I know this is my third post today, but I saw this on Youtube today and I HAD to post it.
I’ve been dying to see The Martian ever since Matt Damon’s awesome performance in Interstellar. Haven’t read the book yet, though it’s definitely on my TBR list—everything I’ve heard about it is really good.
First Gravity, then Interstellar, and now The Martian—I love love love these near-future space movies!
So my 30th birthday is this month, and my parents gave me what may quite possibly prove to be the best birthday present ever: the family’s old cast iron skillet! These things are AWESOME for cooking–they heat evenly, hold warmth for a long time, have a better non-stick surface than teflon (if you care for it properly), can be used on anything from ovens to electric stove tops to campfire coals, and are virtually indestructible. I can’t wait to start using mine!
As you can see from the photo, though, it needs quite a bit of work. There’s a lot of old gunk and rust that needs to be scraped off, and it needs to be tempered and seasoned. Tempering is the process where you heat up the iron to let the oil soak into the pores, so that when it cools down, you have a thin layer of oil bonded to the surface. That’s what gives it the nonstick properties and keeps it from rusting. If you wash a cast iron skillet in soap, it scrubs off that all-important layer of oil, leaving it exposed to water which makes it oxidize and rust. That’s what happened here.
Fortunately, these things are so indestructible that a little bit of rust isn’t going to ruin it. It’ll take some work to get it cleaned up and functional again, but I could use a fun side-project to keep me busy. Besides, I have a writing buddy down the street who can help me out with it. He’s a pretty interesting guy: he has a 3D printer, grows most of the food he eats, worked on film sets for a few years, does some gunsmithing on the side–like I said, he’s an interesting guy. I believe the Grantville Gazette has bought a couple of his stories, though they have yet to come out in print. We’re thinking about collaborating together, or maybe starting a podcast.
In any case, this is going to be an AWESOME project that I’m sure will keep me occupied for the next long while. I can hardly wait to fry some bacon in this thing! Bacon, and baked beans, and cornbread … mmm!
I’ll post another excerpt from Strangers in Flight soon (as well as a cover reveal for the omnibus!), but I woke up this morning feeling like life was awesome, and I had to share why. Of course life is awesome in more months than just September, but it’s my favorite month of the year, as you can definitely see!
Progress is going well on the next Sons of the Starfarers book! I’m on the third chapter, and it’s really picking up. My goal is to finish the first draft before the end of the month, then write book V in October while book IV is with my first readers, so that I can have everything squared away for a release in December or January. But if all goes well, it should be up for pre-order by November.
That’s just about it for now–better get back to writing. Take care, and have an awesome September! 😀
Heinlein’s doors famously “iris” open, and the doors in my novels “hiss” open. That gives us a pretty good idea what it sounds like, but what does it look like?
This:
That part at the end where he presses the two keys and steps through–that is almost exactly what I imagine it looks like when one of my characters palms an access panel.
Someday when I’m a homeowner, I’m going to install doors like this in every major room in my house. I kid you not. And if I run out of other projects, I’ll build a standing jacuzzi like the shower units in my novels, with nozzles that blast you from all sides and a drier that blows hot air from the top. That is a Youtube video that I would love to see.
Live long and prosper, my friends. May the stars of Earth continually align in your favor.
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!
Sorry, no A to Z Challenge post today. I moved to a new apartment, and when I wasn’t moving I was spending time with my girlfriend … so yeah, not a great day for productivity. On the plus side, though, Lindsey Stirling’s new album just came out, and it’s pretty dang awesome.
Did I mention that I have ADHD? About that
Don’t worry, I’ve got topics for X and Y, and they’re both good ones. But for now, I think I’m going to go sleep in a private bedroom for the first time in over a year.
If you want to make a living as a writer, you’ve got to write a lot of books. One book is not sufficient to make a career, unless you’re the exception that proves the rule. But that’s okay, because writing is probably the thing that made you want to do this as a career in the first place. I mean, if writing is the thing that you love, wouldn’t you jump at the chance to do it more?
Sadly, I think a lot of writers put way too much pressure on themselves to produce the next book, and too often that takes all the fun out of the writing process itself, turning it into a miserable slog. I’ve certainly been there myself, and I have to say, the whole thing was just ridiculous. As soon as I regained my own confidence, I abandoned all those silly rules and metrics and just decided to write my own way, no matter whether it was right or not.
I used to keep a detailed spreadsheet where I tracked my daily word count, making all these pretty graphs to show how much work I was producing. Then I went overseas for a year, and the stress of living abroad made it difficult to keep up.
I found myself writing or revising stuff just to boost my word count, and abandoning projects at the first sign of a snag just because I knew that if I didn’t keep my momentum, the stresses of living in a foreign country would force me to take a break. It actually threw me into a funk for a while–not because I wasn’t creating stories, but because I wasn’t keeping my word counts.
So I decided to toss all that stuff out the window, and in the last 2-3 weeks before I went home for the summer, I wrote Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver (Part V) from start to finish. Once the pressure was gone, the story practically wrote itself.
Some writers thrive on external pressures like word counts, timers, and the like. Others think that they thrive, but they really don’t. They cling to writing rules and writing metrics out of habit, or because they’re familiar, or because someone with more experience told them that they should. The truth, though, is that every writer is different, and what works to keep one motivated might just get in the way of another.
It can change over the course of your career, too. The chief advantage of using these metrics is that it gives you a sense of progress, which can buoy you up substantially when you’re first starting out. It can be a real challenge getting through your first novel, or even your second or third, so having a way to measure your day-to-day work can be extremely helpful. But after you’ve written a few books and gotten your feet underneath you, those metrics can get in the way, especially if they make you feel guilty.
Of all the kinds of guilt out there, writerly guilt is probably the stupidest. There is nothing immoral or taboo about not hitting your daily word count. It does not make you a bad person or violate the laws of the universe. Why would you put that burden on yourself? It’s not like anyone else is putting it on you. Life is too short to beat yourself up for not writing.
Instead, learn to channel all the things that make writing fun. It can be, after all–that’s how we all got started in the first place! If you can learn to capture the thing that makes writing fun for you, and not lose sight of that, then even when the going gets tough and the writing becomes a slog, you can still get through it and come out with something that you feel proud of.
Not every part of the writing process is fun, just like not every process of climbing a mountain is fun. But taken as a whole, it’s exhilarating and awesome. I mean, check out this video of these two guys climbing Shkhara, the highest mountain in Georgia. There were moments in that expedition that were tough, but the challenge only made it more worthwhile. It’s the same with writing.
I love writing. I want to write more than a hundred books before I die, and I’m already well on my way. Writing an awesome story is its own reward, even though there are many other rewards that often come afterward. Having people read and enjoy your stories is the greatest reward of all, and it more than pays for all of the hard parts that come before.
On an episode of Writing Excuses, Tracy Hickman once said that no matter how many books you write, it’s important to believe that you haven’t written your best book yet. I’ve definitely found that to be true. That’s not to discourage you that the stuff that you’ve written is bad, but to encourage you that your next one will be even better. And more often than not, it will!
No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the planet–I’ve just been crazy crazy busy this past week.
On Sunday, after one BSOD too many, I finally switched from Windows to Ubuntu. I’ve wanted to give Linux a try ever since high school, but I’m not a computer programmer or anything so a lot of it is way over my head. So far, though, it hasn’t been too bad. The most complicated thing I had to do was change the firmware on my mp3 player (an iRiver T10 … yeah, laugh, whatever).
This is just an initial impression, but it seems that the difference between Linux, Windows, and Apple is a lot like the difference between cooking your own food, popping a frozen meal into the microwave, and paying someone to cook for you. With Linux, you have to at least dabble in the actual code in order to get anything to work, but it works WAAAAY better than anything else (just like real food is healthier than fake food). With Windows, yeah, you can kind of hack stuff, but you’re still at the mercy of Microsoft. And with Apple, you’re basically paying through the nose for someone to hold your hand every time you use your device.
So anyways, that’s been quite an adjustment, with a steep learning curve that I’m still trying to climb. Hopefully, I’ll get it all figured out before I publish my next book, because otherwise there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Actually, scratch that–the wailing and gnashing of teeth will happen anyway (heck, it’s happening now!), but if I don’t have it figured out, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth AND a delay getting the next book out. But that’s not going to happen.
The other thing that’s kept me busy (and really, the main thing sucking up all my time) has been a construction job that the temp agency suckered me into taking. They said it was supposed to end on Monday … but no, it lasted all week. I did learn a lot of interesting things, though. For example, I learned how to take out and re-install a toilet. I also learned that painters are among the most disgusting creatures on Earth, so if I ever want to paint the interior of my house, I’d be better off buying the supplies and doing it myself.
There were a couple of other things that kept me busy, but I’m not sure how much I can talk about them yet. The most exciting thing has to do with the next issue of Mormon Artist magazine, which should be coming out in about a month. Also, I’ve been working with some other sci-fi indie writers to put together a group promo–more on that later.
So that’s what I’ve been doing instead of blogging. I’ve also made some progress in Sons of the Starfarers, though not as much as I’d like. Ideally, I’d like to finish the rough draft in about two weeks, which is pushing it but definitely possible. I figure that writing is more important than blogging, so if you don’t see another post here for a while, that’s what I’m up to.
So much for that. I’ll leave you with this:
Okay, chances are you’ve probably seen it already. Maybe it made you sad, maybe it made you cry, or maybe it made you laugh in a guilty, self-conscious sort of way. However, I am not ashamed to say that I found this clip absolutely hilarious. Sure, maybe it left that poor little girl a bit traumatized, but I’d rather her learn about death from an eagle and a rabbit than from someone in her family passing away.
Rabbits are pests. Eagles are beautiful, majestic creatures who have every right to live as rabbits do. What the eagle did was not malicious, or hateful, or evil–it was natural. Eagles have to eat too, and by golly they sure work for their food a lot more than rabbits do. So here’s to the eagles, the hawks, and all the other majestic birds of prey for being awesome.
I could make a joke here about the rabbit being a PC and the eagle being a Linux user, but it’s getting late and I’d better go write. Later!
So I’ve been working hard at Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) these past few days, and I’m happy to say that it will be coming out sooner than I’d expected! I finished a quick proofreading and touch up pass today, which mostly involved cutting some unnecessary paragraphs and rewording a few sentences here and there. I also wrote the author’s note and acknowledgments, so all it needs is another proofreading pass and it should be good to go!
This story wasn’t quite as difficult as Sacrifice, but it certainly was a challenge, and I’m surprisingly pleased with the result. Revisiting the Star Wanderers story from Mariya and Noemi’s points of view was a great experience, and I did my best to really get into their heads and show what they were thinking. The themes are a bit unusual for a science fiction story, but if you’ve followed the Star Wanderers this far, it should be another fun and interesting ride!
I suppose this is where I should include an excerpt or something. I’m not a fan of huge, unwieldy excerpts, so here’s a quickie:
The others laughed with her. As they returned to their work, however, a strange silence fell over them, as if some unspoken tension hung thick in the air. Mariya glanced nervously at her mother, making Noemi wonder if it was something between the two of them. But instead of speaking with Mariya, Salome turned to her.
“About Jerem-ahra,” she said. “He’s a good man, isn’t he?”
“Oh, yes,” said Noemi, slowing down a little as she folded the last of the clothes. “Why?”
“God knows there aren’t many good men where we’re going—the Far Outworlds, I mean.” Salome pulled the bed-sheet taught and tucked it expertly beneath the thin foam mattress. “Not many Deltans out there either. At Zarmina, we’ll be the only ones.”
Noemi frowned. She glanced at Mariya, who was watching her intently out of the corner of her eye. Something was going on here—she didn’t know what it was exactly, but it felt as if they were backing her into a corner.
“Really?” she asked, her arms growing tense. “Just the three of us?”
“And father too, of course,” Mariya interjected. “He wasn’t born Deltan, but he’s as good as one of us now.”
“And Jerem-ahra,” said Salome.
What are they trying to get at? Noemi wondered. Both of them were staring at her now, making her hands feel clammy. It was as if they expected an answer from her, but she didn’t even know what they were asking.
“J-Jeremahra hasn’t been baptized yet,” she said, her voice quavering. “I don’t know how to bring it up. We understand each other when it comes to little things, but—”
“I can talk with him!” Mariya said, smiling cheerily. “I can help translate almost anything for you. And even though he hasn’t been baptized yet, I’m sure he’ll come around eventually. When he married you, he practically married into it—just like daddy. For your sake, he’ll convert before too long.”
That’s odd, Noemi thought to herself. Back on Oriana Station, she did everything she could to avoid bringing up religion. It wasn’t like she’d stopped believing, though—just that she was nervous talking with people who didn’t share their faith. Considering all the anti-Deltan bigotry back on Oriana Station, Noemi didn’t blame her. But why was she so eager to see Jeremahra converted now?
“Let me put it this way,” said Salome. “Where we’re going, we need to stick together. And what’s a better way to do that than to become one family?”
Stars of Holy Earth, Noemi realized, they want Mariya to become his second wife. Her eyes widened, and an awful sinking feeling began to pull at her gut even as her legs turned to water.
I’m not sure whether to hire a proofreader or just proofread it myself. I doubt I’ll find someone who can turn it around before the end of the week, but who knows? The manuscript is pretty clean, though, so it shouldn’t take too much work to catch the last few typos–just a good eye.
In any case, I’ll leave you with the track I’m listening to right now. It’s a great track by Paul van Dyk, Arty, and Sue McLaren, remixed by Pedro Del Mar. Stuff like this really helps me to get in the zone.
Take care!
First, just a quick update on my latest writing projects. I got the feedback from my second round of test readers for Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII), and while I think the story still needs work, it’s getting closer. I probably won’t be able to get it out by the end of September, but first or second week of October it should be ready.
It’s funny–I sent it to a guy and a girl, and while the guy thought it didn’t need any changes (and he’s studying to be an editor), the girl pointed out a few things that need a little more reinforcement and development. It’s mostly just minor changes I think, getting more into Noemi’s viewpoint and figuring out exactly what she’s going through, and making that clear to the reader. So yeah, it shouldn’t be too hard.
In some ways, writing this book has been like writing myself out of a corner. The story in Reproach runs parallel with the events of Sacrifice, and some of the stuff that happens there is pretty complicated. For example, it’s got a sixteen year old girl who feels like her only hope at happiness is to convince her best friend to share her husband, and the best friend actually kind of comes around to it by the end, though the whole ordeal is almost unbearable for her.
Writing about monogamous relationships is hard enough when you’ve always been single–it’s doubly hard when you’re writing about polygamy. But I’m actually fairly pleased with the way it’s come out so far–even though it’s not quite ready to be published, everyone who’s read it has really gotten into it, even the readers who haven’t yet read the earlier books in the series. It’s been a challenging book to write, but it’s been a gratifying one, and I think you guys are going to enjoy it.
Of course, all of this is yanking me away from Sons of the Starfarers, which is really kind of aggravating. On an interview I listened to recently, Jim Butcher said that writers are either writing, thinking about what they’re writing, or thinking about what they’ve written. The way my brain is wired, I can only really do one of those things at a time, and I’d much rather write or think about what I’m writing than think about what I’ve written. But yeah, Reproach is more important, so after finishing the current chapter I’ll put Sons of the Starfarers on hold for a couple weeks.
Also, I’m working to get print editions out for all of my Star Wanderers books before Christmas. Part of this is because of the new Matchbook program from Amazon, but mostly it’s just because … well, why not? For those of you who want paperback versions of these novellas, that will soon be an option. I’m having a little trouble figuring out the cover art (RBG vs. CMYK, getting the covers to print attractively instead of turning out way too dark, etc), but that shouldn’t take longer than a few weeks to iron out. Expect to see parts I-IV out by November.
Finally, a funny thing happened to me at Leading Edge. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a student-run science fiction & fantasy magazine where student volunteers read every story submission and write a critique for the author. Well, while sitting in the slushpile, one of the editors came in and showed me a story that I’d critiqued … twice! The first time, I’d given it a rejection. The second time, I’d actually recommended that the editors buy it!
Well, I racked my brain a little bit to figure out what had happened, and as close as I can tell the only real difference was in how distracted I’d been when I’d read it. The first time, it had been fairly noisy and there’d been a lot of distractions. The story had some good parts to it, which I mentioned in the letter, but I didn’t really pick up on the character motivations well, so I rejected it based on that. The second time, though, it had been quiet enough for me to really pay attention to the story, enough to really get what was going on. I finished it, and the ending moved me so much that I knew I’d have to recommend that we publish it.
The editor wanted to keep the rejection sheet anyway, but I tossed it in the garbage since really it wasn’t all that helpful anyway. And the moral, if there is one, is to pick up every story with the idea firmly in mind that you’ve got a potential gem in your hands. Too often, I think we read stuff flippantly, as if we already know that it’s not worth our time and attention. Well, don’t do that! Who knows but what you’ve got your new favorite story of all time sitting right in front of you? Give it a chance!
And on that note, I leave you with this:
See you guys around!