Submissions, writer's block, and Twitter

Last week I mentioned that I was holding off submitting my typescript, Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia, until I heard back from Harper Voyager (or not) about whether they were interested (or not) in two manuscripts that I'd sent to them in October.

Having said that in the blog, the very next day I talked it over with Kate and then I changed my mind; Gunn & Bohemia has now been submitted to a publisher. I should get a response before the end of January, and if they accept it I will post here and send out a tweet, and then quite likely spontaneously combust.

As for the current WiP, that's going slowly at the moment. I'm in the process of developing the story and I've hit a bit of a wall. I have two characters converging on a particular place to locate a particular item, and I'm not sure who should arrive first, and then what should happen. Will they fight, or become untrusting allies? Sounds a bit trivial, I know, but whatever happens has to unfold in a way that's believable given what I've established about these guys' characters.

We all hear about writer's block. Well, this is how I experience it. It always happens during these earlier parts of developing a story, when I'm still getting my head around the ways each character is most likely to react to a given situation and how multiple characters are likely to interact when they're together. Once I'm past that part and I have a complete storyline I don't get blocked again because I have a process - I break the story down into scenes in the form of a storyboard, then once that's done and I've reviewed it for problems I can start the actual writing of the first draft (there's actually a bit more to it than that, but I don't need to go into too much detail). By that time I know what's going to happen in each scene, so I've left behind the strategy of building a story and I'm into the tactics of telling the story.

It'll probably be a couple of weeks at least before I have the WiP to the point where I can consider the story done and I can start storyboarding. With Christmas coming up, it's looking like I won't reach that point until the new year. Well, we'll see.

On to a completely different subject: Twitter. Can someone please tell me why some people think it's so important to gain vast numbers of followers? Sure, it must be nice, but is it worth going to the extremes, such as even paying for followers?

A while ago I read a "Twitter For Dummies" blog post that explained How To Use Twitter: follow a boatload of people you don't know; wait a couple of days; get rid of the ones that don't follow you back; rinse and repeat. Maybe once a day, do a huge burst of retweets, and occasionally throw in an original tweet of your own.

Note that doing things this way you're not following people because you care about what they're saying - there's no way you could be, following that many. The object of the exercise is purely to get followers. Some of the people following me in the past (and possibly even now; I haven't looked recently) follow twenty, thirty, forty thousand other people. Anything that I say, or that any one of those tens of thousand of people says, is lost in the noise. I don't see the point, so if someone could explain that to me I'd appreciate it. For what it's worth, I follow people with something interesting to say, and I don't follow so many that I can't read most if not all of their tweets. If that means I don't have that many followers, I don't sweat it.

Until next week...

A Quick Update...

Not much time for more than just a quick post at the moment. Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that there wasn't a post at all last week. My excuse: Thanksgiving and all that. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So, real quick, here's where things stand on the writing front:

Pavonis: Sales are dead as a doornail. All down to bad marketing on my part, sorry to say. Bad choice of title; bad back-cover blurb; bad cover artwork; inadequate marketing efforts; [check] all of the above. People who've read it seem to like it, but it's going nowhere. I'm not too worried about it.

The Artemisia Chronicle: This is the gothic/sci-fi 'script I finished in September. Still waiting to hear from Harper Voyager, which isn't likely to happen until sometime in January. Watch this space.

Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia: This is the steampunk action/adventure that I was working on until recently. I finished editing the first draft last week, and it's sitting in the pile waiting while I decide what to do with it - and that depends on how things go with Harper Voyager (see previous paragraph). If they like Artemisia (and/or Pavonis, since I submitted that too), I'll see if they'll look at Gunn & Bohemia. If not, I have a growing list of publishers to try.

Smoke and Mirrors: That's the working title of a steampunk/sci-fi project I've been working on. Right now I'm building the storylines and I'm probably about a third of the way through that part. It's coming along nicely. I'm hoping to be ready to begin storyboarding before Christmas, but I'm not rushing it. I bought Scrivener (now that there's a Windows version) and I'm using that for this work. Really nice, I have to say.

I've decided not to self-publish any more books, at least until the whole self-publishing landscape settles down a bit (and possibly not even then); thanks to people like Author Solutions (Click here for details) and Amazon (who seem to be treating self-pubs with contempt) the whole plane is a minefield, and I'm not interested in going that way. Things have really got to change; if and when that ever happens I might consider it, but that time is a long way off, I think.

Until next week...

Two Works In Progress

Right now I'm working on two, count 'em, two Works In Progress.

The first is the completed first draft of the story I started writing last year then abandoned for several months. As I mentioned in last week's post I put a copy of that on my Nook Tablet so that I could review it and mark it up for edits, but I deliberately left that to one side for a few days. I started on that the other day and I've highlighted several chunks that need changing; some need to be rewritten, some need to be just ripped out. My process is that I won't start the actual editing until I've re-read the whole thing and marked up everything that needs to be done, and at this point I'm about 15% done with that markup pass. I'm not rushing it - I want to do the best job I can and since I have until January I'm in no great hurry.

The second WiP is the new story that I also mentioned last week. I have the main storyline worked out, together with the beginnings of four major characters. I said last week that it would be in the Steampunk genre; that's still true. I also said that I was considering setting it in the same world as the other WiP (the one I'm reviewing/editing now), but that is no longer the case. See, a few days ago I had a dream. Usually I don't remember dreams unless I either wake up in the middle of one, or something happens later on that reminds me of something in the dream, and both of these occurrences are rare. In this case something in a movie I was watching sparked a memory of a detail of the dream and the rest came back to me a little at a time as I thought about it. And this dream gave me a terrific idea for a twist to the new story. I can't say more about it without committing major spoilerage, but I'm pretty excited about the way things are coming along. The point I was getting at, though, is that this change makes it impossible for this story to be in the same world as the the other story, so that won't be happening.

I'm still working on the story - I have at one subplot that I want to work into the thread, and an idea for another one that I rather like - so it'll be at least a couple more weeks (probably closer to six or eight, or even more) before I'm ready to begin laying down some storyboard. Right now I'm adding notes to the project (using Scrivener, in case you're interested) and I'll continue to do that until I have it all worked out.

That's enough about work for now. Time to get back to the other work (the one that pays the bills). Until next week...

Is it Thursday already?

Despite a day off sick (Tuesday) and another working from home (Wednesday - because even though I was mostly recovered, I wasn't in any fit state to be driving very far) this week seems to have really flown. Hard to believe that tomorrow's Friday already.

Since last week...

I finished the first draft of the Work-in-Progress on Saturday after something of a marathon session. It came out to ninety thousand words, give or take, which isn't too bad and makes it my longest book to date - at least, until I get to editing. To help with that I pushed the 'script through Calibre to convert it to ePub format then sideloaded it onto my Nook Tablet. Now I can read it through as and when I get a few minutes here and there, and use the highlight/notes feature to mark up the screwups. That's on the back burner for now, though; I want to give it at least another week before I start reading it back, even though the very first chapters haven't been looked at in months.

(A bit of history here: this story was one I started late last year then abandoned sometime around February after writing a bit more than seventy thousand words. The thing had lost direction because I hadn't done a very good job of the storyboard, which provided a valuable learning experience. Going forward I'll be much more careful about building storyboards.)

I've given myself until January to do at least one good pass of editing. The reason for that date is that I saw a tweet from Harper Voyager (you may recall that they had that open submissions period in October during which I submitted two 'scripts, The Artemisia Chronicle and Pavonis) to say that they won't be sending out any notices of acceptance until January (a bit of a change from what they said in October, and now it's not clear how long I should allow before giving up on them - but I'll worry about that later).

So here's my plan. I'll take my time doing the best editing I can manage, then hold the 'script until one of three things happens: (1) Harper tells me they've accepted at least one of the 'scripts I submitted (if this happens there will be much celebration in the Ford household); (2) Harper tells me they've rejected both of the 'scripts; (3) Harper says nothing by, say, the end of January, which I will treat the same as (2).

If Harper accepts, I'll keep the new 'script ready so that I can give them first look when the time comes. If they don't, well, I have a small list of publishers that might be interested, and I'll see about submitting it to some of them.

Right now I'm putting together some first thoughts on the next writing project. It's far too vague yet to go into any great detail, but I can say that I intend it to be a more character-driven piece than the previous books. The story's set in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and it'll probably be in the steampunk genre. I may go so far as to set it in the same world as the previous work (but not in the sense of calling it a sequel, at least not the way I'm thinking of it), but at this moment I'm still getting my brain around the general details of the overall story and the main characters.

As far as the actual writing goes, I'm moving away from the software I was using, in favour of Scrivener. The old software was pretty good, especially for storyboards, but failed miserably when trying to render output. That meant loading that rendered output into OpenOffice and modifying all the paragraph styles, and then doing a whole bunch of corrective work to get the thing into proper shape. The whole process was such a damned pain that in the end I started using the program just for storyboards and notes, and actually writing the 'scripts directly in OpenOffice. With Scrivener I should be able to do the storyboard, the notes and the writing. I'll have to see, though; Scrivener keeps its projects as folders containing multiple files, and that could make the process of backing up my work more difficult. I'm still using the trial version, and if it does what I want I'll go ahead and pay for a registration.

I see that the email I've been waiting for just arrived, so it's time to get back to work. Until next week, then...

What a hectic day...

The current writing project (the steampunk action/adventure story) hasn't come a long way since the other day, mostly because yesterday turned truly hectic and I didn't manage to squeeze in any lunchtime writing.

To start with, work (the paying job, that is, as opposed to writing work) got extremely busy. The systems that it's my job to maintain had been suffering from some problem that seemed to have all started sometime around last Thursday. From the look of things some kind of network glitch caused the data transfers between systems to get all gummed up, and it took a while to go through error logs and such to figure out what to do about it.

That in itself was only part of the day, though. I was working at home because we were expecting a nice new washing machine to be delivered (the old one having bust a gut). Just after ten the doorbell rang and two guys dragged the old machine out and put the new one in. Now, I'm fairly sure that the old machine is fixable so we gave Son #2 (who lives not far away) the option of taking it away and trying to get it going again. As such we now had a broken washer sitting in the driveway. Plan: move it into the garage until Son could collect it. Problem #1: our old car was in the way and needed to be moved forward a couple of feet. Problem #2: on trying to move the car, I found that it had a dead battery. I couldn't start the car or get it out of Park, so it wasn't going anywhere.

Now I had to go to the local Walmart and get a new battery. That was easy enough, but then I had to get the old battery off. Problem #3: battery is held in place with four nuts - two on the retainer clamp, then the two on the terminal posts. Three nuts came loose without too much trouble, but the one on the positive terminal wouldn't budge. And it's in such a tight spot that getting a wrench on there is tough. Try as I might I couldn't shift it with the wrench I had, mostly because I couldn't get the wrench into a good position what with all the other bits of car around it.

So it was back to Walmart to get a cheap socket set and a can of WD-40. Bear in mind that I'm still on the clock; I'm supposed to be watching email and working out what to do about the gummed-up data transfers, and here I am running around to change a battery so that I can move a car THREE GODDAMN FEET so that I can move a busted washing machine.

Returned home, applied WD-40, used new cheap socket. Success! The last nut was defeated. So I proceeded to lift the battery out and ran into Problem #4: there's a cable of some kind running across the space above the battery, and not enough clearance; and of course this twenty-odd pound lump of lead and acid has no place to get a firm grip. So I'm now trying to lift the battery out with my fingertips while simultaneously trying to nudge that damn cable to one side. If I ever meet the guy that designed that car...

After a few minutes I figured out that I could get the battery out by tilting up the far end and wiggling the thing out at an angle. Gravity helped when putting the new one in place, so that took only a minute, and after that there were no more problems. I put all the nuts and bolts back where they belonged and the car started first time (not too shabby considering it hadn't been started in months). I let the thing idle for a couple of minutes to get the oil moving, then I was able to move it and hence get the busted washing machine inside. Phew! All that just to do something that shouldn't have taken but two minutes.

I was able to get back to the paid work, which mostly meant making some phone calls and sending some emails to arrange to have those gummed-up systems shut down and restarted, and finding out that we weren't allowed to do that until 6pm. By that time my work day was over (except for the 6pm stuff) so I whizzed back to Walmart with the old battery so that it could be disposed of safely, picked up a few things then took care of a couple of errands including going to Sam's and grabbing a roast chicken for dinner.

5pm we had dinner; 6pm came, the servers got restarted, I ran a test to make sure that the data transfers were now ungummed (they were, thank goodness) and that was that. By that time I was so whacked that any thoughts of writing were swamped by thoughts of tea and rest. That was my day. How was yours?

As you can tell, I didn't have time to do any lunchtime writing (in fact I didn't even get any lunchtime lunch).

Well, anyway. Even though it's slow the work-in-progress is coming along. Current word count is just about 83,000; one protagonist is recovering from being shot, another has been captured by the bad guys, the third is attempting a rescue. Yet to come: big fight, then the wrap-up. I'm looking at a first-draft in the neighbourhood of 90K.

On other fronts: Pavonis sales are still flatlined, but to be honest I haven't had the time to do much in the way of marketing; and I'm still waiting to hear any word from Harper about whether they're interested in The Artemisia Chronicle. They said to allow three months, though, so there's plenty of time.

That's enough blog for today. Tune in next week, when I hope to be able to report much better progress on the work-in-progress and, you never know, perhaps even have some news from Harper.

Writing, @MileHiCon and more...

It's Friday, I'm tired and to be honest more than a little bored. I'm actually writing this in my office, and technically I should be working - but the chunk of Java code that I've been working on for the last few days is giving me more than a little bit of a headache right now so I've quit looking at it. Blogging sounds much more appealing at the moment. This will be a short update on a few things that are going on.

The PREVIOUS Writing Project

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Harper Voyager had a two-week window during which writers could submit manuscripts directly, and my script for The Artemisia Chronicle was ready just at the right time so it went in (and it wasn't the only one I submitted; see below). Harper tweeted just after the window closed to say that they'd received 4,563 submissions. It's going to take them a while to go through that pile so I'm not expecting to hear from them any time soon (or ever; they say that if they decide to pass they'll be too busy to notify writers). Still, I think I have a fair chance with them. Please wish me luck, gentle reader.

The CURRENT Writing Project

Coming along slowly but surely, if more slowly than I'd like. It's close to eighty thousand words right now, and I think I'm looking at a first draft that'll be somewhere around the 95-100K mark. As I think I mentioned, this is a Steampunk story set in an alternate 1850s London (and Paris, as it happens) and might best be described as action/adventure. At the point I've reached, our three heroes (or more accurately, two heroes and a heroine) have foiled the bad guy's plans but they still haven't actually caught him (and in fact, don't know who he really is). Coming soon: a big fight, and a shocking revelation about the bad guy. I'm hoping to get another five or six thousand words over the weekend, but that's going to depend on...

Mile Hi Con

This is going on in Denver, and in fact I think the doors opened about an hour ago as I write this. I was looking forward to this and really hoping to be able to spend a full day there tomorrow; there are a lot of SF writers there and they'll be doing workshops and things that I was hoping to learn something from, as well as a lot of fun stuff, special guests Cherie Priest, C. J. Henderson and Steven Brust, and more listed participants than I can count. But there's a problem... my wife Kate is flat out in bed, sick with one of the worst colds I can remember her having, and even if she suddenly gets over it during the night I can't see her being in shape to spend all day at this shindig and three hours in the car getting there and back. Damn, damn, damn. Anyway, follow the action on Twitter: @MileHiCon

Pavonis (The PREVIOUS Previous Writing Project)

Sales have flatlined. Marketing a self-published eBook is a sod, even when it's available from as many well-known booksellers as it is. I'm plainly not doing everything I could be to generate a bit of interest, but frankly I'm at a bit of a loss with regards to what else to try. But things may still turn around - since I still have the rights, Pavonis was eligible for submission to Harper Voyager and so I sent it in the day after I submitted The Artemisia Chronicle. So again, gentle reader, please wish me luck.

Twitter

I found that auto-following everyone that follows me is a mistake, in that I ended up with so much traffic that I couldn't read it all. I'm not a follower-farmer - I follow people because I want to read what they have to say, not because I'm trying to boost my follower count. So I'm sorry to say that I had no choice but to quit following a few people (mostly ones that sent out nothing but promo-tweets, and a few that would send out endless bursts of retweets that ruptured my timeline and that I didn't have time to read anyway). In fact I think I only dropped about a dozen, but it's made a big difference. If I'm still following you, be assured that I read everything you tweet.

Until next week, then, stay safe and be happy. And if you happen to make it to MileHiCon, send me a tweet - you never know, maybe we'll make it there after all.

Writing the Third Book

For the last few days I've been working on a new writing project. Actually, it's an old writing project that I shelved sometime around February because at the time I was having problems getting the thing going in the right direction. (If you want details: I'd reached a point in the storyboard where I'd written scene descriptions that were far too vague to be able to write from, and also at the time I still hadn't figured out one minor character's involvement with the main story line - between them, a killing combination that I have since learned from.)

So this "old" story is destined to become my third book (the first, Pavonis, was self-published, as regular readers will know; the second, tentatively titled The Artemisia Chronicle, was sent to Harper Voyager a few days ago - they're accepting submissions direct from writers until October 14).

A little bit about it, then. It's set in an alternate Victorian London (Steampunk!) and revolves around a plot to plunge Europe into a war, and the tale of three protagonists fighting to prevent that happening. At the moment I've got about 73,000 words down and it's looking like the first draft is going to be somewhere around the 100,000 mark, give or take.

Before I can really get back into this one I need to (1) figure out that minor character's role (mostly done, in my head at least) and (2) get a bit more detail into that storyboard (ditto). At the moment I'm thinking I should have the first draft completed probably about a month from now, but that's a very tentative estimate at the moment so don't quote me. Among other things I'm still winding myself up to full writing speed and we have other things going on so I can't be sure how much time I'll be able to dedicate to it.

In other news... We saw Jim Gaffigan in Denver last Saturday. That guy is just hilarious. Check him out on Netflix. This Saturday (tomorrow) we're off to see Seether in concert.

Until next week, then...

Some Thoughts on Self Publishing

Having self-published my first book I have to admit that for the last few weeks I've been suffering from a certain amount of disillusionment about self-publishing.

Part of the problem is that the whole self-publishing thing is, I think, still trying to find its feet. People self-publish because the traditional publishing process is difficult, and made more difficult by a publishing industry that's been the keeper of the keys for a very long time. Publishers decide what gets published, and often their judgement is bad. Excellent books never get into print. e-Books are often priced far too high, and authors have little or no control over this. Publishers are seen as elitist, keeping stables of established authors as if they're some kind of exclusive club that new authors are highly unlikely to be invited into. When authors have to practically beg agents and publishers to even read a manuscript, let alone take it on, it's no wonder that so many are moved to self-publish.

(I've also heard it said that feedback from agents when rejecting a manuscript can help the writer improve; however from personal experience I can state that this is 100% pure bullshit. Not one agent that I have ever submitted work to has even once offered ANY useful criticism of a manuscript.)

But then this leads to the another part of the problem, which is that thanks to the ease of self-publishing today, anyone and everyone can write a book and publish it - whether or not that book has even been proofread. I've looked at a fair number of self-published books and I think it's fair to say that the majority, to be frank, suffer from being total crap. The situation isn't made any easier by the fact that it's easy for a new author to ask friends and family members to put up five-star reviews of their book, and thanks to the likes of John Locke we now know just how easy it is to hype a book's reviews in return for cold cash. For most self-published authors, getting honest reviews from professional reviewers just isn't a reasonable option. As for readers, they can't trust online reviews and ratings at all. Right now the whole ratings/reviews structure is meaningless.

On the other hand, and despite its faults, traditional publishing does offer some huge benefits to authors. If an author can actually get a publisher to take a book on, the publisher will usually provide editing, proofreading and marketing services that would be far beyond the reach of most independent writers.

As I mentioned, I've self-published one book; I also have another completed one and I have a third that's perhaps two-thirds of the way to a first draft. Over  the last few days I've been trying to decide for these other two books: self-publish, or try to go traditional? And I have to say that the current state of self-publishing, and the difficulties I had with the first book, doesn't make me that enthusiastic about going the same way with these other two manuscripts. That said, my previous experiences with traditional publishing - in the form of agents who plainly think that they sit at the right hand of the publishing gods - wasn't too great, either. So I've been in something of a quandary.

And then...

A couple of days ago I read a very interesting article in Forbes by David Vinjamuri (Twitter: @dvinjamuri) which was linked to by Richard Galloway (Twitter: @RJGalloway1). Anyone interested in self-publishing should read this article. Among other things Vinjamuri points out that self-publishing lacks anything like a proper online resource for reliable reviews and ratings; what it needs is something like Metacritic.com, but for e-Books instead of movies. He also predicts that within the next year or so we should expect something like this to appear. I agree; something has to be done.

I've been doing some thinking about this and it occurs to me that one or other of the big players needs to be part of this. It's in their own interests, after all. Smashwords could do it and given their interest in self-publishing perhaps they'd be the best choice, but Amazon and Barnes & Noble could be in there too. The biggest problem as I see it is simply finding enough people able to review books professionally. Perhaps these big players could offer cash to readers willing to write proper reviews, or something like that. I'd bet that given an incentive it wouldn't take long to build up a corps of reviewers large enough to manage the flood of new e-Books that are submitted to Smashwords every day. I can see any such system taking a year or three to stabilise while all the kinks get ironed out, but the benefits would be enormous - and not just for readers looking for a good book. Writers would also win, because they'd now be able to get real reviews of their work by people who are truly impartial.

The New Book

(Oops! I wrote this yesterday, got busy and forgot to post it.)

The book I've been writing for the last few months is almost finished! I completed a fourth draft, or pass proof, a few days ago and I've been going through it looking for any last-minute changes. So far I've spotted a couple more spelling errors and, more importantly, fixed a minor inconsistency (one character talks to another about an event that she could not possibly know about at that point in time).

I've also come up with a title. It's quite possibly not final but at this point I think it's the best I can come up with. Unless I think of something better between now and Sunday night, it's probably going to stand.

Why Sunday? Because on Monday Harper Voyager (Harper Collins' science fiction imprint) is doing something very interesting - for two weeks they'll be taking manuscript submissions direct from writers. It seems that they want to move more into the eBook market and in addition to moving many of their existing titles over they want to add in new titles by new authors.

If I was superstitious I'd have to say that this would be some kind of omen; that they happen to be doing this at precisely the time that my manuscript is going to be ready seems like incredibly good luck.

My plan is therefore to submit the 'script to them first thing Monday then wait for a bit. If they accept it there are some pretty huge benefits, so keep your fingers crossed for me, gentle reader.

After Monday, though, I'm planning on stepping back from the writing for a while. I have some writing ideas that I want to think about, but I'm not intending to put much effort into that right away. I have some other things that I want to focus on for a bit; in particular Kate bought me teach-yourself-piano kit consisting of an electronic piano and lessons in the form of software (by teachers at Juilliard, no less). It's brilliant and I was working my way through the lessons a while ago before the book started taking all my free time. I definitely want to get through the entire course (something like 300 lessons if I remember right) before I come back to writing. I'd like to be able to say "I can play piano" before too much longer.

By this time next week the book should be at Harpers and I should be back to piano lessons. But you know what they say about plans...

More reviewing, revising, editing

I'm happy to report that since last week's post I've made a hell of a lot of progress on the current Work In Progress. Despite my fears I was actually able to finish the first editing pass so that I had a completed second draft. I took that and converted it to an ePub format file and sideloaded it onto my Nook, where I could read it through again, carefully, and use the Nook's highlighting/notes feature to mark up more errors as I found them.

I completed that pass Wednesday evening and then spent yesterday lunchtime editing the manuscript from those notes (hence no regular blog post yesterday) - so right now I have a third draft, again rendered as an ePub and sitting on my Nook for another pass.

For this pass I'm looking for some problems that are more general and apply in many places. For one thing I have a tendency to use too many commas and semicolons and even though I tried to be careful I'm sure there are some I've missed, so I need to mark up places where those need fixing. I've got some "cliches" in there - characters doing and saying certain things, mannerisms if you like, a little bit excessively. A couple of minor bits of foreshadowing that need to be there so that certain events later in the book don't come across as dei ex machina.

Once that pass is done I think the 'script will be about ready to be published, which is great news from my perspective because it means that (assuming that I can get it done over the next week) I'll meet my self-imposed deadline of October 1.

The only things left are the final title (I think I have it but I don't want to make a snap decision then regret it later), and the cover artwork. I did the cover for Pavonis myself, it was a bit rushed, and I know I could have done a better job. This time I'm going to try to come up with a handful of ideas and see which I like best, and then take a little more time to make the thing look as professional as I can manage. In fact I'm reasonably happy to push back publication until I'm certain that the cover looks the way I want it to.

On the subject of Pavonis, things haven't moved much. Sales have flat-lined a bit (I was told that things often go that way so I'm not terribly surprised or disappointed); every review and rating has been great (there are about six, mostly five-star, on various sites) but there haven't been any new ones for a couple of weeks now. That's the problem with self-publishing; marketing is something that you have to do yourself, and I guess I'm just not that good at it. (So here's a plug: check it out here).

Reviewing, revising, editing

Yes, the title says its all; I'm going through my manuscript looking for spelling/grammar/punctuation errors, changing a few things to fix some problems with the timeline that I didn't spot when I was storyboarding, adding a handful of new scenes that I think will help the pacing and the flow as well as clarifying some background details, and so on. Some people call this reviewing, some call it revising, some call it editing. You say tom-AY-to, I say tom-AH-to.

It's been a learning process, too; I've found that most of the problems I've come across could have been avoided altogether if I'd reviewed the storyboard after I'd finished it but before actually starting to bash the keyboard. So this has now been noted as an official part of my 'process' - for all future writing projects there will be a review step after storyboarding. I've scratched a handful of notes to point out things to look for during that step.

So far I've gone through about fifteen scenes and the whole book has about ninety, so I'm about a sixth of the way done. That's not so good; at this rate I'm not going to have a second draft for at least a month, and that's too long for my liking.

The problem is that work - the job I'm paid to do, that is, not the work I do with my Writer hat on - has been pretty heavy for the last couple of weeks and that's meant in turn that by the time I get home and we've had dinner it's been too late, and I've been too tired, to concentrate on the manuscript.Talking of a Writer hat, I think what I really need is one of these:

However the panic and rush on that side of the house is now over so for a couple of weeks at least things shouldn't be so heavy. (At this moment the stuff I've been working on is being tested, and there's not much I can do until/unless they come across a problem, which is how I came to have time to fling together a blog post.) Hopefully by the time I write next week's epistle I'll have got a lot further with the editing. I'd really like to have a second draft done before this month's out.

The Day That Became Steampunk

We just had the weirdest day.

We'd set off from home intending to visit Shambhala Mountain, a Buddhist place up near Red Feather Lakes. We never got that far. First, Google Maps gave us a route that was definitely not the most direct. Still, I followed the directions and we were at least heading the right general direction.

As we came to a tiny place called Masonville, Kate started to feel a bit queasy (she sometimes gets motion sickness in the car) so I pulled over so that we could take a break. We looked around this little outdoor museum kind of thing for a few minutes then decided to check out the general store across the street. There's a picture of the place here. And inside we found a wonder. Right there in the middle of nowhere, Colorado, in a place that looks like it has a two-digit population and that doesn't even have mobile phone service, the general store sells STEAMPUNK STUFF. Well, not just that; they also have Victorian period style replica clothes and a bunch of other things - but hell, Steampunk things in such an out-of-the-way place?

Clothes. Jewellery. Hats. Goggles. Monocles. Even bridal wear. The place is way bigger inside than you'd guess from a look at the front.

(This hat here? I'm ordering one in my size.)

So I took some pictures - which I couldn't tweet because of aforementioned lack of phone service - and I bought some stuff. (I'm only sorry now that I didn't take more pics. However we're planning on going back and I'll make a point of taking a bunch more.)

And the lady that runs the place mentioned that quite a few people go there for this stuff, and asked us whether we were planning to go to the Steampunk Convention in Denver that we'd never heard of and is happening in just a few weeks. (I did a search and the only thing I can see for about the right date is MileHiCon; if anyone reading this has better information I'd like to hear it.)

So it's all very strange in hindsight. If Google had given me the most direct route, or if Kate hadn't started feeling odd when she did, or if we hadn't decided to go and take a look in the store, we might never have known about this place. Weird.

What I Did On My Holidays

The BIG NEWS is that I was able to complete the first draft of the current writing project over the weekend:

Working Title: The Arrows of Artemis
Word Count: about 68,000 words

That means that I was ahead of my self-imposed deadline by a couple of weeks (good) but as you can see, that word count is low (bad). I was originally estimating a word count up around 90-100K so this is short by quite a bit.

Well, it's not as bad as it might sound, it turns out. As I've been reading though each scene I've noticed that there's something missing. Not one specific thing; it's more general than that.

This time around (as opposed to when I was writing Pavonis) I have a review checklist that I'm applying to each scene as I review; this helps me make sure that each scene is polished to a high shine. It has things to check for each scene: Is there enough description? Does the scene start too early or late? What about the end? And so on. There are eight or nine things I check for each and every scene, and so far each and every scene has needed some editing to make things right.

For example, so far I've reviewed perhaps 10% of the book and I've found quite a few places where the text could definitely use more description - of people, clothes, buildings and so on. Adding that in will make the book more readable, do a better job of getting across the atmosphere of the setting and so on.

More importantly, though, I noticed that the story would definitely benefit from some more scenes. I have one character who just sort of disappears for a long stretch in the first third of the book, and I really need to add a couple of scenes focussing on her to fill in the gap in her side of the story. I have another character whose story simply fizzles out, and we see nothing from him after that point (which was originally intentional, but reading it back I now think it's a mistake). Some more scenes showing his perspective on what's happening in the City would give more depth as well as not leaving his tale as a kind of loose end. There's a (missing) funeral scene that really should have been in the original storyboard, which would give me a chance to explain some things about the workings of the City's government (which might sound dry but it becomes important later, when a conflict erupts between the City's factions).

Altogether I've identified seven new scenes that are absolutely essential; they'll improve the continuity and the flow as well as add depth and richness to the story. I also realised that I could use about three more scenes close to the end to tie off the storylines of some characters that are not exactly major but still significant. Not doing so would, I think, leave the reader with a vaguely unsatisfied feeling, wondering whatever happened to these people.

At the moment, with a little guesswork and a bit of thumbnail calculation, it's looking like adding those scenes and also some more description and so on, should get that word count up around the 80,000 mark while at the same time making the book better and without any deliberate padding.

I have to say that this book has been an absolute joy to work on. I think I've learned something here; some scenes in Pavonis were very hard to write, and I think that had a negative effect on those parts of the book. There's been nothing like that with this one - the writing itself has just flowed, and I'm really, really pleased with the way it's coming along. I have a good feeling about this one - I think people are going to like it a lot.

First draft not far off... a Labor Day holiday post

Work in progress:
Working Title: The Arrows of Artemis
Word Count: a little under 57,000 words

It's looking like the first draft is going to end up at around 70,000 words. As you can see from that count, that's a bit over 13,000 words to go, which really isn't that much. As it happens we have family (son #1) coming up from Texas--today--so I've taken a few extra days off for the Labor Day weekend. I won't be going into the office until next Wednesday. So, assuming that I get at least a couple of hours a day for writing, I have a good chance of getting said first draft completed before I have to go back to work. Please keep fingers crossed for me, gentle reader.

We received our print copy of Craig Hallam's Greaveburn last Friday and I finished it on Sunday. I couldn't put it down (voluntarily; there were times when I had to for other reasons, but if not for those I would probably have finished it on Saturday morning). Excellent book, highly recommended. Find it on Amazon and B&N.

Pavonis has at last shown up on Sony's catalog, and has at last shipped to Apple, so it should be in the iBook store soon (I'm told it can take a couple of weeks). Still waiting for Kobo to list it; no idea what's taking them so long. The handful of reviews it's had so far have been very good, which is encouraging, and I've had some useful feedback from readers about mistakes and such (the hazard of being your own reviewer/proofreader). (Oh, and by the way I'd like to state here and now that I am NOT a John Locke. My reviews are genuine.) I might put out an updated edition with corrections, and I'm considering a sequel since the feedback I'm getting suggests that my readers think it's a good idea. Honestly, it'll depend on sales; not much point spending months writing a sequel to a book that sold very few copies.

On the Twitter front: my follower list is expanding; more than half my followers are writers now. I try to follow back writers but I can't always--not to be rude but some people tweet so often that my timeline gets flooded, and I don't see the point of following people if I don't get time to read their tweets. (I'm following about 97 people, I think, and I'm already getting overwhelmed with tweets to the point where I'm seriously thinking I'll have to trim that down a bit. I don't know how people manage when they're following a few hundred--or, as in the case of one that follows me, forty thousand.)

And now I'd better cut this short; son #1 could be arriving in as little as thirty minutes and I have some tidy-up to do, so I'd better hop to it. Next week, same time, same channel...

A Short Update

Status of the Work-in-Progress:

Word Count: 42,373

Not as good as I'd predicted or hoped; as I mentioned last week I'd expected to hit 44,000 by this time, and I'd hoped to be closer to 50,000. Finding time to do any writing at all has been a challenge this last few days, and I'm hoping I can remedy that.

As for how the the story's coming along, there's been a major shake-up in Royal Family circles, with the repercussions making themselves felt across the City as the people are beginning to take sides. Tensions are beginning to rise. Meanwhile, we're not far from finding out the reason for an assassination order on an obscure scientist.

Status of Other Things:

Whatever's been wrong with my back for the last three weeks is annoyingly painful at times but, it turns out, not serious. I have to see about some physical therapy to see if that helps. I'm also going to see about buying a laptop bag that runs on rollers so that I don't have the thing hanging off my shoulder.

Status of Pavonis:

The bad news: it's still not showing up on Kobo or Sony, despite having been shipped to both some time ago, and it still hasn't shipped to Apple. Good news is that it's available for Kindle, and showing up on the US and UK Amazon sites. And it's had a couple of reviews - one on the Barnes & Noble site, and another on Amazon UK. Both are short, but good.

No time for more right now. A longer post next week, I promise.

The WiP Slowdown, and other delays

Word count: 37250

That word count means that I've written less than three thousand words since last week. Pretty sad, especially considering the excellent progress I'd been making up to that point.

What went wrong was that the weekend before last I did something to my back. Don't ask me what I did or how I did it, because I have no idea. All I know is I woke up one morning with a serious pain around my left shoulder blade. It was bad enough that it stopped me going in to work, but as is normal with muscle pains it began to fade after a little while.

The big problem was that it didn't go away as quickly as these things usually do - I was still feeling it the following Friday. And then on Saturday morning it came back, as bad as ever. And I can tell you, trying to concentrate is hard when you have serious pain bouncing around your ribs every time you move your arm.

As a result, some code I wrote for work turned out to be truly awful and would never have worked; I looked at it yesterday and wondered What Was I Thinking?, and when it came to working on the WiP I found myself staring at the screen much of the time, with no idea which keys to bash (even with my storyboard to work from).

So today my plan is to get this post done then force myself to WRITE GODDAMMIT even if it's only for ten or fifteen minutes, since that's probably all I'll have left of my lunch break. I hope to report a word count of at least 44,000 by this time next week, and in fact quite a lot more than that.

In other news, I'm getting pretty frustrated by what's happening - or rather, what isn't - with Pavonis. The book has been available on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and Diesel e-books for three or four weeks, which is good; it's also been shipped to Kobo and Sony, but it's still not showing in either catalog, which is not so good.

What's really a problem is that it still hasn't shipped to Apple, Amazon and others - which means it's not easily available for readers with iPads and Kindles, for example. In fact it hasn't shipped yet to more than half the places it should have gone to, and I have no idea why. I've contacted Smashwords to see if they can clue me in on what the problem might be but there's no response yet (it takes them a few days, so I don't expect an answer right away). As soon as I know more about what the hell is going on, I'll update this post and send a tweet, so please check back at intervals for news.

Update - Pavonis publishing status

I had an update from Smashwords; not much has actually changed yet but I've been told that (1) Pavonis should be available from Kobo very soon now; (2) Apple has been requested to expedite publishing, so hopefully it should appear there soon too; (3) the Kindle edition should be available very soon (tomorrow, if all goes well). I'll update the earlier post with the links as they become available.

Another Update:

Pavonis is now available on Kindle. At last. Click HERE for details.

More Work-in-Progress and other things

There are times when I wish I could take two or three weeks off work and then write this MS for eight hours a day; I'd have the first draft completed, or not far from it. Alas I can't do that - I have a September deadline for a software delivery, among other things, so I can't justify the time off. Quite apart from the fact that I'd have no vacation days left over for Christmas.

Never mind; as it is, just writing a bit here and there as time allows, and in my lunch breaks, it's coming along quite well. At this point I've got 34,500 words down and a thumbnail calculation puts the completed first draft somewhere around the 80,000 word mark. I know that quite a few of the scenes I've written will need some work during the first revision, and I'm guessing that'll add ten or twenty thousand words (probably closer to ten, though). I originally set myself a six-week deadline for the first draft, but I'm fairly sure I'm not going to hit that. At the moment - and this is pure guesswork - it's looking like I'll have that last scene written somewhere around the end of September.

Today I sacrificed my lunchtime writing to write this blog post; it won't hurt to take a break just for one day.

As to the story itself... one would-be assassin is pushing up daisies while another is out of the picture for other reasons; two pairs of major characters are not far from colliding with each other, as it were, and that collision will send their stories off in somewhat different directions; and an antagonist is about to do something that risks precipitating a civil war.

And that's where things stand on the work-in-progress front.

Moving right along, then, a few words about my earlier work, Pavonis. It looks like Smashwords is having some kind of a problem getting the eBook shipped to Apple and Amazon, which is disappointing because those are obviously major outlets. So if you're waiting to get the book from either of those places, hold fast - it'll get there, but at the moment I can't say when. I'll update the earlier post with the links as and when they become available. In slightly better but still not great news, Kobo and Sony have the book, but it's still not showing up in either catalog. Sony can take a while, apparently, but it shouldn't be much longer getting there. As for Kobo, Smashwords are looking into why it's taking so much longer than usual. Again, I'll update the links as soon as I have something to update them with.

On the personal front: we - that is, my wife Kate and I - have been through the strep-throat wringer but we seem to have come through it mostly intact. Kate's still getting feverish at times and I'm not sure if it's the tail end of the strep, or some other bug. I've been getting occasional symptoms, too, and then the other day I did something to my back. No idea what I did; I might have pulled a muscle a bit lifting my laptop bag, but I'm guessing. Yesterday it was agonising; today it was much better when I got up, but it seems to be getting worse and I'm seriously thinking about leaving the office early if that continues.

On entertainment: I've been re-reading some books that I first read a long, long time ago. Little, Big by John Crowley, and C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy - Out Of The Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. However I haven't been reading as much as I normally would because (thanks to Kate) I discovered that I can use Netflix on my Nook tablet to watch some TV shows I missed first time round. I watched all of FlashForward (and I shouldn't have bothered, because they cancelled the show without wrapping things up so we'll never know what was behind it all), and for the last few days I've been watching Warehouse 13 from the beginning. Good fun.

I'm looking at the clock and I see that lunch is over, so it's time to post this and get back to work. More next week, same time, same channel...

The Writing Project

I decided it was high time that I said a bit more about my current writing project than the hints that I've been dropping on Twitter. This is prompted a bit by what I see other writers saying about their own works-in-progress, but mostly by a tweet from Craig Hallam* (@craighallam84) who said...

"I know I do it as well, now and again, but I'm really sick of having a feed full of adverts. Why don't people talk about their writing more?"

So I'm hoping to be able to find a little time every so often, maybe once a week, to bring you, gentle reader, an update on where things are.

First, I should point out that this project (which has a working title that will not be mentioned because it's pretty meaningless) is in no way related to my earlier book, Pavonis. It's not a sequel, and where the steampunkness - or not - of Pavonis was open to question, this new project is definitely not steampunk.

Enough about that, then.

It's a story about a place - a city, in fact, probably about the size of Greater London. It's a place of stone and cobbles, of fog and rain, of winding streets and dark alleys and canals and bridges. And this place is also one of assassins and royalty and scientists and mystics. It was inspired by many things: books like Gormenghast and Captive Universe, films like Dark City and even TV shows like Babylon 5. Not that I've taken plot elements from those; what I'm aiming for is an atmosphere that I have in mind, and the story developed from that starting point.

In this place are several major characters whose destinies are intertwined, although they're not aware of it (yet; the connections between them will become apparent as the story unfolds). As far as structure is concerned, I'm trying an approach that anyone who's read Stand On Zanzibar or A Game Of Thrones will be familiar with; each "chapter" is a slice of the story as seen from the point of view of one character. Third-person, of course; doing that kind of thing in the first person would be pretty horrible for the reader. (First person worked for Pavonis although in hindsight I've wondered if I should have done it differently. Well, it's too late to worry about that now.) This fits in beautifully with the way I developed the storyboard, and it's making the actual writing a breeze. (Don't ask me why that's true; my process for writing Pavonis was quite different and parts of it were really hard to write, and I think the process itself was part of the reason for that.)

As to how it's coming along, then: it's up to about 23,000 words, with my first-draft target being in the neighbourhood of 100,000 words. At this point I've introduced all those major characters and established the central storylines. The princess is on her way, with her guardian in tow; the assassin is trying to unravel a secret; the psychopathic prince is about to make his move. Other things are happening, too, but I don't want to give away the farm just yet.

The writing itself is coming along nicely, thanks to that process I mentioned earlier, although finding times when I can really take a run at it and get some momentum is hard; I find a few minutes here and there between tasks at the office, and I've also pretty much dedicated my lunch breaks to writing. Writing at home in the evenings is tough because by the time I can get to it I'm often too tired to focus well. Weekend mornings is a good time, and I can often get quite a bit done those days. All that said, I'm actually pretty pleased with progress so far.

That's enough for now. As I said, I'll try to post updates as and when. Until next time...

* Craig is the author of Not Before Bed and his new book Greaveburn is due out August 20. I found out recently that Greaveburn was also influenced by Gormenghast; that's a coincidence, honest.

Where to get Pavonis

My SF eBook "Pavonis" is available for download from the following fine online eBook stores: (sites with reviews are marked *)

Smashwords (ePub, Mobi, PDF etc., and read online)

Amazon US (Kindle)

Amazon UK (Kindle) *

Barnes and Noble (NookBook) *

Apple (iTunes) (or search by title in the iBooks app)

Kobo

Sony

Blio

Diesel eBook Store

Versent Books

Inktera

It should also be available for Android apps from Cricket and Asus (I can't confirm that, however).

Nook, Kindle, Blio and Diesel e-reader apps are available for iPad, iPhone, Android, PC and others. See the various web sites for details.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE... I'd really appreciate honest reviews. All the above sites have places where you can do this. If you like the book it'd be great to hear but if you don't, please tell me what you thought was wrong with it. Thanks in advance.

For some reason the book summary is not showing everywhere, so here it is:

After a friend dies in suspicious circumstances, John Vaux finds himself torn from his quiet life and thrown into an adventure that carries him across the huge planet Pavonis in search of an ancient artifact that will change the world. As Vaux travels tens of thousands of kilometres following clues to the location of the artifact he's pursued for a murder he didn't commit, chased by fanatics who will destroy the artifact to protect the status quo and kill anyone who gets in their way, attacked by a 'dragon', robbed, gassed, captured, freed, and shot at. He rides (and crashes) monowheels, stows away on land trains and sea trains, steals (and crashes) a dragonfly, flies aboard a personal skyhouse and sneaks in and out of a city in a meteor crater through the sewers. Twice.

Craig Hallam, author of Greaveburn (excellent read, get it if you haven't already) wrote this wonderful synopsis on his blog:

Pavonis is a habitable planet (M-class to you Trekkies ;D) which the human race have migrated to after Earth becomes poisoned by all manner of unsurvivable pollutions. Two hundred years after they land, and the people of Pavonis have lost their old technologies when a madman destroys the ‘libraries’, a collection of all of Earth’s scientific and cultural (and everything else) knowledge. And so, in an effort to survive, the Pavonis folk have to return to steam and hydrogen power to propel their xeppelins, carriages and seaskimmers. But that’s just where the story starts. It seems that some bright spark managed to smuggle a copy of the ‘library’ away and keep it safe. But the bad guys, and their sticky little fingers, want it. When our hero’s friend thinks that he has found the library, the aforementioned bad guys have him bumped off, and so our hero steps to the plate to figure out who killed his friend and colleague, reclaim the library, and kick some bad guy behind while he’s at it. Written in the first person perspective gives Pavonis a real retro Sherlock Holmesy feel to it, like the old memoir style pieces, with action and intrigue and soem great plot points and description. Basically, it’s ace. A really fun read. And it’s Steampunk! What more could you want!? Go get it HERE, among other places.

Thanks, Craig :)

The FBI is trying to arrest me by email

This is just too funny. I received an email telling me that WE THE FBI HAVE WARRANT TO ARREST YOU GET BACK TO US FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. And it had an attachment; normally I wouldn't open such a thing (dangerous!) but since it was just a plain text file, and it made me curious, I just had to look. It's a hoot, plainly written by a complete asshole:


Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division
Fbi Headquarters In Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001 Website: www.fbi.gov

Attention, this is the final warning you are going to receive from me do you get me?

I hope youre understand how many times this message has been sent to you?.

We have warned you so many times and you have decided to ignore our e-mails or because you believe we have not been instructed to get you arrested, and today if you fail to respond back to us with the payment then, we would first send a letter to the mayor of the city where you reside and direct them to close your bank account until you have been jailed and all your properties will be confiscated by the fbi. We would also send a letter to the company/agency that you are working for so that they could get you fired until we are through with our investigations because a suspect is not suppose to be working for the government or any private organization.

Your id which we have in our database been sent to all the crimes agencies in America for them to inset you in their website as an internet fraudsters and to warn people from having any deals with you. This would have been solved all this while if you had gotten the certificate signed, endorsed and stamped as you where instructed in the e-mail below.this is the federal bureau of investigation (fbi) am writing in response to the e-mail you sent to us and am using this medium to inform you that there is no more time left to waste because you have been given from the 3rd of January. As stated earlier to have the document endorsed, signed and stamped without failure and you must adhere to this directives to avoid you blaming yourself at last when we must have arrested and jailed you for life and all your properties confiscated.

You failed to comply with our directives and that was the reason why we didn't hear from you on the 3rd as our director has already been notified about you get the process completed yesterday and right now the warrant of arrest has been signed against you and it will be carried out in the next 48hours as strictly signed by the fbi director. We have investigated and found out that you didn't have any idea when the fraudulent deal was committed with your information's/identity and right now if you id is placed on our website as a wanted person, i believe you know that it will be a shame to you and your entire family because after then it will be announce in all the local channels that you are wanted by the fbi. As a good Christian and a honest man, I decided to see how i could be of help to you because i would not be happy to see you end up in jail and all your properties confiscated all because your information's was used to carry out a fraudulent transactions, i called the efcc and they directed me to a private attorney who could help you get the process done and he stated that he will endorse, sign and stamp the document at the sum of $98.00 usd only and i believe this process is cheaper for you.

You need to do everything possible within today and tomorrow to get this process done because our director has called to inform me that the warrant of arrest has been signed against you and once it has been approved, then the arrest will be carried out, and from our investigations we learnt that you were the person that forwarded your identity to one impostor/fraudsters in Nigeria when he had a deal with you about the transfer of some illegal funds into your bank account which is valued at the sum of $10.500,000.00 usd.

I pleaded on your behalf so that this agency could give you till 7/9/2012 so that you could get this process done because i learnt that you were sent several e-mail without getting a response from you, please bear it in mind that this is the only way that i can be able to help you at this moment or you would have to face the law and its consequences once it has befall on you. You would make the payment through western union money transfer with the below details.

NAME: OBI JACOB
ADDRESS:  LAGOS  NIGERIA
TEXT QUESTION:FOR
ANSWER: YOU
AMOUNT: $98
Senders name======

Send the payment details to me which are senders name and address, mtcn number, text question and answer used and the amount sent. Make sure that you didn't hesitate making the payment down to the agency by today so that they could have the certificate endorsed, signed and stamped immediately without any further delay. After all this process has been carried out, then we would have to proceed to the bank for the transfer of your compensation funds which is valued at the sum of $10.500,000.00 usd which was suppose to have been transferred to you all this while.

Note/ all the crimes agencies have been contacted on this regards and we shall trace and arrest you if you disregard this instructions. You are given a grace today to make the payment for the document after which your failure to do that will attract a maximum arrest and finally you will be appearing in court for act of terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking charges, so be warned not to try any thing funny because you are been watched.

THANKS FOR YOUR CO-OPERATION.

ROBERT MUELLER

WASHINGTON DC

Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division
Fbi Headquarters In Washington, D.C.
Federal Bureau Of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001 Website: www.fbi.gov

My New Book

Before I begin this post in earnest, here's a link to the Smashwords page for the book: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/177165

It's set five hundred years in the future, on a colonised planet where a war early in the colony's history has resulted in the loss of most technical knowledge. That's all I'm going to say about it here; for more check out the link above. Download the free sample. Then buy the book - it's a snip at $2.99 - and write a review. I'd love to know what you think.

Now, the tale. At the start of May I sent my manuscript of Pavonis, my first full-length book, out to several UK literary agents, then settled down to wait for responses.

Most of them replied pretty quickly - with rejections, unfortunately, but I didn't let that get me down; there was only one that still hadn't answered after eight weeks (the usual period most of the agents say to allow before following up). That eight week wait was up last week so accordingly I sent an email to that last straggler and gave them 24 hours to get back to me; they didn't, so I decided it was time for Plan B.

The only thing was that I hadn't really decided until the last minute what Plan B was actually going to be.

I had several options. I could try to find an agent in the US, but to be honest from what I've seen and been told about the US publishing industry I didn't like that idea much. Another option was to try to rewrite the book, or at least parts of it, to try to make it more agent-friendly, but since I'd had no feedback from any of those agents telling me why they'd rejected the manuscript there was no way to know what changes I'd have to make.

So I settled on the option that in hindsight I should have considered almost a year ago, when I submitted the manuscript to the very first agent (the one that I mentioned in the May 4 post - see below). I decided to self-publish Pavonis as an eBook on Smashwords.

So I reformatted the 'script in line with the guidelines (they publish several books specifically to help their authors, all available as free downloads), created an account, and published.

I've done all I can to make sure Pavonis goes to Smashwords' premium channels - that way it'll be made available through Apple, Barnes & Noble and other major booksellers. It has to go through a review process before that happens, though, to make sure it fits those companies' rules regarding formatting, pricing and some other things. To be honest I'm not certain that it'll pass that review first time. Amongst other things I write using OpenOffice, but Smashwords requires submissions as Microsoft Word documents; OO can save in Word format but I've never been convinced that it does it 100% correctly, so until I actually see the review results I'm in a fingernail-nibbling hold.

While that's going on I'm thinking about the next writing project.

I have another book that I've been working on, which would actually be three stories involving the same characters and settings; the storyboard for the first story is complete and I have some scenes written.

On the other hand, I wrote Pavonis intending to follow it up with a sequel at some point, and I quite like the idea of starting that sequel sooner rather than later.

And then I have a third option, which at this moment is no more than some vague ideas about a fictional place and some characters and an 'atmosphere' that I'd like to create.

So, which way to go? All three ideas have their merits and I really can't decide for sure which one I want to start on. For now, I think I'll continue biting nails and see what happens with Pavonis.

Great show, Seether and Bush; Pepsi Center, you suck

Last night we went to see Seether and Bush (and My Darkest Days and Nickelback, but I'll come back to that) at the Pepsi Center in Denver. Seether were excellent as always, and Bush were good too (this was the first time I'd seen them live). But the whole experience was marred by the total fucked-up-ness that is the Pepsi Center.

The tickets were expensive in the first place; I guess that's just par for the course these days and anyway Americans don't seem to mind being ripped off. So it was adding insult to injury to find that parking at the Pepsi Center is $15. We've seen Seether at Fiddler's Green (aka Comfort Dental Amphitheater, which is a bloody stupid name) and other places, and parking was free there.

But the ripping-off wasn't over yet. It was hot weather so we both had bottled water with us, which was taken away as we went in so that I had to pay $7.50 for two bottles of water inside the Center.

Water wasn't the only thing to drink, though; there was beer, wine, whiskey, you name it, and plenty of people were carrying alcohol onto the floor. And plenty of people were drunk, of course. Inconsiderate assholes carrying drinks continually tried to squeeze through the crowd to get closer to the stage; someone started picking a fight about ten feet from us; we both got beer and who knows what else on us. Thank you, Pepsi Center, for encouraging people to get brainless drunk in a crowded arena.

And of course there was the obligatory six-foot-four man-mountain who didn't give a shit that nobody behind him could see the show they'd paid for.

We ended up leaving after Bush left the stage (which is why we didn't get to see My Darkest Days and Nickelback). We'd had enough. The next time we go anywhere to see a band, it'll be somewhere we can get seats, and it will NOT be at the Pepsi Center.

Agents, Schmagents

I'm writing this as a blog post because I have to get it out of my system and I can't do that in 140 characters. It may come across as whining, which is fine by me; whining is a tradition with a long and distinguished history.

Last September I submitted a query to a literary agent. I'm British, so is the agent, my manuscript is written in British English using an A4 template, so I felt compelled to use A4 paper rather than American Letter size; as such I had to find somewhere to buy A4 - which took some doing, I can tell you.

Having done that I had to print the first three chapters, the cover letter, the synopsis and a one-page bio, then put the whole pile in a strong envelope and mail it to the UK.

I gave the agent nine weeks. There was no word, so I called and was told that (1) they couldn't tell me when they'd received the query because they didn't keep a log, and (2) their reader was at that time going through work that had arrived in April. This was November, and a little thumbnail calculation told me that the reader should get to mine sometime around April this year.

So like a fool I let it go. I decided that rather than bug them by calling too often, I'd wait until April then call if I hadn't received a response.

April went by and May appeared, and I hadn't received a response. Time to call. It took three calls over two days to get to talk to someone, and I was then told that according to the log, there was no record of my script.

Wait a minute; when I called in November there wasn't a log. Now there is?

So the guy said I should submit again. I asked him if, given the circumstances, I could send the material by email. He said that their crappy old system didn't handle email attachments so I'd have to send another print copy.

It sounded like an excuse. It sounded like a lie. Even if their system is so crappy that it can't handle email attachments - which sounds like bullshit - surely they have access to a real computer? Create a gmail account, give me the address, I send an email with the attachments, they get it, job done. And the thing about the log... the guy had checked the log for September, so they must have had it in place at that time; why was I told in November that they had no such log? Why was I not told that my query was not in the log? I could have sent it again right away, instead of wasting months.

I told the guy I would send the query again, but by the time I'd hung up I'd already decided that I wasn't going to.

That afternoon and evening I did another quick revision pass of my 'script, then yesterday I spent most of the day going through the UK agents listings in the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook, finding agents that handle the kind of book I've written, and looking up websites. I found seven agents that accept queries electronically, and I sent every one what they asked for. All of them say I should expect a response within eight weeks.

What really annoys me about the whole thing is that the original agency is not some two-bit operation; they handle some very well known names and they're pretty well respected. I chose them in the first place because they represent one of my favourite authors. But they can't or won't accept electronic submissions, and they won't return phone calls or answer emails.

I suspect they feel that by making writers jump through hoops to get the work to them, they'll filter out all but the most determined. Perhaps that's true - but just because someone's determined doesn't mean that they write well, and on the other hand I'm guessing that there are some really good writers out there who nevertheless aren't about to piss about with an agent that insists on paper submissions, especially when there are other agencies, with author lists just as impressive, who don't.

So going forward I've made a decision about agents. If they insist on paper submissions, they're not getting my work. If they can't respond to a query within the time they say they will, they're not getting my work. If they can't return phone calls or reply to emails, they're not getting my work. One agent has managed to sour my opinion of all agents, and that's not likely to change until I find one that I can trust.

Piracy

Before I go any further, I must point out that I am against piracy. That said, I am also strongly against SOPA, PIPA and any other legislation that assumes everyone is guilty until proven innocent, and that anyone and everyone with the means to commit piracy will automatically do so.

Here's the problem:

Fact 1: Music, movies, books etc. can all be stored as files on a computer system. Music on CD, movies on DVD, photographs and e-books are all stored as files. Compare this to vinyl records, celluloid films, videotape and printed books - those media aren't file-structured; they're not even digital. Copying them means having specialised equipment, so piracy isn't the problem with these that it is with digital media.

Fact 2: Files are easy to copy from one system to another over a network connection.

The upshot of these facts is that while the entertainment industry embraces the ability that digital technology gives them to distribute their product easily, at the same time that same technology makes it easy for anyone with a computer to make pirated copies.

It seems that what the industry wants to do is make sure that they're the only ones that can make the copies; they don't appear to have grasped the fundamental fact that the technology itself makes that impossible.

So they've tried a couple of different approaches. One is by using yet more technology, in the form of DRM and encryption mechanisms. The major problem with this is that it still has to allow copying to some extent; for example it's perfectly simple for me to rip a CD on my computer then burn a copy to leave in my car so that I don't need to worry about the original being stolen or damaged. On the other hand if I were to then sell that copy, that would make me a pirate. There's no way the technology can determine my intentions and stop me from burning copies to sell. (Let me make myself clear on something: I'm a software professional and I don't pirate music, videos, software etc. I'm against it in principle.)

The other approach is legislation, and so far almost every attempt at this has been a farce; DMCA, for example, is a total mess.

The root of the problem is that the entertainment industry wants the benefits of the technology, but they want to keep distributing music and movies the same way they always have - in shops, as if they were vinyl records and VHS cassettes.

Entertainment industry execs, here's a clue: That Doesn't Work. This simple fact should be plainly obvious by now. If you sell things that are easy for anyone with a laptop to copy and share, then some people are going to copy them and share them (and forget DRM and encryption; someone, somewhere, will crack it wide open within days).

The real answer - the only answer, from where I sit - is that the entertainment industry needs to work out a completely new way to sell their products. A way that gets away from the old vinyl-and-VHS way of selling things, and takes into account the fact that those products can and will be copied. A way that works for the producers and the consumers, and doesn't place the producers' rights to make a living above the consumers' rights to enjoy the products in any reasonable way. (Message to the industry: We consumers pay your wages. Don't forget that.)

And if you're asking me for how that might work, forget it; if that was that easy, someone else would already have thought of it by now. Entertainment industry, the ball is in your court.

The Christmas Round-up, and Back to Work

All in all a good christmas, despite an extremely tough pre-holiday week involving at least one twenty-hour day of cooking, decorating and present-wrapping. The big day itself was nice in general but marred by one self-centred individual. I tried to not let it spoil the day.

I deliberately left the tree and other decorations up for the following week, for atmosphere, the intention being to take them down on New Year's eve - that didn't happen but we got it all done yesterday.

On the gift front, I got Kate the camera she'd been ogling, and I got an electronic keyboard with two disks packed with piano/keyboard lessons. Anyone who tells you that learning to play is easy is lying. :)

Today, back to work after more than two weeks off - the longest break I can remember in a long time. That meant getting up at my regular time, getting stuck in diabolical traffic, then dealing with email (thankfully not too bad because of the holiday), fixing a bug and finally getting into the list of tasks to be done for the next version release. I've been here five and a half hours and it feels like fifteen; I'll be glad when I can pack it in and head home.