Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Okay, so I think I can finally sign off the Remastered Edition of A Division of Souls (a month early! yay!), which means I can now get back to working on Theadia. Woo! I'm still a bit nervous that I may have forgotten something important like proper formatting or missing a really stupid and obvious typo, but I think I've caught all the ones I'm going to catch this time out. More important however is that I fixed a few minor continuity and clarity issues that had always bothered me.

This of course is going to mean that I'll have to figure out how I'm going to promote this thing. I don't want to just throw it out there and say 'have at it' and get nothing in response. Which means I'll be spending most of August creating different possibilities. I've also pulled the physical copies from Amazon as I no longer want them available there when I can have them done POD through Draft2Digital where all my other novels are. That'll be something for 2026: how to make my works available in physical form through that platform.

Anyhoo, I'm crawling back to normal creativity once again, and that's good enough for me!

It's been a busy week here...starting with the Motion City Strk show on Sunday, working five days and ending Saturday night with The Airborne Toxic Event playing with the SF Symphony! Thankfully all those work days were opens or short midshifts so it was never really all that exhausting.

I am, however, embarrassed to admit that I haven't been up on my Theadia revision as of late. It's another chapter that needs a lot of TLC to make it work -- in this case, I had to ramp up the conflict a LOT more than what was originally there in order for everything else after it to work properly. I'm hoping I'll be back to normal quick(er) revision later this week. What will I work on after this novel is up to question, though I have at least one sort-of-almost-complete novel and maybe two or three ideas to play around with. But that's further in the future, so I'm not going to worry about that just yet!

Oh! And if I forgot to let those few of you know who follow me here, I've been posting chapters of Diwa & Kaffi over at Welcome to Bridgetown! I'm up to Chapter 20 as of last Friday, so if you want to start from the beginning, go here. I've decided after all that I'm going to self-publish this one, so I need to find an artist to commission. I've got a few in mind that I'd like to ask, and I'm totally fine with whatever I have to pay. This one's worth it.

Anyhoo. Not much else to report, so I'll let you return to your relaxing Sunday afternoon!

Wait, it's Saturday already?  When did that happen?  It was a fast week of Day Job stuff and catching up on writing, and not much else of import, so time seemed to fly by rather quickly this week.  Not that I'm complaining.  Midweek had some crappy weather as well, but currently there's no clouds in the sky so it looks like it's going to be a really nice weekend all around.

I'm still concerned that I might not make my autumn deadline for Meet the Lidwells but I think that's mainly because I'm having a bit of trouble at the moment.  The first act is done (creation of the band up to their initial success), and now I have to shift from that to act two (the highs and lows of success and creativity), and it's a bit harder than I expected.  If all else fails, I think I'll have to just make a hard shift there for now, and smooth it out in revision.  We shall see.

Secondary Project, aka The Apartment Complex story, is slowly evolving via the 750 Words site (much like I did with Lidwells a few years ago), and this one promises to be a lot of fun to write.  I'm coming up with some really fun characters and story ideas for it.  I don't think I'll be outlining this one as strictly as I did with Lidwells, but I should at least get the characters and places down. 

Related, I think this might end up being my writing process for a while.  I like the idea of working on new ideas in a playground atmosphere to let them grow and expand (thus letting me work on them during slow points of my day), while dedicating more serious writing time to the current project (which I'll have given a deadline for finishing).  This not only gives me a quicker turnaround, but also lets me work on and self-publish more projects.

Which of course brings up the question, do I want to keep self-publishing?  Well, funny thing about that:  yesterday I got a completely unexpected email response from an agent.  It was a rejection for a submission of A Division of Souls and I couldn't find the date of my original response...so I have no idea when I sent this.  This was before I ultimately decided to self-publish, so this must have been at least around 2015, possibly earlier.  I'll be honest, I'm amused and touched that they got back to me even after this long, even if it was a rejection!  But at the same time, it really put things into perspective: I simply don't want to spend all my time waiting for a yes/no from an agent or a publisher and not knowing either way until then.  I don't seek vindication...I just want to know if I'm Doing It Right or not, and I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to go that route.  Sure, self-publishing means a hell of a lot more work, but I've already proven to myself that I'm willing to do it all.

Anyhoo...going to have a relaxing weekend here, hope you have the same! :)

Wait, there's less than two weeks to go in the year? How did that happen?

Well, I'm not actually complaining that 2015 flew by too fast this time out...this past year has been quite creative and productive for me, so no real complaints here. A few unexpected changes in project deadlines, some frustration here and there, but I'd like to think I finally made a tremendous amount of progress.

I've made a lot of serious decisions with regards to my writing career this year. At the top of that list is my decision to self-publish the Mendaihu Universe novels, as well as the decision to do so with my other projects down the line. This decision didn't come lightly. I didn't do it because of all the rejection letters (or more to the point, the lack of any response), although part of my decision did in fact include my frustration in the seemingly infinite wait time between querying and production. I didn't do it because 'they don't believe in my brilliance'. I'm not that stupid. No, the reason I did it was because I wanted to see if it was for me, simple as that.

It was only after I gave myself that September 3rd deadline and learned the entire process from top to bottom that I realized that I actually loved doing it. I loved creating the cover, figuring out how to correctly format everything, forcibly distancing myself from the story for editing purposes, and even being creative with the release processes, including editing the galley copy for the physical version. I made sure I knew what I was doing and what I wanted to do. This was a creative and financial endeavor that was 100% my own.

Put it this way: my aim wasn't to be on the bestseller's list. It was to be out there in the world. And I achieved that. Twice, actually! There was the release of A Division of Souls but also the Uniquely North Quabbin collection (I have a short entry in there which also contains a few of my pictures). And I plan on doing it three more times in 2016: the second and third book in the trilogy, and Walk in Silence.

So what's in store for 2016? Well, I'll hit upon that in the next week or so for my final post of the year. I'll also be posting some of the year's pictures on my Tumblr, a retrospective of my writing at Welcome to Bridgetown, and my end of year music lists at the WiS blog.

But yeah...2015? I think overall it was a Very Good Year indeed.

Thanks to a little more fancy footwork using Photoshop, PicMonkey.com, and CreateSpace at Amazon, I've created the official cover layout for the print version of A Division of Souls. I quite like how it came out! The back cover is actually a zoomed-in crop of the top right of the original Shutterstock image. My only gripe is the kind of boring spine, but apparently I could not change the font or placement, only the color. Actually, my other gripe is that for some reason I had to price it at $18.99. I think that's a little steep, but apparently with Amazon's weird royalty setup, that's the lowest I could do it and actually make any profit. Granted, it is 500+ pages (500+ nicely laid out pages in Garamond font, I should add!), so it'll be a bit on the chunky side. This being the first edition, I'm sure I'll have forgotten something ridiculous or missed exactly one typo, but the good thing with Print on Demand is that I can do a quick fix, upload that version, and Bob's yer uncle.

It's not available in print just yet; the Powers That Be at Amazon have to check and make sure it's all groovy and everything. I will of course let everyone know when it is! That said, once this goes through, this will mean that ADoS will be available pretty much everywhere. Yay!

I will say that if you're wondering where to buy it, I have two suggestions:

1. If you buy the e-book via Smashwords (and it is available via all formats, including Nook and Kindle), I will end up getting the highest amount back. With the book at $5.99, my take is $4.69, the rest going to Smashwords for being the awesome people they are. Not bad at all!

2. Thanks to it also being distributed by Kobo, the book is also available through many brick-and-mortar bookstores that sell e-books on their website (for instance, I'm available through my local bookstore just down the street, Green Apple Books, as well as via Books Inc, a well-respected Bay Area mini-chain). If you buy the e-book through your local retailer that does the same, I'd be thrilled to give them a portion of the money as well.

Of course, if you want to buy it in your usual way, via B&N or Amazon or wherever, I'm cool with that too. :)

Wow. I can finally call myself a published author now.

It's still sinking in. How many years did it take me to get to this point? And compared to that, how few months did it take for me to go from making the decision to reality? I'm still amazed by it all.

But yeah...it's official, A Division of Souls is now available for sale! :D

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/565782

I really should not feel this exhausted by an afternoon of concertgoing.

Granted, this concertgoing includes quite a lot of walking, eating really bad things (including a cheeseburger with bacon utilizing two full glazed donuts as a bun) (yes I have photo proof) (YES IT WAS TASTY), constantly breathing in secondhand pot smoke and vaping vapors, and walking home afterwards. I'm not old, really I'm not. I'm just...out of shape. Yeah, that's it!

Various pictures were taken yesterday for Day 1 of Outside Lands (which I will be posting to Walk in Silence soon enough). In record time, I was told by OL Staff that my nicer camera was not permitted as I did not have a press pass, even though it's a) a personal camera, and b) has a detachable lens no bigger than 2 inches (okay, I measured it and it's 2 inches plus 1/8 of an inch, but let's not be pedantic asshats, shall we?) and was told to put it away. This kind of put a damper on my mood for the rest of the day, as I was really looking forward to taking good pictures. I don't want to be that photographer who flouts rules until caught. I went for the music first and foremost, so I was happy enough to take pictures with my phone yesterday (and got some really good shots!), and will be taking my older point-and-click today and tomorrow.

And yes, even despite being on my feet all day, eating bad food and grooving to good tunage, I still found time to work on the ADoS edit when I got home. There's a good chance that's the source of my exhaustion, but it's totally worth it.

OH! And speaking of A Division of Souls...I can't tell you how giddy I get looking at this page, making it official: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/565782

:D

After a slight bump in the road, in which I had to call Shutterstock to get them to process my payment correctly, I purchased a package of 5 downloads (which is good, considering I can use the others for books 2 and 3) and commenced playing with both Photoshop and PicMonkey to get what I wanted. I also consulted A. for her input on the visuals, asking what seemed to work best for a reader like herself.

The picture was taken by Tommy Zhang. :)

The funny thing is that I'd used Photoshop only for the cropping, as I was less than happy with the fonts they had available. And since I needed to work within the submission parameters most want, I had to make sure I had the right ratio. Which meant eyeing it because I can't do ratio math to save my life, measuring the picture using an actual ruler against my monitor (LIKE A BOSS) and considering it done. It's as close to the 1:1.33 ratio as I could get it.

As for the fonts, I used PicMonkey.com (thanks to Meagan for the suggestion!), which is what I'd used for the original outtakes. Goddess knows I did not want to use the Papyrus font (aka the pseudo-Celtic Wiccan font you see on all the New Age books), nor did I want to use the same science fiction fonts everywhere else. Something just that bit unique, but not overly so. The title is Geo Sans Light (bolded), and the subtitle and author name are both De Walpergen Pica.

So, total cost today? Just $41 for the five download credits on Shutterstock. I already own Photoshop, and used the free level of PicMonkey. Not bad at all.


Next up: Continuing the work on the final line edit, and uploading. :)