Starwalker breaks 1,000!
Just checked my web stats for August, and Starwalker had over 1,000 unique visitors that month!
It’s not my bestest month ever – April cranked up 1180 unique visitors – but it’s my best one since I dropped the posting down to only once a week. Wow.
Completely awesome. It almost tipped over 200 in a single day a couple of times, too!
Also, today Starwalker tipped over 90,000 words. Yay!
Paper vs e-books
I came across this link on Twitter today, and thought it worth nailing down. It’s an interesting summary of the paper vs e-book battle, with some curious statistics. One worth keeping in mind when you’re thinking about which way to go to publish a book.
Plot burp
I have reached a strange place in the Starwalker plot. One saboteur has been caught, but there are suspicions that she was not working alone. The extent of the scheme hasn’t yet been uncovered.
This has led me into a bit of a quandry. On the one hand, I want to get the whole sabotage/betrayal issue sorted out, tied off, and kicked smartly off-screen. I don’t want to draw it out so long that my readers get sick of it and want it done already. On the other hand, if I do it too quickly, I might wind up missing out on some opportunities.
What I really need to do is dig out my original planning pinboard and see what the next phase is due to be. It it still in the garage after my house move, safe from damage and kittens who like to steal pins (I wish I was kidding about that). I’m juggling so many plot elements right now that I think I need to revisit the whole plan, see what shape it needs to take and how I might get to some of those places.
I’m almost to the mid-place of my original plan, and it is over 85,000 words now! I’d like to tie this off in a way that is both satisfying and moves on to the next phase of the story.
Challenges, challenges. Looks like I’m going to be busy replotting things this weekend, and possibly rewriting the post I’ve got ready to go up next.
Can’t wait to get going with it.
Reviewing things
Reviews are something I’ve been meaning to get into for a while. I’ve done a couple, mostly out of a need to vent my irritation and/or random thoughts about the subject material (Kill Bill and True Blood (season one), for those playing at home).
I find that the more I write and the more I explore writing, the more critical of fiction I become. This isn’t just books (which, because of all the writing, I don’t have a lot of time or headspace for at the moment), but includes TV shows and movies. Plotting, character development, continuity – all those elements that transcend media and tend to ping my radar when I’m reading or watching something.
Quite often, it’s the fiction that is almost awesome that annoys me the most. I want to love it. I want it to be fantastic, but there’s something that niggles. Those are the ones I get the urge to write about. Picking apart those annoyances helps me work out more of what I like and don’t like, what I want to avoid in my own work and what I want to emulate.
I’m going to try to find more time to write reviews. At the moment, there’s a list building up of ones that I want to do, namely and in no particular order:
- The Box (movie) – not at all what I expected, and more annoying the more I think about it.
- Inception (movie) – awesome on first viewing, but suffers under close scrutiny.
- White Tiger – Kylie Chan (book) – one I like much more than I had expected to.
- Remastering Jerna – Ann Somerville (book) – not my usual thing, but enjoyable nonetheless.
I’m also currently watching through the first five seasons of House, and occasionally discussing elements of it with a critical and yet addicted friend. I might pull my thoughts about that into some kind of review-type-thing at some point.
It’s a plan. I wonder if I can fit any of it in around my current commitments. Don’t hold your breath, but watch this space anyway!
HELP: Texan Cat Needs Home
I don’t usually post things like this, but this is an extraordinary case, so here we go.
A very good friend of mine living in the US is in an awful position. He has had to move and the cat he left behind needs a new home, or he faces being put down.
Here’s Dave’s story about his little fuzzy boy, Butterball:
Butterball is a fluffball, two-year-old grey tom, currently living in the Sherman-Denison area of Texas. I adopted him as a kitten, and he was a part of my family for a year and a half.
He grew up as an indoor cat with two others, and is well socialised with other felines. He’s naturally friendly and inquisitive, especially after he gets to know someone. He loves to play, often with great enthusiasm, but has never dealt with children before.
About seven months ago, he accidentally got out of the house. We searched for him, but he wasn’t seen for two days. We still don’t know what happened to him in that time.
When he came back, he had a mangled front paw and continuously mewled in pain. It took over a month of care, during which time he suffered uncontrollable bowels and a fever, but he finally pulled through.
Now, it’s almost impossible to see where his paw was hurt. Also, where he was wary of strangers before, now he’s friendlier and seeks company more than he used to.
When my fiancée and I moved, we had to leave him in her mother’s care, as we sadly couldn’t take him with us to our new home. My fiancée’s mother, Marsha, had cats of her own and could provide him with a good home.
Now she is being forced to move and can only keep one cat. Sadly, this will not be Butterball. If he doesn’t find a new home, he will be put in a pound or simply let go in the countryside. In a pound, his chances of getting a home aren’t good. As an adult cat with a plain appearance, he will lose out to younger, cuter cats when it comes to an adoption. If he’s not homed, they will put him down. In the countryside, he doesn’t have a chance; he isn’t a mouser and never learned to hunt.
He needs a home, a good home, one that is understanding and loving. That’s all I want for him; it breaks my heart that it can’t be with me. He’s a good cat. He’s had a harsher life than any animal deserves, and now not only is he about to be taken from the last vestige of the home he’s had for his entire life, he may end up out in the cold.
Any patient, understanding, and loving home would be enriched by him. He deserves a shot at a good life, so if you can help him find a home, please get in touch.
If you know anyone in the Sherman-Denison area of Texas who can help, either by giving him a home or helping him to find one, please please, let either me, Dave, or Marsha know. Marsha can be contacted on 903-647-5652 (between 4pm and 6pm Central time is best). Any and all help will be gratefully received!
Thanks for your time, everyone. I have my fingers crossed that we can find the little fella a new home.
Reactions wanted!
I’ve often said that I’m a feedback-whore – I love hearing from readers. It makes me happy.
I try to keep as many avenues for feedback open as possible, and am always on the lookout for new ones. With the Apocalypse Blog, it was emails from readers. With Starwalker, it’s comments on the blog, and then the forum. On the weekend, I added a new way for readers to give feedback to Starwalker.
First, let me explain how I got there. I was doing my semi-regular poke around the Web Fiction Guide forums, when I came across a thread that started out discussing weblit and traditional publishing, and wound up pondering the familiar question: why don’t more readers comment?
As it happens, one weblit author did a survey into exactly that, and her results are interesting. Not entirely unexpected, but it does have some great insights – I recommend that any weblit authors take a look.
It’s also worth taking a skim over the comments on that page, as that’s where I found the suggestion to add reaction buttons. Thanks to another helpful weblit author, I discovered that there is a handy WordPress plugin that adds reaction buttons to posts.
Commenting takes time and effort on the part of the reader. There might be many reasons why someone chooses not to comment: some readers don’t want to take or have the time to do that; others may be looking just to be entertained; and others may simply have nothing to say. That’s all fine! I know I’m often too busy to fill out a comment form when I’m going through blogs, and most of the time I wouldn’t have anything particularly interesting to say beyond ‘I agree/like this’. Sometimes I make the effort, but often I don’t.
Having a button to click is much easier. One click and there, feedback given. You can indicate an opinion without filling out a form or trying to formulate actual words. Quick and easy, so even a busy person won’t feel held up by it.
It’s not intended to replace comments at all – I still love and encourage comments. I do adore it when readers cheer on my characters, just let me know they’re reading, and all the other fun stuff I get in comments. Keep it coming! But now you can click when you’re not feeling so chatty.
I had a bit of a headache over what to put on the buttons. This particular plugin is very configurable – you can have as many buttons as you like with any labels on them. Awesome! Wait. What do I want people to click on, now? Um.
I wanted a negative-reaction button, because it feels weird to me not to give someone the chance to give negative feedback. I struggled with finding a label, though – I started with ‘sucks’, and then downgraded to ‘needs work’, and gave up because I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t troll-bait. So right now, there is no negative option (though there’s always the comments!). I might rectify this if people want it and I can think of something to put on it.
So, there you have it. A new avenue for feedback – click away! Tell me what you think! Suggestions for more/different buttons welcome. And the buttons are on every post, so readers can go back and click on favourite ones if they want!
Have fun!
Editing kicked off
Following my post on Friday, I managed to follow through on my intention to start on the mammoth job of editing the Apocalypse Blog over the weekend.
The weather was nice, which meant that I could sit out on the deck with my wad of paper and a red pen. Most importantly, this meant that I was away from the computer and the TV, and all of the distractions and procrastinations that they encompass. I put some music on and sat out in the fresh air, and got my head down.
I had a slight blip when I realised that I’d printed AB out without page numbers. I’ve been very careful about weighing down my piles of pages (and writing numbers on as I go), because I don’t want to have to try to put that particular jigsaw puzzle back together if the pieces get spilt! So far, so good.
It’s strange, reading through it all again. I haven’t read AB since I posted it – every now and then while I was writing it, I’d go back and read the first week or two to remind myself how Faith used to sound, but this is the first proper re-read I’ve done.
It’s not as bad as I had feared it might be. I believe I’ve grown as a writer since I started it – AB taught me a lot – and more since I finished it and started on Starwalker. But despite that, I don’t think AB is terrible (it’s easy to despise old work). I’m still proud of it, I think.
I’m not saying it’s perfect – far from it. There’s not a page without some red marks on it: some little tweaks, some shuffles. Nothing major yet, which is a relief; this isn’t intended to be a major re-write, just a tidy-up.
I’m about 60 pages in at the moment (it comes to between 500 and 600 pages altogether), so I’ve only made the first dent in the editing job. It still feels good to take this first step and start on the road towards getting the e-books sorted.
Also, I may have found someone who can help me out with the covers. Lovely!
I’m feeling positive and perky today. Here’s hoping I get time to do more of the same soon!
Remember that thing?
Every now and then, I kick myself about the Apocalypse Blog. I have so much I want to do with it, and no time to spend on it. I have new, more current commitments. In many ways, I’m moving onwards and upwards with the new blogfic, and AB is rapidly becoming That Thing I Used To Do.
It’s a little bit like tidying. Where I’ll let it slide, and slide, and go uncommented, and poke at it just enough to stop it being disgusting. And then I’ll get fed up of things being all over the place, and blitz the hell out of it until it’s perfect and sparkly.
That’s how I feel about AB right now. I keep letting it slide, let it sit in the background, glowering at me. But recently, I’ve been getting more in touch with people again (mostly through Twitter, and some FB meandering), and I keep seeing writer friends mentioning publishing and e-publishing, and it’s a good kick in the backside for me. That’s what I should be doing! Need to sort it out!
So this weekend, I’m hoping to blitz it. I won’t get the whole thing sorted – I wish I could! – but I’m going to make inroads. Time to start editing it and getting it together for e-booking. I even started a thread on my forum about it today (go comment! You know you want to!).
So. Editing frenzy. Let’s see if we can get this party moving towards having a huggable download available for my lovely readers. And then I can look at kicking over those other things on my list.
Rarr.
Starwalker posting update
I have just finished posting up this week’s quota of Starwalker updates. Great news – two brand new posts for you all! The mystery of Elliott’s collapse unfolds, and not in a good way. It’d be no fun if it was all smooth sailing, right? Starwalker just ain’t that kind of ship.
As those of you reading probably know, I’m trying to catch up after a couple of weeks off. So I was delighted to be able to pen a couple of posts and start to fill in the backlog. Oh, if only it was that easy. I’ve hit a heavy bit of plotting, and stretching it out to one post a week is just not feasible right now. There’s a lot to cover and my lovely little characters are not so sluggish that it takes them a week to get around to these things! I’ve spent half of my writing time lately just wrangling dates and timing.
So today’s postings – Unquiet sleep and The nightmare box – both cover only one week of actual plot-time. It’s going to take at least a couple more posts to get the current issue resolved (one of which is written), so it looks like there might be two coming next week as well. Then maybe I can work on closing the gap and getting the posts running to date! And then maybe I can work on a buffer!
And for those of you who think that it will be done once the sabotage business is figured out – no way. I’m on chapter 6 out of 12 I have planned, so there’s lots more to come. There’s no time limit on this the way there was on the Apocalypse Blog – it’s going to keep coming until I run out of stories to tell.
Off to put my feet up for the evening, now that my posting is done. I feel accomplished. Enjoy, everyone!
Kylie Chan and being published
As I mentioned recently, Kylie Chan came to talk to my writing group this month. I’ve been lax in updating here when this stuff happens, but I’m trying to get better at posting this kind of thing!
First, it might be useful to have a little bit about Kylie Chan. She’s a bestselling author in the Australian fantasy market, with four books published in her Dark Heavens series so far and the fifth one out later this year. She’s published with Harper Collins’ Voyager imprint, who are dragging their feet about publishing her overseas (in the US and UK markets), but she hopes to be released in at least one of those markets by early next year.
She writes modern fantasy (or contemporary fantasy, if you prefer) based in Chinese mythology and set in Hong Kong. It’s interesting stuff – I’ll review the first book of the series if I get the chance.
The meeting was a relaxed affair – we asked her questions and she chatted to us in a very open, honest way. I love it when guests feel comfortable enough to do that, as I generally try to foster a relaxed atmosphere in the group. We wound up running way over time, partly because traffic delayed people getting there and because it was really hard to stop talking! (Eventually, we got hungry enough to break for dinner, and that was it.)
We got lots of interesting and useful information out of the talk. We talked about the different ways to approach writing – ‘planners vs pantsers’, and the middle ground. Personally, I tend towards a ‘stepping stone’ approach, but the group is made up of a variety of planners and discovery writers. Everyone has their own way! It was nice to have a writer encourage us to write however it was best for us.
Kylie also talked about what it’s like to be edited, and was very frank about her experiences with getting and being published, which is better than hedging and trying not to put people off. (To be clear: this is talking about the traditional paper publishing industry, not self- or e-publishing.)
Let’s face it: getting published is hard. And once you’ve crested that hurdle, being published is not all it’s cracked up to be (unless you’re a rare shiny thing like JK Rowling or, heaven forfend, Stephanie Meyer). Startling worldwide success aside, when someone tells you ‘don’t give up your day job’, they are not necessarily insulting your talent; they might just be aware of how hard it is for a writer to earn a living from traditional publication.
Royalties are small and are only paid after they have covered your advance. From what I understand, it’s not uncommon for a book not to earn back its advance, and royalties tend to return little to the author.
There are ways to maximise what you earn from your work. Being published in as many territories as possible is one way, though you won’t get the same percentage from foreign market sales as you do from the book’s home market (which is, I believe, the first market it is published in, not necessarily where the author is). There are other ways, but this topic is what a lot of the talk revolved around.
For an unpublished author, negotiating that first contract can be a losing battle; you don’t have any cards to play, being an unproven risk for the publisher, and you usually don’t know what pitfalls to look for. You’re asked to sign away a lot of your publishing rights. On the plus side, you’re being published and on your way to being a known, successful writer. Future contracts will be easier to negotiate.
For writers in Australia, it’s tricky because while the Australian market is good, it’s not that big, especially when compared to countries like the UK and US. If your Australian publisher has the international rights to your book and chooses not to publish you overseas, then you can’t take advantage of those markets. That’s a lot of revenue to miss out on.
So what can we do about this? The most direct way is to go through an American or UK agent/publisher (there is no reason why you can’t do this) and be published in one of those countries first. It’s quite common for authors to do this, particularly genre or niche writers – I know a British horror writer who got published in the US, because it was so difficult to get horror published in the UK.
Another hurdle for Aussie writers selling overseas is writing about Aussie things. Kylie’s series involves an Australian main character, which is seen as a barrier to publishing in other markets (particularly the US). On the plus side, her books are set in Hong Kong and you don’t have to be Australian to read them (the Australian flavour to the book is subtle and unobtrusive, in my opinion), so hopefully this won’t be a big problem for her. I just hope the publishers agree and take the chance to find out!
Kylie also recommended a couple of books that helped her to prepare her books for publication. They were:
- Self Editing for Fiction Writers – Browne & King
- The First Five Pages – Noah Lukeman
I think I’ve babbled on enough. That doesn’t cover everything we talked about, but no-one wants a blow-by-blow. Right?
Hope you all find it helpful. I know I did!