Category Archives: publishing

2020: The Plan

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So, in 2019, the final count was 20 novels and 21.5 short/medium/novella stories (finished Eva #5 on Jan 1, 2020 as the 22nd). 1,394,982 words because I damned well didn’t want to push that hard the last three days, thank you very much. Call is a shade under 1.4 million words.

Good enough. My goal had been 1.2+ or 100,00 words per month. (My goal is always 100,000. Sometimes easy, sometimes a hard stretch, but I’ve done it since May 2018 at this point and that’s kinda awesome.)

The only real target had been 20 novels in 2019. Managed that. Wrote a novella at the end of the year because that was NOT going to turn into a novel. Kept it at 19,000 but it is very obviously a book one in a new series of historic espionage/thriller. (set in 1977 with no more science fiction than Q provides to Bond, per se, and not even that much, except that I know where technology goes, so I can pull things forward a little.)

So now we’re looking at 2020. Second full year of writing for me as a full-time vocation. Making enough money that I generally don’t worry, except that this year I plan to dial back some expenses because of the crazy-ass election season coming up and all the other shit. Previous presidential seasons have seen entertainment sales Aug 1 – Dec 1 tank hard. This might run much wider and longer, depending.

I’d rather be proven wrong as a cynic than an optimist. I’m probably unemployable at this point.

So going forward. 100,000 words per month. That doesn’t change.

However, I’m only “planning” 14 novels. And 40 short stories.

(—WARNING MATH AHEAD—)

I have a patreon account and promise them a new short story every month long before it ever comes out to the general public. So that’s 12 new stories.

I am publishing Boundary Shock Quarterly 4 times per year and have a story in it.

I expect to do two new volumes of Blaze Ward Presents (#1 and #2 here) annually, plus strange ideas that need me.

Starting soon, I’m going to be offering new short fiction on my website every month, with exclusives that do not go up for sale anywhere else. Like, ever. Only get them here so folks get used to coming to my site for a new fiction fix for cheap. ($1 sort of thing.)

So as you can see, I’m already at 30 stories, and I haven’t even broken a sweat yet. Throw in the odd projects where someone asks if I can write them a short story to theme, weird shit that wakes me from a dead sleep, and whatever other silliness comes around, and I don’t see it being that hard to hit 40. It comes up to three and a quarter stories per month, basically.

I also have 3 business/technical books on the calendar this year. Those don’t count as short fiction, but generally come in around 12-15,000 words.

I’ll be busy. It will be a good busy. Writing books, writing novel series, writing short series serializations.

Not going to push as hard on the novel count also means that I can aim for some longer stories that unfold slowly. I enjoy writing crazy-fast stories that suck you in and hold you underwater, but occasionally I want to just sit back and let the world slowly enfold the reader. Or write a single volume that’s 175,000 words long if I can do it and not get bored.

Health has been good. Sales have been good. Life has been good. I’m still not rich enough to buy an island or build a castle, but those would be the long term goals if I was suddenly wealthy beyond a safe level.

Today, I blasted out my usual morning word count and then realized that I was all set to finish the current novel off (#1 for the year and #10 in the Science Officer series). Finished the morning session typing “Epilog” as a header, so that’s lovely and I’ll finish it Wednesday.

And looking forward to the next project. Need to write several short stories over the next week or two, and then I can go on and commit a next novel. Likely to flip a coin between Lazarus #3 and Taft Station #2 at this point, but that’s fine. Been reading the finals of the Star Tribes books. #1 & #2 are “done.” #3 is at the First Reader. Working my way through a final edit pass on #4 now, then on to #5. April-August release dates.

In case you missed it, the Handsome Rob books are up now for pre-order. Can’t Shoot Straight Gang is actually #1 and originally came out in Boundary Shock Quarterly #3 (Grand Theft Starship). Then Can’t Shoot Straight Gang Returns, which you might have read. Hunting Handsome Rob is #3. Handsome Rob, Assassin will be #4, sometime in the fall, most likely after Star Tribes is done (SWAG: September)

This blog will see less updating than it used to going forward, mostly because I plan to update the patreon news every Monday. Plus I have newsletters with more information than comes here. If you aren’t subscribed, this is your reminder. 🙂

Gonna be a busy year. Hope y’all are along for the ride.

The Indie World and Fans

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So I don’t have a formal publisher. Or rather, I married her. Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm)

We write fast and publish regularly. I’ll put out 14 novels in 2019 and write 20. 4 Issues of Boundary Shock Quarterly. 2 Issues of Blaze Ward Presents. Turn them around pretty quickly, because the Canadian Copyeditor Babe(tm) works fast.

Nonetheless, errors creep in. Or rather, nobody catches some of the stupid shit I do. And it’s all my fault.

However, we live in the future, and it’s kinda cool.

When I put a book up on Amazon, occasionally I get warnings from them about errors in a manuscript. Those come from someone who had read it and then signed in and notified them of problems.

Many authors, I am sure, huff and curse when that happens. I know I did, but then I had an interesting realization. I can put out an updated version of the file pretty quickly. So it gets progressively cleaner, even as I thought it was pretty good to start with.

Fans, offering up suggestions. And making the book better.

That’s all sorts of awesome, when you get right down to it. They liked it enough to finish it and send notes. (Personally, I don’t even mind if you send them to me directly here, as they’ll get processed almost as fast.) Some fans might just stop reading when they hit something like that.

I can’t do this without you, the fan. Somebody has to buy the books. Someone has to tell their friends, their book club, the lady at the grocery store.

That’s why I give everyone who signs up for newsletter a new book nobody else has (Not for sale anywhere.) to say thank you to you people.

We operate in a strange future. Fifty years ago, you had a publisher, and they had teams of people. They also had years to work on a manuscript, from the first contract signature to the book landing on a shelf. And errors still got missed.

But those errors were permanent. You had to sell enough to justify a second run. Or maybe a revised updated edition if you got famous enough.

We turn things out that quickly, but we can also fix them that quickly.

So again, thank you, whoever you were or are. They keep coming. We keep fixing them.

(And if you want a paying gig, lemme tell you, most of the writers I know can’t ever find enough good editors. You can make good money getting to read things first. I have a whole group of folks that I just send novels and stuff out to, usually before they even go to the copy editor, because they’ll end up buying the final product, but they also appreciate seeing how the sausage really is made.)

Just thought you should know.

 

Been playing with new covers

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A reminder for folks who might have missed it in other place: Sometime early next year (Q1-ish), the plan is to start selling certain short fiction directly from my website, rather than out on the major distributors. There are lots of reasons, but primarily, I don’t sell a lot of short fiction, even when I bundle it up in Beyond The Mirror collections. (Trust me, I run those numbers and nobody buys them.)

Plus, if I sell it elsewhere for $0.99, I make about 26 cents.

So I plan to make sure people are drawn in to the website to read things that you will not be able to buy anywhere else. That exclusive part is the key. Right now, I’m planning to put up a new story every month on www.blazeward.com. This is in addition to the short fiction and other stuff that goes to my Patreon people long before anybody else sees it. Throw in the Boundary Shock Quarterly stories and the Blaze Ward Presents stuff and I figure to write about 36 short-ish stories next year, in addition to the 14 novels I have planned.

So there will be stuff you can only get here. Right now, I think that we’ll start with Kumiko. You might have read the first Kumiko story in Boundary Shock, but I have a longer story for her, part of a whole series. Along the way, I wrote origins short stories for five people I plan to introduce. Here are the first two covers: Dancer and Shirabyoshi

I already have all seven covers done, so you’ll start seeing them by next summer. I also have Ollie, Yasmin, Farouk, and others that will be coming out.

Why am I doing this? Simple enough. Places that are the heart of social media right now are going to fail. Facebook is declining as more and more people turn off their accounts and move elsewhere. (When was the last time you logged into your MySpace account, anyway?)

For creatives, we’ll lose that central marketplace of ideas and potential fans, so I need to start training people now that they need to come to my website every month in order to find new fiction. That will get them into the habit.

There will be the new novel for sale every month, and if you follow me on places like Amazon they should send you a reminder. You should also sign up for blog posts directly in your email, rather than however you get them now for the same reason.

The world is fragmenting. This is a good thing in general, because some things have gone desperately wrong, and the market turning against bad players will cause them to course-correct.

But Indie artists like me suffer when we lose the ability to reach a number of new fans quickly because one of you shared something I wrote. (Feel free to forward this email to your friends like you did in the old days before social media sharing. It helps.)

So that’s the plan. If you are a cover artist or in need, I am starting a newsletter in january that will deal with all sorts of things in publishing, two of which helped me create those two ebook covers above in under an hour combined, and I don’t use anything by Adobe. Yes, you read that right. No more Adobe. Really cool covers for ebooks done pretty damned quick. And hopefully the folks involved are working on print-book covers as well. Had a chat with them and provided some specifications, so fingers crossed.

But that’s my news today.

Happy Turkey Massacres to all the US folks celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow. I’m going home in a few hours and making blueberry poptarts from scratch for one of the desserts. We also have pumpkin and pecan pie. Homemade dulce d’leche. Spatchcocking a chicken and having scratch-made stuffing. (Handmade cassava root bread. Homemade sausage. Etc.)

Gonna be a nice quiet weekend. Should finish the lastest novel by Saturday, and then on to #20 to round out the year.

What traditions do you have for the holidays?