming down with a mild headache. Also, minor congestion.
Saturday was when the plague finally struck me.
Congestion, massive headache, unbelievable chills—the whole works. I spent most of the day in bed, with a blanket, a quilt, and a down comforter all piled on top of me, and I still didn’t feel warm enough. Drank lots of water and took a bunch of medicine, but I was still in a pretty bad way through most of Sunday.
As things stand right now, I’ve still got a headache and I’m coughing up all kinds of nastiness, but it seems that the worst has passed. Still popping vitamin Cs and drinking piss-tons of water, which isn’t fun, but at least I’m getting better.
No idea how that’s going to impact things this week. Hopefully, I’m back on my feet and writing again relatively soon, but that may or may not be the case.
Either way, there’s still a lot of prewriting to do before I can start my next WIP, Edenfall. I need to reread Genesis Earth and really immerse myself in that universe. I also plan to look over the reviews and spend a day or two picking over tvtropes like a menu. If I can line everything up the way I want to, I should be able to write a really clean first draft and publish it before the end of the year.
No promises, though. I’m still not sure when this sickness is going to go away. Hopefully soon.
I’m only two chapters away from finishing the first draft of Gunslinger to the Stars! This book was supposed to be finished a month ago, but life got busy and my chronic disorganization got in the way.
Of course, these last few chapters are taking WAY longer to write than I thought they would, just like all of my books. It’s like Zeno’s paradox for writers: no matter how close you are to finishing the damn thing, you’re still only halfway to the end.
The ending for this book is going to be awesome, though. Truly awesome. How do I know? Because I started this book with Chekhov’s armory, and the only gun that hasn’t been fired is called Charity. Why? Because Charity is the greatest of all, Charity never faileth (even when all things fail), and whosever shall be found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.
So yeah, I’m really excited for Gunslinger. It’s probably the funnest, most entertaining book I’ve written to date. I tell people it’s like Monster Hunter International meets Guardians of the Galaxy. I actually told Larry Correia that at LTUE back in February, and he got a kick out of it.
In other news, I’ve decided to publish a bunch of short stories in the next couple of months. These stories have been out on submission for a while, but it’s time to put them out there for you guys to read.
I’ve decided that any short story market that takes longer than 60 days to respond with a form rejection is not worth my time. If the magazines were the only way to get these stories out, then sure, I’d grin and bear it, but in an age of indie publishing it just doesn’t make sense. Why should I wait three, four, or five months for each market to make a decision? Multiply that by ten or fifteen markets, and my stories can be tied up for years. I don’t need that, and my readers don’t need that either.
Stand-alone short stories have always been hit or miss for me. A few, like Starchild and Worlds Without Number, sell at a small but consistent rate. Others, like Decision LZ1527, haven’t performed as consistently. I’m never quite sure whether to publish a short story as a stand-alone, so I’m going to just throw them all up there and see how well they perform after three or four months. Let the market decide.
As for the ones that don’t perform well, I’ll take down the stand-alones and republish them in bundles and short story collections instead. No sense keeping an individual title up if it isn’t selling. I’ve already taken down a couple of the old ones, which will definitely go up later in some of these bundles. Trouble is, I just haven’t had stories availabe to bundle them with.
So you can expect to see that in the next few months, as well as (hopefully) Gunslinger to the Stars. The first draft is pretty rough, but I don’t think the revision process is going to take that long. Mostly I just need to run it past my gun nut friends to make sure I got all the details right, and find an awesome artist to design the cover.
I’ll leave you with Shostakovich’s Second Waltz, because it’s a fantastic waltz that’s been stuck in my head for several days now. Enjoy!
Yesterday I finished the second draft of Captives in Obscurity (Sons of the Starfarers: Book V). I’m extremely pleased with how it turned out, and I think you guys are really going to enjoy it!
Unfortunately, writing the book is only the first step. Publishing is going to take resources that I don’t currently have, so it’s going to be a few months before I can get it out. Right now, it looks like Captives in Obscurity will go up for pre-order sometime in April/May, for a release date in July.
In the meantime, I plan to start working on Book VI: Patriots in Retreat right away, in order to release it soon after. With luck, there should be three Sons of the Starfarers books published next year, with only two left to complete the series.
I’ve got so many awesome ideas for stuff to fit into the next few books. Captives in Obscurity and Patriots in Retreat fall squarely into the midpoint of the series, where the characters hit rock bottom right before the plot twist. In other words, this is where I really get to twist the knife, and if you’ve read my other books you know that that’s the part I like best!
So yeah, it’s going to be a while before these books come out, but they are really going to be awesome when they do. In the meantime, I’ve got some short stories coming off of submission in the next couple of months, including a Sad Puppies inspired piece that I want to have up before the Hugos are in the news again. So even if it takes some time for Captives in Obscurity to get out there, I’m definitely not going away!
Back in May, I made what might possibly be the worst mistake of my entire publishing career: I severely underpriced all of my Star Wanderers books. For the year and a half leading up to that decision, sales had been declining rather steadily, and I was getting rather desperate for some way to reverse that. By lowering my prices from $2.99 to $.99 for that particular series, I thought I would bring in some new readers who would go on to buy my other books, and that that would offset the loss in income.
At the time, I kind of had an impression in the back of my head that it was a bad idea. And for a while, I listened to that impression. But when you feel desperate, there’s a temptation to shift strategy and just do something, especially if it’s easy and produces immediate results.
So from May to October, I severely underpriced my books. In October, I went through all the data I’d collected, and realized that I’d categorically failed to accomplish any of my goals. Sales had increased by only two or three copies a week for the books I’d discounted, and sales for the non-discounted books hadn’t increased at all. Meanwhile, my writing income had fallen precipitously, to the point where I could barely cover costs.
At the same time, my personal expenses started to become a problem. I’ve always been frugal, but a couple of unexpected expenses combined with poor planning and lack of work meant that by the end of the summer, my emergency savings were drained and I had to make some hard choices. Long story short, I had to pull most of the money out of my business account in order to avoid going into debt.
I’m doing okay right now, so don’t worry about that. Work opportunities have picked up with the Christmas season, so I should be able to get by for the next couple of months just fine. And as for the writing end of things, business is still profitable, so if I just let it sit for a couple of months I should be able to replenish the money I had to take out. It’s not like I’ve eaten my seed corn.
At the same time, though, it kind of is like I’ve eaten my seed corn, because I don’t currently have the money to pay for editing and cover art. In a couple of months, I will, but not soon enough for a January release.
I had originally planned to release Captives in Obscurity (Sons of the Starfarers: Book V) in January. And on the writing end, I’m still doing pretty good: I’ve heard back from my first readers and should have the revisions done by the end of the month. But the actual production isn’t something I can do right now, so I have to put the project off until the money comes in.
So that’s what’s going on. It kind of sucks, but lesson learned.
As for Captives in Obscurity, barring any more problems, it should come out in March. And I do still plan to publish some short stories between now and then. The nice thing about short stories is that they’re small enough that you can do most of the editing/art yourself. It’s kind of like the difference between planting a backyard garden and planting several acres of farmland. In fact, if things go well I should be launching a pen name soon, potentially as soon as December.
And for the future, I will be careful not to underprice my books. If I could, I would love to give away all of my books for free (in fact, I actually do: on Smashwords, my books are available on a “reader sets the price” arrangement), but that just isn’t practical. Lesson learned.
I have been sick for about a week now and it sucks—literally. Got a sore throat right now, and I’m sucking on garlic to try to make it go away. Strangely enough, it seems to be working.
It all started with my cute little niece, who apparently is an incubator for the plague. Came down with the mother of all stomach flus a week ago, and was spraying out both ends for three or four days. Just when my stomach settled and I thought things would return to normal, I woke up on Sunday with a throat so sore I could barely breathe.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, though, I managed to finish Captives in Obscurity (Sons of the Starfarers: Book V). So that’s going out to the first readers. After that, I’ve got a couple of projects that I could start working on, though I probably won’t get to it until after I’m feeling better.
Heart of the Nebula is up for pre-order, though, so check it out! I’ll send out a newsletter announcing it soon, but I just switched from Tinyletter to Sendy and I’m still figuring out how it all works. Keep an eye on your inboxes though!
Wow, it’s been forever since I last blogged. One of my real-life friends even asked me why I never post anything anymore. That’s when you know you’ve fallen off the face of the Earth.
In truth, there’s not a whole lot to report. I’m plugging away on Heart of the Nebula, making good progress. My goal is to finalize this draft before the new year. After that, it’s off to the first readers, who should be pretty happy to see another Gaia Nova novel. It’s been far too long since I’ve written one of those.
As for Friends in Command (Sons of the Starfarers: Book IV), the first draft has some problems that can only be fixed by throwing in another viewpoint character. For that reason, I probably won’t be publishing it until February or March. I could drop everything and try to push it out by the end of January, but I want to make sure that I’m putting out the best possible book that I can. Besides, there are other pots on the back burner that I need to stir.
Speaking of pots and back burners, while I was at my sister’s for Thanksgiving, we got to talking about all the cooking and gardening that I’ve been doing recently, and she suggested in jest that I start a homemaking blog. Well. I have to admit, it sounds like fun. I’m going to write it under a pseudonym, so I don’t want to say too much about it, but it’s going to be about the intersection between homemaking, emergency preparedness, and self-reliance.
Of course, I’ve got a lot of other work to do before I can afford to spend much time on a hobby blog. So at this point, I’m just trying to keep my head above water. With the holidays coming on, there’s a lot of publishing stuff that I need to get done, on top of all the writing. But don’t worry, I’ll still find time to post a thought or two on this blog. And I plan to run a few more Goodreads giveaways in the future, so keep an eye out for that!
So a couple of weeks ago, I picked up the manuscript for a novel I’d written years ago, looking to see how much work it would take to salvage it. It’s a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, with James McCoy (again) as the main character. Long-time readers of this blog may remember it as Heart of the Nebula.
I wrote the first draft in 2010-2011 (started it almost exactly four years ago, in fact), and right from the start I could tell there were a lot of problems with it. I tried to throw in a romantic subplot that backfired horribly, and several of the major plot points weren’t thought out very well. I pushed through and finished it, though, and in spite of a few extra arms growing out of weird places, there was a lot of stuff in there that I liked.
(Come to think of it, I think this was my NaNoWriMo attempt back in 2010. That would explain why I pushed myself to finish the thing, even though I knew it had problems. I dropped it before the end of November and didn’t pick it up again until March, but since the only other books I had going on at the time were Desert Stars and Bringing Stella Home, I forced myself to finish it just so I had another one. This was back when I was under the impression that every book needs at least five or six revisions to be any good, and that most of the work in writing is actually revising. I no longer labor under those myths).
Over the next few years, I went back to it from time to time to dust it off and run it through a revision pass. Unlike my other novels, though, this one was so broken to begin with that revising wasn’t enough. I changed a lot in the 2.0 revision, cutting out most of the worst problems but not really replacing them with anything better. In the 3.0 revision, I mixed things around a bit but didn’t substantially change the story. Then I went through a bunch of incomplete revision attempts, tweaking scenes and rewriting sentences, but not really changing the story as a whole.
Then last year, I read through all the sundry drafts that I’d written of this story and put together a massive set of revision notes for the 4.0 draft. This time, I tore into the heart of the story itself, reworking plot points and adding new subplots to replace the ones that didn’t work. I went through the whole thing by chapter and scene, making a list of bullet points for all the changes that needed to be made. I also made notes for scenes that I needed to write entirely from scratch, and other notes for scenes that I needed to recycle from previous versions.
It was a massive undertaking, and I got about halfway through it before putting it on hold for other projects. That was nine months ago. Between then and now, enough time passed for me to more or less forget most of my ideas for it.
So earlier this month, I had an opening in my schedule and decided to take a look at this one again. Instead of picking it up where I’d left of, I decided to start from the beginning. Immediately, I was struck by how much better the story was. This wasn’t the three-armed baby I’d stuffed into the closet back in 2011–this was a really compelling story, with an intriguing hook and great potential to go places. The further I got in it, the better it became.
There were a couple of scenes early on that just didn’t work. I could tell that I’d reworked them to death, so I threw them out and wrote completely new ones. This time, they actually worked! By completely getting rid of the problem scenes, amputating those mutated limbs at the base, I was able to free the story from the mess in which it had spawned. For some of these scenes, revision is not enough–they need to be tossed and rewritten from scratch.
Over the last two weeks, I’ve really gotten excited about this project. Not only do I think it’s salvageable, I think I can make a really awesome story from it. I just got to the middle of it today, past the part where I’d stopped back in February. For the next few chapters, I think I’m going to throw out the revision notes entirely and just see where the story goes. I’ll probably write toward the stuff I know I want to keep, but throw out everything else.
So yeah, you can expect to see Heart of the Nebula come out sometime next year, probably in the spring. I still want to run it past my first readers, but I don’t think it’s going to need any major revisions after this one (at least, not any that should take more than a week). Keep an eye out for it!
The bookish side of the English-speaking internet exploded last week with an article in The Guardian about an author who stalked a Goodreads reviewer, showing up unannounced on the reviewer’s doorstep and going to great lengths to expose the reviewer’s identity. The crazy part–or crazier, I guess, since the whole thing is batshit crazy–is that the Guardian article was written by the author/reviewer herself.
It gets crazier, though. This same author, in another article published a little over a year ago, confessed/bragged to stalking someone else who she perceived as crossing her, this time assaulting her victim both physically and verbally. According to Jezebel, even after she was brought into court and censured for her brazen act of assault, she continued to stalk this person online, to the point where the police intervened a second time.
I normally do my best to stay away from drama like this. However, with the issues that this case raises and the way that it’s rocking the book world right now, I feel that I ought to add my own thoughts to the public discussion that’s happening right now.
First, I think that this author’s actions were completely inexcusable. Period. No book review, however critical, justifies hunting the reviewer down and showing up unannounced on her doorstep. Furthermore, when you read the original review that sparked the whole incident (and the subsequent Goodreads discussion thread), you realize that the author’s characterization of the reviewer is simply untrue. Was the reviewer “bullying” the author? Because she seems perfectly civil (if perhaps a bit enthusiastic) on that thread–much more civil than the author’s fans, in fact.
If there’s any bullying that happened in this case, clearly the worst offender is the author. She not only crossed the line of civility, but she also demonstrated herself to be both dangerous and unpredictable. And after all of that, to write about it in the Guardian–that is crossing a whole new line altogether.
It’s frustrating for me, because bad actors like this completely undermine the review space for all of us. Reviews–honest ones, critical ones–are an important part of a healthy book culture. They are helpful to readers in deciding whether or not to read a book, and they are helpful to authors in guiding our books to the readers who will enjoy them the most.
At the same time, reviews for readers and not for authors. When authors argue with reviewers, it undermines the review space for everyone. Arguing with a reader is not going to change their opinion of a book, and being public about it makes other reviewers think twice about posting anything less than a diabetically saccharine review.
And then you have a case like this, where one batshit-crazy nutcase goes over the deep end so spectacularly that she tarnishes the review space for everyone.
I have to be honest–this story pisses me off, not only as a reader and a reviewer, but as an author as well. Have I received negative reviews? Certainly. Does it sting when I get them? Of course it does–and the ones that sting the most are the ones that bring up good points. Do I engage with negative reviews? Only when I feel that there’s a point that needs clarification, and then only in the most non-intrusive and non-confrontational way possible.
Whenever I hear about reviewers bullying authors, it almost always turns out upon closer examination that the author is behaving just as badly, if not much worse. For that reason, I have very little sympathy for authors in these cases, especially when reviewers everywhere are made to feel unsafe. This narcissistic literary pettiness helps no one, at the ones who get burned the most are almost always the reviewers.
So that’s my $.02. Now time to do something productive with my time and energy–like, y’know, actually write or something. Take care.
Writing retreats and seminars make me uneasy. I’ve never attended one, mostly because the prices tend to run so high, and that’s part of what makes me so uneasy about them. Yes, writing is a business, and yes, the author deserves to be paid, but paid for what exactly? For telling stories, or for telling other people how to tell stories?
There’s an unfortunate tendency in the writing world, especially the SF&F corner of the writing world, for us to elevate authors to a quasi-godlike status and take them as a definitive final authority on the field. Certainly, when Brandon Sanderson or Orson Scott Card gives an opinion, I give it more weight than an anonymous handle on a message board somewhere. At the same time, though, an opinion is just an opinion, no matter where it comes from.
You don’t have to shell out a lot of money to learn the craft of writing. There are lots of excellent books on the subject, as well as online communities, videos on Youtube–I think all of Brandon Sanderson’s lectures from his English 318R class at BYU are now up on Youtube. More importantly, there’s no one stopping you from sitting down in front of a computer (or setting out a pen and paper) and learning from doing it yourself. So why do we need all these huge, expensive retreats and seminars?
Perhaps my view on this subject is different because I’m an indie writer. One of the great things about self-publishing is that it tears down the walls, throws open the gates, and levels the playing field for everyone. Since we all can be authors now, the pedestals are a lot shorter. The old authorities are no longer quite so definitive, because there’s so much room for experimentation in this new marketplace.
In the indie writing community, there’s a very strong ethic of sharing. Hugh Howey is probably the biggest example of this. He repeatedly goes out of his way to help his fellow writers, putting together the Author Earnings Report and being very generous in sharing everything he’s learned. He’s also very modest about it, constantly putting other, lesser-known authors forward as much better writers than he is. Instead of capitalizing on his knowledge by creating artificial scarcity, he puts it all out there on his blog and the internet communities where he participates.
Of course, retreats and seminars are just as useful for the networking opportunities as they are for the actual instruction. The thing is, just how useful is that networking really? The market is open–we all have access to readers now. The gatekeepers no longer have the power to make or break anyone’s career. And if you’re in the business of writing and telling stories, what better way to network is there than doing exactly that? Sure, it can boost your career to be on a first-name basis with a successful author/editor, but if you don’t also have the writing chops to back that up, it’s not going to do you much good.
I don’t want to call in doubt the motivations of those authors who do put on retreats and seminars. I think that for the most part, their motives are pure. But the structure is one of artificial scarcity that props up this legacy model of gatekeepers and pedestals. It makes me uneasy, because it grants too much of an air of solemnity and authority in a field where the brightest new voices are often self-taught.
Perhaps the thing that makes me most uneasy about these retreats and seminars is the fact that I’ve received so much bad writing advice over the years. To the extent that I have succeeded at all, it has been in spite of the advice I’ve received, not because of it. When I see people turning around and selling their advice for top dollar, it makes me very uneasy, regardless of their motivation in doing it.
I never want to participate as an instructor in expensive retreats or seminars. I don’t feel comfortable supporting that sort of thing. If I ever do get to the point where people would pay to hear me pontificate, I’m going to be very careful not to put myself out there as a definitive authority, since I’m sure any of my advice will be just as harmful to the wrong person as it is helpful to the right person. As for networking, I’d much rather do that through collaborating, reviewing, guest blogging, and putting anthologies together.
According to conventional bookselling wisdom, summer is the slowest time out of the year for book sales. But is that really the case? I’ve heard David Gaughran and Ed Robertson argue that that’s just a myth perpetuated by New York publishers who are completely out of touch with their readers. Sales don’t fluctuate with the season so much as with promotions and new releases, so the argument goes.
Well, it’s been three years since I started self-publishing, and I still have no idea whether there’s a slump or not. June was my best month ever, but sales have fallen off sharply since then and it looks like August is going to be the worst month of the year. I wish I could blame that on the summer slump, but last year, June was also my best month, and sales after that held more or less steady.
It’s a hard thing to watch your main source of income fall more than 50% over the course of seven or eight weeks. More than anything else, it’s reinforced to me that I cannot afford to rely on just one income stream. Most of my sales come through Amazon, but I need to figure out ways to promote and market my books on the other venues. Relying almost exclusively on Amazon is like putting all your officers in the same shuttlecraft.
How much of the decline has to do with the launch of Kindle Unlimited last month? I don’t know, but it’s making me nervous. None of my books are available through KU because Amazon requires exclusivity in order to be enrolled in the program. That’s not something I’m willing to give them, at least with my already published books. But I may enroll one of my future books in the program, just to see what it’s about.
Honestly, though, I think the slump has more to do with my own lack of promotion and the fact that I haven’t had a new release for two months. When Strangers in Flight (Sons of the Starfarers: Book 3) comes out next month, I hope that will change things around.
I think it’s also good to remember that books don’t spoil. In a certain sense, it doesn’t matter when a book comes out–when a reader discovers a book for the first time, to them, it’s something new. My Star Wanderers series has been out for a while, but there are still a lot of people who have never heard of it and would probably enjoy it. I’ve got to find ways to get at least the first book into those people’s hands.
I really, really suck at marketing though, as you can probably tell from the fact that I’m blogging about writerly business stuff that isn’t all that interesting to the average fan. 😛 Until now, I’ve been relying mainly on the strength of my writing to sell itself, but that probably isn’t the best strategy.
And that’s one of the other problems with the idea of the summer slump–it lulls you into thinking that things will pick up on their own once the summer is over. Well, that’s one rude awakening that I’d rather avoid if I can help it. In this case, the path of least regret is to assume that the slump is a myth and get back to work, dammit. Because even if it isn’t, it’s not like the extra marketing is going to hurt you.
Enough with the boring business stuff. Here’s Grant Thompson doing the ALS ice bucket challenge with dry ice. Enjoy!
