Random Post
November 29th, 2017I feel like I should be posting here more often, but most of my time these days is going towards writing, followed by all the other daily essentials of life.
So what’s going on with the writing? Well, the end is in sight on the initial draft of a new novel. This will be a short novel compared to most of my work. I’m hoping the final will be around 75,000 words. It will also be the first of an anticipated trilogy of similarly short novels, so we’ll see how that goes. I’d like to get book 2 drafted in the next few months. How’s that for ambition?
It looks like I need to get back to promoting the books…
Before and after The Last Good Man came out, a huge percentage of my time went toward promotion — and not much toward writing. I started backing off on the promo activities in September and by October I wasn’t doing much at all. I don’t think I’ve done more than tweet about the book a few times in November — and wow, have sales fallen off over the past two or three weeks. And not just on my newest, but on the other books too. Yes, it’s a bit discouraging. Isn’t “momentum” supposed to kick in at some point? Heh.
There’s a school of thought in indie publishing that the way to grow your career is to have a new novel come out every three months. Deep down, I suspect this might be true, but that’s far, far faster than I can get a book out the door. Oh well. At least I’m having fun with the writing … which is why I don’t want to shift focus back to promotion! 😉
Posted on: Wednesday, November 29th, 2017 at 5:14 pm
Categories: Writing.
December 1st, 2017 at 12:26 pm
Three 75k novels are great. Don’t think of 75k as “short”, it’s not. I’d rather have a dozen 75k novels telling a broad story than a few “doorstoppers.” Andre Norton still rips me to pieces, and most of her stuff was 60k to 75k. In school, I would regularly read all her stuff each summer vacation. I’m only now working back through them. They are still solid.
Don’t get me wrong, I read King, over and over, but each of his “doorstoppers” are just one story that he goes into great depth telling.
Read The Time Mercenaries by Philip E. High. It’s less than 50k but contains a story as large as LOTR. If written today, he would be expected to write the story in phonebook size volumes. Yet I fire the book up and read it in an evening, each time torn to pieces by the story. I have read it many times, and it still makes me tear up. I finally bought the ebook version. The mass market, Ace Doubles, I have are foxing so bad it takes more time trying to see the print on the page than read it. The ebook is a joy to read, despite the occasional OCR nits.
https://www.amazon.com/Time-Mercenaries-Philip-High-ebook/dp/B00H6SOLS6/
December 1st, 2017 at 5:15 pm
Hi Allyn! “Short” is relative. For example, 75K is short compared to The Last Good Man, which was close to 140K as I recall. I tend to think of anything under 90K as short, because almost all my novels are longer than that. The two Puzzleland books are the only exception. I don’t think “short” is a negative comment. Personally I like shorter novels and as a slow reader I tend to avoid the really long ones.
December 1st, 2017 at 9:29 pm
It takes me an hour to read 10k words, so your Last Good Man takes me about 14 hours to read. I’ve never been able to read faster. That’s why once I start something like Last Good Man I know that I’m going to have trouble stopping for the night. If I’m “almost done”, and it’s 10pm, I can’t stop, even though I’m not finished till after 2am.
As a kid, there were no long novels like there are today. The only two big novels I had were When Worlds Collide/After Worlds Collide and The Foundation Trilogy. That’s why I liked stuff like Andre Norton; a vast number of books that I could binge read over the summer to get a similar high. I routinely buy series if I find that there are dozens of 75k books playing in the same world. Dumarest of Terra was 50k to 60k, and I have almost all of them. I’m debating getting the last two because they are only ebook. I like paper.
As a kid, I would get a bubblegum cigar from the store and chew on that as I walked to school. My jaw would ache doing that. I would get that same ache in my jaw and I knew it was time to read a big book like When Worlds Collide/After Worlds Collide. That ache doesn’t happen anymore because I have King and the other big novels to read on a regular basis, but I still love the clarity of starting Time Mercenaries after supper and finishing it, in one sitting.
So don’t hold back writing 75k novels. Just write a bunch of them in the same world, so that I can binge read them. HA!
December 1st, 2017 at 9:40 pm
PS, That’s why when I read each of your new books, I read all of your books, so that they come together in my mind as a larger story. I’m just waiting for you to fill in the blank spaces. HA!