WOO-HOO!!!

Long backstory short, I had always wondered if we could collect up the eight Science Officer audio books that Matt had done, and put them out as one monstrous compendium. I’ve been told be people (who might not be full of shit) that audio folks don’t like novellas. Just the wrong length, because they would rather use their free credits to binge on some doorstop. Similarly, other people who (I trust to know these things) have suggested that I get a different payment rate for anything under appx. 45,000 words (Javier runs 24-32k each). Maybe I’m leaving money on the table here.

But all the filed existed. It was relatively painless (I’m given to understand from Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm)) to merge them and do a mega-audio book.

I don’t do audio books. Brain doesn’t work that way. So I don’t know much about the format. However, this monster is 24 HOURS LONG. That’s kinda impressive, as I’m guessing we’re just a shade under 240,000 words, all bits combined. That should keep even you busy for a couple of days, missy.

And this is just the first part of things. Coming out of NINC this year, I had a list of tasks to attack in 2019. And the greatest wife/boss in the world.

We’re in process of getting all the The Science Officer books translated into German. That’s a good market for science fiction, and they like novellas (see Perry Rhodan, currently working on their THIRD BILLION books sold.) Sometime second half of 2019, I would like to finally start writing Season Two of The Science Officer.

Melissa is currently working her way through the Jessica Keller books for audio, with Auberon and Queen done so far and she’s working on Last of the Immortals now. I’ll finish that series next year, and keep her busy for a while. And you.

Meanwhile, Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) is getting close to signing contracts for audio on the Star Dragon books. Awaken is #1 and I have #4 in the can right now, with #5 getting written early next year. Not sure when #6. Ebook, Print, and Audio (everywhere and not just audible) should all drop at the same time, next summer. And a second series will come out after that, although that one may go into Kindle Unlimited for the ebook. Audio will be everywhere as well.

Hope you’re ready. I have (I think) eleven novels out right now, with several more on pre-order. I am currently writing novel #23. And speeding up just the weeest bit as I go. There will be lots of fun new things for you to consume, starting next week with the seventh Jessica Keller, St. Legier.

But for now, I’m just hyper-jazzed that you can listen to the whole of The Science Officer Season One. Get yours today!

This one is for my Egyptian friends, but anybody outside the US can use this to their advantage, as a way to embrace the Indie Publishing world in the so-called Western World.

Recently, one of my con buddies from Cairo asked about finding an English-language publisher for his novel. (Working on that, but he wants to go more traditional than I do, so a longer task.)

However, it got me to thinking about how him and his buddies could go about doing it. The tools necessary are relatively simple and cheap these days (at least by US prices, not sure how things convert elsewhere.)

The world has changed.

Print that and stick it to your bathroom mirror. Or post it on a sticky note on the side of your screen.

At the most recent OryCon (40th), I presented this new case, separate from the old days of finding a publishing house, or starting a publishing cooperative, or just doing it entirely yourself. It saves you from a number of problems, and lets you offload the work as much as possible.

Ten years ago, the only organizations equipped to put out pretty books were the Traditional Publishing houses (what we refer to as TradPub or “NewYork” in shorthand). Indies like me could put things up, but doing good covers, good blurbs, pretty interiors, etc is difficult. Or was.

The world has changed.

If you would like to take your work (in English or translated) and put it in front of a global market (Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, B&N, etc.), here are a set of steps you can follow. And feel free to reach out to me directly with questions. And needs. I have many friends who you can hire for certain chunks of the work, if it is an expertise you do not have yet. (You need to learn these things eventually, or find the right people to hire.)

So let’s start with your manuscript.

If you can format it as a .docx type file (modern Microsoft Word formatting, regardless of source), then you can import that manuscript into a new program called Vellum. This is a Mac-only program at present (and probably forever). You can apparently rent virtual macbooks that come with Vellum installed in order to do the work. If you write slowly, that might be an economical choice. I write fast, so I’m always formatting something. It was worth acquiring an old Mac Air 13″.

Apple just released the new Macbook Air, so a whole LOT of people will be upgrading their old machines for Christmas. That means that you should be able to get a good refurbed machine (with warranty) for under $500 US. (link goes to random search on Amazon.com) Last year, I cashed in all my points from my Amazon Visa card, and got a machine WAY cheap as a result. You might ask for cash for Xmas so you can buy yourself such a tool. And remember that (for US folks at least) this is a business expense, as it all directly affects your burgeoning publishing empire.

Vellum makes pretty ebooks and pretty print books. It is not as perfect as you can achieve with Adobe InDesign, but it is also about 1/100th as much work to do. Time = Money in this instance. Do you want to spend a week or more formatting your book, or writing?

My buddy Chuck wrote a pretty good book on the process.

So you can get it all in there and get the machine ready to spit out pretty ebook, mobi, and pdf for you.

Next: Cover

You can get get good stock art at cheap prices (pay attention to your licensing when you sign the contract and get the right one) on places like Dreamstime and Shutterstock. This might be the place where you find the art and then pay a cover specialist to make you something pretty, because you’ll need to generate the ebook cover, as well as the full wrap for the print book. There are folks out there, and the going price seems to be $100-$300 US for something professional looking as a wrap, depending. (You can also negotiate deals with folks. I’d happily trade my time to some friends for things translated into other languages, for example.)

A good cover nails genre. The reader knows exactly what to expect, just from the thumbnail on Amazon. Look at my Jessica Keller books and you’ll see the spaceship on it. You know what you’re getting. This is where expertise is worth the money, to get the right font, the right color, the right “feel.”

So now you need a blurb.

Present tense. Four sentences, pretty much. Action from the first page of a short story or the first chapter of a novel. Nothing more. Don’t describe the whole plot. Don’t use the word “and” or any version of “is” when you write it. Short, hard, pithy. Leave them breathless and demanding to open the book to read it.

Okay, then you put all that into Vellum and you have a book. Ready to publish. Easy as that (yeah, I know.)

But publishing it is complex as well.

The world has changed.

I know, as of summer 2018, that Egypt now allows Paypal. That means that someone in the US can send you money pretty easily. Worth the effort, as far as I’m concerned.

So we’re going to talk about the Bunny.

You can create an account for yourself on BundleRabbit and link in your paypal information so you can get paid later. Major revolution.

Now you create a new Project. (I’ve detailed a lot of these steps in my book on creating your own magazine, because I use the same process there. You should consider starting a magazine as well. The world has changed.)

You can invite yourself into the project, and put your name at 100% for payout. You can also put down an editor and artist,and give them a share of the proceeds instead, if you want to do that rather than paying them upfront. Up to you and them.

When you fill in all the information, you can then have BundleRabbit act as your publisher of record (Kydala Press, technically). Chuck will push the book out to Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, Draft2Digital, and others for you. And handle some of the crap that publishers have to go through with the middlemen. (shit happens.)

He will take 10% off the top, after the publisher’s cut, but that means that you functionally get a publisher and accountant working for you on a royalty-share method. You’ll note, it is possible that everyone goes in royalty-share, including an editor and cover artist, if you negotiate such a deal, so very little money has to come from you up front.

DO NOT LISTEN TO THE CHISELERS who tell you that they can publish your book for you for thousands of dollars US up front. You can hire professionals sure, and I can give you a list of people I trust to talk to. It might cost you some money, but the thieves don’t need to make any of it from you. Editors want to be paid. Cover artists need to put food on the table. But there are entire ecosystems now dedicated to some aspect of this major task, and they work fast at good rates.

Fabulous Publisher Babe ™ and I are talking about starting up our own service soon for certain folks where we will take a manuscript for maybe $100-$200US, depending. We’ll run it through the process I detailed above and then get it published on the Bunny, and we won’t take a percentage. You’ll get the 100% after Amazon and the Bunny take their cuts. You won’t get much choice in the overall process (we’ll pick the cover and write the blurb, with a little input from you, but no prima donnas need apply).

You’ll deal with Bundlerabbit at that point and all points going forward. We’re just mechanics helping with that middle process. What is still a little messy, at least for the next two years. And we won’t take many clients, but I’m also planning to train a few other people on the process, and once they are ready, they’ll start their own publishing support gigs.

As an Indie, there is no marketing budget except what I put in. Sweat and time. But most small to medium publishers don’t really have much more money, time, and expertise to dedicate to your book, either. They got their cash in the past by being the professional gateway you required to actually get your book on a shelf somewhere.

The world has changed.

Let me know what questions you have.

You’ve got less than 38 hours as I write these words to get out there and get all the car chases, spaceship battles, and epic mecha slugfests you need to get through the Christmas season. Why the hell are you still reading this.

Go buy these books!!

Okay, back? Got them all? What, I need to sell you more than the awesomeness of  Loren L Coleman and Robert Jeschonek running around in giant fighting robots? What the hell is wrong with you?

Fine. How about AI starships, space pirates, and alien invasions?

Look, you’re gonna regret not buying this bundle. That’s all I have to say. It’s amazing, broad, serious, and silly. And you know that Christmas this year falls on a Tuesday, so I’m guessing you took three days off and won’t go back to work on Wednesday. Whachagonnado when the football is over and you’re back to reruns and soap operas on television? Binge on YouTube videos all day? (Not judging. Much.)

Maybe you need to just buy yourself the Christmas present YOU wanted and not have to rely on the family to guess how awesome this will be. Do you really want to risk nothing but socks and ties?

Get out there and buy this bundle. And move quickly. You got less than thirty-eight hours from this moment, and it will take some time for the signal to reach you, so the clock is definitely ticking and you’re about to be out o………..</signal lost>

Good, now that I’ve got your attention, you should look at the calendar. NaNo is going to be over in a few days. For many of you who have never done a NaNo before, you’ve been pounding away at the keyboard trying to complete your novel. (And if you’ve done it, then YAY!!!!! GO YOU! If not, keep plugging away.)

Sometime next week, NaNo will be officially over for this year, but that just means that your work is moving on to the next phase: editing, polishing, and publishing.

Fortunately, there is a lot of help available from folks who have been through this before and done the NaNo thing, but are now full-time writers. This is a bundle of twelve books that will help you with the various bits and pieces you need as you decide you like writing, and want to move on to doing this as a career. (And yes, you can make a career of it. I no longer have any other job, except feeding the cat.)

Twelve books: on writing, polishing, publishing, and learning to write with speed.

This is also the official NaNo bundle for 2018, so they have been reviewed to some extent to make sure that you’re getting good information from professionals who want to help you, rather than predators (the old days of vanity press) who just want to take your money and screw you.

Never trust someone who demands lots of money up front. There are services that are legitimate, and they’ll give you references you should talk to before giving them cash. Or talk to your friends. We’re building a whole support economy here.

For now, finish your novel. If you have, then take a deep breath and do a HAPPY DANCE!!!!!! around the room a few times. You have now done something a minuscule fraction of the world ever accomplishes.

Next week, you’ll put it aside and forget about it. Leave it for at least a week. Then come back and read it top to bottom. Clean copy means that you only need to fix a few errors, clean up some language, and then you are ready to go.

If you don’t write clean copy, you need to learn. I’m sorry, but that’s the only way to succeed anymore. The old days of an editor doing major surgery to fix your manuscript are gone, if they ever existed. It is a skill you can learn. Several of these books show you how, step by step.

Then you clean the document up and send it to a First Reader. Not a Critique Group. NEVER a Critique Group. You want someone to read it and tell you what sections work or don’t work, rather than someone redlining it like an English teacher.  First Reader is an emotional reaction.

• If a reader tells you a passage doesn’t work, they are almost always right.
• If a writer tells you how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

Get a First Reader you like and trust. Then listen to them and expect to take 75-90% of their comments if you mesh well. Not all of them. I have a copy editor I love, who gets me, and I only take 95% of her comments. (She did once correct the day of the week in the year 13,445 CE, and I just assumed she was right, because she’s that good.)

Fix their issues and you are DONE. I know people who use lots of first readers, and lots of drafts, and I think that is a mistake. Each pass strips some of your voice out of the manuscript and eventually you end up with “white picket fence vanilla” as a story. Nothing exciting. No emotion. None of the visceral rawness of good literature. Just pretty words devoid of meaning.

At that point, either publish it or start querying agents, depending on your religious bent. I don’t do TradPub, so I can’t help you with agenting a manuscript. And I feel it is a waste of time, unless you happen to be Joanna Rowling and haven’t told anyone. That’s a one with a whole lot of zeroes behind it if you are.

My process is that it goes into the publishing queue at that point. Finalize. Cover. Blurb. Publish. Repeat. I write fast. I would rather spend my time writing the next novel, instead of spending a lot of effort rewriting this novel. Your Mileage May Vary, but I’ll publish way more than you do as a result. And yours still won’t be twice as good as mine (or three or eight times, depending on how many reworks and redrafts you do).

The best way to learn to write is to write. Not rewrite. If you rewrite, you are teaching yourself to rewrite. Write the next novel and make it better than this one. And then the one after that. Repeat.

So remember to relax when NaNo is done. Take a quick break, and then prepare for the next steps. Maybe read a few books to get you ready for the editing and publishing phase, so you can be successful sooner.

I believe in you. Others will as well. But they can’t buy a novel you never publish, so I need you to step up here and make it happen.

And best of luck. The future is glorious!

In the late 70’s when I was a kid, the family went to Breckenridge, Colorado for a long Thanksgiving holiday. Snow, skiing, fun, stuff. Really enjoyed those trips.

One year, total whiteout conditions. Like, can’t see the car from the window blizzard. We ended up straightening out coat hangers to roast hotdogs over the fire. ‘Cause that’s what you do.

When I moved to LA in ’90, I started a tradition wherein me and my roommates cooked chilidogs for Thanksgiving, because we were all from out of state and didn’t have family to go visit. Kept that tradition up when I left LA in ’95. Did it back in Kansas in ’96. Then moved to Seattle in ’97. Kept it up.

When Donna and I got serious, she was a fantastic cook. And so there was always a Thanksgiving turkey done. I ended up rotating to having my chili dogs for breakfast early, just because that had become my family tradition and I wanted to keep at it. (Yeah, don’t ask.)

Lost her ten years ago (summer of ’08) and her birthday is Nov 25th, so she is always on my mind this time of year. (And Fabulous Publisher Babe’s ™ birthday is a week later, so I am getting into planning for that.)

But the tradition was strong.

However, I was a broken soul for a long time. Way longer than leaving for LA in ’90. Didn’t finally decide to be a happy person until five years ago. Over the last decade, the annual task of reinventing myself has moved from where it used to be to how I can be more happy in myself in the future.

So last year, I skipped the chili dogs. Just decided not to do them. Put that in the past and let it go. That way, I can start remembering the good times, and not necessarily the bad times.

Fortunately, most of you didn’t know me at my worst. Very few people who were around me at the blackest times are still around. Snake died about fifteen years ago. Bishop’s just dead to me, and a number of others. Pike will never get on social media to see this. Nor will Frosty. Haven’t seen A-bomb in nearly twenty-five years. Coop still exists, but has turned into such a hermit that I have to poke him with a cattle prod set to high to get a response.

Others I miss include Sean and Perry. With Donna. I lost all three of them in a 14 month stretch.

But that’s yesterday. I want to be thankful that I had those times, and that I survived them. But I don’t want to be defined by them anymore.

So this year, Fabulous Publisher Babe and I were in Costco, meandering and looking for inspiration. In past years, we did a writing marathon over the holiday break, but I don’t have to go back to work on Monday. Or rather, I never stop banging away at the greatest hobby of all time.

She looked at the turkeys and decided she wanted to have one this year. We’ve had Cornish Game Hens in the past, but neither of us has ever made a full turkey. Her brother has a great recipe we’re going to try.

Then the side fixings. She’s making cranberry-orange relish. We’ve got Brussel Sprouts to bake. Keto/Paleo biscuits.

The fun is stuffing, since she’s full keto these days.

When I was a kid, cranberrys came out of a can and stuffing out of a box. She’s making it from scratch. We did with and without oysters, but her traditions include sausage.

So I just finished making two pounds of sausage for her. From scratch. When she asked, I handed her my book on sausage recipes and she picked.

Got two pounds of Kielbasa chilling and drying in the refrigerator as we speak. About half will go into the stuffing, and she’s going to have the other half for soups and whatever.

Told her I thought that should be my new tradition, to make sausage for whatever it was we were doing for Thanksgiving and got a hearty “OH YEAH!”

[brief pause while kitty demanded scritches. She’s decided in the last week she likes it when I scratch her back, after five years. I have apparently been found adequate by the cat.]

So that’s my new holiday tradition. We try to do something new on a regular basis, as part of the Anti-Stodgy Campaign.

What are you doing to not fall into the same rut?

So,

it’s the weekend before Thanksgiving in the US (sorry for the rest of you, but go ahead and have some turkey and stuffing Thursday anyway, just so you can cosplay at home.) Fabulous Publisher Babe(tm) and I were in the grocery store last night picking up stuff when it dawned on us.

Reminder: I live out in the boonies at the foot of the Cascades, thirty-some miles southeast of Seattle. I have deer that live in my yard.

So we had to get a small turkey and start planning out the meals. Paleo stuffing (without the onions and mushrooms that will kill me), cranberry/orange relish, Brussels sprouts baked in bacon grease, paleo bread. Etc.

We are NOT going to visit the family this year. My nearest close relative is in Kansas. Her nearest is in Los Angeles. We’re staying home and writing, because that’s what we do. (If you are stuck in Seattle area without family and want a quiet afternoon, ping one of us.)

But, for those of you who are going to Grandma’s house, this is your reminder that there is some amazing military science fiction available over on storybundle for a few more days. You owe it to yourself to go pick up several hundred thousand words of top-notch booms, bang, and assault mecha doing their thing. Dean’s in there. Kris. Tami. Keith. David. Stefon. Loren. Planet Bob. I’m in there. And there is a collection of Fiction River called Valor with eleven stories, including Lee Allred. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Many Americans take this whole week off, because three vacation days turns into nine sleeping in. Maybe you’re traveling. Maybe you’re just hiding behind the closed curtains. (You aren’t supposed to start decorating for another two weeks, so skip that part and start making yourself some hot chocolate with maybe a dash of something extra for cold nights.)

But you should be reading. It will keep you distracted from the nastiness of the world, at least for a few days, and we all need that, going into the holiday season. Plus, you might be able to distract your crazy in-laws or uncle with a story you just read, and not have to listen to their latest conspiracy theory on reverse vampires or Jade Helm II.

So go get the books. Or maybe you should do someone an early Christmas present. These will be gone by then, but traveling for the holidays is always stressful, so treat yourself or the ones you love RIGHT NOW. Someone can hide from the world for days behind their reader slab.

Go get Valor. Save yourself, your sanity, and the galaxy, all in one go.

🙂

And no, I don’t need commentary from the peanut gallery on that one, thank you very much. But man, was last night’s dream weird.

I’m a writer, in case any of you had any doubts. The question is not “How do you get your ideas?” (Poughkeepsie, New York, long story), but rather “How do you make them stop?”

So I’m sleeping heavy and deep early this morning. The whole thing assembles in my head and stays with me with I wake up, which is uncommon. Usually, I forget the dreams on waking, but retain flavors. Nope, whole damned idea.

Disclaimer to follow:

1. I don’t write horror.
2. I won’t claim this idea later, if one of you decides to write it all down.
3. I will demand, at a minimum, a dedication at the front, blaming me for everything, and a paper copy at some point, if you end up writing it.

Okay, let’s get weird.

The Cthulhu Mythos always returns, again and again, to cities laid out in non-Euclidian Geometry, whatever the hell that means, as a way of indicating “Things Man Was Not Meant To Know(tm)” and all that jazz. Simply learning how to think and understand that way will drive a man or woman completely and irrevocably insane. Every story agrees there.

However, you can train an AI/Machine-learning-program. Think about those bastards that force a Machine Learning algorithm to watch 1,000 hours of lawyer commercials. Or Bob Ross videos.

So, Man cannot learn about the true depths and meaning of the Dread Old Ones. However, you could program a machine to do it for you. And you cannot unlock the doorway, because by the time you understand how to summon Yog-Sothoth, you’re utterly nuts.

But a computer doesn’t care. And the phrase: “The stars must align” is a metaphorical concept, not a literal one, because even they recognized that the chances of one of the monkeys figuring it all out were astronomical in scale.

So you suddenly understand that you can open the path, by training a computer to solve the formula. But it’s a complete, and utter bitch. One of those where the NSA would require millions of years of computer time to brute force it open. Because they are using Euclidian Geometry to do it. Decision trees and binary, rather than insanity.

So you attach it to a block-chain. Create a crypto-currency where “mining the blocks” to “Solve mathematical problems” is actually deciphering the formula to summon the Greater Gods from R’lyeh to the here and now. (And boy, won’t Cthulhu be surprised when someone actually knocks.)

With me so far? Great. That’s the first half of your novel right there. Mystery. Thriller. Horror, Urban Fantasy. Science Fiction. They all work to that point.

Are we trying to raise Chuck from R’lyeh or prevent it? (If Charles can become Chuck, why can’t Cthulhu? Have you asked him which he prefers?)? What happens when Yog-Sothoth shows up? Did you bring enough alcohol for someone who’s been trapped in a foreign dimension for millions of years? Somehow, I doubt they were on the Elemental Plane of Good Beer.

So, you get to take that and run with it. If anyone asks, print this off and save it, so they can’t sue you for getting too close to their idea, because I just woke up and wrote this blog post, without asking the interwebs if it has previously been done. (And no, that is not a search I plan to undertake.) Plus, you’re going to write your story, your way. A dozen of you could all start out at the same spot above and never get any closer to each other. Not worried.

But damn it, I will throw a fit if you don’t blame me in print. And I seriously want a copy when you get done, preferably signed, but you can just drop ship it and then live the rest of your life wondering when I’m going to show up on your doorstep to get it signed. Ye Haff Been WARNED!

heh

On your marks. Get set. Go Call Chuck!

And remember that my brain’s strange enough that those aren’t even the weirdest sorts of things it comes up with.

We now return you to your regular programming.

Since I’ve had to give this speech several times of the the weekend at the just-completed OryCon in Portland, OR, I figured I might as well just post it for everyone.

As you are now approaching the halfway point of this year’s NaNoWriMo, many of you need to celebrate one key aspect of things. Too many of you will lock in on the fact that you’re behind on your expected wordcount. Today, being the 12th of November, you would hope to be at or ahead of 16,000 words. Many of you are, and YAY!

For those of you who aren’t, you need to remember to stop and look at the glass as being half-full. How many words do you have done? Especially compared to your normal month? When you get to the end of NaNo, even if you didn’t complete your 40, you still need to remember that you wrote.

I can’t tell you how many writers I know who lock themselves in on all the negative emotions when they can’t write as much or as fast as they originally wanted. That, in turn spins them downward into a destructive cycle from which it takes so much energy to escape. Many writers never do.

You are a writer. You do something that very few other people do. Celebrate that. the glass is not half empty. That glass will ALWAYS be half empty, especially with all the awesome ideas you want to pursue and write one of these days. I can’t tell you of the lists of novels and series I want to spend time committing to paper.

It is also half full.

Half full means you have accomplished things. Revel in them. List down all the wins you’ve had this year, rather than any of the places where you might have fallen short of your original goals.

I know people who do challenges, where they try to do something crazy like write 30 short stories in 30 days. Frequently, they only write something like 20 or 25, and get down on themselves. In missing 30, they don’t honor that they have 20 new short stories that they can publish or submit somewhere. They think they have failed because they missed hitting the impossible goal. They have ONLY written 20 new short stories. (Seriously, people. WTF?)

I know people who thrive on challenging themselves to the impossible, and never let it get them down if they miss. But most writers are most emphatically not in that category, and it gets toxic after they think they are a failure.

You aren’t. You write.

Even if you only wrote two sentences today, you wrote. That’s all it takes. Put words to paper. You will have good days and bad days. Make hay on the good ones and don’t let the bad ones defeat you.

If you miss your NaNo target, the point is to to just keep writing into December so that the novel gets done at some point. You only can fail when you let yourself give up on writing. Nothing short of that counts.

And remember, you are not alone out there. There’s a whole tribe of writers and creatives who can help when you have questions, because that’s what we do.

—————————–

Now, a word from our sponsors. 🙂

NaNoWriMo does an official story bundle each year. I’m in it this year, but every year it is chock full of useful information from a number of people, any of which might help you take the next step or at least understand that self-care is the single most important thing you can do as a writer.

Never let the bastards grind you down.

Now, go commit some novel.

Hey gang, I’m in a new story bundle!!

VALOR, a military science fiction story bundle is out, and includes my never-been-published-before-and-you-can’t-even-by-it-yet novel “Can’t Shoot Straight Gang Returns.”

This is another Handsome Rob gig, part of the Alexandria Station universe and taking place roughly around the same time as the later Jessica Keller novels.

The first story “Can’t Shoot Straight Gang” was in Boundary Shock Quarterly Issue 003  (Grand Theft Starship). Now the gang’s back for another crazy mission, but this time everything goes wrong and keeps getting worse as the clock is ticking.

In addition, there are a bunch of other good novels and anthologies in here for all the military SF fans. Dean Wesley Smith. Kristine Kathryn Rusch. David Bruns. Loren Coleman. Even an issue of the Fiction River Anthology filled with even more amazing authors and edited by Lee Allred.

Like Handsome Rob, your time is running out on this bundle. Get yours today and give yourself an early Thanksgiving present to read as you recover from the turkey coma.

So my social media boards and walls have been full of folks doing the annual NaNoWriMo plunge. National Novel Writing Month runs November, and the goal is for someone to write a (40,000 word) novel in this month. There’s help, and we’ll come back to it later, but let’s talk NaNo itself.

For new writers, that’s a scary project. TradPub always told you that you could write one novel in a year, and had to labor painfully over each and every word and sentence. Agony. Rewrites. The works.

Hornswaggle.

You sit down and write. Simple as that. Writing is a muscle. If you commit to writing, you’ll develop it. Your plan should be to reach a point where you can write 1,000 good words in an hour without distractions. You won’t get there immediately, but you won’t run a marathon in three hours your first time either. Practice. After that, it becomes math.

1000 words/hour means 40 hours of work, give or take. Let’s call it 50, so you have time to think and plan as you go, assuming you’ve already roughed out your notes and outline in October. 50 divided by 4 equals 12.5. So you need to put in about 12-13 hours PER WEEK over the whole month if you don’t fully average 1000 words/hour.

Let’s assume you’re serious about this project. That’s 2 hours each day hard writing, with some gaps for things. How much television do you watch after work? How about the weekend? The average football game is 3 hours. Skip two of those and write instead on saturday and sunday and that’s 5000-6000 words, rounded off. And that’s just the weekend afternoons. You’ll have other time to do things.

When I had a day job, I got up and went in way early to get an extra 2 hours to write in the mornings, all by myself, in the kitchen at the office. And I wrote in the evenings, but usually only 2-3 nights at most (I wrote 7 days per week and usually 28 days in 30.)

You can do this. Let me repeat that: YOU CAN DO THIS!!

If you are a morning person, get up early this month. Night owls, stay up a little later. Get in 2 hours of work each week day, by not watching tv for a month. Its not like you can’t go back and binge in December. This isn’t the old days where you had to wait for reruns to come on in the spring.

2 hours each day. Maybe before the kids wake up or after they go to bed. Maybe your lunch hour or on the bus on the way home. Add it all up, even in small chunks. Find yourself 10 hours. That’s presumably 10,000 words if you are working at it. Over 4 weeks, that’s 40,000 words, without the weekend. Or one hour each day and six hours on the weekend skipping football.

It adds up. That’s how it works in this game.

You can do this, but you have to want it hard enough to commit to it. That means giving things up. People tell me they want to be writers, so I ask them how much they write. That’s what writers do: Write.

So write. It will amaze you how easily it will flow, once you commit to prioritizing writing over other things.

I have faith that you can do this.

It’s never really NaNo that kills people. It’s what happens afterwards.

Let’s talk about December 1, after you have written your novel. (and if you only got 3/4 of a novel done in November, remember to throw a party. YOU WROTE MOST OF A NOVEL. Now finish it.)

When you have this manuscript, what do you do with it? If you are a chronic rewriter, you probably never got more than one chapter anyway, so let’s assume you actually finished.

Put the damned thing away for the month of December. Period. You aren’t allowed to even admit you have such a thing. If someone asks, you say “Yes, did NaNo this year.” That’s it.

In January, you come back to it and read the document, front to back. Don’t change anything. Fix places where you left words out of a sentence (like I’ve NEVER done that). Run a spell-checker and make sure you caught things.

Then send it to your first reader and put it away.

Don’t touch it again.

When your first reader sends it back, fix the things they marked as awkward, or sentences that don’t make any sense (again, I NEVER do that). Add in the bits where something in your head never quite made it to paper.

Nothing else. No rewrites. No ripping whole chapters out because you could do it so much better if you spent another six months on 1000 words. Fix the obvious problems.

Now, here’s the hard part. Take a very deep breath. Maybe sit down first before you continue.

Ready? Sure?

Okay.

Publish the damned thing. As is. Slap a cover on it. Write a blurb in the active voice. Put it on Draft2Digital and have them distribute it everywhere. Dan and Kevin and the others are good folks, and your novel will go worldwide for folks to read and pay you money.

Put it up on BundleRabbit so other folks can find you and put you into bundles for the marketing opportunities.

But you are now done with this novel. I don’t care if you think it sucks. Almost every young writer I know thinks their work is crap. Part of turning into a professional writer is learning to get over yourself and have confidence that you write good stuff. We can’t all be Stephen King or JK Rowling, so don’t try.

Tell a good story. Tell the best story you know how. Then learn from this one and got write the next one. Do not look back.

DO NOT LOOK BACK.

Some of my early stuff makes me cringe to read. Shit happens. I’m a better writer now than I was one year ago, let alone five. I’m not going back and fixing things, except where someone points out a problem I can fix (like mixing up two characters and five different readers missed it until three years later and the audio person asked. Whoops).

Write a better novel next time. You don’t get better as an author rewriting the same novel six times. You get better by writing six novels.

I’m midway through novel twenty-one. I know people with fifty and more. They try to get better at their craft with each one.

So, how do you get better? Keep writing new things. Publish them and move on. At the same time, the folks at NaNo do a story bundle every year (the official nano bundle, that runs all of October and November). I happen to be in it this year.

This year’s is full of serious firepower from pros who have been where you are today. (And me.) How to write better, cleaner, faster. How you can make the leap from wanting to be a novelist to actually doing it.

It is a muscle. You develop it the same way you do anything else. But it is also a lifestyle. Writers write. If you aren’t writing, you won’t get much done. If you don’t prioritize writing over other things, then those other things are more important to you.

I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you that, but that’s what it takes. Writing (all art, for that matter) must come first. Not to the exclusion of other things, but you need to find ten hours each week to write, if you want to write a short novel. I can’t help you with Epic Dark Fantasy trilogies, except to help you with the math and say that 600,000 words is 600 hours of writing, spread over 13-14 months at this pace. If that’s you, you’re a better man than me. I like to keep them short and fast, rather than long, but that’s me. I’ll settle for two novels per month right now.

You are responsible for your own career. That’s the most useful advice anyone has ever given me at a writer.

NaNo is a way to help you focus on pushing through a short marathon to know that you can do this. Then you learn how to repeat it, and these folks can help.

But remember that however it goes, you will succeed by sticking with it on December 1.

Keep writing.

And congratulations.