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.
It’s about the three main voices in every professional artist’s head, and how they bicker and play off of each other. As someone whose been in the writing business for a few years, I can say that it’s absolutely spot on (and not just because they’re anthropomorphized jaguars). Seriously, this webcomic needs to be like a primer for all creative types or something.
The thing I’ve learned the most by following this webcomic has to do with the marketing voice. I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that marketing is evil. And if you do it wrong, it really is. But if you do it right, it’s actually pretty amazing:
…your goal in marketing is to create sustainable relationships with people who want you to succeed; in short, to seek patrons, rather than one-time customers. To do that, you can’t be focused on the money or the one-time sale. You want to inspire customer loyalty. You want people to be invested in your success. You want them to feel special … because they are.
A lot of the stuff I do, like keeping this blog, or putting Author’s Notes at the end of all my books, comes back to this idea of making meaningful connections with people. I just never saw it as marketing. But if marketing yourself is really about focusing on people rather than obsessing about sales, that’s totally something that I can do–something that I’m excited to do!
The character I can relate to the most is probably Business Manager. It’s the entrepreneurial spirit I can trace back to my grandpa, who started his own oil company in West Texas and was successful enough to put all us grandkids through private school. But Artist is definitely in there as well–it’s why I’m always jumping from project to project, driving my inner business manager crazy.
So yeah, if you’re a creative type, you’ll definitely want to check out this webcomic. It’s written by the self-published author whose books briefly got pulled from Amazon during the Space Marine controversy (fortunately for all of us, she held out and won). Lots of good stuff there–she really knows what she’s talking about.
In the meantime, let me leave you with this incredible piece of orchestral trance music. It’s quite possibly the most epic thing I discovered last week. The video is pretty good too.
First of all, sorry for forgetting to do a Trope Tuesday post (again!). I guess I’m really flaky about doing those. Oh well–better to be flaky about blogging than flaky about writing, right?
In fact, the reason I didn’t write-up the post was because I was busy doing a 2.0 revision pass for Star Wanderers: Dreamweaver. This is the novella that retells the events of Outworlder, but from Noemi’s point of view. I hadn’t looked at it in the eight months since I wrote it, but sometime over the summer I gave it to Laura to alpha read, and she just got back with her comments a couple of days ago.
Well. Reading through those comments was simultaneously the most excruciating and most invigorating thing I’ve been through in a while. I’ve changed a lot since I wrote the first draft, and a lot of things about it are horribly embarrassing, but the story … the story is actually pretty solid. Oh, some of Noemi’s motivations weren’t close enough to the page, and some other elements needed a bit of pruning, but the structure, the bones–it all seems to be there.
So, long story short: I got Laura’s comments on Monday, and finished the revisions today. TODAY. Of course, it still needs to be proofread, and I’d like to send the new version out to some other first readers … but I don’t anticipate making any major, earth-shattering changes to the story. In fact, I could publish it tomorrow, and most of you would probably love it.
So far, my Star Wanderers books are selling much better than any of my other titles. They’re also much shorter, which means that I can put them out a lot faster–or should, at least. I probably angst over them more than I should, trying to make everything perfect. But I’ve got the extended series planned out to Part X, and I’ve already written half of Part VI. Some of those might get moved up or down, depending on demand, but the more I write in this universe, the more stories present themselves. And hey, if that’s what you want to read, I’ll be more than happy to write more of them.
If all goes well, Dreamweaver will be out in the first half of April, perhaps as early as the end of March. As always, newsletter subscribers will get a two-week coupon code to download the book for free on Smashwords. This also provides access to all future editions, in all ebook formats, completely DRM free. If you enjoy it, I hope you’ll review it or tell a friend about it. I’m not sure how I’ll end up pricing it, but I don’t anticipate going higher than $2.99.
In the meantime, here’s something to leave you with: an awesome remix of Jewel by Solarstone & Clare Stagg. Man, I love Solarstone’s work. I picked up his newest album, Pure, over the summer, and have been pulling songs from it for book soundtracks ever since.
That’s right! After what felt like six hours of un-anesthetized brain surgery, Stars of Blood and Glory 1.0 is finally complete! Here are the stats:
words: 76,326 chapters: 18, prologue & epilogue ms pages: 360 start date: 20 Dec 2011 end date: 2 Feb 2011
Some extended stats, just for fun:
days spent writing: 36 miles traveled: ~5,500 viewpoint characters: 5 characters from other novels: 9 major characters who die: 3 space battles: 5 planets slagged: 1
The wordsplash:
And the most influential song while writing:
It’s good to finish another novel, but this one definitely needs a lot of work before I feel that it’s of publishable quality. I think I know how to fix it, but my mind needs a break in order to give it a fresh approach. I’ll probably let it settle for a few months, then come back either this spring or summer.
I’m pleasantly surprised with how quickly I was able to finish this book. Thirty-six writing days is something of a personal record. Still, it feels like it needs a little more fleshing out. 76k is definitely too short for a novel of this type; hopefully in the second draft, I’ll be able to bring it up to 80k or 90k.
In other news, I heard back from the TLG program, and I’m happy to say I’ve been accepted! I’ll fly out to Georgia in a little less than two weeks, have a seven day orientation period at Kutaisi, then ship off to wherever the Ministry of Education decides to send me. I’ll be there until at least June, then either renew for a second semester or go somewhere else, maybe Eastern Europe or the Middle East.
Needless to say, I’m pretty excited! Hopefully, this new career will be a good fit, and I’ll have many awesome adventures in the next few years. Even if my writing starts to take off and my books start selling hand over fist, I’ll probably keep teaching for a while just for the experience. Writing is fun, but when you have nothing else to keep you busy it can also get quite boring.
The next few weeks are going to be pretty freaking busy, so I’m probably going to ease off on the writing, at least until I get settled into the new routine. Before I leave, I need to:
Find affordable expat insurance.
Pick up a 220 to 120 volt converter and plug adapter.
Publish Journey to Jordan on Amazon and B&N.
Get some new clothes.
Clean my parents’ guest room.
File state taxes for Utah (federal taxes are already filed).
Write up the last couple of Trope Tuesday posts for the backlog.
Finish the covers for Star Wanderers (while I still have access to my desktop computer).
Read up on Georgian customs and mentally prepare myself for the inevitable culture shock.
Shouldn’t be too hard, but it’s only going to get crazier once I’m over there. I’ll be sure to keep you updated as much as I can, though; this is going to be fun!
So yeah, another novel down; this one makes my sixth. Just another 94 to go before I reach my lifetime goal of one hundred!
This post might get a little emo, so I apologize in advance.
I feel like I have so much on my plate right now, and yet when I look back at what I’ve accomplished each day, I wonder if I couldn’t have been more productive. I’m moving out of my apartment on the 21st, so that’s the deadline for pretty much everything, and here’s what I’ve got to do before then:
Run through the copy edits for Desert Stars and rewrite the epilogue.
Get the cover art and publish Desert Stars.
Write the epilogue for Journey to Jordan and publish it.
Finish Star Wanderers and submit to Writers of the Future.
Do a guest post for Slava Heretz.
Finish the application for the TLG program.
Get rid of all my remaining books.
Figure out electronic W2 and other forms for taxes (before leaving in January).
Write up the “About My Books” page on blog.
Do a couple of recap posts on the travel blog.
Pack and ship my desktop computer.
Pack all my remaining stuff.
Get post office to forward all mail to home address.
Clean apartment for move-out inspection.
Find suitable traveler’s insurance.
Go clothes shopping.
Half a dozen other things that I’m sure I’ve forgotten.
In other words, this is not the time to be playing minecraft.
And yet, taken individually, most of these tasks are not all that difficult. A lot of them are just mindless chores associated with moving, and the other ones, while requiring hard work, are pretty straightforward. So am I really swamped, or am I just disorganized and lazy?
This is something I’ve struggled with since graduating last year. When I was in school, I was constantly busy, but I was also constantly producing. Even though my writing suffered a bit when I was swamped, I still found time to write three novels (Ashes of the Starry Sea, Genesis Earth, and Bringing Stella Home) and hold down a student job. For the last year, I haven’t had any school and most of the time I haven’t had a job, and yet my productivity doesn’t seem to have improved.
Part of it has to do with structuring time and organizing myself. In the past year, I’ve learned that a routine isn’t something you should hang onto doggedly, but something you need to constantly reinvent. And yet, when I’m staying up until 2am-3am and not getting up until 8am-9am, I can’t help but feel that something’s off. The whole moving limbo thing certainly doesn’t help, but hey, the work’s still got to be done.
Maybe it’s just deer in the headlights syndrome. I’ll try making a checklist of everything I want to accomplish in the next two weeks and go for it. In the meantime, I’m going to get out of this apartment and take a walk, because if I don’t, I’m going to go insane.
Also, as a token of gratitude for putting up with my babbling, here’s something cool I made the other day:
So my birthday is coming up a little later this week, and my family has been asking what’s on my wish list. In order to help them out, as well as anyone who might feel inclined to give me stuff, I thought I’d post it here on my blog. Some of the stuff might be reaching a bit, but what the heck, might as well throw it out there.
Item One: Signed First Edition Hardcover Copy of Legend by David Gemmell
This is the ultimate gift of all time for me. It is my life’s goal to obtain a signed copy of Legend, which is made all the more difficult by the fact that David Gemmell passed away in 2006. He is, by far, my favorite fantasy author, and this book is my favorite of everything he’s written.
I don’t expect to fulfill this life ambition on this particular birthday, but in the unlikely chance that it lies within your power to help me obtain a copy, know that I will be your slave for life in exchange for this priceless gift. Literally. With chains and everything (or caramel topping and whipped cream, if that’s your preference).
Item Two: Göttmann Dress Cap
Specifically, the Dallas-2 design pictured here. I have no idea how or where you’d get it, but that’s what I want–specifically from Göttmann Caps and Hats, in Germany. I’ve got a similar cap right now and it’s pretty spiffy, but it’s from Ross so the quality is pretty cheap. I need an authentic writerly cap like this to give me x2 pretentiousness and +5 charisma.
Item Three: Kant Stop The Music T-Shirt
This one’s a little pricey for a T-shirt, but I absolutely love the design. What better way to combine your love of music with your love of 19th century philosophy?
Item Four: Beginnings, Middles, and Ends by Nancy Kress
Nancy Kress is one of my favorite people to listen to at a con, and I’ve heard a lot of good things about this book. If you want to get me a book on writing, this would probably be the best one (or, alternately, either of Orson Scott Card’s books: Character and Viewpoint or How To Write Science Fiction & Fantasy).
Item Five: Anything by Hiyao Miyazaki
You simply can’t go wrong with this awesome Japanese director. I already own Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Castle in the Sky. Even though it was done by Miyazaki’s son, I wouldn’t mind a copy of Tales of Earthsea either.
Item Six: Interstella 5555
My favorite anime ever! Now out on Blu-Ray!
Item Seven: Mirage: the Remixes by Armin Van Buuren
Recently, I’ve really gotten into trance & progressive music, and Armin Van Buuren is one of my favorite artists. I skip lunch each week just so I can listen to his radio show, A State of Trance. His latest album, Mirage, is really good, and so I’d like to pick up a copy sometime of the remixes. Alternately, you could get me the Imagine remixes album, or anything by Cerf, Mitiska, & Jaren.
So that’s pretty much my wish list. Of course, if for some reason you’re not in a position to get me any of this awesome swag, I’ll take a gift card or a sweater or a homemade whatever <grumble>. But if you do get me a gift card, please make it an Amazon gift card, so I can buy more books and music. And if it is within your power to get me a signed hardcover first edition copy of Legend…let’s just say, I’m only partially joking about the slave thing.
Today I was supposed to finish the second draft of Sholpan, but I moved apartments this weekend, so everything got thrown completely out of whack. I’m all moved into my new place now (with some awesome Quarkie roommates), but Sholpan is going to have to wait until Monday.
Fortunately, I’ve only got a couple of new scenes to write, then touch up the rest to make sure it fits the novella storyline. I got in touch with my copy editor, and he should be able to have them for me by mid-September. If all goes well, I’ll send it out to a couple of my first readers to give it a pass, make the fixes, and then send it out to Josh and have it up about a month from now.
I’ve gotten some amazing responses for “Memoirs of a Snowflake” in the past week, and it’s gotten almost 2,000 downloads on Amazon so far. Not bad! However, while rereading it, I noticed an error: in the author’s note, I said that I wrote the story in December of 2008, when really it was 2007. I must have been thinking “winter of 2008” when I wrote it the first time. In any case, I’ve made the corrections, so it should be up on Amazon in 24 hours, and all the other sites before the end of the month (since I distribute to them through Smashwords).
Also, another piece of encouraging news: the boss at the temp job I’ve been working the past few months wants to hire me! If that works out, I should have steady work at least through into 2012. I’m hoping they’ll let me work part time, since that would help me juggle the writing career a lot better, but this is their busy season so I might have to work 40+ hour weeks for a while. Still, it’s better than starving.
Which reminds me: my first royalty check from Amazon comes in next month, and to celebrate, I’m going to crack open that bottle of Martinelli’s from Charlie and throw a small party. More on that later.
Finally, I found this the other day while trawling youtube for good trance tunes. It’s a remix of “Are We Human?” by the Killers, done by Armin Van Buuren. Everything Armin touches seems to turn to gold, and this is no exception. Check it out!
I’ve got this great idea for a novel, with a rough plot outline, an awesome ending, setting and characters all worked out, even the soundtrack–but no title.
I enjoy making soundtracks for my novels, but this is the first time I’ve made one before writing the first draft. Usually, my first drafts are so all over the place that I end up hating whatever music I try to associate with my work–that, or the feel of the book ends up being so different from the feel of the soundtrack that I just have to abandon it.
In spite of all this, I couldn’t really help myself from putting together a playlist for my next big project, a Gaia Nova novel combining characters from Bringing Stella Home and Desert Stars. Here it is:
For me, soundtracks are all about the emotion that a story evokes. I’m going for a tense and gritty feel, with heart-rending losses and soul-crushing defeats interspersed with poignant moments of personal triumph.
The really cool thing is that the soundtrack has helped me out a ton with the outlining process. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past month hiking in the mountains around Provo, just listening to music and thinking about this story. Whenever I put on the soundtrack, something would click and I’d see exactly what the story needed. I kid you not, all of the plot twists and big reveals came to me while listening to this music.
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!
Yeah…today wasn’t that great. I revised through about 2k words in Desert Stars, but none of it was new material, and I only worked on it for maybe 3 cumulative hours. I’m working full time now, but even so, I can do better than this.
My self-imposed deadline for Desert Stars is July 9th. That needs I need to do three chapters per week, and last week, I only did two. Some of the later chapters are going to require tossing out everything and starting from scratch, but for the next four or five, I probably just need to shuffle scenes around without changing too much. Hopefully, I can get through three this week, perhaps even four.
Genesis Earth continues to do well, though. I checked it at work, and saw that 69% of the people who view the Amazon page end up buying the book. That’s huge. Some glitches over the weekend have made sales updates sporadic, but it’s still selling a good 1.5 copies per day. So to all of you who have bought a copy: thanks so much!
There’s still a lot I need to do for Genesis Earth on the epublishing front, however. Here’s my to do list for this week:
Send GE to +5 review sites.
Publish GE to the nook.
Get GE listed on Goodreads.
Do 3 guest posts / interviews for the blog tour.
Create an index for the blog tour.
Should be pretty straightforward…if I can balance writing time with non-writing publishing/promotion time (along with full time job time). It’s going to be tricky, but I think I can do it.
Here’s my plan: I’ll get up at 6:30 each morning and write for at least half an hour, exercise, get ready for work, etc. When I get home at 5:30, I’ll eat a quick dinner and then devote myself to writing until about 7:30 (I have events going on every weekday evening that start at 7:30). In the late night, I’ll maybe write a little, but that won’t be my primary writing time (since I never get much done when it is).
So anyways, that’s my tentative plan for this week. Hopefully, that productivity boost will kick in soon, and I’ll be writing 3.5k words a day again.
In unrelated news, Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing posted an awesome interview of Kristine Katherine Rusch up on their podcast yesterday. To all my writing friends: you really should check it out and listen to it. Kris is an amazing veteran professional in the sf&f field, and has loads of good advice. I read her blog religiously and recommend that all other aspiring writers do the same.
Which reminds me: Robin Sullivan was interviewed last week on another podcast, and this one is also very much worth checking out. Robin runs a small press called Ridan, which is embracing unorthodox business practices and doing surprisingly well in today’s publishing climate. I’ve said that I’m on hiatus from seeking a publishing house for the next three years…but if I could get into Ridan, I would in a heartbeat.
Finally, let me end this post with a cool trance song I discovered the other day. Way mellow, with sweet vocals that fit surprisingly well with my current WIP.
Item One: Signed First Edition Hardcover Copy of Legend by David Gemmell
