As mentioned here before, almost two weeks ago I managed, with grace and style (not!), to fracture my jaw. The oral surgeon thought it minor enough that we could proceed with “no treatment” other than a liquid diet. But on a followup visit, he decided the teeth were not realigning on their own — so now I have a mouthful of metal. This isn’t quite a wired jaw. It’s called “elastics” because rubber bands are used to link the upper and lower teeth, instead of wire, and I get to take the elastics off a few times a day to eat drink and brush my teeth.

The whole incident is quite unpleasant as you can imagine. I’m not in pain right now, but the pressure on the jaw is uncomfortable, and talking while the rubber bands are in place is really hard. So far I’ve lost around six pounds, which in other circumstances might be a good thing, but I’m now under 120-pounds for the first time since some long-ago college finals week. I really don’t want to keep losing at that rate for another month, so I need to deal better with diet.

But on to the important part: How does this affect the release of The Red: Trials?

The manuscript was still with my editor, Judith Tarr, when this first happened. She sent her editorial letter and comments last Friday, and gave the novel a nice thumb’s up: “My biggest problem was finding myself reading breathlessly, in pure reader mode, racing from scene to scene, in classic ‘can’t put down’ fashion, when I needed to slow down and put on my editor hat.”

As with First Light, her editing is insightful and thorough, so there is work to be done, but mostly in clarifying and drawing out details — there won’t be any major remodeling. I’ve made a solid start on the revision and hope to get back to it today. The goal is for the novel to be released in late May, and I’m still hoping to accomplish that.

I should have cover art to share with you soon. In the meantime, once again, if you’ve read and enjoyed The Red: First Light, please consider writing a brief reader review at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble. There’s no need to say much — a line or two is fine — but reader reviews really do help with visibility. Thank you!

I love the digital painting my daughter, Dallas Nagata White, did for the cover of The Red: First Light, but the layout of the text on the cover was done by me, and I’ve never been happy with it. I wanted to hire a graphic designer to re-do the layout, but there wasn’t time before publication, so I went with what I had.

But the sequel, The Red: Trials, will be coming out in a of couple months. Ahead of that release I wanted to “rebrand” First Light, giving it a better look that could be re-used on the cover of Trials to clearly indicate that they are a series.

So I turned to Emily Irwin, who is a working graphic artist, and who created the new cover for Memory. Here’s the result–and I think it’s gorgeous:

Expect to see this cover soon on both the ebook and print editions.

Today, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) announced the nominees for the 2013 Nebula Awards, to be presented in 2014. I don’t mind saying that I was a bit stunned but very pleased to learn that the The Red: First Light was on the novel shortlist.

Thank you to everyone who took time out to read the novel and recommend it to others, and who helped to get the word out! This was the first science fiction novel I wrote in over ten years. Given that span of time, it was really gratifying to know that readers were still interested in my work.

I haven’t done the research, but the consensus on twitter is that this is the first self-published novel to make the Nebula shortlist, which is kind of interesting. If you’d like to know why I chose to self-publish, here’s a post from last fall.

For SFWA members who’d like to read TRFL, ebook copies are available in the forum.

Congratulations to all the other 2013 Nebula nominees. To see the complete list, visit Locus Online.

The Locus Recommended Reading List was posted yesterday, and I’m very pleased to report that The Red: First Light was included as one of only twenty science fiction novels.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that The Red: First Light is an indie-published novel. Many venues will not even consider reviewing a novel unless it’s from a traditional publisher. Ironically, it was only some of the bigger review venues that paid attention to TRFL — specifically, Russell Letson at Locus and Stefan Raets at Tor.com, as well as UK reviewer Paul Kincaid. At any rate, I’m very grateful to the staff at Locus for including The Red: First Light on their list.

And also…

Among the many Locus recommended short stories is my Nightmare Magazine story “Halfway Home.” If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, you can find it online here.

In my last post, Why I Self-Published The Red: First Light, I talked about why I decided to independently publish my newest science fiction novel. This time I want to talk about the process.

In the spring of 2012 I wrote a short story called “Through Your Eyes.” I intended it as a stand-alone piece, but I couldn’t get the protagonist out of my head. I wanted to know what became of him, and The Red: First Light is the result.

From the start I knew the novel would be problematical from a marketing perspective, for the reasons noted in my last post, but I wanted and needed to write this book.

I started working on the novel in early June 2012—a week or so after sending the short story off to market—and finished a very rough draft at the end of September, ironically, about two days before the short story sold to Asimov’s.
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There is no best path in this business of writing fiction and every author’s career is different. I started in the usual way, with traditional publishing, and had six science fiction novels published by New York houses between ’95 and 2003. My work garnered good reviews and there were a couple of awards, but despite my best efforts no meaningful amount of money was going into the family coffers. Economically, I was wasting my time. Emotionally I was inhabited by a deep, dark sense of failure, with no viable means to turn things around. So circa 2000 I more or less walked away from the field for almost ten years. I did not stop writing entirely, but it was close.

In 2009 I woke up to the ebook revolution.

My background and situation let me jump right into self-publishing. I’d worked in web development for nine years, so I knew how to handle the HTML behind ebooks, I was familiar with Photoshop, I’d learned the basics of InDesign, I had the rights back to all my novels, and I had time to devote, since the recession had ended my programming job. So I became my own publisher and reissued the novels, first as ebooks and then in print-on-demand editions.

I found that I loved this new business, because I was in control.

In traditional publishing, after a book is sold, the important decisions are made by the publisher—format, cover art, cover copy, sales date, pricing, promotional budget (if any)—and once those decisions are made they can rarely be changed. So my near-future bio-thriller Limit of Vision was released with a pulp cover featuring giant bugs, while my far-future novel, Memory, was released with a back cover description that got the basic facts of the story world wrong.

As my own publisher, I make mistakes too, but because my business model—low upfront costs and no warehoused inventory—is radically different from that of traditional publishing, I’m in a position to correct those mistakes. I can—and I have—changed cover art, cover copy, and pricing after publishing a book.

Of course these days, self-publishing out-of-print backlist isn’t controversial. The question writers debate is what to do with original fiction. I looked at it from a business perspective, asking What’s best for me? And I couldn’t justify trying New York again.
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Reviewer Stefan Raets offers his opinion of The Red: First Light in a review published yesterday at Tor.com.

“…an amazing novel… The Red: First Light is a dark, intelligent, cynical take on military SF. It’s an excellent novel that deserves a much larger audience.”

Read the full review here.

Back on August 1 I posted that Locus, “The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field,” had reviewed The Red: First Light.

That review can now be read online. Check it out, and let me know what you think!

(Update: August 28, 2013 — the review is now available online.)

When I decided to indie publish The Red: First Light — the first adult science fiction novel I’d released in ten years — I knew I could handle the production, including professional editing, copyediting, cover development, ebook creation, and print book creation. I also knew that the online distribution was easily within my reach.

The remaining questions were:

• Could I get the book into bookstores?
So far as I know, the answer to this remains “no.”

• Could I do the publicity?
Among other things, this blog post talks about what I’ve managed. Has it been enough? Nope.

• Could I get the book reviewed?
Despite wonderful reader reviews posted at Amazon and other venues, to my knowledge The Red: First Light has not been reviewed at any standard book review site or publication — until today. The August issue of Locus is just out and contains a full review of The Red: First Light by long-time reviewer Russell Letson.

Locus is “The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field.” It’s a trade publication covering science fiction and fantasy since 1968 and available in print and digital editions.

And what did Russell Letson have to say about The Red: First Light? Here are a few pull quotes:

…the novel’s vision of the military – or at least of the soldier and his or her most immediate context of competence, loyalty, dedication, and courage – is anything but disrespectful or dismissive. The setting in which these virtues are employed, tested, and sometimes betrayed, however, is something else again.

…a series of operations, described in enough detail to satisfy any mil-SF enthusiast, and with a sour enough attitude towards official and actual power structures to keep old lefties from feeling too guilty about enjoying the action.

…the same post-Vietnam sense of discontinuity that separates The Forever War from Starship Troopers, updated for the post-9/11 world.

The August 2013 issue of Locus contains reviews of many other books, along with an interview of Kim Stanley Robinson. Find it here.

And if you’ve read and enjoyed The Red: First Light, please consider reviewing it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your own blog. Getting the word out is the most challenging part of publishing — whether indie or traditional. Thanks!

Shop for the Ebook
Amazon USA
Amazon UK
Mythic Island Press LLC
Barnes & Noble (USA)

Shop for the Print Book
Amazon USA
Amazon UK
Mysterious Galaxy
Barnes & Noble (USA)

“Codename: Delphi” is the first — and so far only — short story I’ve completed as part of the the Clarion West Write-a-thon. It’s part of The Red: First Light‘s story world, and has just sold to Lightspeed Magazine!

This is my second short story sale of 2013.

The first story sold this year, “Halfway Home,” will be published online in the September issue of Nightmare Magazine.