Tag: Triumphs
Holy Amazon rankings Batman!
So about 24h hours ago, Amazon noticed that I was giving “From the Ice Incarnate” away on a number of other sites, and decided to drop the price down to free. What happened next was INSANE.
Almost immediately, the downloads started pouring in. Within a matter of hours, it cracked the #1,000 spot in the Kindle Store rankings, breaking into the top 100 for horror. By noon today, it was at the #14 spot for Horror and #256 overall.
Holy crap! That’s a jump of three orders of magnitude from where it was in the rankings before–more ebooks downloaded in just a matter of hours than I’ve sold across all platforms since April! The really cool part is that it’s driving some interest in my other stuff. Not a whole lot at this point, which is fine, but more than I was expecting, especially in my other short stories.
One thing I’m a little worried about, though, is that it seems to be selling with a different crowd than my target audience. “From the Ice Incarnate” definitely has some prominent horror elements, but it’s essentially a science fiction story.
I changed the category in KDP and republished the ebook, but I’m worried that the act of republishing will set the price back to $.99. I like having it free; I’m hoping it will generate more interest in my novels, which is where I hope to make my bread and butter. To jump off the free train right now, just as things are starting to take off…
…well, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Still, holy cow! It’s a wild and crazy ride!
In other news, I recently did an interview over at my cousin Angela’s blog. Angela is a mom, a writer, and an all-around awesome person, and she publishes a bunch of poetry on her blog, both her own and by others. The interview covers why I feel drawn to science fiction, themes in Genesis Earth, and how studying political science influenced my writing. Good stuff; check it out!
Desert Stars 3.0 is finished!
That’s right; after almost exactly two months of writing, the third draft of Desert Stars is now complete!
This is the first draft where I feel that things are truly coming together the way they should be, where the story is transforming into something that not only works, but is actually fairly awesome. I’m probably not the best judge, though, so I’ll have to send it out to another round of first readers to get their reactions to it, but I don’t think this will need more than one more draft before it’s ready to go to a copy editor.
Anyhow, here are the stats:
ms pages: 505
words: 108,468
file size: 246 KB
chapters: 22, prologue & epilogue
start date: 16 May 2011
end date: 18 Jul 2011
And the Wordle:
The most influential song in the writing of this draft comes from an mp3 cd of Arabic music that a friend in Jordan gave me while I was studying over there in 2008. The title is فرحة عمرانة بالدار, which apparently translates to “The Joy of _____ in Casablanca.” I know absolutely nothing else about it, other than it sounds very Arab. Since Desert Stars is essentially about a far-future Arab society, it resonated quite well.
The hardest part of writing this draft was probably at the very end, when my daily routine fell to pieces and I completely lost my stride. This seems to happen a lot whenever I’m trying to finish something, which reflects in my daily word count charts.
But the ending itself was not particularly hard to write; in fact, it was quite fun. A bunch of previous changes came together in a way that just clicked, including some spontaneous ones that I hadn’t planned for at all. As a result, I’m really excited about this draft and hope to get it out as an ebook before Christmas.
One question, for those of you who have read the previous draft: do you think I could justify splitting the story into two separate novels and selling them each at a lower cost? I hate books that end on a cliffhanger, but one of my first readers thought that this might work, and it would certainly give me more stuff to epublish.
Also, if you haven’t read a previous draft and would like to be a first reader, please let me know. I only send my rough work out to people I know in real life, however, so if our only interaction has been online, please don’t ask. I’ll probably start the fourth draft sometime in September, so you’ll have until the end of the summer (and possibly a little more) to finish it.
Next project? Publishing Bringing Stella Home and putting together the spin-off novella Sholpan. Shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks. After that, I think I’ll start the indirect sequel that I mentioned before. In the meantime, on with business as usual.
…WHUT
So this morning when I was getting ready for church, I realized that I couldn’t find my Kindle. Anywhere. Remembering that I’d left it at a Quark event in my apartment’s lobby, I started frantically calling people and knocking doors. Unfortunately, no one had seen it.
A few hours later, after combing every place I could have possibly left it at least four or five times, I have to admit it’s completely lost. I have a very good idea when and where I lost it, so the only remaining possibility is that someone picked it up. The aggravating thing is waiting to see whether they return it, or whether they decide to run off with it. ARRRRGH!
The amazing thing is how attached I’ve become to that device in the last month since I first got it. I’m not a particularly voracious reader, but right up until I lost it I was carrying that thing around everywhere. It’s so amazingly convenient–instead of lugging books around, I can read almost anything I want on a device that fits in my back pocket. And the interconnectivity is really cool, too, although if I end up having to replace it, I’ll probably go with the more expensive 3g version, since hunting for wireless is a major pain.
But yeah…it’s lost, and I can’t currently afford to replace it. I’m saving up for Worldcon 2011, so finances are tight; I’ll probably have to work this temp job through most of August just to be able to go.
However, all is not lost. Yesterday, Genesis Earth got a stunning review on a book blogger / fellow indie writer’s blog. My favorite part:
This is space opera of the highest caliber. There are grand, sweeping ideas, the discovery of a new world, first contact with an alien species, an examination of the nature of humanity, the nature of the human mind. Yet it’s always a personal story. No matter how epic the backdrop, you are always reading about engaging, fully-realized characters.
It certainly qualifies as an adventure story, and keeps you wondering what will happen next. Yet it’s also much more. Genesis Earth will broaden your mind even as it delights your inner ten-year-old. It has a kick-ass premise, executed with enviable skill, full of thought-provoking ideas couched in a thoroughly-entertaining story that’s just plain fun to read.
I kid you not, I stood up and did a little dance when I read that. Someday, I’ll probably have a wife who will secretly videotape a moment like that and embarrass me by posting it to youtube or something…hehe. Anyhow, the whole review is awesome, so check it out!
In other news, I finally got around to publishing Genesis Earth on the Nook: you can find it here. And I don’t know whether I mentioned this or not, but I’ve also published it to smashwords, so if you live outside the US/UK and want to avoid the nasty $2+ surcharge that Amazon tags onto its international sales, you can find it there.
As far as the epublishing goals I set at the beginning of the week, I’ve accomplished all of them except the blog tour index and the 3+ guest posts…better get on top of that. This week, here is what I want to accomplish:
- Publish the short stories to smashwords for $0 and get Amazon to price match (since giving them out for free will *hopefully* drive readers to my novels).
- Figure out how how the Kindle book forums work.
- Query artists/illustrators for Bringing Stella Home cover art.
- Send out Genesis Earth to another 5 review sites.
- Write another 3 guest posts for the Genesis Earth blog tour.
- Put up the index for the blog tour.
Oh, and one more thing…FIND MY &$%! KINDLE!!!
<< sigh >>
Genesis Earth is now live!
That’s right! Genesis Earth, my first epublished novel, is now available on Amazon for $2.99. Check it out, post a review, tell your friends!
I decided to price it at $2.99 for a few reasons:
First, that’s the lowest price at which Amazon allows a 70% royalty rate. When you buy the book, I get $2.05, which is a very nice royalty even for a traditionally published book. A lot of readers like to know that their money is going to support the author, rather than the people exploiting the author, and that’s only really possible at this price point. I might drop the price to $.99 at some point in the future, but only for a short period of time for a special promotion.
Second, there’s the question of value perception. I don’t want people to think that my book is worth less than a cheeseburger at McDonalds. Sure, I might get more buyers if I price it lower, but I don’t want to attract people who will buy it and never read it; I want to attract people who will read it, love it, and buy all my other stuff–and I plan to put out a lot more work before the end of the year!
Third, and perhaps most importantly, I fully believe that this book is worth that much. It’s worth at least that much. Granted, if I didn’t have to worry about money, I’d gladly give it away for free (and what an awesome world that would be!), but even so, if you’re a person who enjoys thoughtful, character driven science fiction, I’m confident that you’ll come away from Genesis Earth feeling satisfied.
So yeah, Genesis Earth is finally up! Buy it, read it, blog it, tweet it, facebook link it, start format…er, yeah, you get the picture. Wheee!!
I’m going to start guest blogging on a bunch of other blogs, but don’t worry, I’ll keep this blog updated as well. I also need to get back into writing my next novel, so I’d better do that now. See you around!
AHHH! It’s uploaded!
That’s right; just a few minutes ago, I uploaded Genesis Earth to the Amazon Kindle store. It’ll take about 24 hours to show up on the site, at which point the entire universe will implode and we’ll all become robots fighting for survival in an artificial reality. So get ready!
That beautiful image on the left is the cover, by the way. Pretty awesome, neh? It turned out even better than I was hoping it would.
Genesis Earth is my first epublished novel, and as such, I feel happy, nervous, excited, and ecstatic about it all at the same time. The short stories were one thing, but this–this is the real deal. This is me jumping in with both feet and not looking back.
It’s been a long and arduous road to publication, and I want to thank all of you who have been a part of it. I plan on sending out a free copy to all of my first readers as a thank you gift; if for some reason I miss you, please let me know and I’ll get that sent out to you.
Finally, if you still want to get in on the blog tour, let me know and I’ll sign you up. I’m not going to set up a strict schedule, but I’ll probably do three or four blogs a week, so either send me a topic to blog about or a set of interview questions, and I’ll get back to you as promptly as I can.
Man, this is exciting! I’m sure that the road ahead won’t be easy, but at least things are now in motion. This awesome novel has sat on my flash drive for far too long–time to put it out for people to discover. It might take months for it to find its natural readership, but I’m confident that it eventually will.
Expect a post in the next 24 hours with more details. Until then, prepare yourselves!
Into the Nebulous Deep 1.1 is finished!
That’s right; my fifth novel, Into the Nebulous Deep, is finished! Here are the stats:
ms pages: 447
words: 101,215
file size: 230 KB
chapters: 20
start date: 7 March 2011
end date: 14 May 2011
And the wordle:
This novel is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home, and takes place within the same universe as Worlds Away from Home (note to self: find new title for that one). I got the idea for the novel from a conversation with one of my first readers for BSH, who mentioned that James didn’t get a whole lot of closure at the end and still had a lot of maturing to do. Immediately, I saw that there was a story there, and got to work figuring out how to tell it.
This was back in October, and like so many other things, the project quickly started going in about twenty different directions. I was still on something of an sf romance binge, so I decided to throw in a love story, and that quickly turned into a love triangle with a weird sf twist. But then, I started getting interested in the girls’ stories, which led to other subplots, which led to more stuff…and…and…
Actually, for a rough draft, I feel I pulled it off pretty well. I dropped the ball on some aspects of the story (didn’t develop the techno-democracy elements of the Colony hardly at all, and dropped James’s sidekick without giving his character a satisfying arc), and forgot to throw in other stuff until well past midway through (the wolf vs. sheepdog debate–Lars has a rather feisty take on that, which should be interesting), but I think the overall structure is mostly intact. For a rough draft, I’m rather pleased.
Of course, it will need a major triage edit before I can send it out to any first readers. It has problems, I know what they are, and I need to give the draft a major overhaul to get it to the point where feedback would be helpful.
But after ten weeks of working on this thing, I’m ready to move on to something else. Next up: my second revision of Worlds Away from Home. I am sooo stoked to get working on this project–it’s going to be AWESOME!
The song that had the biggest impact on my as I wrote ITND was probably this remix of hot head bop on ocremix. I think the lyrics sum up James’s character pretty well, especially in this book:
Now, onto other exciting things!
ABNA reviews of Genesis Earth
Today I checked up on my entry for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest, and saw that it garnered a couple of very encouraging reviews!
Here’s the first one:
ABNA Expert Reviewer
What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?
I enjoyed the background of this excerpt immensely. The futuristic technology like images projected onto walls, transparent floors, milky skies, cryofreeze.
What aspect needs the most work?
I would avoid using the term “ground zero” as it has such a close association with 9/11.
The idea of generating a wormhole was popularized with Star Trek’s Deep Space 9 series, so this is not an entirely original idea. What is going to set this book apart from existing media on this idea?
What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?
This is a strong piece of work. Nicely edited. While the idea of going through a wormhole to explore new worlds is not an original idea, I am curious what this young explorer will find out there? And what will he find within himself and his co-explorer when they wake from cryofreeze? There is potential here.
Not bad! I’m glad to see the reviewer feels that the story is well edited–I certainly spent a lot of time revising it, and it looks like that’s paid off. As for the criticism about the wormhole, I’m not too worried about that, since it’s more background information for the story than a central element in the story itself.
Here’s the second one:
ABNA Expert Reviewer
What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?
The idea of space travel and finding a ‘new Earth’ isn’t a new one. For years Sci-Fi authors have written about the non-sustainability of our planet, of the melting ice caps, the over population and crowding. This author has taken that concept and twisted it into something more unique and young. Our hero is a 17 year old who went on to school at 14 to become a Planetologist. You see his family and friends live in deep space, they’re trying to create an artificial worm hole and find a new Earth. The younger take on how Michael feels trapped both by his parents and the ghost of Earth is fantastic. I love the author’s voice through Michael on deep space, cryogenics and alien life form.
What aspect needs the most work?
The one thing to me that stood out was that it seemed rushed. I think the author knew this and that was why the author even addressed it in the excerpt through Michael and his mentor as he prepares to leave. They just found the other side of the worm hole, there might be alien life, and they send two people within a couple days into the wormhole, knowing they won’t be back for 80 years. I just wish there was a more valid reason then Earth people (who are light years away) would try to send the military first. There has to be away of not making it seem so pushed and rushed.
What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?
Overall this story got me; I really want to know when the full book comes out (or if it’s already out) and read the rest. What about Terra who has a slight sway to schizophrenia? Or the fact that 80 years is a long time and anything can happen, will there be alien life? Is it just another dimension and time? The hook was there and reeling me in trying to get me to keep turning the pages, long past the last word of the excerpt.
Wow, what a nice review! I was especially surprised to see this person wondering when the full book is coming out. I don’t have a deal for it (yet), but hopefully, it won’t be long. Also, it’s good to see that someone really enjoyed the narrator’s voice. Young Adult can be hard, not just from an artistic perspective but because of so many differing editorial opinions on what a “YA voice” is supposed to feel like. Good to see that someone thought I got it right.
As for the criticism, I can definitely see how it’s valid. Part of the reason for rushing Michael and Terra out so fast is to set things up for the sequel, but I suppose I could have them wait a few months before launching the mission. I thought that’s what I’d done, but I suppose I need to make it more clear.
If you would like to read the 3,000 word excerpt for Genesis Earth, you can download it for free here. You might need to download some software from Amazon if you don’t have an ereader, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Their Kindle for PC program is free, so I just use that.
So yeah, check it out. I hope you enjoy it!
Bringing Stella Home 5.0 is finished!
That’s right; I finished the fifth draft just tonight. 110,000+ words and 550+ pages in three weeks–not bad. Here are the stats:
ms pages: 556
words: 110,000
file size: 264 KB
chapters: 27
start date: 21 Dec 2010
end date: 11 Jan 2011
And the wordle:
The song that best represents my experience with this particular draft would probably be a chip tune remix I discovered recently (as in, yesterday). It’s called “Milk in Veins,” and the only version I have is in .xm (extended module) format. I don’t yet know how to export it to mp3, but here it is:
This draft was mostly just a quick polish, but I did get some useful feedback from some World Fantasy friends; some of Stella’s reactions were off, and Anya’s parts needed better development. I don’t know if it’s publishable as is, but it’s definitely as good as I can make it without a professional editor.
I had a good time with this draft. I feel confident that I’ve got an exceptional story here, and I think I did a good job telling it. At the end of the day, it’s great to have something you can look back on and say “yeah, I accomplished that.”
Now, to send it out into the publishing world and see if it gets any takers. Who knows–maybe this could be my debut novel! Only one way to find out…
Q4 report, 2010
For those of you who don’t know, I do a report on my blog at the end of each quarter, giving a progress update on my writing. I like to think it helps me keep things professional. Whether or not it does, it’s certainly helpful to look back on how I did.
So anyhow, here’s the word count chart:
The red line represents daily word count, and the blue line is a running total for the previous seven days. The chart includes revisions as well as original material; for revisions, I just do a wordcount of the finished version, whether or not I’ve cut out significant chunks of the text or left it largely as-is. Maybe that skews the picture a bit, but it’s the best I can do with the tools I have.
At the beginning of the quarter, I was working 40+ hours per week at a seasonal job, so the writing was pretty slow, averaging a little less than 15k per week. My main project was the fourth draft of Mercenary Savior, which I was struggling to get ready for World Fantasy.
The job ended October 28th, and I didn’t do any writing during the conference, which is why you see the dip at the end of the month. But I took November off to work entirely on my writing, which is why things took off again rather quickly.
That huge peak in the middle of the quarter is from the fifth draft of Genesis Earth, which I completed in about two weeks. The draft was already pretty well polished, but one of my hard sf friends did a read through and got back with a few major science issues which I needed to rectify. Also, I figured it was in need of a language polish, since I finished the last revision almost a year ago and my writing (I hope) has improved a lot since then.
I was pretty surprised at how quickly it went. The book is definitely as good as I can make it, and any further revisions without professional editorial assistance would be a less effective use of my time.
Things dropped off rather sharply, however, because I spent all of Thanksgiving week either on the road or with family. Ah, how I love road trips…but they sure can throw a kink in the writing schedule. I also had a hard time settling on my next big project, which is why things took a while to take off again after I got back.
After starting a sequel for Mercenary Savior and toying around with a short story idea, I decided to do a major overhaul of Worlds Away from Home. Unlike GE, however, WAFH really, really sucks. It took me two weeks just to read through the rough draft and pick out all the troubled spots, after which I rewrote the outline from the ground up and decided to completely scrap half the book. I started the second draft in mid-December, but it’s taken a while for things to really build steam.
Right as I was starting WAFH 2.0, a couple of other writer friends from World Fantasy got back to me with their comments on Mercenary Savior, and pointed out a few problems that I hadn’t noticed before. I started the revision on December 21st and have been plowing through ever since. That accounts for the huge spike at the end of the quarter–like GE 5.0, the draft has a lot fewer story problems, but does need a few things fixed for consistency, as well as a language polish.
Overall, I wrote or revised through about .25 million words this past quarter–some of which were easier than others. I started a new project (Into the Nebulous Deep), polished one of my manuscripts to the very best of my abilities, and made significant headway on revising and polishing two others. In terms of publications, I had a major article published in Mormon Artist, and a short poem accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Leading Edge.
Not a bad quarter. Now, let’s see if I can find an agent and/or publisher in 2011.