Yesterday I announced that I’ll be self-publishing my fantasy novel, The Wild through my own imprint, Mythic Island Press LLC. This isn’t as frightening as it might seem at first. Book publishing is changing rapidly, and it’s much easier for a small press to bring out a book than it used to be.

Also, I’m lucky enough to have a few advantages. I’ve got a track record—six novels published by either Bantam Spectra or Tor, and a couple of awards that will help with promotion. This venture would be a lot harder if I were a first-time novelist.

I’ve also got family behind me, ready to help with finance and promotion. With luck, I’ve got other people behind me too—yes, I mean you who are reading this. You’ve been very patient with me through a long, dry spell and I truly appreciate it.

For you, I’ve got an offer and a request. We’ll be printing up twenty-five to thirty pre-publication (advance reader copies or ARCs) of The Wild. With luck, they’ll be ready to go out in early January.

We’d like to send them to a diverse set of interested readers: some who read mostly fantasy, some who don’t, some who like challenging books, some who prefer simpler fare, eclectic readers, occasional readers, writers, non-writers, men, women, different ages, different geographies . . . you get the idea.

What we ask in return is that you read the ARC within two to three weeks and answer a questionnaire on it, and on you, as a reader. Our goal is to discover and address potential problems with the story, and to determine how best to market it (and if we can harvest a few marketable quotes on the side, even better).

ARCs are expensive, so this is going to be a very limited list. Please don’t be offended if we don’t have a copy for you. But if you’re interested in being on the list, don’t be shy! Step right up and email me at linda at mythicisland dot com, and tell me a little bit about yourself and your reading interests.

As always, thank you for your interest in my work, and thanks for stopping by!

I’ve been wonderfully busy lately. Most of my focus has been on getting The Nanotech Succession ebooks off to market, which involved a big learning curve. And lest all that effort should go to waste, I’ve started spending more time promoting the books.

But this doesn’t mean I’ve been neglecting my upcoming fantasy novel, The Wild.

In mid-November we made the decision to publish The Wild ourselves, through my own imprint, Mythic Island Press LLC. I’m really excited about it. I love the idea that–for better or worse–the book is in my hands. I get to pick the cover, the release date, the promotion strategy. If it all fails badly, I will have only myself to blame, but I can handle that . . . better to rule in hell perhaps? Well . . . we’ll see!

Tomorrow: an announcement and an offer . . .

Just over a year ago I announced that I wasn’t satisfied with the responses I was getting from readers on my novel-in-progress The Wild, so I was going to undertake yet another revision, primarily of the story opening. Later in the year I talked about the butterfly effect and writing—how the partial revision I’d originally envisioned had turned into a complete re-write of the entire manuscript.

The re-write turned out to be a stuttering, sputtering process, with periods of productivity interrupted by long periods of nothing much getting done. But late in the game things finally started to click. I was suddenly immersed in the process, and completely neglected my other projects, with the happy result that Draft 3 was finally finished yesterday.

Hoorah!

The next step is to send it to a few test readers, to see what sort of reaction it gets. I’ll confess I’m nervous. The last two drafts didn’t fare too well. Let’s hope this one does better!

In the meantime, I get to start something new.

Yesterday I finished up current changes on another chapter of The Wild, leaving only a couple of chapters to go before the end. But a quick survey of these last pages revealed something I hadn’t quite realized before–or had refused to notice. All the plot devices I used before, all the motivations, even the loose ends that get tied up in the climactic scenes–all of these have to be changed.

The characters will remain the same, as will the location and even the ultimate result, but the details of how it all happens–just about every part of that will need to change.

At first I was extremely annoyed. But then I drew up a list of all the plot elements that now need to be included and it turned out that there was a lot to work with. Next I went on a long walk. I don’t usually get ideas while walking or working in the garden and such, but sometimes it helps, and this was one of those times. Short scenes started coming to mind, events, motivations . . . I even called home a couple times to leave some ideas on the answering machine so I wouldn’t forget them. I’m feeling better about it now. I’m even starting to think I could have a much better ending this time around.

My work time lately has been divided between three major projects, the most neglected being the novel. But in the past few days I’ve returned to working on it and have managed some decent progress. Today’s efforts resulted in only a bit of forward momentum because I needed to backtrack (yet again) and lay in some foreshadowing and explanation of a smallish plot point. Hopefully the incident will now be clear to the reader.

It’s really a challenge sometimes to figure out what the reader knows at any given point, as compared to what the writer knows. I’ve got so much extra plot knowledge rattling around inside my head that I have to make an effort to remember that the reader is naturally going to be less informed and things have to be explained on occasion, and clarified. But today’s effort has produced good results, and once again I am poised to move onward.

Nanowrimo is well underway. For those unfamiliar, this is a writing exercise, held in November, with the goal of producing a 50,000-word novel in a month. The idea, as I understand it, is to just write, without concern for the inner editor, letting the unconscious creative spark take over. You won’t have a publishable novel at the end of it, but you might have a good framework to build on, with some great scenes, and you will at least have something.

My daughter persuaded me to sign up for Nanowrimo last year. That lasted for about two hours and this year I refused to go near it. I’m not recommending against Nanowrimo. It’s just not the way I write.

There are writers who always write in the Nanowrimo style, pouring out chapter after chapter without pause or revision until they reach the end, and then going back to re-write it all later. And then there are writers like me who insist on a polished chapter 1 before going on to chapter 2, and if something in chapter 2 changes things, then of course one must go back to chapter 1 and revise accordingly. While I admit this is mostly personal style, for me there is also a logical reason for doing this—because naturally everything that happens in a given chapter is dependent on what happened, or what was introduced in prior chapters. So that when I do go back and change some plot thread at an earlier point in the story, the repercussions are always more than I initially hope. This is the writer’s version of the butterfly effect, and this re-write of The Wild is turning out to be a profound demonstration of it.

The idea behind this re-write was to change the opening to better set up the story, change some motivations to provide better conflict, and change some of the plot to do the same. But once those butterfly wings start stirring the air, the winds can get very erratic.

I had hoped to make big changes in certain sections while holding onto other parts—and significantly the last quarter of the book—pretty much “as is.” So of course I have wound up re-writing almost everything. Oh, I’ve preserved some scenes and lots of paragraphs, but I bet if I went through and highlighted new stuff versus old stuff (and no, I’m not obsessive enough to actually do this) it would probably be 70% new, even though it’s telling essentially the same story.

The really painful moments are when I am forced to dump favorite scenes because they no longer fit in.

But onward. I’ve figured out the major plot points and motivations for the next to last section and have even managed to recycle some of the more dramatic moments. Now to outline it, and then to write it. It’s still possible I could pull this off in a way that will require only minimal changes in the last section. That’s the goal, but I’m not making bets on it.

I’ve embarked on a new programming project. The good thing about it is that it gives me something productive to do when the writing is not going well.

Of course, the bad thing about it is that it gives me something productive to do when the writing is not going well.

For me, it’s not always a good idea to have viable alternatives for my time. Sitting in front of the computer for four or five hours and producing nothing is incredibly frustrating, but if it’s ultimately followed by a break-through, I guess it was worth it. However if I have some other project to turn to, odds are I won’t stick with the story for very long if I’m not “in the flow.”

I wish I knew what makes the difference between those times when I am completely immersed in writing and all those other times when I am ready to go try something else for awhile. I wish I could manufacture the first state-of-mind, which would make me ever so much more efficient!

That’s all right. The specifics for the current section of The Wild are coming together day by day, and eventually they will all be set down and I’ll move on. I’ve been writing long enough to at least be confident of that.

Once again I’ll take a shot at getting this blog re-started. Despite the silence here, I’ve been pretty busy these past months. As some may remember, my big goal this year was to self-publish my fantasy novel The Wild. As preparation for that, I sent a “final” draft to a few readers. I wanted to see if it would grab people–but the response was a bit underwhelming. No one managed to get back to me in under two months. Bad timing was a factor. People were distracted by other tasks and no one even started to read for several weeks after receiving the manuscript. Nevertheless, I know lack-of-enthusiasm when I see it. This was the first time I ever had to do some gentle nagging to get any feedback at all, and even then I did not get much more than, “I liked it, but the beginning is a little hard to follow.”

Hrmmm.

“Well, was it boring?”

“No. I was interested in it when I was reading it.”

But it was not, apparently, the sort of manuscript that would leave you sleep deprived the next day; and when you’re about to wager your own money on publication, a more bubbly response is absolutely required.

Now it’s true that my chosen readers are not writers themselves–at least not of fiction–but all are avid readers of novels. So if they were having a hard time getting through it, the logical conclusion is that the manuscript needs work.

Well, really, the most logical conclusion is that I should stop throwing good money after bad, and start on something new. I do have a new novel in the rough planning stages. It’s a mainstream work, topical, mildly comedic and meaningful if I can pull it off the way I envision–but I seem to be in the obsessive grip of The Wild.

So I have decided to go ahead and throw good money after bad (or more accurately to devote time that might be used for more lucrative projects) and do a major re-write. The first goal is to cut a substantial chunk of the 158,000 word length. For comparison, both Vast and Memory were around 130K. For the new version of The Wild I’m aiming for 110K, and so far am under 130, so it’s going well. That much cutting has led to dropped characters and plot changes that will hopefully tighten the whole thing up and give it more momentum.

So wish me luck. I would love to have the rough-cut done by the end of the month. I’ll keep you posted. No, really!

The name of this website comes from a place name in the fantasy novel that I finished last fall, and which went to market in January. Long after I had started writing this novel, but long before it was done, my agent called to say he was concerned – the market for heroic fantasy had collapsed, and almost nothing was selling anymore. I wasn’t too bothered. This was typical of my career – the collapse of science fiction arguably began around the time I started breaking into the market – and anyway, I was writing the book I wanted to write. I hoped to have it published – I thought it would be published – but if not, at least I would have written it.

So I kept at it, through some very stressful years.

When my agent read it last fall, he was… shall we say ‘concerned’ again? ‘Finely crafted, but doesn’t draw the reader in until well-along in the story.’ I was surprised, and none too pleased, but after some discussion it went off to market anyway. His premonitions proved accurate, for the novel did not find a home among the last of the major fantasy publishers. The general reaction was very similar to my agent’s, “Doesn’t grab me enough; Doesn’t draw me in.” Well, okay.

Strangely enough, I am not depressed. I still think there is a market for this book, but now I will have to find it without the involvement of New York publishers. This is not a horrible fate. Truthfully, I have had such awful experiences with the publication of the last two books that it’s not hard to look at this positively.

So unless I am struck by a bolt of good sense and persuaded otherwise, it’s my plan to self-publish the novel. Not as it is, of course. The book did not garner the reaction I expected, and I want to try to understand why, and re-write it, if I can see a better way to do things. So now the book – and all the risk of publishing it – belongs to me alone, which is frightening and pleasant all at once. Since no one else can tell me what to title it, or what cover image to use, I would like to finally introduce it to you, at least by name. It’s called The Wild. I look forward to working on it again, and I will do my best to make it a better book by the time it sees print.