Go · Fiction · Finance
Go · Fiction · Finance
Jul 16, 2017
I buckled down this summer and finished Snapback Volume 2! It ended up about 5,000 words longer than the first volume, and I think it's considerably better. But you'll have to wait for September to decide for yourself. I'll have copies at Hal-Con.
Writing one novella per year, I've found, is a manageable task. Even with a full-time job, I've been able to muster up the motivation, two years in a row, to produce something that's 20-25k words. It's not a lot, and in years past, I've produced far, far more.
Ghostcrime was different. I really got going in 2009, when I was unemployed, and I wrote about 40k before burning out and putting it away for half a decade. When my life stabilized, I picked it up again and wrote the second half in 6 months, producing the masterpiece that we all love. But it was a considerable effort that drained me, and in the ~7 years it took to fully produce, I had nothing to show for it until the end.
The idea with Snapback is to produce and release consistently. To always have something new to sell at the conventions, and keep improving my writing and publishing process with faster iterations. So far, it's been working. And in a few years, I'll even have something I can push together into a single volume.
What would it take me to write another novel? Money and time, probably, in large quantities. But even if I devoted all my energy to producing a novel, I don't see why I wouldn't release it in serial. There were complaints when the seventh Harry Potter film would be split up into two parts, but does anyone care that they're not a single work now? If you can watch them one after another, what's the difference?
So those are my thoughts on big writing projects. But who knows -- maybe you're more productive than me and more disciplined, and you can write a novel without having your life fall apart as you do it.
I look forward to reading it.
Apr 2, 2017
I'm sure winter has been hard on all of us here in the Maritimes. Between the biting cold & the hours of darkness, I wouldn't blame anyone for losing the motivation to write.
On that subject, I haven't been doing a ton of that this winter, but nevertheless, I'm going to be selling the books I've previously written at this year's Spring Geequinox. Why don't you drop on by? It's the weekend of April 22nd, and on the Sunday I'll be running a panel on Go.
I am still planning to have Volume 2 of Snapback done for Hal-Con this fall, though. If you haven't read Volume 1, the eBook is only $0.99. Or half-price if you also buy Ghostcrime! A whole dollar is pretty steep, I know.
Nov 13, 2016
Last weekend I showed up to Hal-Con with a table full of newly-minted copies of Snapback, and I tell you, did the occasional person ever stop to look at them! In all seriousness, I did move a good number, and it was a successful weekend.
But then shortly after, I succumbed to some November sadness, as is expected, and I only just got around to producing an eBook version of the damn thing. So the PDF is up here now, and if you want a physical copy, you can order one of those, too. There's $5 shipping on that link, so if you're local and just want to pick it up from me, let me know when you order and I'll reimburse you the $5. God I'm accommodating.
And as for the eBook, a deal mechanism is in place, so if you buy Snapback and Ghostcrime eBooks together, you get $2 off the purchase! I'm just throwing money away. For literacy, though.
Oct 22, 2016
It's exciting times here in the living room that has become my studio -- after months of writing and years of editing, dithering, re-working, giving up, un-giving up, etc., Volume 1 of Snapback has been sent off to print! I'll be selling it for $10 at Hal-Con in two weeks. The eBook will also be available, if I can muster up the energy to produce it.
The foundation of the story took a long time to get right, but I'll be able to 'churn out' further volumes much faster now, and publish them digital-only. Volume 2 is about 2/3rds done at this point, and will probably be available early next year.
I guess another reason I'm excited for this to be out is that I built a 'price combos' deal system into this online store last year, when I only had Ghostcrime for sale. But now, with more than one book, I can bundle them together and offer discounts, making use of carefully-written, well-tested code from last November! Why am I even a writer. It is clearly more torturous than programming.
Jun 18, 2016
I've been sitting on a novella for years, so long now that the technology the characters use seem dated. It's never been perfect, though it gets better every year, and it's always needed some art, which I am not qualified to do. The book is called Snapback , and it's about some Go-playing friends who get wrapped up in an international board game conspiracy.
Bruce Delo loved the draft I sent him, and we thought he might be able to do the images, but he's going to be pretty busy on the next volume of Kobra Stallion. If he's going to get it out for Hal-Con 2016, I can't take him away from production. It is huge. And from the script and the first 50-60 pages, there's no doubt it's going to be amazing.
Recently, though, I've been working with Dawn Davis, and she's going to illustrate! This is very exciting news because Dawn is mega-talented and I think her style really works for the story.
So, at long last, Snapback will be released. It's going to the first in a series of 3 or 4 short novellas, all hopefully adding up to the bulk of one regular-sized novel. This lets me release faster and experiment with episodic structure.
Can't wait to see you all at Hal-Con.
May 22, 2016
It's not that the first edition was bad. The margins were slightly too small, so you really had to open them up to get into the middle of the page. The covers were a little dark, maybe. Wasn't a barcode on the back cover.
But this next edition. Oh man. Does it ever fix all of those problems!
Right now they're gathering a little dust in the office, but soon the first bunches are going out to local bookstores, where their new barcodes will be scanned by skeptical proprietors. I'm also putting aside a bunch for Hal-Con 2016, which I recently found out I've got a table at. See you in 5 months? I don't usually make plans this far in advance.
