I’m going to go ahead and blame Steve Barnes. I happened to be sitting with a group of folks he wanted to say hello to at a recent con, and the man stopped and talked with all of us for about twenty or thirty minutes. (In case you’ve never met him in person, he’s simply awesome as a human being.)

Most of the people at the table were of the Traditionally Published flavor, meaning that they’d gone through the entire gatekeeping process with New York and had had some level of critical or commercial success at some point. The problem that most of them faced in the present tense was that the world has changed, and they generally don’t understand how to adapt to the new reality, or don’t want to.

Steve went around the table asking each of us where we were in our career. I seriously doubt that he was expecting to run into someone like me. This was a few months ago, but not that long, so the numbers weren’t that much smaller. At the time, I think I was in the middle of my thirtieth novel. (I could check calendar dates, but I don’t really care that much. For comparison, I started my thirty-fifth novel this week.)

He looked at me and his eyes got big.

“You aren’t a writer,” he said with all honesty. “You’re a publishing company.”

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I agree with the man. I generate IP at a staggering pace, compared to many of the writers I know. Fortunately, I know others who make me look like a bloody piker by comparison, so it all balances out.

But I write fast. Clean drafts. Good stories. Entertaining yarns that people find worth the money. Right now, that works out at about 120,000 words per month, only because I keep a little spreadsheet of my monthly tracking, and to keep the days in line, it multiplies the date by 4,000 and I try to hang around that number when I’m done writing for the day. Don’t get there everyday, because I don’t have to.

Some days, it’s not there. Other days, like today, I lock in and flow enough to make up for the slack days. By the end of the month, I frequently take a day or so to purely goof off, because my honest target each month is 100,000, not 120k. Pulp Speed Two. (Three is 116,667, so I beat that frequently, but again, not my goal.)

My short novels usually clock in around 45,000 words. Medium length runs to 60k, give or take. Occasionally I write monsters (three of the Jessica Keller novels are above 125,000, if I remember correctly), but I find myself occasionally getting bored at that length, because you end up cramming so much story in.

At 45k, you are basically on a roller-coaster ride from the first word, rather than slow-walking to the story. Novel #34 started with a literal bang, as someone trying to kick in the front door ran into a harder lock than he expected, and the good guy had just enough time to escape, before being pursued through the streets all morning.

That novel is Hunting Handsome Rob and is the third story and second novel in the set. (Can’t Shoot Straight Gang. Can’t Shoot Straight Gang Returns). The entire novel takes place in less than one day. Not quite real time, but you never stop to have a break and think. Just keep running.

Sure, I could have made it 90k. Added in lots of other details. A few more triple-crosses. More gunfights. Some gratuitous nudity and extraneous sex scenes. But why bother? Snark, speed, and action.

Because I’m a publishing machine.

Amazon rewards you if you publish something on the same day every month. For me, that’s the 10th. And it doesn’t have to be a novel. Any story works for the pulse. Shorts in series will trigger the machine. And you can bundle them all up as a novel later and sell it two different ways.

I just love to write, and I get paid to make shit up for a living.  I’ll die of old age before I get ALL the stories told. And that’s on pace to write 20 novels in 2019. (Fewer in 2020, only because I plan to write a couple of longer ones. Maybe. Dunno.)

One of these days soon, I’ll drop a second novel in a month. At 45k average, and 120k writing, I’m frequently turning out two novels per month, plus my short fiction for my patreon and Boundary Shock Quarterly.

Over on the Storybundle for Space Travelers, you can read WinterStar, which is a new book one, with book two (SeekerStar) in the can. Longshot Hypothesis wasn’t supposed to come out early, but did. The other five in the series are winter drops. Lazarus is coming. First book in The Hunter Bureau just came back from Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) with comments, including the fact that it didn’t suck and was publishable. (I took a long chance on that one, and both readers have told me it is a hard story to get through, because of the subject matter, not the quality of the writing, so I’ll add more to that series and maybe drop them as seconds. Or drop four of them the same day. Stay tuned.)

Everyone has a different path to the top of the mountain. Mine won’t work for most people. But it works for me, and worked to set me apart from the other people at the table, when Steve asked about our careers. He’s always learning. Always. and teaching, which is even better.

And it works for other people who are doing much the same that I am, so I am not a unicorn. (I am, but for entirely other reasons and you’ll have to ask nicely to hear.)

In the modern age, the system rewards the writer who can put out quality product on a consistent basis. Simple as that.

Learn to cycle your work. Learn to write clean first drafts, rather than spending months revising and rewriting your novel until it is “perfect.” Learn what “good enough” means. Write, a lot.

I generate 4,000 words, 28-31 days per month. Net sellable words, including this blog. If I chop a whole chapter out of a book, my work count goes down that much. But I couldn’t tell you the last time I removed that much, because I trust my storyteller brain to work it out as I go, so I frequently write into darkness and add more in the editing process.

Lester Dent: A character, in a setting, with a problem. Go.

I’m not aiming to win awards. They’d be nice, but the friends I have who win awards for their gloriously pretty words (Amen!) still have day jobs. Spend months or even years on a novel draft, revising it and rewriting it. I’ll write 20 novels this year. 16-20 short stories. 1.3 million words. Sell them all. Make money.

Because that is the world we live in.

Today.

Tomorrow, the world will change again, and I will continue surfing the chaos. (With an “F” mind you, not a “V.”)

What worked yesterday won’t even work today, so you should figure out how to get to tomorrow, and use all the tools the world has put at your fingertips to be successful.

But first, define your success with your happiness.

I get to get up in the morning and write. GET TO. Not being forced, even on the bad, slow morning where the words aren’t there.

I have the greatest job in the world.

What do you need to do to be able to say the same?

Just as a reminder: Call of the Star Dragon is coming out in a few weeks. Have you put in your pre-order yet?

This is #3, and marks the halfway point. It’s also the beginning of a three-part, cliff-hanging ending where I went back to those great serials from the forties and fifties, like the ones Republic used to do in the days where you got your long-form entertainment at the movies. Before television was a thing. Those days.

Morty and Xiomber are now working for the Constabulary, and trying to help Gareth and the cops save the Accord of Souls because as Morty would like to remind you: If you burned the damned house down yourself, you don’t get to complain when you have to sleep in the mud. And Gareth has to confront more of Marc Sarzynski’s evil. Meanwhile, the Accord of Souls is taking action to make sure the humans never escape their galactic jail.

Call of the Star Dragon ends on a cliff-hanger. So does Shadow of the Star Dragon. I’m like that. It does come to a spectacular and hopefully unexpected ending with Trial of the Star Dragon in September. You’ll have to tell me.

Meanwhile, do to circumstances beyond your control, I have two accidental books one out there now. Stuff you’ve never read.

WinterStar is part of the Space Travelers Story Bundle, and that’s the only place you’ll be able to lay your hands on it until I actually do a formal publication, which is probably sometime in Spring of 2020. Normally, we simulpublish quietly when I’m in a story bundle, just because some people look at all the other novels available and decide they already have most of them.

This story bundle is different.

It has two anthologies: A Fiction River Presents that is special to this bundle, and Issue 003 of Boundary Shock Quarterly: Grand Theft Starship. Additionally, there are several novels in here that I knew would be exclusive, first-time-ever publications, like WinterStar, so most people would end up just buying the whole bundle.

And, I screwed up, but we were able to fix it. Or at least tap-dance around the issue and do some awesome hand-waving.

Longshot Hypothesis is the first of six books in the “Shadow of the Dominion” series. It was supposed to be the one to go into the bundle, but somehow we clicked the “Kindle Unlimited” button. That was why we turned around and offered up the person in charge of the storybundle WinterStar instead.

However, there’s a three-day take-back rule that we didn’t know, and were able to get it back out of KU. But by then, it wasn’t worth putting everyone through the mess a third time to get Longshot Hypothesis back in.

And not worth pulling it down and returning it to it’s original publication date in October.

Longshot Hypothesis does stand on its own. The first four novels do, even though they are part of a six-novel arc. No cliffhangers, really. Well, Five does, but I couldn’t resist, because if you’ve read five of them, I know you’ll get around to #6.

• Longshot Hypothesis
• Hard Bargain
• Outermost
• Dominion-427
• Phoenix
• Princess Rualoh

And I leave the end of the series wide open to have more novels after that. Those are probably self-contained, or short (2-3 novel) arcs. Don’t know. Haven’t written them yet. Have notes.

Finally, for those of you scoring along at home, I have a Patreon. My superfans have now gotten to read two of the four Science Officer short stories that will make up book nine: “The Bryce Connection.” The other two are coming in July and August, so hurry and sign up if you’d like a sneak peek chance to read “The Forest Goddess” and “The Adventure Seeker.”

Plus, I’ve started writing novel #10. Just the opening chapter, but I needed to do that as I was working. So “The Alien Suns” will be queueing up on the writing list soon (maybe 2-3 novels from now, will let you know) and I’ll have Science Officer Season Two start coming out next year. They won’t drop one after the other, like I have been doing. Probably.

Hell, I don’t know.

Sign up for my newsletter if you really want to know. I share more details there than here, but I wanted everyone to hear some of it now.

shade and sweet water,

blaze

West of the Mountains, WA

Hey, gang.

Long story, cut down to reasonable size: I’m in a new story bundle called Space Travelers.

Unlike previous bundles I’ve been in, my novel (WinterStar) is not going to get published anywhere else until sometime in 2020. Hint: if you want to read it, you better buy it now. Or offer up some pretty good bribes.

Originally, we were going to put up Longshot Hypothesis, but had some issues and a small whoops at the last minute, so we reached into the vault and pulled up WinterStar instead. This is a Book One in a whole new series, in a new universe, in a new everything. I’ve finished book two (SeekerStar) and the Star Tribes books are tentatively scheduled for the slots after “Shadow of the Dominions” of which Longshot Hypothesis (which is out) is book one. Think April 2020 at the earliest, most likely.

WinterStar is something kind of grand and huge, with lost civilizations, ancient mad gods (sort of. He thinks of himself that way), super weapons, and general craziness as well. It’s almost more of a space fantasy than hard SF, only in the sense that I went some places and did some bizarre science that just won’t be adequately explained anytime soon. At least I don’t think so.

Can’t be too sure, because I’ve only written book two so far, and I’m largely making things up as I go, rather than having plotted out the whole arc of the universe, like I did with Jessica. More fun this way.

Figuring I’ll write at least four of them. Maybe six. Dunno. Got lots of story to tell. WinterStar was largely self-contained, as any book one in a long series should be, but SeekerStar kind of cliff-hangers a little and leaves all sorts of places where book three can go, when I get to it.

And the main character is an ethnically-Algerian French chef on a distant colony, who has a serious mid-life crisis in chapter one and walks away from his restaurant and the Golden Diamond of excellence it has.

Nothing, however, has prepared him for life aboard the warship WinterStar, where he’s the personal chef for the woman in command, Kathra Omezi, and her entire, female comitatus of bad-ass, Amazon, warrior, fighter pilots. Or the shit that happens after that.

It was a lot of fun, because he’s such a fish out of water hero, who rises to become a true hero, but never forgets that he’s a 5’7″ tall Algerian chef surrounded by twenty-odd women, most of whom are taller than he is and don’t like men. (The whole tribe is 85% female, plus a sperm bank freezer.)

You gotta read it to believe it. And you’ll have fun.

There’s also an issue of Boundary Shock Quarterly in there: Grand Theft Starship, which contains the first Handsome Rob story: Can’t Shoot Straight Gang. Can’t Shoot Straight Gang Returns is book 2, and I’m currently writing book 3, Hunting Handsome Rob. And writing notes on book 4

Again, worth your time, especially as the bundle contains a Fiction River Presents, as well as three other stories that are bundle exclusives (meaning not available anywhere else yet.)

You don’t have to run, but you shouldn’t walk, because these bundles only run for three weeks and then they are gone forever. And in my case, you won’t get another chance at WinterStar for nine months or more, until I’m ready to drop the whole series.

Get yours today.

In case you missed it, Flight of the Star Dragon is now available. We continue the adventures of Gareth St. John Dankworth in the Accord of Souls. All the bad guys are still around, and the good guys aren’t really that good, or at least, they don’t like Gareth all that much. (Can you blame them?

Here’s the current reading list:

• Prequel: Patrol Cutter: Bellerophon! (In Boundary Shock Quarterly 006)
• Prequel: Tin Can Pirates (available fall 2019 in Boundary Shock Quarterly Issue 008)
• Birth of the Star Dragon
• Flight of the Star Dragon
• Call of the Star Dragon (July)
• Shadow of the Star Dragon (August)
• Trial of the Star Dragon (September)

Audio should be out as well, depending on your vendor, because I’m not sure how long some of them actually take, even though we told them delivery on the 10th. And print is, I think, just live everywhere because it was easier to put the print books up for sale all at once, rather than coming back every month and doing just one.

If you like paper, you’re able to read them all.

Not a lot to say here, other than to thank everyone for the emails I got this morning asking questions and such. And telling me how much they enjoyed reading. That helps.

I’m currently editing the new series “Shadow of the Dominator” that will come out in the fall (Oct-April, with Jessica Keller #9: Petron, in the middle). And currently writing book two in a new series that will come out next year sometime.

Looking forward to hearing from everyone and reading the good reviews.

Thanks.

So this year, one of our big projects was to start doing audio books. Science Officer Season One is done and out there. Jessica Keller/Auberon is making slow progress and will get done when it can.

For 2019, we found the most amazing guy to do new voice work. (Email me for his contact information. Seriously.)

The various Star Dragon books will all have audio when they drop. (The “Shadow of the Dominator” series will be a little delayed for audio on launching, so I think the first three will come out in print and ebook this year and then 1-3 audio will drop when 4 comes out with everything (January, if the schedule holds.)

For those of you thinking about doing audio books, I was looking over on Findaway Voices tonight. They are a middleman distributor that takes the audio files we paid to produce, and then sends them out everywhere. Pulled up their web site and looked at sales reports, and found myself a little gobsmacked. The audio for Birth of the Star Dragon has been out for about a month now, and the sales that I’m seeing on Findaway Voices included two lines that didn’t make any sense at all, until I looked closer and realized that they represented libraries.

“Library-Pay Per Use”

Someone (multiple someones) had gone to their local library and requested Birth of the Star Dragon and then listened to it. Sue me, I’m a nerd, but that was kinda cool.

I rarely buy new books anymore. I have two used stores I haunt for prizes, but mostly I read ebooks on the magic tablet, having checked things out from the library. And while I’m personally in a few libraries for ebooks, I’m not used to someone being able to check out my audio books, because I’m not an audiobook kind of learner. I gotta read something to grok it.

But you can do it. Others have. I’m even making money here. Wowsers.

So if you have friends who are into audio books, ya might let them know that the Star Dragon series will be coming out over the summer, and that they should go listen to it.

I’m kinda jazzed.

🙂

On June 10, the second Star Dragon book goes live (Birth is already available).The series is also available on Kobo and other jurisdictions.

• Birth of the Star Dragon (available)
• Flight of the Star Dragon (June 10)
• Call of the Star Dragon July 10)
• Shadow of the Star Dragon (August 10)
• Trial of the Star Dragon (September 10)

One tremendous long arc of story, following two Yuudixtl criminal physicists and their various attempts to save the galaxy, after they’ve come close to screwing everything up forever by recruiting one of the most dangerous beings in the universe as an assassin for their boss: a human.

In a subsequent attempt to fight fire with fire, they’ve gone back to the well for the only thing that can save a pair of career mobsters like them from watching Marc Sarzynski conquer known space and subjugating the seventeen species of the Accord of Souls: another human.

Except this time, they’ve kidnapped a cop.

Gareth St. John Dankworth just wants to do what’s right. He doesn’t care that he can never return to Earth. Never see the love of his life again. Nothing. He’s got to stop the man who’s on track to overthrow the entire Accord and institute a reign of immortal terror if he gets his way: Gareth’s former best friend Marc.

Worlds will fall as these two men race against the clock and each other. The Accord Constabulary, the galactic cops, can’t stop a renegade human. The Underworld wants Marc to succeed, at least until they understand the price.

Gareth must do the unthinkable, and volunteer to transform himself into a symbol of power and justice that will drive the criminals back long enough for his friends to save things. He must sacrifice everything he has to save his new friends. He will become a Star Dragon

But a darker power sleeps restlessly. Fifty thousand years ago, the Chaa uplifted the various species into the Accord of Souls, before setting off to seek the Creator of All Things. As the Accord begins to unravel, and the humans trapped on Earth come to realize that they aren’t alone, the very Gods of the Vanir, The Communion. the twelve most powerful beings in the galaxy, return from their sojourn to put the Star Dragon on trial, as well as all of humanity.

I had fun writing these books. It was an intentional act on my part to make them all feel like a 1050’s Pulp Serial, like you might have seen at the movie theater on Saturday morning, in the era before cartoons and sugary cereal. I tried to make it seem like I was one of those stuffy intellectuals in tweed, smoking a pipe and prognosticating on what the world of the scientific future would look like, centuries hence.

At the same time, it’s me. There’s a man that needs sticking to. A world that needs saving. And a rivalry over thwarted love that will shake the very pillars of creation, destroying either all humans, or the entire galactic civilization, before it is done.

I also had a stupid amount of fun working with aliens and technology. Creating entire cultures that were part of a larger polity, but based on seventeen distinct species, all following a roughly humanoid, bipedal model and uplifted from lesser forms by the Chaa (the Gods of the Vanir) before they left.

Going into the Star Dragon books, I had a pair of goofball career criminals in Morty and Xiomber (“ZI-ohm-bear”) who first kidnapped for their boss the perfect assassin, and then had to save the universe because, as Morty said, “If I burn the damned house down, I don’t get to complain that I have to sleep in the mud and rain.”

This was a shift for me, from the Alexandria Station universe of Jessica Keller, Javier Aritza, and the rest. In that universe, there are no aliens. None. Humans are alone and always have been, due to some unexpected twists on Fermi’s Paradox and low numbers on the Drake Equations.

One of the ongoing questions, going back to Fermi and Drake, is best distilled down as “Where is everybody?”

In my circle of gamer buddies, the general consensus is that humans are probably the most violent, dangerous, unpredictable species in the universe, so the bright folks of the Accord of Souls have made it a point to keep all knowledge of other intelligent life away from Earth. Humans can never know they aren’t alone, because then they might find a way to escape their prison and launch a crusade against the galaxy.

Anyone studying any bit of human history cannot dispute that we make lousy neighbors.

So it became an element of mad science for how humans would find a way to break out. Why they would be a threat.

And how one cop would stop the man who had been his best friend in the world from conquering the galaxy, turning himself into an immortal, and ruling forever.

Just like those Saturday matinee serials, ya know?

• Birth of the Star Dragon (available)
• Flight of the Star Dragon (June 10)
• Call of the Star Dragon July 10)
• Shadow of the Star Dragon (August 10)
• Trial of the Star Dragon (September 10)

Audio for Birth will be available shortly (however long it takes everyone to process) and Flight should go live with audio. The rest should have audio when they go live as well. I’ve got an awesome audio guy that I would highly recommend to folks. He’ll be starting on my Longshot books in the fall, if that gives you an idea.

But this is the summer of the Star Dragon. I hope you’ll enjoy it and we’ll have a grand time enjoying things.

And thanks for the support.

She is God’s eleven pound, perfect killing machine, and she would appreciate it if you stopped kissing her on the head.

</long story chopped to manageable size>

My wife (Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I don’t live in the same house. I have the main house, She has a “tiny house” across the front yard. She sleeps there Monday-Thursday night, and then (usually) joins me Friday-Sunday. (If you don’t know the details, expect to buy the beer.)

The kittie o’doom (Kyara) comes over Thursday afternoons, because Thursday is generally Girl’s Night Out, so I feed and entertain the kittie. I joke that I see the cat more than I see the wife.

Thursday night, kittie was semi-fixated on the pantry, which is open for her roam, and had the water heater tank and furnace through it behind a second door. Has been paying attention, the last few weeks, but I didn’t realize why.

Turns out that I had rodents under the house, in the crawl space. In past years, I’ve left poison bon-bons everywhere around the outside of the buildings to keep the critters at bay, but this year we’ve moved to bait stations so that I don’t kill the rabbits or all the birds that the various seed feeders have finally attracted.

Friday morning, came out only half awake. My job is to feed the kittie before I feed myself, so I got that taken care of. Then I notice that she’s thrown up on her towel. (Fourteen year old cat. She does that, and has been a little sick earlier in the week.)

So I pick up her blanket, dump all the toys off of it, and throw it into the wash. Bring out a spare and am laying it out when I see a new chew toy I don’t recognize. Really life-like.

Kittie of Doom has killed a mouse. God’s eleven pound perfect killing machine. She had heard them gnawing on the wood where a furnace electrical line comes up from below and waited. Been waiting. They have been in there for a bit and gotten it open enough to slip inside. (Sealed it up with spray foam this afternoon and chucked a mess of poison baits under the house again, just to give everyone something else to gnaw on.)

Several years ago, God’s perfect killing machine had been sitting on the floor at  Fabulous Publisher Babe’s house when a mouse popped out of nowhere, made it three feet, and got pounced.

Cat knows her business.

There were extra treats today, because Kittie o’Doom successfully defended her castle.

She just doesn’t appreciate being kissed on the head.

Gotten a couple of questions recently, so I figured I would just post the complete Jessica Keller books list in one place again, for everyone to find it easily. While I was at it, I decided to add all of Alexandria Station universe in one place. For now. Things will change.

Jessica Keller

• Auberon
• Queen of the Pirates
• Last of the Immortals
  • Siren (Vo Arlo)
• Goddess of War
• Flight of the Blackbird
• The Red Admiral
• Legier
  • Two Bottles of Wine With a War God
  • Queen Anne’s Revenge
  • Packmule
  • Persephone
• Winterhome
• Petron (Coming December 2019, already written)

Also

Javier Aritza

• The Science Officer
• The Mind Field
• The Gilded Cage
• The Pleasure Dome
• The Doomsday Vault
• The Last Flagship
• The Hammerfield Gambit
• The Hammerfield Payoff

Doyle Iwakuma

• The Librarian
• Demigod
• Greater Than The Gods Intended

Henri Baudin

• The Story Road

Handsome Rob

• Can’t Shoot Straight Gang
• Can’t Shoot Straight Gang Returns

Lansdowne

• Last Leaf Falling

Got more coming, one of these days. But at least you have all the links now, if you want to catch up.

🙂

When I set out to do the Star Dragon series, I wanted a really 1950’s pulp feel to it. Old school sensibilities, like a boy scout would bring to the table, rather than the ironically-anti-hip bad-boy hero of the modern age.

Personally, I think we’ve overdone that shtick to the point of tragic comedy. I miss heroes. People who stand for something that they know is right, and are willing to fight for it. And by right, I’m leaving out all the folks on the wrong side of history, claiming that “right” as they see it is the permission to oppress someone else based on any of a long list of characteristics.

Are you making the world a better place for everyone, or just people who look like you?

Just went back and watched Avengers: Endgame for a second time this week. Picked up a lot of things you always miss with a movie that has that many moving parts.

But the thing that struck me was the arc of Steve Rogers. Captain America. He’s always been my favorite, going back to my youth. (I had a shirt custom made with the shield on the chest in 1997, long before anyone else. Wore it yesterday.)

Two scenes in the movie nailed it for me, and if you haven’t seen the movie yet (what the hell is wrong with you, btw?) then these are sort of spoilers, but its been several weeks, so deal with it.

Thanos about to kill Thor with Stormbreaker, and Mjolnir bounces off his head, tumbling our villain ass over teakettle.

And then Mjolnir returns to Cap’s hand. Remember Odin’s enchantment, that only the worthy may wield such a weapon.

Worthy. Cap. But we always knew Steve and Fred Rogers were the two best role models of masculinity in the 20th Century and beyond.

And then it’s him against all of Thanos’s hordes, by himself. Captain America with shield and hammer, engaging everything. It’s almost anti-climactic when the portals begin to open and all the armies of Wakanda and the Sorcerer Supreme’s students step through, leading to one of the most famous lines from my childhood: “Avengers Assemble!”

Heroic. Others have their arcs, and many of them find some level of resolution across the movie, while others will move forward into Phase IV.

Which brings me back to the Star Dragon.

Gareth St. John Dankworth and Steve Rogers could sit down over a pitcher of lemonade and be friends. Both share that vision of making the world a better place for everyone, and not just some narrow caste based on color, religion, or creed.

Everyone.

All Gareth ever wanted to do was be a cop. To make the world better. When he gets pulled out of his own life, sent to a place from which he can never return, he has the occasional moment of sorrow, but then he moves on, because he’s the only person he knows who can save the broader galaxy from an evil most beings can’t even fathom.

Even knowing he can never go back to what he lost. Just like Steve Rogers, frozen in the ice since 1945. I won’t spoil the ending of either the movie or the series, but I always want a hero who strives, even against the impossible or inevitable.

The man who plants himself alongside the river of truth and says “No. You move.”

The Star Dragon series is big. Pulpy in the best ways. I always tried to imagine I was standing in the year 1950 and pretending like this was a sci fi serial of the sort you’d see at the movie theater on Saturday morning. Weirdly scientific. but with certain things that they would take for granted and we’ve already grown past, like people smoking cigarettes on a spaceship, or Gareth trying to figure out how a hands-free faucet works in an alien rest room.

I wanted that sense of wonder. To go back to where we were before we lost that in the early 1970’s and everyone turned dark and broody. Whatever. Gimme heroes. Superman’s hope rather than Batman’s rage. Captain America’s optimism rather than Iron Man’s cynicism.

Fred Rogers’ neighborhood, where we’re all friends together, striving to make the world a better place.

I hop you will enjoy the Star Dragon books. #1 is out. #2-4 are up for pre-order. #5 will join them soon. That will wrap this phase of the Star Dragon stories, but I’ve left the door open.

Boundary Shock Quarterly 006 has a Gareth story, send in his past from the Star Dragon tales. And Issue 008, coming in the fall of 2019, will have a second one from the Sky Patrol days.

Let’s get pulpy.

In the modern age of Indie Press, there are a number of experts who can tell you all the ways to get rich by expanding your market.

I am not one of those people, btw.

However, at the NINC (Novelists, Inc.) conference last fall, one of the things that came up was the power of translations as a force multiplier. You can write the book once, and then spend what one hopes is a reasonable amount of money to have a professional translate it, expanding your market. You just need to figure out which markets like what genres.

For me, the obvious choice was The Science Officer books. They tend to run shorter than novels (24-32,000 words, rather than 50-150,000) so it would be a cheaper experiment, as you are paying a rate by the word for the completed manuscript. In the case of book one, I think it ran about $2,500 US for the translation into German.

I picked German because of the Perry Rhodan books. If you aren’t familiar with them, they started off as a weekly novella series (15-30,000 words) in September 1961 and have continued on a weekly basis for fifty-eight years. You read that right. 58 years.

According to wikipedia:  (emph mine) “As of February 2019, 3000 booklet novels of the original series plus 850 spinoff novels of the sister series Atlan plus over 400 paperbacks and 200 hardcovers have been published, totalling over 300,000 pages.” (Holy shit, batman!)

Also: “Having sold approximately two billion copies (in novella format) worldwide alone, (including over one billion in Germany), it is the most successful science fiction book series ever written.”

So Germans are happy with Space Opera in German. Accustomed to it, even. And they like long arcs of the stuff.

We found a good translator and paid the money. The book went live about two weeks ago, but I’ve been out of town at a writing retreat all of this week, and in the middle of a bunch of other hecticness before that, so this is the first chance I have had to talk about it. I figured I’d get back and say something, but something went weird in Germany. The book just started selling. Ten to twenty copies per day on the German Amazon page all week. WOW!

More interestingly, I’ve already gotten reviews from folks who mostly complained about the translation, rather than the text. Mind you, The Science Officer is one of the first things I wrote commercially, and I’m a MUCH better writer now than I was five years ago. If they were noticing the translation choices (made by someone who is bilingual, so I can’t help you there) then they had flipped over, bought the english language version ($0.99 US is not much money) and compared the versions.

So now I’m dealing with really smart folks who can read the English language versions of things as well (Howdy, y’all) and liked it enough to do the work. I also saw an enormous spike in sales of Auberon (again $0.99 US, so easy choice) this week. Hopefully, they will tell their friends, because my goal, knowing now that maybe this wasn’t the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, is to do the rest of the seven. And then maybe some other stuff after that.

One review asked why I didn’t just do the entire omnibus, but they missed the point. I’m not rolling in money here and had no idea if it would work. Plus, it cost $2,500 US for book one. All eight at once would have probably cost us about $15,000 US, up front. At least this way, I can afford to roll them all out slowly as they sell. If I average 10 sales per day, then we’re looking at about a four month payoff cycle for book one, multiplied by all eight.

Mind you, we’re also paying for audio up front right now do, for the Star Dragon books, to be followed by Longshot when we get there, so I’m having a kinda spendy year. Making good sales in 2019, better than 2018, but with any luck, access to the German market, and German mindshare, will bring some of those readers over into my English-language stuff.

But it still totally, freaking awesome that I have German language fans. That I can look at a book by copy/pasting the title “Der Wissenschaftoffizier” into Amazon.de and see folks liked it enough to leave me reviews. (And yes, I used Google Translate to get the them into English again. 30 years ago, I probably could have read them pretty well, but that was thirty years ago.)

The German Edition of The Science Officer is now available. And there will be a print version available on Amazon soon. (It is in the Ingram catalog, so you could order a personal copy from your independent bookstore if you were feeling really weird.)

And if you want to hire translations into other languages, let me know. I would recommend the folks I worked with: http://www.literarytranslations.us Really nice and good rates.

I’m also in the process of bribing some friends to do me something into Arabic, just because.

But this is totally, freaking awesome.

Hope y’all enjoy it, and it you’re one of my new German friends: Willkommen!!

🙂

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