This year, as part of my job of being Fabulous Publisher Babe™’s Marketing Troll, Ollie, I’m branching out into a few new realms, in that eternal quest to make enough writing money that I don’t have to get up and put on pants in the morning. (Venn Diagram. Two circles that do not touch. “Days I am happy.” “Days I am wearing pants.” Snerk.)

One of the tasks is a new semi-picture book for the Jessica Keller Books tentatively entitled “Uniforms of the Fleet” that will show what (in my mind) a Republic of Aquitaine (Senior/Command) Centurion wears, and how I think it differs from what you see on television or in the movies. (Eventually, we’ll do a full technical manual, but not today.)

Andy Weir has taught us to use science in our science fiction. In his case, a truly impressive array of “how would you do this, trapped on a hostile planet?” (Which is kind of awesome, when you realize he just updated Robinson Crusoe and made it brand new to an entire generation. That takes skill.)

So we’re going to explore Aquitaine uniforms. One of the things that strikes me is that you’re in space. Deep. Cold. Hostile. If something goes wrong, you are in a vacuum quickly.

With that in mind, you have to be able to get into an emergency suit quickly.

Jessica’s technology is advanced, but not out in the realm of magic. (I remember a story where their tech was so high that they wore a small belt that produced a full life support force field around the wearer. At one point in one of my favorite stories, the main character snuck into a space base by wearing something so startlingly primitive (to her and her culture) as to be merely cloth wrapped around someone and sealed, instead of a full field.)

Worry number two, you don’t have time to strip out of your existing gear before you put on the emergency suit. That’s 10-15 seconds, in the dark, in a rush of escaping atmosphere, with the gravplates turned off. Things will go wrong. Things will blow away if you aren’t holding on tight.

So, you have to be wearing something that your suit will go over, and do it quickly, blindly, and while rotating in three dimensions in motion.

Next, you live your life in a fully controlled-climate environment. Temperature, pressure, humidity are standard across the fleet, unless you have a small ship, with a tight crew, and a command centurion who talks them all into raising or lowering the temp. Normally, this would be a long-serving crew who all originated on a single planet. And even then, the Navy frowns on that sort of thing.

Standards exist for a reason.

So, here we are. You need to design a uniform that can be worn under the emergency suit. All environments are close enough to identical to not count.

Let’s play.

Shoes. Everyone will wear ship-slippers most of the time, with the exception of engineers and security marines. And even then, the difference is slightly more tread and steel toes and steel underplates to protect the foot in hostile environments. So weight, rather than bulk. Easily slipped on and off, and not required to do much except keep the arches intact and keep a grip while running or exercising.

Pants. Everyone will wear black, semi-stretchy pants. Not quite spandex. A heavier material than yoga pants, but serving the same purpose. Pockets on the front for your hands. Pockets on the outside of the butt (think jeans) for stuff. Maybe pouches on the thigh, but more frequently a belt attachment that can be jettisoned in a hurry. Again, nothing to get in the way of keeping you alive.

Tunic. Jacket. Whatever. The pants will come up over the hip bone. The tunic will come down and rest on the hip bones themselves. Open at the bottom, instead of having elastic. (Anyone else remember Patrick Stewart standing up and immediately pulling down his jacket? My friend always called THAT the Pickard Maneuver.) Cut close to the body. Again, a little stretchy (think a heavy jersey material). Zippered, or velcroed, or somethinged up the front. Whatever we manage to invent in the next twelve millennia. No collar, so think of the t-shirt you are wearing with the collar cut out. Plus take a small vee (maybe 2 inches) out of the center top.

The tunic is dark green. There will be a pattern under the arms in black (TBD). The upper arms are black, the lower arms are the same green as the body. Cuffs that cut back at a 45-degree angle to expose the outer wrist bone when you are typing. There is a black line across the pectoral muscles. On wearer’s left side, medals when in dress uniform. On the right, badges for schools and certifications.

Undershirt. I don’t have a good way to describe the color. I saw it once in a store. Mix neon green with gray in a chaos pattern. Since everyone wears a tunic over it on duty, and the tunics are the same weight, this is how we account for different body temperatures. The only uniform requirements are that the undershirt run an inch above the top of the collar as a low mock-turtleneck, and that they not appear at the wrists, and that they tuck in to the pants. Beyond that, there will be different weights of fabric, different sleeve lengths, etc. for people who run hot or run cold. (Men and women will absolutely have different weights, will be my expectation.) Folks might print something on the front, as long as a superior officer who sees it isn’t going to be offended enough to do something about it. Women will generally wear a bra or sports bra underneath that, as necessary. (Moirrey doesn’t have enough chest that she had to wear one, so she might not, half the time. YMMV)

Hair is expected to be kept neat, but does not have to be kept short. An emergency suit has a hood that is attached and flips up and over and seals, so presumably your hair will be inside, or might be stuck on the outside and cause a slow leak, but not bad enough to kill you in the short term. (If you’re going to be floating for several hours in a vacuum, you might have a problem. Maybe. Again, if all else fails, cut off the part that sticks out and pull the rest in.)

So there you have it. A uniform design that is based on my interpretation of how human need and technology will interact. They don’t have technology that mimics magic. And they aren’t gods. They have risen, fallen, and risen again on a number of occasions. Some of the falls were nearly terminal. None of the rises has been godhead.

So what the hell is all that about?

Simple. I’m doing Uniforms of the Fleet as an exercise in technology for me the writer, but also for me the marketing troll.

I’m meeting today with an artist I want to hire to do all the pictures, starting with Jessica as a command centurion. I’ve structured the contract to both our benefits.

She gets to draw pictures in the Auberon universe for a number of years, and sell them at cons and on her website. Hopefully, she will make good money from it.

At the same time, her name will be on the cover of the picture book when it comes out. (I’ve always dreamed of running into someone cosplaying a Command Centurion at a con. And now they’ll have images to work from.) Plus I’ll get access to all her fans.

Every time someone looks at her pictures, I have a chance to sell the books. Every time someone reads the series, they might go out and buy this art book, and then go look at all the other art she’s done and buy prints and stuff.

Everyone, hopefully, makes money. And has fun, which is the more important part.

This is the year where we use art as a marketing tool. Partly because it might make me more nickels.

But partly, because I can.

shade and sweet water

bd

west of the mountains, WA

I got to talking with a friend the other day about moving around.  Hint: I know very few people up here who are actually from Seattle. More likely is that the person ended up here at the tail end of something else, or running away from something, or running to something. Whatever.

I grew up mostly in Wichita, KS. Spent a lot of time in other places along the way. in 1990 I left for SoCal. Did five years there before I left. The leaving part wasn’t exactly planned. I had been talking to Bishop about how much I hated LA and he said, “So what are you going to do about it?”

<light bulb going off/>

Picked up the phone, called my mom, and told her I was leaving LA. Didn’t know where I was going. When would be as soon as I could get everything packed up and find a place. Options were NorCal (Coop and Dusty had ended up north), Houston (open invitation to stay at a Buddhist monastery. Long story.) Somewhere totally at random pulled out of a hat or pulled from a dartboard.

Ended up back in Wichita, mostly because I had too much stuff to just pile it in the parking lot and burn it. (Did that later. Another long story.) Was there for about eighteen months before a woman I knew in LA convinced me to move up to Seattle, where she was living.

The moving to Seattle part was a good idea. The living with her was less than good. (More long story. You’re gonna need a lot of beer to pry that one out of me.) Ended up moving out very quickly.

Had my own place, in a town I barely knew, 1500 miles from anything. Flat broke.

Fell in love with the Pacific Northwest flying over it, the first time, before I had even landed for my first visit, before I moved up here. So I made do. Met the first wife. Fell madly in love. It was good. She and I bought a house in 2001. Lost her in the summer of 2008. Sold the house in the fall of 2014.

Between 1990 and buying the house in 2001, I had moved 17 times. Wanderlust. Horizons.

These days, I live over the pass. Sitting on six and a half acres with water, trees, fruit, and elk. And very, very little interwebs coverage. Some days, 2 bars of 1x cell coverage. Have to go into town to get access to the rest of the universe.

Paradise.

Interestingly, most of the writers and creative folks I know have similar stories. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) left the country with a one-way ticket in the early 90’s and was gone for several years, doing more countries than I had states, but she was looking for something different than I was. Don’t think she ever found it, but haven’t really asked.

We all have many ghosts.

Seattle is a place for creatives to pool themselves, not so isolated as they were when they lived in the land of traditionally stupid and boring lives. I have friends who went white picket fence along the way. Occasionally they find me on social media and wonder at the “what changed from thirty years ago”. (I’m told I still look the same, just with more gray in the beard, but anyone from that, they would know me as soon as I walked into the joint. At least, that’s what Dusty said when I saw him for the first time in twenty years.)

They stayed home. Got out of school and got a tie-wearing job. Went into business, or law, or banking. Happily-ever-after. -Ish. Close enough. We don’t speak the same language these days, so it is hard to judge.

But I wonder what life will be like for this new generation. I could disappear off the face of the planet more than twenty-five years ago. Disconnect the land-line. Forward my mail. There was no email, or social media, where everybody was just across town and could stay in touch, regardless of how far they might travel. Just a gap where something had been once, and was gone.

I did just that. Disappeared for a while. (Another very long story.)

I leave public trails these days, for people who are looking and know how to look, to find me. And I’m far more gregarious than I used to be. (Being happy helps.)

Every once in a long while, someone pops up from my distant past. Friends I went to school with. Girls I dated. Old enemies.

And a million miles have passed.

We’re not the same people any more. I don’t hold grudges. Not worth the effort. Bygones have forgotten how to even be bygones.

We’ll get together, over a beer or a chat window, and talk about the old days, but there’s nothing really there.

I was always over the next horizon. They knew that then. They know it now.

I had a dream I was pursuing. Haven’t caught it, but I’m catching up. Dunno how to even talk to folks that never had a dream worth pursuing at these sorts of costs. Most people, I guess, never want something this bad.

Most people don’t have adventures.

Yesterday, Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I caught a train to Portland to meet some friends for lunch, and then took the train home. Nothing more, nothing less, than a new adventure. Could have driven. Have done that several times. Wanted to see the world through different eyes.

Still do, but I’m not sure how many people have that dream, that itch.

What do you want that bad?

So to celebrate the latest birthday of Jeff Bezos, we’re publishing the third in the Business 4 Breakfast series. And I wrote this one. It is The Beginning Professional Storyteller.

I wanted to write this one (more than a year ago. Long story) to lay out for myself an understanding of the 7-Point Plot Structure that is the basis for all good genre fiction. (Literary does weird things. YMMV) Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) suggested I turn it into a B4B book, and that sounded like a good idea.

Most of the people I know who are writers were friends of hers originally, and have been doing this for a very long time. They don’t need the review. For others, especially some of my newer writer friends, they might be making the jump from journalism (a whole other skillset that does not lend itself well to good fiction frequently), or trying to undo some of the damage done by a BFA/MFA program that looks down its nose at successful commercial writers.

We are the enemy, as far as those people are concerned. And I’m okay with that. My goal is not literary awards. Nor is it groupies, although Fabulous Publisher Babe insists that I would have to share anyway.

It is all about money. And as crass as that sounds, that is why you got out of bed this morning, to make enough money that you can go do something silly on your time off: buy a book, go to a show, walk in the woods.

For me, enough money is quitting the day job and writing full time.

To do that, I need to look and sound like a professional writer (B4B:Book 1). But I also need to tell good stories that have all the right elements of 7-Points contained therein. If you are a writer, you need to do the same.

It works for short fiction, medium stuff, and grand/epic/mega-fantasy series that get turned eventually into television shows.

And I firmly believe that everyone has at least one book in them. Each of us has a story, told in our own voice, that is compelling enough that other people will want to read it.

You should go write yours.

It has been a very strange twelve months. Some of you know this story. For you, my apologies for repeating. For some of you, this will be new.

I have been a storyteller for as long as I have had words. I published some of my short fiction and poetry, once upon a time, in various very exotic and small-scale magazines. I even paid to print a dozen copies of volume one of my poetry, The Anthem, back in the early ‘90’s. Lord only knows where those copies are today. I have two of them. I think the last thing I had published would be in my grad school newsletter, where they used my poetry to fill in empty columns rather than have white space. Call it twenty years ago.

So when Fabulous Publisher Babe™ finally convinced me that I could go the indie press route two years ago, I started with what I knew, and wrote some interesting fantasy serial pieces. My plan with the Beyond The Mirror series had always been to put in a variety of on-going tales of such folks as Suren, Kaleph, Brak, and whoever else came up, like Alicia or Horatio.

And that worked for the first two books, both sub-titled Fantastic Worlds. The third Mirror was Alternative Worlds, because I wanted to have some fun with dieselpunk and science fiction, as one does. None of them were selling more than a handful of copies each month. I think I made $250 bucks that year, hustling everyone I knew to buy a physical copy.

At some point, late in 2014, I was having a conversation with my sweetie about what I should write next. What would sell? How could I fill out the bakery in such a way that I could do what she had done and walk away from the day job.

I had just finished writing The Science Officer, based on some story ideas that had been rolling around in my head for the better part of five years. (Auberon, by the way, was based on ideas going back ten years or more, specifically the scene over Sarmarsh IV.)

Additionally, I had spent a couple of hours in a book store while she was doing a book signing, and I had walked through the entire set of stacks (and this was a big place) and found perhaps a half dozen books that maybe looked interesting enough to buy, but not one of them ended up getting my money.

So as we had this conversation one day, about what to write next, the Publisher said that novels were where I would achieve success, long term. Nobody really wants to buy collections of short-stories, except when it is an anthology with one of your favorite authors in it, and the story isn’t available anywhere else. I can say this with authority, because all my short stories are up individually, and people buy them that way, even when I tell them that they could save significant cash by purchasing the Mirror that contains it. (No, I don’t get it either. Speaking purely from experience.)

So, first lesson: put up every individual short story, novella, etc. that you have. Price them appropriately (for me, I have a matrix cross-indexing length to price).

I will still publish more volumes of Beyond The Mirror, as I have pieces, based on the logic that I don’t do Print On Demand for anything less than ten thousand words. (Just not worth the effort.)

And then, in early January, The Science Officer exploded. I went from selling a couple of copies on a good day, to 60+ copies a day for more than three weeks. (My best single day was 92, I think.)

I have no idea why.

The best theory I have was from Anthea, who suggested that Amazon has a 30-day machine (or 90) that occasionally randomly selects some book, based on magical incantations in South Lake Union, and puts that book on the “You Might Also Like…” bar, where everyone will see it.

I have good covers, thanks to Fabulous Publisher Babe. I have learned to do pretty good blurbs. When you sample the book, the interior is clean and sharp. The story is entertaining. (Hey, I’m pretty good at this, you know.) And the sample literally ends on a cliffhanger. Could not have timed it better if I tried, but the last words on the sample are something like “And then she shot him.”

So. Sudden “success” in the sense of selling.

Many of the writers I have known are dilettantes, rather than professionals. (I know way more professionals these days, and try to be like them.) The amateur writers would have panicked. I certainly had three days of complete and utter incomprehension.

But I also had plans.

My motto: Assume success, plan for victory.

So, book is selling, what do you do? Write the next one as fast as you can.

In between the time I had finished Science Officer and early January, I had written Imposters (43k. Accidentally a NaNoWriMo), and just completed the first draft of Auberon. (Fabulous Publisher Babe wanted novels. Auberon is the first of the nine titles I have for Jessica.)

I already had the story for The Mind Field in my head. It was actually the other part of Javier, that I would have put into a first novel if I was going to do Javier novels instead of novellas.

And I can write fast with quality, when I set my mind to it. Don’t tell anyone, but I started Mind Field after work that Friday night. Worked my ass off all weekend. Finished it Monday morning at work in the kitchen (I get there at 6am and write until 8). Did an editing pass Monday night. Emailed it to her. She did a first read pass Tuesday. I fixed everything Wednesday. She turned it into POD and ebook Thursday. Took it live on Amazon’s website Friday night.

It stayed up there with Science Officer and I got about four months of traction on it.

So now what?

I had Imposters on track to be published first, but it was totally unrelated to Science Officer. Auberon was related, but I had already sent Imposters to first readers I was bribing. So I turned around and asked them to toss Imposters out the window and get Auberon back to me as fast as possible with their comments, so I could publish.

Again, not panicking. Much.

Went to Oregon with my sweetie when she was at the Coast Anthology Workshop for Fiction River. She was attending. I stayed at the hotel and cooked and wrote all day. (We as a group had rented the whole hotel, so the owner gave me the keys and told me where to find everything in the kitchen. Kinda awesome.)

Spent that whole week working on Queen of the Pirates. You’ll understand where I was in the draft when I say that I had to stop and write The Story Road based on that damned dinner conversation that came up at Callumnia, and asked Anthea for the right song to listen to while I wrote it. In this case, Johnny’s Gone To War.

So then I had two novels in the series done. And cliff-hangered the hell out of the second one, so I took a deep breath, and dove headlong into Last of the Immortals.

At this point, I published Auberon, in May.

I freaked out that I got more than twenty pre-orders. (I don’t have that many relatives.) But it hit, and it sold. Again, good covers, good blurbs, solid teaser, good opening. It got good reviews.

Queen hit in August, with Imposters tucked in between, but not really pushed. The Story Road came out with Queen, because you really needed to understand Henri Baudin and the Founding in order to make some sense of the conversation. (And I have at least two more Henri Stories planned in my copious spare time.)

Better traction, because now the Alexandria Station universe has depth, and interlocking histories, and readers can see that I have a novel series coming.

Next lesson: when readers find a character they like, they really want to travel with that character. I can tell Jessica stories, and people are interested in what happens to her, because she is a powerful and interesting character, but she’s also human (unlike some of the folks she gets compared to in SF literature.)

So don’t just write novels. Write a trilogy. Auberon, Queen of the Pirates, Last of the Immortals. In my case, I’m just about to start Jessica’s next trilogy: Goddess of War, Flight of the Blackbird, The Red Admiral. And they are not what you will be expecting. (And oh, by the way, I also have titles for the third trilogy, but I’m not going to tell you today.)

In between, I just sent a new novel #1 to first readers last week, in an entirely new universe. It’s going the formal path, Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs), a commissioned cover, etc. so it won’t probably come out until this fall. I think you’ll like it. I’ll get books 2 and 3 done as fast as I can, but Jessica is demanding more of my time right now.

Another interesting thing I learned recently. I can’t write short stories. At least, not well.

I grew up on comic books. (LOTS and LOTS of comic books.) I tell stories in serial. I have also been a gamemaster for thirty years. I author campaigns. The fantasy characters are former PC’s I want to immortalize.

But I can’t write what you call a self-contained short story. And I don’t want to take the time to develop those skills. I’ll tell short pieces of larger arcs. For Brak: Meat Shield, The Popcorn Kitten, and Destiny. I also have a fourth story, Feet of Clay, coming out in an anthology later this year. All one long campaign, broken up.

Eventually, Brak will get his own collection, in another year or two, when I have enough stories to make it worth. It still won’t sell, except to completists and Otaku.

But it doesn’t matter. People will read the individual stories and enjoy them. Hopefully, they will clamor for more.

I want to do a Kaleph novel one of these days. (Copious spare time.) He has such a fun voice and story. Maybe after Jessica takes a break. Maybe not until I have enough sales on any given week that I can consider walking away from the day job and writing full time, instead of the 1-2 hours per early morning I get right now, plus weekends I can carve out.

Next lesson: know how much money will make you happy.

I am a well-paid database nerd these days. I am also the primary breadwinner in the family, so I can’t rely on her to support me. I support her. In order for me to quit the day job, I have to be making enough money to support myself, and provide her a safety net. I might get a smaller job one of these days, shifting to a more part-time function, but I have to be making enough to cover the mortgage and still survive.

How much money do you need to be bringing in each month? You need that roof. After that, food, transportation, and sundries. There is a very specific amount you need to be making. Period. If you aren’t there yet, and I mean every month for maybe a year, you should not be preparing to leap off a cliff. Too much risk, unless you have very deep reserves that can hold you above water.

And what is your fear point? What is that thing you cannot live without? For me, the farm. I bought the land six years ago. Cleared it, cleaned it up. Just put a house on it last summer. Mine. I’ll eat ramen if I have to. But I will not give up the farm. For others, they might be happy couch surfing for years on end, as long as they have their daily jolt of caffeine from the Mermaid. Or they have to have their car, and might be willing to sleep in it.

What is your fear point?

I’m nowhere close to retiring from the day job. I do have a plan. I might even have a horizon, but it is a ways off, right now.

How will I get there? More novels. More Jessica. More Javier. More Kai Di. More other projects that might yield me nickels and dime here and there. I’m investigating costs and quality around getting some things translated into other languages. More fans that can’t find me in English. More money.

So what does it all mean?

It means I have a plan. Several. It means I’m flexible about what I do next, based on evolving needs. It means I don’t bother trying to write to market, because you never succeed. Kris has already covered this in greater detail and clarity than I could. Go read her.

I write what I love, which right now includes popcorn space opera with no greater, overarching socio-political axe to grind. Fribourg isn’t evil. Karl isn’t evil. Emmerich isn’t evil. They’re just on the other side of a war, but they still operate within their bounds of civility.

Write what you love. But understand that this is a business if you want it to support you, one of these days. Act like a professional. Make your deadlines and stay on target for the theme and wordcount your editor/publisher requires. Be friendly to other storytellers, because their success isn’t going to come at your expense. In fact, if they get successful, the market and the pie get that much bigger for everyone.

See what you can do to help people. Trade first reads. Introduce your fans to their work. Blast them all over the interwebs. Not because they’ll do something good for you, but because it is the right thing to do.

And have fun. If you aren’t giggling as you write it, if you are bored, you’ve gone mundane and won’t entertain people. You need to take some risks and get silly from time to time. Your fans will go with you down those weird byways, as long as you are entertaining.

shade and sweet water,

bd

west of the mountains, WA

Because there are very few people actually listening, I can pretty much talk about anything here. Those of you paying attention, feel free to offer suggestions, advice, and/or winning lottery tickets… 🙂

For any creative type, the struggle in life is always the mundane versus the exciting. There are all these stories that I would like to tell, but the day job inhibits me. It requires so much of the life and energy of many artists, to have to put food on the table and a roof overhead. Mazlow covered this.

There are some who have what we call a “supportive spouse,” which is the person who goes to work and supports the household so that we, the artist, can pursue our dreams without having to be taking orders, moving boxes, or writing code all day. Those people are worth their weight in dreams.

Some of us, however, do not have that luxury. Or, in my case, I’m the supportive spouse so that Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) can do her thing.

Eventually, my goal is to not have to get up in the morning and go to work. To get there, there is a number. I’m not sure exactly what that number is, but I know it exists.  I know the amount of money I make monthly at the day job. While it would be utterly fantastic to be able to replace that with other income streams, I’m not anywhere close right now in terms of monthly book sales. But I don’t have to be, because if I’m not buying dress shoes, not commuting to work, not being all those things, I can live much smaller and still fake sanity.

At the same time, I am selling books. (Thank you, by the way, for reading them, and telling your friends.) That is a second stream of revenue that helps me pay off the credit cards and other things that came up in 2015 as I built a house, got married, and had a few other interesting adventures. It will get me there.

Fabulous Publisher Babe and I were talking about how to achieve other revenue streams on this last Saturday with a group of like-minded weirdos that we collectively refer to as the Bellevue Writers Lunch. (Because we started out having a business lunch once a month and Bellevue was central for everyone. Saturday was in Lynnwood.) We talk writing, but more we talk about publishing, and advertising, and other stuff. How to do better covers, better blurbs. Better discoverability. We talk about how to make ourselves better as business people.

All of that translates into money. Money translates, in this particular instance, into the happiness of being able to walk away from the day job and just write and create full-time. (I am a storyteller. I have always been one. But I would love to be able to make a living at it.)

Andy brought up the topic of a Patreon. Fabulous Publisher Babe and I had been talking about her doing one, featuring, among other things, early access to her catalog of never-been-seen-before short stories, months or years before she publishes them for the rest of the world to see.

Other artists, especially other writers we know have tried this. Some of them have had some modicum of success. You almost certainly won’t make enough money from a monthly Patreon to walk away, but it becomes one more stream of nickels. And those nickels add up. Because you add them to nickels from books, and from magazine sales, and and and…

But her advantage is that she writes short stories. She has a compact object that she can share with her supporters as a reward for someone giving up a starbucks or three every month to support the arts.

But I wanna play, too.

It’s not so easy for me. I have written short stories in the past (and not so short ones), but I don’t have a ready back catalog of things to share. (Sure, I could comb through hundreds of old poems I wrote when I was a very angry young man, but I’m not sure that it would appeal to anyone enough get them to cough up money monthly for them.)

If I took the time each month to write a short story, that would also cut my productivity on the novels by about a quarter, as I can write a pretty good story in a week.

Another option Linda suggested was to serialize a novel.  Take something that is done, but has not been published yet, and put it up a few chapters at a time for my fans, so they can read it before anyone else. They would also see it in the much rougher state than the final, and could offer suggestions, corrections, and thoughts. (My novels are pretty clean when I get to the end, but that means it makes sense to me. I still rely on several First Readers to go through the text and point out all the places where something that was in my head never quite made it onto the page.)

The downside to serialization is that I tend to write pretty quickly (as you know), and then work fast on the First Read, Copy Edit, book design, and publication.  It’s not like Traditional, New York, Publishing, where I might finish a book and send it off to the editor, for it to come out on the bookshelf three or four years later. I wrote and published the following in 2015: The Mind Field, Moonshot, Queen of the Pirates, The Story Road, Last of the Immortals, and The Gilded Cage.  And I’m racing myself against the clock to finish the current novel, because I think I can finish the first draft before January 1. It won’t come out until spring, but I count the words against my annual total.

Next year, I won’t be building a house, moving into it, getting married, honeymooning, or a few other things, so I ought to be even more productive.

What weighs on my soul is what we call in business “opportunity costs.” I could write fewer novels, and more short stories, and possibly build up a Patreon base that might cut down on the number of years until I can quit working for the man. But at the same time I might just plow ahead and write as many novels as I can, hoping that they establish a sales baseline that provides me a random collection of nickels from a whole bunch of spines each month, growing as I put more product into the bakery for the casual reader wandering down the street to smell.

But I’m not alone, here. I’m surrounded by a wonderful collection of friends who help. I have fans who will even possibly read these words and weigh in with their entirely different view of things as a reader. (Thanks: K & B) I have connections on social media that might show me a radically new way to do things that I’ve never come across.

It helps me to think, when I put words on paper, even electronic ones. I don’t have any answers. But I don’t have to. I have stories. I have dreams. I have plans.

Thanks for letting to talk your ear off. I look forward to any advice you want to offer. The good ones will even get published, as I presume the rest of you can find all the male enhancement drugs and such you need on the interwebs without my help. 🙂

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

Quick survey: What kind of reader are you?

There are two interesting schools of thought out there today, when it comes to how people read. On the one hand, the old school (Traditional Publishing) demands that a writer must be closely pigeon-holed into a very specific genre category. The corollary is that if you write something “different” from that category, ever, you must do so under a new pen name. Many of the more established writers I know (being folks who have been successfully traditionally published decades ago, and possibly still today) have gone through this inanity.

It gets more interesting, decades later, when they get their rights to a book back, and want to republish it as themselves, rather than as who New York demanded they be back then. Now they have to identify themselves in such a way that readers who remember them from before can find them, while letting them know that the person they think of is really just a facet of a much more complicated writer.  Kris and Dean are both veterans of these psychic wars.

At the other end of the spectrum are folks like me. We’re proudly indie. I write it, edit it, and publish it, without sending it off to an agent or submitting it to a publishing house for consideration. (It helps that I married my Publisher, Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm). YMMV)

Nobody gets to tell me if something is good enough to see daylight. There are no trunk stories waiting for me to get around to. (Not counting all the poetry I wrote 1984-2004, of which, lots, but I’m getting to it over time.) And I don’t have to publish things under pseudonyms.

(And we’ll leave aside, for now, the rampant sexism that says that girls are too icky to write hard science fiction. I’ll let Judith tear your limbs off and beat you to death for suggesting that to her. She’d probably enjoy that bit.)

Will you, the reader, be willing to wander down every strange and exotic pathway my twisted and elusive muse takes me?

She can be Br’er Rabbit, some days.

It’s on my mind because I’m getting down the last bits of a new novel. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) tries to write every one of her novels with a “practice” to it. She might be working on wallpaper, or senses, or nailing every chapter with a cliff-hanger. Something new to expand her repertoire.

For those of you keeping score at home, I wrote Auberon, Queen of the Pirates, and Last of the Immortals functionally back to back to back. (With Story Road tucked in there for good measure, but related and associated.) This current project is something totally else, at least for me.

First off, it is slow. This novel is very much a coming of age, and literary. Single POV, when I just did eleven for Immortals. Everything takes place in the perception of the main character, and she’s a bit unreliable as a narrator. (Hint, possibly crazy, hard to tell.) She’s setting out to get revenge on the man who killed her best friend. Problem is, however, her friend was a costumed super-villain and the guy who killed her was a hero.

The novel is fun, and deep, and goes into strange places.

It is not gunfights and car chases. It is not a 40,000 word space battle (unlike the last section of Immortals, for example.) It is not a wild, seat of your pants ride, like some of my fans have enjoyed with the Jessica Keller novels.

I will tell you that it is the first of a trilogy arc I will have done by this time next year, Good Lord willing and creek don’t rise. If I was Traditionally Published, there is no question I would have to put it out under a pen name. I actually set out to create half a dozen when I started, because that was what everyone had to do.

Dean, however, assures me (us) that modern readers are sophisticated enough to realize that if they like a writer, they will probably like all the strange stuff, as long as they know what they’re getting into up front. That means good covers that convey the right genre. It means good, tight blurbs that entice you in. A teaser just inside the cover that communicates the essence of the Voice of the tale, rather than the spoilers or the cliff-hanger. An opening that grabs you by the lapels and sucks you right down the rabbit hole.

You know, the usual suspects.

Which means that we, as writers, no longer have to be other people.

The conversations lately have been thus: Once I finish it and send it off to the first readers (all female for specific reasons, this time) will they rate it as Publish in order, or save until all three are done and drop them back to back to back? (I will be going back to Jessica Keller IV: Goddess of War as soon as this project goes to First Readers, so don’t worry about not having your Moirrey fix.)

I won’t know until they tell me what I should do. And I’ll listen to them because this is so different from I’ve written. The closest thing might be The Story Road, but with far fewer “adult situations” as my main character describes herself as “20 and never been kissed” more than once. The sort of slow, emotional build-up. That sort of depth to the universe and details that normally pass in the background.

So: your vote. Would you like to read something totally different from Jessica soon, or later when all three are ready?

cheers,

bd

West of the Mountains, WA

I didn’t get much done over the long weekend (Thanksgiving in the US). Did the traditional chili-dogs breakfast (long story, remind me to tell y’all sometime, preferably over mead), then invited some friends over and had what we call an Art Colony. Lunch at 2. Sit around and talk until 4. Then everyone gets serious about committing art for two hours and not talking.

It was unfortunate that one of my friends wasn’t able to come because her dad had come into town at the last minute and announced that he refused to sit quietly at something like this, because he liked to talk. (Hopefully, she didn’t axe murder him over the break.)

Got a lot writing done. So did Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm). Alex did portraits and colored them. There was music. It was generally kinda awesome. Seattle folks without extended families who like the thought of no politics and no football, let me know and we’ll get you hooked up next year.

🙂

You have a few hours left to get in on the last Goodreads Giveaway before they’re all done.

Just realized last night that I’m about to start Act III of the new novel this morning. KInda awesome, all told. Won’t know until my several first readers get back to me, so I can’t tell you when it might be published. They may say go, they may say to hold it until I have the trilogy done and drop them back to back.

It’s not traditional SF. Many of you might not like it. It starts slow and literary. There’s only one Point of View character (Immortals had eleven for comparison, I think, rough counting on my fingers just now: Jessica, Nils, Tadej, Denis, Tomas, Robbie, Jouster, Moirrey, Suvi, Emmerich, and Sykes.) It is somewhere in the category of New Adult (older than YA, because the main character is 21 instead of 16), but very much a coming of age. She has decided that the best way to get revenge on the man who killed her best friend is to become a super-villain and hunt him (a costumed hero) down.

We’ll file it under SF/spandex, for now. That’s where you would find it in the book store. I would love for it to sell like Jessica or Javier. I suspect it will be more like Rick. I’m okay with that.

Was talking to Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) last night while I was experimenting with a new biscuit recipe (or rather, modifying someone’s to be entirely grain-free).

One of the neat things about the modern publishing era is that I don’t have a publisher telling me what I can and can’t write. Kristine Katheryn Rusch had a lovely blog post last week about writing to market, which is where an author sits down and looks at what they think is selling and puts out a story in that genre. And why it rarely works.

It struck me an useful, because as an Indie, I write what I want. Because I have a day job paying the bills, I can write the story  I want, the way I want, with the ending and rating I want. The jobs of my first readers and copy editors is to tell me where I leave out words, where I’m confusing, where I misspell my own name, etc. But not to tell me that I have to throw something in the trunk because nobody will buy it.

(I have, now, officially, sold at least one of every thing I have ever put up for sale on one of the big ebook sites.)

That means that someone will buy it. Will I make back the money equivalent of the time I spent writing it? Who know? And you know what? I don’t care, either. I’m not doing this to become rich and famous. (Comfortable would be nice. Anonymous at the same time would be awesome.) I’m doing this because it is a compulsion on my part.

I have been a story-teller as I long as I have had words. It brings me joy.

And the other thing that brings me joy is when I hear from a reader/fan how much they appreciated it.

Got an email from a man last week who just wanted to say thanks. Didn’t get a chance to reply until Sunday when we came into town and got connected to the interwebs (doing that from the farm is a hit and miss proposition.) We were there for about an hour while she did publishing stuff, so I managed to get three rounds of email back and forth with him, answering questions and talking about the future and Suvi.

Made my day.

Did the October financials last night, too. It’s always funny. “I sold a what, where?” Seriously. Someone in Japan bought The Blacksmith’s Song a few months ago. Hope they enjoy it and come back for more. Or send me a note asking for more. I have six volumes of poetry on a hard drive somewhere. Y’all have seen about half of one, and that’s mostly The Forestal, spanning II and III.

Someone bought The Horse Thief the other day. That was the last thing I had marked as a lifetime zero for sales.

I did a book signing in Powell’s in Beaverton, OR last week. He had bought copies of Auberon and Queen through what they call “Extended Distribution” meaning I’m in the Ingram’s Catalog and anyone can order my books at any bookstore.

Hopefully, that means I’m doing something right. Will I please all readers? No. Enough? I hope so. You? Please let me know. The opposite of love is not hatred. It is apathy. If a story riled you up, tell me. (I would prefer only good reviews on Amazon and other places, but I understand. Sometimes the story is just not right. Sometimes the reader didn’t get what they thought they would. That might be my fault. It might just be luck of the draw.)

One last thought. Well, maybe more than one. Holidays mean weird schedule, so I might not be as constant as I could be. Travel coming up to visit her family back east.

And the third Javier books, The Gilded Cage, is coming out in a few weeks. The Science Officer currently has 47 reviews on Amazon. I have been told that 50 is a magic number in their machines. If three of you could write me reviews in the next few weeks or get friends hooked on the books so they do, that would blast it out to a much wider audience. More sales equals less day-job equals more writing time from me equals more books for you to read.

So, really, I’m just looking out for you. Right?

Heh.

shade and sweet water,

bd

West Of The Mountains, WA

That was an intense weekend. (And I need fashion design help.)

OryCon, followed by my first ever book signing at Powell’s. Thanks to everyone who came out, and all the new friends I made. (And that poor girl that I talked into liking epic, military SF in spite of herself. She did at least friend me on facebook so I could apologize for dragging her down into Jessica’s world, but I suspect she wasn’t fighting too hard.)

Make your plans now.  I’ll be there next year.  And several people have threatened to make sure that the Con Committee puts me on panels, since I missed all that fun this year. Maybe, I’ll even get invited back to Powell’s again for more signings.  That was kinda awesome.

And no, I’m still only barely coherent after going for three days, then the signing, then dinner with some big gun writers that are friends of my wife and her sister, and then driving back to Seattle in the middle of the night so I could make it to work Monday morning.  (I would greatly appreciate if you could each recruit a dozen friends to buy my books so I didn’t have too day-job any more.  Pants sucks.)

Also, a bit of trivia: I’ve talked about the various definitions of readers, being social, casual, and voracious. I may have finally gotten my first collector, as well. Up until last week, there had been a story that had NEVER sold a copy, on any platform. It’s in one of the Mirror Collections, so it has been (hopefully) read, but several people have bought the first in the set (one of my favorites) and ignored the second. Sunday, on top of all the other weirdness, I finally sold a copy of The Horse Thief. Whoever, you are, congratulations on being my first official “gotta have them all” reader.  Let me know if you would like me to do something silly like sign a hard-copy of the cover for you, as a memorial trophy.  🙂

And please let me know what you think.  In my copious spare time, I have been slowly extending all of my fantasy characters.  I just turned in a new Brak story for a collection that will come out in the spring.  Suren, Kaleph, and several others will eventually bubble up, usually as palate cleansers between longer projects. (The Gilded Cage, the third Javier, was between Last of the Immortals and the current project. Have a fourth Javier planned, and just no damned time.)

What other news?

Holidays are upon us. The might mean less blogging, but mostly because I’m trying to get a novel done with all my spare time, plus I’m traveling to see the family. You’ll still see me on Facebook, and you can always email me here or there.

Winter is upon us.  I drove through chewy rain this morning, coming over the pass with a bunch of knuckleheads who probably have no business being out in the rain, let alone trying to drive in it. Soon, I’m going to have to start taking the long way around the mountains to get to work.

The new novel comes along apace.  I got to sit next to Mark Ferrari and his lovely wife, Shannon Page, at the signing, and I might be able to afford having Mark do a trio of covers for the new trilogy, which will be kinda my definition of having made it as a writer.

Also, if you know any wizards with fabric, I need some help. At OryCon, I saw a LOT of people cosplaying Manticore and the Honor Harrington books. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) leans over at one point and suggests that one of these days, someone is going to want to walk up in the uniform of a Command Centurion from Aquitaine, and that I better be able to tell them exactly how to do that.

I have the images in my head. I went back and re-read the appropriate sections of the books where I describe the uniforms. I have made it a point not to bog down the narrative with useless details, unlike some of the SF Writers I know who like to go into excruciatingly boring detail to show off. It should be just enough to carry the story along, and no more. (Tolkien and I would come to blows over the correct verbiage necessary to tell your tale, most likely.)

If you know anyone who does magic with cloth, I would appreciate an introduction. As I work out the next novel, I’m giving serious thought to uniforms, so that I can give someone the exact pattern numbers from McCalls or wherever, the correct colors, and the correct measurement ratios. (I promise more detail in Jessica’s fourth book, Goddess of War, but I’m not there yet. There are also surprises enough to keep everyone jumping and giggling.)

And, one of these days, I need to commission someone to make me an Aquitainian Navy uniform. Possibly First Fleet Lord, but we’ll see. It would be so amazingly awesome to have cosplaying fans, the last thing I want to do is look at one and say “but you did it wrong…” (Someone thwap me upside the head if it looks like those words are about to come out of my mouth, okay?)

Okay, about out of words.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

Y’all have no idea how awesome it is to meet and interact with fans. And to know people are enjoying my books.

shade and sweet water

bd

west of the mountains, WA