A quick update

If life had a crazy-meter, the needle on mine would be somewhere in the yellow green right now and trending toward the red.

Next week, Future Mrs. Vasicek and I will be traveling to Iowa for my nephew’s baptism. It’s going to be a big family affair. Future Mrs. Vasicek has met everyone already, minus some of the nieces and nephews, but this will be the first time that we’re all in the same place together. Should be fun, but also very busy.

Next month, we’re getting married, and that’s a whole other source of craziness right there. Good craziness, but craziness all the same. Things are coming together one thing at a time, but there’s still a bunch of stuff to figure out, and a bunch of unknown unknowns as well. It will probably take at least a couple of months after we’re married before everything fully shakes out.

As far as writing goes, I’m making slow but steady progress on Edenfall, and should still finish it before the wedding. I’ll share more details on that in the email newsletter that I plan to send out this week, but the short version is that I seem to be over the hump and making good progress. That’s where I’m putting most of my energy, so if the blog falls off for a while, don’t worry—I’m still here.

As for the publishing side of things, I’m figuring out how to get all my books out in print, which was something I thought I’d figured out back in January until I learned just how crappy KDP Paperback really is. That said, it’s the best option for the present time, so I’m trying to figure out how to work within those limitations and design covers that their POD printers won’t mangle too badly. Still, it’s going to be a while.

An area where I’ve really dropped the ball is short stories. It’s been months since I wrote the last one, and I need to put a bunch out on submission again too. Also, marketing is an area that I need to do better in. I’m experimenting a bit with AMS ads, but it is so freakishly complicated that I hardly know where to begin.

But reading is an area that I really need to do better. I try to spend an hour or two each night reading, but the last couple of weeks that hasn’t happened at all. My TBR list is about three shelves long right now, and that’s just the print books. That’s definitely an oversight that needs to be rectified.

At the same time, I’m well on my way toward collecting all of the works of David Gemmell, mostly through Paperback Swap. If everyone has a superpower, mine is the ability to acquire books, so Paperback Swap is a really fantastic way to leverage that. The Neverending Story is my favorite book, but David Gemmell is my favorite author, so I definitely want to have all of his books in my personal library.

That’s pretty much it. Still need to figure out cover work for Edenfall. Still need to assemble my first readers and get stuff figured out for that. All of these are good problems, though. Hopefully, I’ll be trading up for better problems in the very near future.

Back to Blogging

So my life is in well enough order now that I think I can get back to my goal of daily blogging. If I fall behind on writing again, I may duck out for a while, but for now it looks like we’re good.

The last couple of weeks have been a little crazy. Engagement photos, wedding invitations, and then there was FanX this weekend. Future Mrs. Vasicek is finishing up with school, with all exams last week and a group paper due today. But once that’s done, she’ll be working full-time over the summer, so it’s not like her work load is going to lighten all that much. Plus, we have the wedding in June.

In any case, the next couple of months are going to be a bit rocky, but there’s enough of a lull right now that I think I can get into the swing of daily blogging again. Hopefully I can keep it up for quite a while.

Getting better, coming back

So last Monday, I woke up with post-nasal drip and a sore throat, which quickly turned into a 101 degree fever. Needless to say, I was out for the rest of the week. I’ve mostly recovered by now, though I’m still coughing up gunk from my chest, and should be back up to 100% in the next couple of days.

Coming back is giving me a chance to re-examine the way I’ve been doing some things, and to make some adjustments that will hopefully yield some positive dividends. This includes reworking my writing goals, writing process, and publishing schedule, updating my business plan, and figuring out what I need to focus on with regards to marketing and publishing.

The biggest thing is that I’ve decided to trunk Queen of the Falconstar, just because it’s not the kind of story I want to write or be known for. I’m still working on Edenfall, but enough time has passed that I’m going to call it a new draft. The current one is a bit of a mess, so I’ll take the next week to clean it up before hopefully going into it full-speed.

More stuff to come, but I’ve got to run so I’ll share it later. With luck, I’ll be back up to blogging weekly again soon.

Quick update

So I missed a couple of blog posts last week, and I don’t currently have any more lined up in the queue. I know I said I’d try to blog daily from now on, and I intend to work up to that, but I’ve got to get other things in order first. Here’s what I’ve got going on:

Wedding stuff
Tax stuff
Writing Edenfall
Revisions for Edenfall
Copy edits for Gunslinger to Earth
Metadata, formatting, and publishing Gunslinger to Earth
Writing a short story for March
Catching up on emails (there’s a lot of them)

It’s not that the workload is overwhelming, it’s just that there’s a lot of moving parts. Also, the daily routine has fallen apart and I need to build it back up again. This tends to happen periodically, so I’m not too worried, but it is frustrating and it does mean that balls are going to get dropped.

First things first: finish the copy edits for Gunslinger to Earth and get that up for preorder, preferably by the end of the week. Taxes also need to be done ASAP. The wedding stuff is mostly being handled by other people, but I need to be available, so that’s an ongoing thing. But if I can tackle those big ones, then the rest should fall into place hopefully.

Also, sleep. Can’t function without it. Caffeine is not a long-term substitute.

I’m not gonna lie, there’s a part of me that wants to shut out everything else and just do family history all day. Then there’s making family history, AKA spending time with Future Mrs. Vasicek. But she’s got school and work, so there’s a hard limit to that.

Then there’s reading. So much reading to do. Books are piling up everywhere.

Anyways, that’s enough for now. I’ll post as often as I can, but it’s going to be touch and go for a while, at least until everything else is in some semblance of order.

January Recap

It’s been a busy, busy month. I finished a major WIP, published a new bundle, started a new job at the local bookstore, and made a bunch of changes and adjustments behind the scenes. And that’s just my writing life!

Nothing Found

First, I published a new Star Wanderers bundle, containing the complete series. This replaces The Jeremiah Chronicles and Tales of the Far Outworlds, the two previous series bundles that have been up for the last several years.

Eventually, I plan to release Star Wanderers: The Complete Series as an audiobook. That’s one of my big projects for the year. I want to narrate it myself, but I also want to do a damn good job of it, which means I have to learn how to properly record and produce a quality audiobook. That’s going to take time.

I will probably release Star Wanderers: The Complete Series in print too, once I’ve gotten set up for that. As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve pulled all my books from KDP Paperback and plan to go with a different print-on-demand publisher in the not too distant future. But again, that’s going to take time to do properly.

Gunslinger to Earth

Phase:1.0 Draft

100%

MyBookProgress by Author Media

Second, I finished Gunslinger to Earth! At this point, I’m just waiting to send it out to my editor. Another few weeks, and it will finally be up for preorder!

There’s a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes, too. I’ve sent out more than 60 short story submissions this month, sold one to The New Accelerator, and hope to sell a lot more in the next few months.

I’ve also been rethinking my email newsletter. Until now, I’ve been using it mostly just to share free and 99¢ stories, and tons of links to giveaways. But now, I think that might not be the best way to provide value.

From what I can tell, there are basically two approaches to newsletters: as a vehicle to convert casual readers into fans, or as something much more personal to keep the existing fanbase active and motivated. Obviously, there is some overlap.

With the way I’ve structured things, I lean a lot more to the first approach. However, I do think there’s a lot more that I can share to add value, even to casual readers. Here are some things I’m thinking about sharing:

More detailed updates about my writing, current WIPs, and what I’ve been up to.
Recommendations of other books that I’ve read and reviewed. To do this properly, I plan to set up a separate book site.
Extended descriptions and background information about my books, kind of like what I’ve got in the author’s notes, but with links and detailed by series.
Stories from my personal life tha readers might find interesting, such as experiences from working in a bookstore.
Better curation of the group promos that I participate in. Until now, my approach has basically been to spam InstaFreebie / Prolific Works, but I think it will be better to participate in a smaller number of group promos that more closely match the kind of books that I write.
I still plan to do free and 99¢ book deals, but not necessarily with every email. A book deal is still more of a take (“read my book!”) than a genuine give.

Those are a few of my current ideas. Do you have any of your own? If so, I would very much like to hear about it!

The other big change to my newsletter is that I’m branching out to other sites, like Story Origin, Book Cave, and Bookfunnel, to build my email list. I’ll probably also add preview editions of my books to Prolific Works and put more emphasis on those. It’s something to experiment with.

Still trying to figure out how this blog fits in to everything else. At this point, I’m just doing my best to keep it updated. I have lots of ideas for blog posts, but not a whole lot of time to write them.

There’s a ton of books that I’m reading or want to read, and at some point I really need to revamp my Goodreads profile and get all of my book reviews up there. Probably after I set up the new book site, which will mostly just be a repository of affiliate links for all of the books that I review. I can’t put them up on this site without commingling them with my own books, and I don’t want to do that.

That’s most of the big stuff, at least for now. The main focus for the next couple of months will be growing my email list and figuring out my newsletter. My girlfriend is a programmer, so this weekend we’ll fix up the newsletter template I’ve been using and hopefully make it cleaner. If you have any other ideas for that, please share!

Good things are happening!

It’s been a while since I posted a general update here on the blog, and while I’ve been sharing regular updates to my mailing list, enough has been happening that I suppose I should let all the rest of you know what’s going on.

First, I decided to pull out a bunch of investment money and put it into my writing, in order to go full-time for the next few months (and hopefully for the forseeable future). I shared more about this on my newsletter. Basically, I rewrote my business plan and decided that my best way forward is to go all-in for the next few months, writing more books and growing my business. I have a plan, and if it works, I’ll be able to go full-time indefinitely.

Second—and this may seem to contradict the first—I got a job at the local used bookstore, Pioneer Book! I’ve been going to this bookstore for years, befriending the manager and several employees, and several months ago (before I decided to reinvest in my writing business) I dropped off a resume in the hopes of getting a job there. When I got the call, I wasn’t going to turn it down.

It’s a part-time, 20 hours per week job that fits in perfectly with my writing. It’s also a job where I get to work with books, and be around bookish people, so I’m sure there will be lots of opportunities to learn interesting things that will help as I build my own writing and publishing career. Basically, it’s the perfect day job for a writer, and I’ve really been enjoying it so far.

Writing-wise, I just finished Gunslinger to Earth, the third book in the Gunslingers trilogy, and I’m finishing up the revisions to send it to my editor hopefully in the next few weeks. My next WIP is Edenfall, and I’m hard at work on it now. The goal is to finish it by March, and publish it over the summer.

Publishing-wise, I’ve revamped the backmatter in my books again, with a new map for how everything connects to everything else. The biggest change is in my short stories, which aren’t mapped out here, but basically I’m going to focus on putting them into bundles, and have the singles point there. Eventually, I want to have only one or two singles for every bundle, with five to six stories per bundle. I have enough stories written to fill out four bundles, but a bunch of them are still out on submission, so it could take a while.

I’ve also been doing a lot more to build my email list, not just through Prolific Works but also through Bookfunnel, Story Origin, and MyBookCave. There is a method to the madness, and all of this fits into the wider plan. I’ve also updated the pricing on some of my books, and experimenting with AMS ads, though there’s not much to report on that front at the moment.

In short, I’ve been pretty busy. Most of my time and effort is going toward writing. I’ve got a very aggressive writing schedule for the next year, and hope to finish all of my trilogies before 2020, including the Genesis Earth trilogy and the Twelfth Sword trilogy. The way I have it planned out, if I can average 1600 words a day, I’ll be able to do that no problem.

As far as my personal life is concerned, I’ve been dating a really fantastic girl for the last few months and things are going very, very well. I’m not sure how much of that I should share, but you’ll probably hear more about it in the future, if not here on the blog, then definitely in my author’s notes and newsletter.

As of right now, 2019 is looking to be a fantastic year! I’m really looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year will bring, and I expect I’ll have lots of good things to share with you in the future. Take care, and thanks for reading!

Finishing up Gunslinger to Earth

I’m finishing up right now with the third and final book in the Gunslingers Trilogy, Gunslinger to Earth. Just one more chapter to wrap everything up, then all the final revisions for the last few chapters. So far, so good.

At 40k words, this is turning out to be one of my shorter novels. I’m really happy with how it’s turned out so far, though. It wraps up a bunch of stuff from the previous books, with a surprisingly hopeful and optimistic look toward the future of the universe.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll post a few excerpts, being careful to avoid any spoilers for the previous books. If all goes well, it should be up for preorder sometime in February, with an April release date.

In case you’re curious, I wrote almost the whole thing while listening to the 2009 A State of Trance year mix. Such a great year for trance.

Next up, Edenfall!

Reconsidering my newsletter

One of my writer friends made an interesting comment the other day. We were talking about email newsletters, and he pointed out that Jordan Peterson’s 5th rule, “don’t let your children do anything that makes you dislike them,” also applies to newsletter subscribers.

Obviously, I don’t think that my newsletter subscribers are my children. But the principle is the same. We tend to care more about people that we like, and are more willing to spend time and energy on them. When we dislike people, we either try to avoid them or we end up harboring resentment in some fashion.

My goal for my author newsletter is to attract casual readers who have read, at most, only one or two of my books, and convert them into loyal fans who eagerly await my next book. Until now, one of the things I’ve advertised is that I have a free and a 99¢ book with every newsletter. I have enough books out that I’ve been able to keep that up for the last two years or so, although most of the freebies have been short stories.

But I worry that I’ve been training my newsletter subscribers to only pick up the free books, or to wait until the book goes free. That’s a problem. I don’t mind giving away free books from time to time, but I’m not going to give away the store, and if readers come to expect that then I run the risk of breaking Jordan Peterson’s 5th rule.

So I’ve decided to make a change to my email newsletter, or at least to how I advertise it. Instead of giving away a free and 99¢ book in every newsletter, I’m going to look into other ways to provide value and convert casual readers into fans. Don’t get me wrong—I still intend to share free books from time to time. Just not with every newsletter, or not a different selection with each one.

I do want to share more book recommendations, especially since one of my new year’s resolutions is to read a novel every week. What I’ll probably do is set up another blog using MyBookTable with all of the book links, so as not to mix my own books with the ones I’m recommending, and include those in a newsletter every one or two months.

In the last few months, I’ve also been sharing updates on my writing with each newsletter. That may be a better place to share that stuff than here on my blog. What do you think? Blogs are better for public discussions, since they’re indexed by search engines and usually have a comment section with each post.

Either way, I definitely need to update my newsletter templates. I cranked those out way back in 2015, and they’re not too pretty. My girlfriend is a programmer, so maybe I could persuade her to help me out with that. But first, I should probably figure out all what I want to put in them.

What do you think? Are there things you’ve seen in other author newsletters that you’d like to see in mine? Any other interesting ideas or approaches? I’m open to anything that adds value without giving away the store.

Unpublishing the Star Wanderers omnibus editions

After some deliberation, I’ve decided to unpublish the two omnibus bundles for my Star Wanderers series: The Jeremiah Chronicles and Tales of the Far Outworlds.

In place of the omnibus editions, I plan to release Star Wanderers: The Complete Series on all platforms. Currently, it’s only available on Kobo. Eventually, I’ll put it out in print as well, but until then the omnibus print editions will still be up. All of the singles are still available in print and ebook, and will be for the foreseeable future.

When I wrote the Star Wanderers series back in 2011–2014, it was, in many ways, an experiment. Instead of writing one long book with four or five viewpoint characters, I decided to write eight shorter books, where each one focused on one character’s story and told it in greater depth. The first four books were all from Jeremiah’s point of view, hence The Jeremiah Chronicles. The other four were each from a different character’s viewpoint, with two viewpoint characters in the last one. Since I already had one bundle, I decided to put them all into a second one. Hence, Tales of the Far Outworlds.

Going forward, though, I don’t think it makes much sense to break up the series this way. Better to have one series bundle with all the books (and the short story “Starchild”), so that they’re all in one place. I don’t have plans to add anything new to this series in the near future, though that may change. If it does, though, it will be its own new thing.

The other advantage to combining all the books into one complete series bundle is that it makes it easier to put the whole thing out in audio. One of the things I want to do this year is produce an audiobook, and I think that Star Wanderers will do better as a single, longer audiobook that costs one or two credits than as eight short books that cost one credit each. But that’s still somewhere in the mid-future.

It’s the end of an era for me, but I think it’s for the best. Star Wanderers: The Complete Series will be available on all ebookstores later this month.

Trying out a new blog theme

I just switched blog themes from WordPress 2016 to WordPress 2017. If it isn’t working or you have strong feelings or opinions about the change, please let me know.

I know I’ve been sparse about posting on this blog, but that’s hopefully going to change soon. I’m gradually putting things in order to allow me to post more frequently, and not just whenever I have a new release or some group promotions or something. It helps that I have a more permanent living situation now, that isn’t so ridiculously stressful.

Some of you have asked me to blog about my outlining process, so I will be posting that within the next week. Until then, take care!