Happy Week of Days With Descriptors!

We are nearly at the end of said days, but as the focus of today is "Giving" it is the perfect time to remind everyone of my raffle. I have six Audible codes for the An Unattractive Vampire audio book and if you give money to an at-risk cause, your name will be entered in to win one of them. If you need more information, visit my website or see my last update. There are lots of lists out there of groups who need help. Groups like Trans Relief Project, CeaseFire Illinois, Doctors Without Borders, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and more. 

Once you’ve donated (and you did donate, didn’t you? *Guilt stare*) tell me you did. You can respond here with a comment (don’t just like the post, that doesn’t actually tell me anything) or find me on twitter or e-mail me at anunattractiveemail@gmail.com. Your name will be entered into the contest which ends December 15th.

Look it’s win/win. You win because you get to feel good about yourself AND might win a free audiobook. They win because they get the money and resources to help people who desperately need it. And humanity wins because the entropic decay of the universe will be put off a little longer. EVERYBODY WINS!

Except for the cannibal Futurekind. They don’t win.

This is just a quick heads up about the status of LandFall.

During the week LandFall was moved out of ’The List’ and placed over in the LaunchPad contest. This is an error. I’m hoping it’ll be resolved soon.

I’ve done some looking and I think I have a pretty good idea as to what’s happened, but until I know for sure, I can’t say what the outcome of that resolution will be. For now though, I’ve put a hold on working on the story until I know what’s happening.

I wanted to be transparent about the situation and will continue to be so going forward. Stay tuned, when I know, you’ll know.

Keep an eye on that horizon.

Okay, update time. A short-ish one.

No calendar chart today, mainly because there was nothing new to put on it over last weeks.

Everything was rather disrupted again this week, must be the time of year. One thing I did find the time to do however, was to listen to the entirety of my book over a couple of days.

Yes. Listen.

Now it may have been with my Mac’s automatic text-to-speech through Scrivener, but it was overall a pretty good experience. The most surprising part of it all was that I actually found myself entertained by my own writing. There were small comedy moments that I’d forgotten I’d written that I actually laughed at. So I think that’s encouraging? Right?

I also realised that structurally, I’m really solidly pleased with the second half of the book. There are a few kinks to work out on the front end, but overall there’s not as much hardcore editing/rewriting to do as I thought. Which is good.

Work is back to focusing on Ghosts again this week, LandFall has hit a bit of a snag which has it in a form of limbo. Hopefully, it will get sorted soon.

Until next time.

You will not believe this... 

I have never typed “The Animal in Man” into any search engine. Not during the Sword & Laser sequel campaign. Not during the ten months finishing the draft. Not during the last two months of ‘rest’ I’ve enjoyed. Not once.

Until today. I’m pleased to say that your favorite philosophical fantasy-science-fiction novel featuring animals that walk, talk, and brutalize one another came up as the third result from the top. And who was above me? This:

I cannot believe this... I had forgotten all about this song. Listening to it this afternoon, on repeat, has been surreal. My older brother used to crank the volume of this very song when we drove to high school in the morning. And now… Now I remember. Give “The Animal in Man” a listen. Let the Dead Prez tell you, in 3 minutes 19 seconds, the same type of story that mine attempts to tell you in [roughly] 500 pages. (Original credit, of course, to George Orwell as well.)

...Just don’t let the song discourage you from a pre-order, if you haven’t made one already. Don’t assume these talented rappers or George Orwell himself get to have the last word about what does or doesn’t separate man from his bestial nature. Consider a third perspective. Thanks very much, my dear animal.

I meant to send this update out last week, but I am forgetful.  First off the edit I decided to do on Magus is going to take longer than my original estimate, because it always takes longer than the original estimate(I suspect all my fellow writers will understand that).  As I’m looking over I’m finding not just the matter of a few descriptions which could have been more clear in their wording, but also a few bits of dialogue that with some minor tweaking can be much better displays of the characters’ personalities.  Its still minor changes, but also one’s which will only make the book stronger.  Unfortunately its also the kind of changes which require I go over the entire book word by word.

Now on to the slightly more detailed explanation of my plans for Magus.  First I’ll start with what I had intended for Magus when I started writing it: for it to be released in a serialized fashion, basically a sequential release of short stories which each told their own story and part of a larger story.  This was started years ago and at the time I looked around and decided that while there are obviously still magazines that include short stories, that serialization had faded to a point of near non-existence so my plan wouldn’t work.  As a result I hadn’t looked into it in the years since, but after my first campaign ended I was contacted by a website asking if I wanted to serialize through them.  I decided to wait on that since I knew I wanted to give an Inkshares campaign one more shot, but it did cause me to go on a bout of new research into serialization options and the resulting discovery that a decent number of them had popped up in the time since I abandoned the idea.

So, stage 1 of my Magus plan is to go the serialization route.  Since most of the terms for such sites understandably state that the book cannot currently be available elsewhere in a digital format or free online that means I will be taking down the chapters I have posted here as well as those on Goodreads and Wattpad.  Starting next Tuesday I’ll take down one posted excerpt every other day.  This will begin with the first excerpt (chapters 1-3) and continue sequentially from there so if you want to get a free read of any of the chapters that’s the timetable you’re looking at.  Once that and the current edit is done then I’ll start submitting to some sites I have in mind.  I would most like to get Magus on either Serialteller or Channillo (you can actually read the work of another author who started funding on Inkshares and then moved to serialization, Rebekka S Leber, here on Chanillo), so hopefully that will work out.

I do still want to one day get a print run of Magus out there, so stage 2 of the plan occurs concurrently with stage 1 as I scrape together funds to get the book into the condition I want it to be physically both from an editorial perspective and interior artwork-wise.  My current idea for a serialization outline would have it running about a year, maybe a year and a month, so I hope to have gotten everything to where it needs to be by the end of that time, finances allowing.  If I’m still running short on financing I may consider running a Kickstarter to make up the difference closer to that time, but I would prefer to avoid crowdfunding if possible.

Also part of stage 2 is a continued effort to get my name out there and attention to Magus via a more active posting on my own and others’ blogs.  A general idea of attracting readers through actually writing basically.  I know full well that it will be a difficult task since I’m only one small voice in a very crowded field.  Try and I may fail, but don’t try and I will always fail.  Just gotta forge ahead and hope I can make the smart choices at the right times.

Since I will need to save up as much money as possible, that also means that I’ll soon have to stop almost all non-essential spending.  This unfortunately also means the backing of funding books on Inkshares, a freeze that I’m delaying until 1/1/2017.  I still want to do what I can to help others meet their funding goals though, so I’m going to try to do my best to keep my eyes open and spread the word about those books I really want to see published via recommending/sharing/reviewing and so on.  If you have a book you want to see get funded, whether its your own or someone else’s, still feel free to point it out to me.

Finally, stage 3 is actually getting that print run done and out into the hands of people who want to read it.  I have no doubt this will be even more daunting than stages 1 & 2, but I’m just too stubborn to not try.  Its also pointless to talk in more detail on this until the time draws nearer and I have a more clear idea of the strategies I’ll employ.  For now my main focus is on stages 1 & 2, with only light planning/brainstorming for stage 3.

Of course once these three stages are completed its far from over, since I’ll need to repeat some version of these stages for each book I try to put out whether its one of the many in the Exile series or one of my other projects.  I do hope that one day I can build a following large enough to reliably fund and release via Inkshares, but I have a lot of platform building to do before that day is here.

Feel free to contact me for any reason, though especially if you have any advice/tips/tricks for me as I prepare to forge ahead.  As always, thanks for your time and support, and keep reading and enjoying!