we’ve been way too social over the last week or so. It’s been wonderful, and I’m glad we did, but I needed to take a day off. Normally on Sunday morning we go down to Krain, WA (just north of Enumclaw) and have breakfast at the Krain Cafe. Damned good food and amazing people.

Today, we came home and changed back into pajamas and are having something of a goof off day. I just made myself a redneck mocha (areopress coffee and hot cocoa mix, with coconut milk). Just hit send on the latest BW newsletter. (the serious one as opposed to the redneck chef one). Writing a blog because I can. And want to.

Got to thinking about circles over the last few days. There are a lot of people I know (my wife the Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) knows everyone). But I don’t encounter all that many people IRL. Don’t have a job anymore, except to write, so that and gaming group folks are about it, except when we do special events.

But there are a lot of lives I sort of follow on social media, and then it gets weird when I run into them in the flesh, as it were. I know way more about them in cyberspace than I do meatspace, so I have a moment of hesitation engaging.

Last night, at a friend’s birthday/Xmas party, I got hugs. I used to hug, but in the modern age, I’ll hug men and stay reserved around most women. They get it initiate.

I think they appreciate my not assuming a hug, but it got me to thinking last night about all my circles.

These are not Venn diagram circles, but the layers each of us has around themselves at how they interact with people. Closest friends and family who get the whole story. Folks who get the reader’s digest condensed. The elevator pitch edition. The none-of-your-damned-business people. The strangers.

I’m an introvert. An extremely gregarious one, but last night I didn’t feel like engaging in direct conversations, because of all the people at the party, I knew two that I would just talk to. A dozen more I have talked to and who know my name. Two dozen faces I more or less know, but might only see at this particular party. Maybe don’t even know their name (except I usually remember names) or they don’t know mine. Maybe only ever shared a dozen worlds in the last few years.

Internet friends, but not IRL friends you go have a beer with.

I have internet friends who rant and unleash their anger, but I have had to learn to just shut up and listen, and hope I can gain context from the words. Angry black men (with damned good reason, mind you) but if I ask what’s going on, I risk becoming a target. (Again, mind you. Been there, done that, got the scars from what I had thought was an innocent question. Ignorant certainly.)

It isn’t their job to educate me, but sometimes I get lost because I’m not part of their inner circles, same as they aren’t mine. Maybe never met in the flesh, because they live in North Carolina or Georgia, most of the country away from me in Seattle.

So I listen, and contemplate circles.

You ever do that?

Stop and try to figure out if you know someone on the interwebs well enough to ask a harder question than the weather, unsure if you’re about to be virtually bleeding as a result?

These folks don’t know me, except from what I’ve posted and the sides I’ve taken in the past, if they saw them. I can be an ally. Am I a friend?

Hard to know. Strangers come up to me at the party for a hug, and she commented that she felt like she knew me so well, because we interact on the social medias, but this was the first time we’d actually met in the flesh to say hi.

I’ll take her word for it that we kinda waved at each other last year at the same party, but I didn’t know who she was, except a face in that crowd. Got my hug. Had a brief conversation about her kids, because she had just bought a sweater for her oldest that was similar to the one I was wearing.

Small talk. The kind of thing you share with a relative stranger, rather than someone you tell dirty jokes to. Don’t know her well enough to make the sort of sarcastic jokes I might with the gamers who know I was raised by pirates and sailors. Partly, it’s the modern age, and I’m okay with that. I have other women I do make those jokes with, because they’re just as salty.

But it’s the holidays, and I only maybe see these people in the flesh at someone’s holiday party.

Kinda sad. Kinda strange. Kinda interesting, in a philosophical way. (And I’m a trained philosopher, so kids don’t try these stunts at home.) Not really sure where it takes us, other than the need to unplug and talk to those people in real life.

I frequently try to get people to meet for coffee or a beer. I’m happily married, so not even remotely a threat, but people are shy. Easier to talk with all the cyberverse between you, because on the internet, everybody is one state over.

How do y’all handle that sort of question with circles?

I have so many outlets of communication these days that the blog is going to be far less than it used to, but I’ll still share things here that don’t go elsewhere. Let’s face it, I have my Patreon, where every Monday I try to talk about what I’ve been writing, in way more detail than anywhere else. I’m about to ramp up the monthly newsletter to twice-monthly. I moved the Boundary Shock Quarterly announcement newsletter to quarterly so I wasn’t bombarding people, but keeping them up to date (We just dropped issue 008 last month, if you did forget.)

So the blog needed something specific. It goes wider than any of the others, because it feeds my Amazon author page, goodreads, and a few others.

So general stuff.

OryCon 41 (the link already says 42) was fantastic. I got to moderate a panel with Lifetime Guest of Honor CJ Cherryh and Brenda Cooper on “Humanity 1.1” where we talked about the ethics and morals of genetic engineering like good little science fiction writers. Those two ladies were wonderful. I mostly just tried to ask questions to keep the conversation moving, because nobody was there to hear me talk.   🙂

The next panel was with Science Guest of Honor Mika McKinnon. Occupations of the future, but we turned it into “Art in a Post-Scarcity World.” She’s fantastic fun, if you ever get a chance to listen to her talk. And had awesome cosplay going the entire time. Wonderful lady.

Finally, Science Fiction and Politics, with Bob Brown moderating. This was the panel where we stopped at one point and took a vote as to whether fuckery was an acceptably descriptive term. I had a blast.

Outside of that, got to see lots of folks who are con friends. Connected with some new folks as well. Been sending out social media friend requests and notes over the last few days, so all good.

Right now, I’m talking to some folks in the Atlanta area about what single Con I might want to try to make in 2020, down in that neck of the woods, if I could. Got a lot of travel going on next year, so things tend to be a little weird. If any of you know a good SFF con in the southeastern US that I might try, please let me know, or reach out to those folks and ask them to send me some information. Happy to talk writing as a business, and SF as a vocation.

And it’s coming on to winter. Currently defrosting some turkey. We cooked a bird a while back and froze the bones. Then put them in a crockpot and melted them for broth a week ago, but I also got a nice amount of meat off of them at the same time.

Found a focaccia mix that we can both eat. Going to boil down some bone broth with a little coconut milk into a gravy, mix in the turkey, and make me grain-free/egg-free pot pies as an experiment.

What are y’all up to as the weather gets nasty out there?

It’s late October and I’m coming up on the end of the year. Time to sit down and determine how things went and are going.

Yesterday, I finished the second novel in the Air Pirates of Cyrenaica series. That’s number 18 for the year and number 40 overall. (Sped way up this year on a goal of 20 novels in one year. Will hit.)

For October, I’m at 97k words. For the year 1.15m. The goal is always at least 100,000 words in a month, and as much as 120k. This blog post won’t get me there, but I’ll be close.

There will, however, be fewer blog posts going forward.

Coming out of NINC this year, the general consensus was to send out two newsletters per month instead of one. In my case, that would mean three, because I’m about to start a whole other newsletter dedicated to publishing. “Blaze Ward’s Indie Publishing Corner” or something like that. Place for me to share what I’ve learned from all the people I talk to and learn from. Almost nothing to do with my writing.

In addition, I have my Patreon, where I post a weekly “what did I write this week” post on Mondays, as well as the various fiction I send out to my fans to read long before anyone else does.

So that right there is four things. Five, with the quarterly newsletters I send out for Boundary Shock Quarterly, but I don’t really count that, except that I need to write one this week.

So this blog will get a little less attention. Not enough to go stale, but…

We took a drive yesterday, me and Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm), to talk about communication channels. (We take long drives in order to reinvent publishing and come up with new Business For Breakfast books to write. Got two more on my schedule right now to write in early 2020.)

She has her chatty newsletter and her publishing newsletter. In my old newsletter I talk about what’s already come out, what’s coming, and farm news. (I have silly critters out here.)

Going forward, I wanted to split things into two pieces. Radically separate in order to keep them interesting for me, especially with as many different channels as I need to fill as the world fragments.

So, what do y’all think of this idea?

1. the publishing newsletter. Same as before.
2. the anti-stodgy campaign newsletter.

So there is scientific proof that most people get their personal tastes in damned near everything LOCKED in between 14 and 26. Same food. Same music. Same clothes.

Everything.

Yuck.

The Missus read that study a decade ago and said “Fuck that.”

Every month, she tries something new. A new restaurant. A new toothpaste (when the was the last time you changed toothpaste?). A new way to drive home. She just got a package with new clothing style. (An asymmetric, plaid tunic that’s really cool.)

Something.

So my spare newsletter will talk about the new things I’ve done. Last night, we cooked sunflower chokes (root ball) for dinner as a side. Think sweet potato when you dice them and bake with oil and salt. Really nice. Completely new for both of us.

One downside we discovered later is that it gives you gas. I mean loud farts. It was a silly evening, but we’re fine today. But we tried something new. Doesn’t always have to work, but it keeps the brain sharp.

Plus, I’ll talk recipes. She’s always been allergic to grains (wheat, corn, rice, soy, barley. anything derived from grass) so I have a number of recipes I altered for her to eat. Healthy stuff made of stuff instead of chemical additives. Later, we discovered dairy was an issue (coconut milk and non-soy butter), and she got badly sensitive to eggs (hives level problem).

But I still have all these recipes. Stuff from in between, when just replacing grains, as well as more recent, where I try to adapt anything I come across to be able for her to eat. Let me tell you, making breads without eggs or dairy is an adventure.

And not all those experiments work either, but that doesn’t stop me. Made Nanaimo bars the other day, with coconut milk and gelatin for the filling. Walnut, shredded coconut, and maple syrup for the crust.

That sort of thing.

So sometime soon, I’ll send out the usual newsletter. Probably Nov 15 after I get back from OryCon in Portland, OR. Then maybe Dec 1 we’ll start getting a little sillier.

I won’t be offended if folks don’t like the anti-stodgy. But you read the newsletter for the authentic me, and I can promise to be a little too authentic at times.

If you just want the publisher news stuff, send me your email and I’ll add you to the current list. It’s probably coming in January, after some other things get sorted out.

And welcome to the crazy.

🙂

At least that’s as far as I’m willing to commit to at present.

Crazy summer is over (theoretically). Got one part of the fence project left to finish partway on Monday and then hang the deer netting after that and call it done.

Recovering from NINC. Mostly. Got a lot of homework in front of me, including writing everything up from the conference so I know what I need to do going forward. Several weeks of homework ahead.

One of the things I plan to do will be to start direct-selling some of my short fiction directly off my website. Short stuff only, not novels. Stuff I won’t put up anywhere else, so everyone will have to get into the habit of coming here to get it. This is not an accident. The extra 60 cents I mightmake isn’t all that impressive, but it puts things better in my control.

Found out the other day from a fellow writer (or writer fellow) that if I don’t see more than X in sales for any given state, I don’t have to collect taxes for that state. And some of them are $10,000, while others are serious amounts of money. If I’m making that level I’ve traded up for other problems, and I can deal with that.

The thought right now is put them up for like $0.49 for a week or maybe the month. Then raise them to $0.99. Or maybe even a whole dollar. I know, big-time spender.

These will not be stories that get put up later on Amazon or anywhere else. Best you’d see is if I got around to doing another Beyond The Mirror Collection or six, depending on theme. Input from the peanut gallery will be taken under advisement.

At $0.99 on Amazon, I make 28-29 cents net. Everyone else is pretty similar. So I’m making more money at $0.49. And you’re saving money. Win/win.

The narrowcasting is coming. (More in a moment.)

I’ll be down at OryCon in November. I do not know what my schedule is, because they are behind on posting it. (I knew I was in trouble when one of the ConComm folks reached out personally to let me know that I would be on panels, but they were still filling things in. News to follow. Yikes.)

But after Orycon, I know a few people who are simply going to shut down their FB accounts and walk away. And I understand their logic. It can be a cesspool. Just this week, I had a friend of a friend post some armchair racism on my wall. That got deleted. She got banned. FB actually slapped me for my response, which may have been a bit overboard, but I like to remind folks that when they defend white supremicists, I will simply assume that they need to be tarred with the same brush. There is no equivalence there, as I have many friends who aren’t WASPs, and your racism offends me. If you can’t shut the hell up then go away.

But without something like FB, you will suddenly have ten thousand channels for communication. Unsocial media, as it were, where everyone goes off to their own fragment of the internet and loses track of everyone else.

Not talking. Probably worse than talking, even when I have to risk idiots explaining the importance of fourteen words to me. (That’s a good way to get yourself punched, by the way. You have been warned.)

But I’m also going to contribute in my own way.  Won’t stop the social media, but will be spending less time there. Will be blogging a little less  as well.

Instead, I will be moving up to doing a twice-a-month newsletter, probably starting with the new year. Chat about life and projects and the farm and whatever, plus talk about the book just come out, or the one coming.

Also, I will be starting an entirely separate newsletter. New signup, new process, new everything. This second one will be called “Blaze Ward’s Publishing Corner” or something equally memorable and will talk about what I know or have learned related to Indie publishing. Won’t be anything useful for TradPut writers, or folks who still have the delusional hope that they’ll get a agent or a deal in this lifetime. Won’t be much useful for folks in KU, because I’m wide and it is an entirely different ecosystem with different rules.

If you want on the mailing list, make sure I have your email by sending it to me and expressing direct interest. There will be a button for it at some point, but again, probably end of the year, once I write up all my NINC notes.

So far, we have broken Indie down into five separate categories. I hesitate to call them levels, because you can get from one to another without crossing some. When you sign up, I will send you the document (not quite done yet) as part of the on-boarding, so we all share a vocabulary.

Each newsletter will have stuff I have learned, broken out by the groups most likely to be able to take advantage of that information. It’s all good stuff to know, but a lot of Indie involves training wheels all over the place, only removed when you get comfortable. Myself included, even where I’m at in my career.

Folks joining us for our monthly writers lunch have complained (good-naturedly) that it can be a fire hose of information, and you just have to survive for a while until you start to get a grip and figure out what your path to the top of the mountain will look like.

There was some talk about putting it on my Patreon, but I’d rather folks just buy my books and those from the Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm). Those come out after the fact, but will also help catch you up some.

Indie Press moves. My favorite two sayings, looking each direction: “That’s so three days ago.” and “The galaxy has changed.”

What worked for you as recently as three years ago is hopelessly out of date now. Sometimes, three months ago. Occasionally, as we learn things, three days ago.

You have to adjust your mindset. Part of that adjustment is that you have to reevaluate things on a weekly basis. Something will have changed. New tools. New services. New gimmicks suddenly not working anymore and causing people’s careers to implode while they thrash about hopelessly because Amazon got tired of chiselers.

Change.

If you want to play in the big leagues, adapt. I am not a big shark. Frequently, I am the smallest dogfish in the room, but the Babe and I punch well above our weight because we are willing to abandon things that don’t work and try new things. I get invited to meet with interesting people under NDAs because I have ideas, and want everyone to succeed by sharing with others.

As some of those NDAs expire, you’ll see useful bits in the newsletter, which is why the writer/publishers out there should consider it.

Fans are always welcome as well, but you gotta be nerdy to want to actually see the sausage being made. I know a few of you are, so feel free to jump in the boat with us.

Nobody knows where the river’s headed.

But it is going to be one hell of a fun ride.

[From last week’s NINC conference, written in real time and then stored to be sent out a week later.]

Saturday. Actually managed to sleep some last night. The hotel has a set temperature at all times, and it gets warm in the room. Or rather, I let my house get cold at night (66 in summer and 64 in the winter) so I’m not used to sleeping in hot. And so I woke up every night confused and overheated. Finally figured it out, but I’ve been ON for several days, so processing non-NINC things is occasionally difficult.

The background music and whine of the noise and AC does not help, so my head has basically been ringing for five days now. Hopefully, a few days of quiet next week will grind some of the jagged edges off my mind. (As you are reading this, hopefully everything is better. Will try to remember to put in a note, but it’s 9/28 right now, midafternoon. EDIT: OMG better after sleeping in my own bed at 64 F at night, when it’s 36F outside in the dawn.)

So done, more or less. Thu-Sat, with some meetings outside of the NINC structure itself on Wednesday, trying to map out the future of publishing so we can get ahead of the curve and either position ourselves to take advantage of it, or build mitigation plans to protect ourselves against it. Some of the things we envision are kinda scary, but most of them are black swans over the next 12-18 months, with probabilities growing ever greater over that period.

BEFORE I FORGET (again): Novelists, Inc. is an organization for “professional” writers. The annual conference is in St. Pete Beach in September. This is my second.

Membership requirements (as of now), taken from their website:

• If they’re traditionally published, you’ve earned at least $2,000 each from an advance or royalties in any consecutive twelve-month period following publication, and as long as one of those titles has been published within the last 5 years.
• If you’ve published at least two novels—each at least 30,000 words, and neither is a box set or collection of shorts.
• If they’re self-published, you’ve earned at least $5,000 each in any consecutive twelve-month period following publication, and as long as one of those titles has been published within the last 5 years.

As you can see, a little heavily tilted still towards trad, since a $2,000 advance is most medium-sized publishers for mid-list authors, whereas royalties above $10,000 in a year is pretty good work for the indies.

What happens is that the Indies like me that are here tend to be doing pretty good, and the tradpub writers who do attend tend to be either on the backside of their careers, or have lost their NY contracts and are frantically making the transition to Indie.

Additionally, the organization originally split from RWA, so romance writers are extremely over-represented in membership, but Thriller is catching up. I’m rather lonesome, just writing SF. (Not Romance SF, mind you. Lots of those folks, making good money.)

But the convention is to network and learn from others. Make contacts you take outside the week and continue to work with later.

Additionally, a lot of useful Vendors attend and make presentations. Folks like BookFunnel, Reedsy, Draft2Digital, Findaway Voices, and Book Brush have all done presentations and impressed me. The big book distributors (B, A, A, K) usually have a presence, but rarely send high-powered folks to this con, which always strikes me as kinda stupid.

One of them did a presentation that started off explaining how to create an author account and publish ebooks. And did you know you could even do print books? Seriously, it wasn’t even junior varsity sort of stuff, because everyone in that room is either making a full-time living as a writer, or has a plan to get there. Up your games, people. These are the sharks, not the tuna.

That’s where those earlier vendors I mentioned looked good. They came in and looked sharp, understood the level of knowledge in the room, and the amount of hunger. They want your money, and are willing to work their asses off to get it. And establish relationships that will last you over your career.

Money. Folks I’m going to be emailing even as you read these things, just because they have side conversations I want to follow up on, and options available to NINC people. Plus, really nice people. That’s why the names and the links. They are folks you need to know about if you don’t already. Poke me for introductions if you need them.

One of the themes of conversation here was trying to list out all the things that writers need, from the moment they have the books files ready to upload. One of the presenters referred to the “value chain” of publication and that became our shorthand. We need folks to hand things off to, like uploading files to all the vendors manually, which takes hours. Additionally, marketing help.  Financial analysis. Estate planning. There’s a whole list we’re putting together to send off to our friends, so they can start carving them off, once they realized just how much money they are leaving on the table. (Hint: a LOT that they never even realized, but that’s why they come, and work so hard to talk directly with writers, so we’ll tell them our pain points and they can solve them. And they will. And we’ll all get rich in the process.)

So you’ll see me start listing out some things you can do to help jump-start your career here or elsewhere. I won’t put most of it in my newsletters, because that’s for readers and fans, but maybe I’ll continue blogging on the business aspects, and writing Business For Breakfast books boiling it all down.

I have considered creating a second, “artist-only” newsletter where I talk business topics, rather than characters, worlds, or sales. If you think that sounds like a good idea, send me a note and I’ll add you, so we can share out some of these ideas.

(Edit: On the flight home, Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I decided to do a newsletter dedicated to publishing. “Publisher’s Corner” sort of thing. Contact me if you want to be added to list. Already got several dozen names and I’m still figuring out how to talk about it all.)

The world is about to change again, and every gimmick you had that worked last week will fail tomorrow. One of the tomorrows. You need to build up some of your fundamental strengths to be ready to ride that storm out when it comes.

Maybe more tomorrow (Edit: Yeah, no.) when I’m at the airport and have some time to kill, but maybe not, as I’ll need to write up all my notes and boil them down into action lists and stack ranks.

But there is a lot you could be doing, if anybody had ever taken the time to share what they knew. Tune in.

-b-

[From last week’s NINC conference, written in real time and then stored to be sent out a week later.]

Blogging for the shy

Had lunch with several lovely folks today. The question I try to ask everyone this year is “What thing did you learn that you think will completely overturn publishing next year?”

Not a lot of folks immediately jump on that, but it gets everyone to thinking, which is almost as good. From there, the conversation meandered around to the concept of audience engagement (and we were all even sober) and how to talk to your fans.

I’m fairly personable and garrulous with my blog, but folks paying attention at home will realize that I rarely ever put personal details up here. Happy to talk about my writing, my characters, my business, or even my farm and the critters, but you won’t learn much about me as a person.

This is not accidental.

But one of the women at the table was horrified at the concept of talking via a blog of any sort. She’s not a fast writer like me, but a serious SEO expert, which means she know marketing and those sorts of things. For her, she prefers to do big and wide advertising campaigns to draw in readers, without necessarily ever “engaging” them.

So we talked engagement, Fabulous Publisher Babe™ and me, trying to offer some ideas she could use to get past the moment of panic that people might want her to write about herself. The lessons apply elsewhere, so I figured I’d write them here and hopefully some other folks might find that thing that helps them.

I don’t set down to write on a topic. More frequently, something pops up and either irritates me or inspires me, so that becomes the source of a new blog post. (If you want to know how the writing is going, you’ll have to follow my Patreon. Don’t have to give me money, but I put that stuff over there, rather than here. This is public.)

Write what makes you emotional. Don’t write because the calendar says you have to write a blog post on Wednesday. That’s the fastest way to make it work and turn it into something you hate so much that you’ll fight yourself not to have to do it.

My wife has her chatty newsletter, where she just talks about whatever exciting thing came along. Or a new link so something she read somewhere. Or art.

Her goal is frequently to put a smile on other faces, because she already has one.

It’s okay to blog about your cats. People who want to know about the cats will follow you for that. Fabulous Publisher Babe™ also has her release newsletter, which just mentions the most recent and next.

Don’t talk about your cats in your author bio. That’s the one to make you look professional. But blogs is blogs. Readers want the authentic you.

That also means don’t hire someone to write your blog, because they’ll never get your voice right and will eventually end up turning of your very fans that you worked so hard to accumulate in the first place.

Instead, write out the words, and then you can have a personal assistant who you email it to, and that person can add pictures, links, whatever.

But your words. Always your words. That “you” is why people want to keep up with you. Talk about your characters. I assign birthdays to people who will not be born for thousands of years in the future, and then have the small birthday celebration for them. (Suvi will be born March 19, 7426 CE, by the way.)

And it does not have to be long. Some quick idea, or question. Maybe something that you might have put into a tweet. Or sent out as a tweet later. Maybe as much or little as 500 words. You don’t have to assign yourself a word count.

THERE ARE NO RULES HERE.

However, if you do blog, count those word. To date, I’m over 65,000 words of blogs and newsletters and whatever else is publicly consumed, because I figure all that is marketing ad copy.

If you write a few hundred words ever week, that adds up. More if you’re chatty on social media, where you write it on your website and then feed it out.

Always remember that the goal is to drive casual interest back to your website, where you can turn them into fans. Eventually, some will even be friends, but settle for fans.

Every person you can engage that way is likely to turn into someone that buys all your books.

We’re in the business to make money here, so use your words effectively. Be a storyteller, and not a writer. Writing is a business. Storytelling is pure art. Let the artist side of you write the blog, rather than the businesswoman.

But have fun.

Always have fun being you, and the fans will come along and celebrate.

Day three – ps

We’re in Florida. And at the end of the summer. Everywhere I go, I’m surrounded by tiny little lizards (of type unknown to this Pacific Northwesterner). About 2-5 inches long. Casually sunning themselves on the brickwork next to the paths, so they can skitter quickly back into the undergrowth as soon as someone gets too close.

Plus, it’s been hot every day, so I’ve been staying indoors with the air conditioning. Fun watching all the women dressed hard in many layers and cardigan sweaters, looking at me and most of the men like we’re aliens in shorts and light t-shirts.

Gulf has been fantastic. Last year, every afternoon it started a thunderstorm off shore. Sometimes they can in, sometimes it was just alien sf light show a few miles away.

So far, nothing but sun and stars.

Tradewinds on St. Pete Beach. Awesome place.

Also 1200 Chophouse. Oh My God amazing steaks, just a quick walk down the street and across. If you have the chance, eat there. Munching on leftover ribeye while I type this.