Just a quick aside here. I don’t spend a lot of money on advertising my books… to do even the modest amount that’s usually recommended for independent authors is way, way out of my budget. I try to save the money I do have to devote towards my work for editing first, and then art assets second, with advertising a distant and terrifying third.
Now, if I were a businessperson, chances are pretty good that those numbers should be flipped straight on their head. Advertising first, because it doesn’t matter how good your book is if nobody reads it, art second because it doesn’t matter if people see your book but are immediately turned off by an ugly cover, and then editing third because once they’ve bought your book who cares. But I’m not interested in being a flash-in-the-pan. I want to be doing this for decades to come, and that means people need to know I make good products, and that I deeply care about how the finished product looks and reads.
I want people to like my work and to want more of it.
Anyway, what this means is that my monthly advertising budget is usually around $20. Most months it doesn’t hit that amount. But that’s okay, because in order for it to hit $20, it should really be selling at least $20 worth of books, and that’s equally rare… these days I only sell ten books or more on a week that I release a new book.
Small potatoes.
But regardless, important ones I suppose. Hopefully the things I learn by running these small (tiny, really) advertising campaigns will eventually let me be somewhat successful if I have to do it for a thousand dollar campaign (which, again, is the minimum I have seen recommended for independent authors). And last month I sold $15 worth of books, and the advertising only cost me $10, so that’s pretty much a win.
Now, if I could just multiply all those numbers by a thousand, I would be so happy…
August... already?
It is indeed already August, and I’m still not sure how that happened.
I’ve been struggling to get the novel finished, not for any particular plot point related issues, but just general-life-stress issues. It’s hard working a full-time job and then having to be creative in the nooks and cracks between.
I actually had somebody who read (and liked!) my first novel tell me that at work. He’s a full-time game designer and said that he’s glad he can be because he couldn’t imagine having to work a different job and then be creative afterwards. Adrian, I feel ya man… it’s rough as hell, and I really wish I didn’t have to. But for now at least, I do. Hopefully not for too much longer, but we’ll see… that hinges pretty heavily on my ability to finish novels, of course, which I am at least three weeks behind in doing!
Gah! But of course stress doesn’t help me write better (quite the opposite), but it’s gotta get done, but that’s putting pressure on myself and I already have tonnes of pressure from sources outside myself… and so on, and so forth. All I can do is my best, and I think that’s what I’m doing.
Gosh, I hope that’s what I’m doing.
Anyway! Going to get back at it. The novel is so close to being done, I just gotta carry it over the finish line, kicking and screaming if that’s what it takes.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Still Plugging Away
Somebody famous said something about writers aren’t people who find writing easy, but rather are people who write despite writing being very difficult.
There are definitely days where the writing comes easily and flows quickly. And then there are days like this last week where it felt like I was pulling teeth uphill in a blizzard to try and get anything done… AND I managed to lose 500 words because my computer decided to do a mandatory restart. Whee.
Oh well. I’m not a writer because it’s easy. I do love it, even when it’s hard.
Today I’m going to try and finally finish this novel so I can send it to my editor (who won’t have time for it for a few more days, but that’s okay!). And then probably collapse in a heap and moan softly for a few hours as a method of recovery.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Rainy Days
It has been raining sporadically all day… there was a period of about an hour that I managed to sneak a run in (which I can’t say I enjoyed, but I did finish it, so there’s that), and since then it’s been 15 minutes of rain followed by 5 minutes of sun followed by 10 minutes of rain followed by 30 minutes of cloudy-but-not-rainy and so on. Weird weather.
Managed to get a couple of my courses sorted out for September and January… hopefully I will pick up a few more courses later, but for now I’m okay with 1 per semester until the pandemic is over and I can attend classes in person again. I just don’t learn very well online… so I’m taking courses I’m not interested in but are prerequisites for my degree (specifically “Shakespearean Histories and Tragedies” and “British Literature I”). Get ‘em finished, move on to more stuff I’m actually excited about when I can talk to professors and TAs and classmates and actually wring some knowledge-juice from the knowledge-fruit that is university.
Anyway, I gotta finish this novel. Still haven’t found a cover for it, but plenty of time for that after I finish writing!
Hope everyone is safe and healthy!
The New Normal
So I’m getting pretty used to wearing a mask at the game store I work at to pay for my editing costs. I can’t say it’s pleasant, and I’m washing my hands about 20 times a day (without exaggeration… lunch alone is 6 hand washings minimum every day) and disinfecting them with hand sanitizer at least another thirty or forty times, but I’m getting used to it.
Not to say I won’t enjoy being able to go biking without having to wear my mask someday, but for now, that’s a very small price to pay.
I don’t mind going grocery shopping only once a month. I’m okay with only having a certain number of customers in the store at a time (maximum 6 people per aisle and 15 people in the building). I miss my friends, but again I’d rather us all be safe than risk making any of them sick because some of the customers in the store are not particularly careful (my favourites are those who feel the need to specifically lower their mask when they talk… don’t do that, that’s the whole point).
Don’t get me wrong, this is still a pretty far-cry from ideal, but all things considered, I can’t complain too much. Do wish I had more time to write, though!
Speaking of which… back to writing!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
July Release Pushed Back to August
Well, my editor is booked for the rest of the month, so this month’s release has been pushed back until August. That’s fine, since it gives me another week to work on the 2nd edit, and I think the story will be improved by an extra layer or two of polish. I’m happy with how it’s coming along, but it can always be better.
I think that’s an important thing to realize, in the grand scheme of things. Stories can always be better, but at some point you have to stop working on them and just move on. In my case, that means self-publishing them in the hopes they can a bit of traction out in the world, and eventually I have enough supporters that I can do this writing gig full-time. In other people’s cases, that means putting them down and working on other projects. No judgment, personally, but I think it’s important to know when to stop and move on, ya know?
Anyway, no luck on the cover art just yet (but now I have another 3-4 weeks before the novel can be published I’m definitely not in a rush). And the weather has been giving me really annoying headaches all week… I assume the storms have something to do with it. Hopefully it will let up soon!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Cover Art Shopping!
So far I’ve used the same company/artist for all of my covers. He does consistent, pre-generated work that’s inexpensive but looks okay. Since my budget is limited (with the vast, vast majority of each book’s budget devoted to editing costs), that’s always been fine.
Trouble is he doesn’t do a lot of sci-fi covers, so for the last two or three books the offerings have gotten slimmer and slimmer. And while some of his covers are quite good, many of them are inappropriate (not bad, just not thematically right or the wrong sub-genre) for the kind of books I write.
So I spent a little time yesterday stretching out a bit, seeing if there was anyone else who does good quality pre-generated covers. The answer is a resounding “yes”, but the price range doubles pretty quickly without really much visible quality improvements (I suspect the higher price point is due to many of these being designed for actual physical books, rather than e-books, so the resolution and colours have to be different? But that’s a guess).
Anyway, it was still neat to do some browsing, and I’ll probably do more today. Either that or dive into the 2nd draft edits, which I should be doing… any moment now… definitely…
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Finishing the first draft today!
The end is in sight, and it’s a nice sight! The novel is on the precipice of completion, and I can see the path from here to there pretty dang clearly. Almost certainly going to finish it today, and then take a break from writing until Wednesday when I dive into the 2nd draft.
The transition from first to second draft is an interesting one. I tend to over-write the first draft and then pare back to the best bits. A bit like a gardener trimming away dead leaves so that the plant can grow stronger.
(We watched a few episodes of “Big Flower Fight”, which is full of VERY arrogant people and that bothers me, but it’s been kinda neat to hate-watch)
Anyway, I should get back to wrapping up the story in a satisfying way. Finish line in sight, let’s get this done!
New Month!
Well, June is gone, and we’ve passed the halfway point of 2020. I suppose congratulations are in order for everyone… it’s be a helluva year, and it shows no signs of slowing down or improving in the immediate future. So good job everyone!
I’ve spent the majority of the day consuming a lovely little Canadian comedy show called “Kim’s Convenience”, based in Toronto about a group of Koreans. It’s light, and funny, and it speaks to both me and my partner in a very fundamental way as children of immigrants (although neither of us are of Korean ancestry). It also makes me miss Toronto in a very fundamental way… I loved living in that city, although we were always poor and really couldn’t afford to stay in the city (which is why we’re not there now).
We have a nice house in Kitchener, with a nice backyard, but man, I miss the city. But nothing I can do about that now… and certainly not with my chosen field! The odds of a writer being ever able to afford a home in Toronto isn’t even vanishingly small: it’s basically non-existent.
But that’s okay! I can miss the city and still appreciate everything I have.
Speaking of which, I really gotta get this novel finished so it can get out to all of you! Fingers crossed for late this month (but a big chunk of that will depend on my editor and her schedule).
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
A Few More 3k Word Days, Please
Wednesday I managed to write over 3,000 words. That’s not my best day by a long shot, but it’s my best day recently, and that’s nice. I need about four more of those to finish this draft, take a few hours to sleep, and then start editing it before sending it off to my editor.
I’m a little worried about the last few thousand words for this story, only because the source material I’m using (Tintin and Red Rackham’s Treasure) doesn’t have an awful lot happen in it. Some very pretty scenery, but not a lot of actual stuff. But I’ve mentioned that before, and it’s a hurdle I’ve tackled before, so I’m not really THAT worried about it. But it is on my mind (and today I’ll be diving into the deep of it, as well as Wednesday).
In other news, I went grocery shopping for the first time in over a month. I’m probably going to have to go again next week for fruits and vegetables (I got a massive stock of staples and non-perishables, but I left the fruit and veg until last and there simply wasn’t room in my shopping cart for much). I burned an entire week’s paycheck on that shopping trip… but again, hopefully this will last a month, so I’ll still be okay in the end.
This pandemic, man. So weird. Oh well! Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
When Two Books Become One...
So part of the joy of bringing the old Tintin comics into science fiction has been re-imagining the world through the lens of written stories, rather than the visual medium of comics. For the most part this has been a joy, and a lot of the scenes in the TIntian novels “feel” very comic-inspired to me. I think I did a respectable (if not exceptional) job on the first novel, and the second one is even better, if you don’t mind me saying so.
I suspect the 15th, when I get around to writing it, will be fantastic. But this is the third novel I’m doing this with, and I continue to be happy with the process. Maybe someday I’ll write a sci-fi Asterix and Obelix, but until then, Tintian is a chunk of my childhood dreams made real.
But that’s not to say everything is necessarily easy. The biggest issue is one of length… trying to fill a novel worth of words with a comic that maybe has a thousand words across it is tricky. And in this particular case I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better to collapse a two-part story into a single novel.
Specifically, “Tintin and the Mystery of the Unicorn” and “Tintin and Red Rackham’s Treasure” are 2 parts in the comics, and finish laying the fundamental groundwork for the rest of the Tintin comics in many ways. It introduces the last of the “major” characters in Professor Calculus (who I’ve already included in my 2nd novel, “Tintian and the Mysterious Meteor”) as well as the Captain’s ancestral home in Marlinspike Manor (which I am introducing in this novel). Other than the two major reoccurring villains in Tintin, that’s most of the fundamentals covered, really… and I’ve already built the foundations for one of those two villains in my work.
ANYway, what I’m saying is that the current novel is hovering around 35k words, and that’s just a bit shy of my usual novel length. Now Spielberg compressed the two (and added parts of “The Crab with the Golden Claws” to boot!) when he made the movie adaptation, so I’d be in rarefied air if I did the same… I just don’t know if it will make this novel too long if I do. But, all things considered, there’s not a tonne that happens in Red Rackham’s Treasure. A talkative parrot, some monkeys that steal a rifle, and a lot of submarine and diving suit action that makes good comics but I don’t know if would make a great novel.
Of course, one might say the same thing about the entire endeavour of writing works inspired by Herge in the first place, but that’s what I’m doing.
Anyway-anyway, I’ll decide in the next thousand words or so. I might even cut some of the stuff I’ve written so far, make sure the story doesn’t spiral away from me… we’ll see!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Words Count
Get it? Because words are important, but also because I have to count how many words I’m writing to finish a novel?
Hey, I didn’t say it was a clever title. Just that it’s a title.
A friend and I spent much of today doing “writing sprints”, just picking word count goals for an hour and then trying to hit them. I picked 1,000 word goals each hour, and have so far fallen short each time (although not by much, mostly landing around 750 words). I have 30 minutes left in the last sprint before I start making dinner and calling it a day… so far I’m 790 words finished, so at least THIS hour I’ll hit the target. Of course, I am lightly self-sabotaging, since I’m writing this post instead of continuing to work on the novel…
Regardless, I also have tomorrow (or most of tomorrow at least) to continue working on this. Which is good, because I’m a week and a half away from needing it to be mostly finished (minus second-draft editing). At this pace I’ll be fine, but that’s assuming I can maintain this pace… but I should be fine. It’ll be fine, right?
Right.
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Nice to be Writing Again!
I mean, technically I never stopped, but there’s a big difference between academic writing and novel writing, as I’m sure everyone is aware. So it’s nice to be writing for work instead of for education, I suppose? Either way, it’s awful nice to be back at writing fiction.
My pace is going to have to pick up a lot if I want to hit finishing this novel by July (that is edited and published by July, of course). But that’s okay, I think I can manage that. I have two more lessons to take notes in for my class, which I will finish today, and then one last (little) assignment for the 22nd that I am technically already finished (just need to collate and submit a bunch of “conversations” I’ve had in the class Discussion forums), and then nothing until the autumn.
Which is good, since I need to have another novel done by the autumn before classes start, more or less! It will be nice to have that time back.
I realize that I am missing my weekly writing group since they were a great source of feedback on works-in-progress, but somehow we must soldier on. “Chapter Two” (the writing group) will get back together before long, and I’ll just have to do without until then.
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Essay Done, Back to the Books!
Well, that’s the majority of my summer course finished (not all of it, but most of it). I still have a few short stories to read, but I should be done the whole thing tomorrow, and then I can turn my writing attentions back to the novel full time.
Which is good, because I’m hella-behind.
I mean, it’s not that bad, and as is typical I got the sudden urge to start a completely different story, but I’m going to focus on this one and get it finished in the 2 weeks I have until I have to turn it over to my editor (well, 3 weeks really, but one of those weeks is going to be just editing).
Anyway, nice to have most of the mental load for the course finished, and I hope I did okay in the course (I think I did pretty well on that last essay, but you can never really be sure).
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Big Essay Done!
Well, the most significant part of my summer English course was just submitted (gah, passive voice, the bane of my casual writing!). So that’s nice. A big weight off my mind.
I think I did pretty well on it, honestly. Probably not great, I don’t think I am going to blow any minds as a result of it, but it was still a pretty satisfying sort of thing to write. And further evidence that I am not great at academic-style writing, but can do it when the need arises. So that’s nice.
I have a couple short stories I still have to read for the course, and one of them is by a writer I love (Mary Robinette Kowal) and one by a writer I heavily dislike (Andy Weir), so that’s something else. Looking forward to finishing that so I can get back to writing fiction! Woo!
Anyway, that’s it for today. I have a big dinner planned for my partner and me, and maybe a few more episodes of Schitts Creek before bed… maybe. I have been pretty exhausted recently, so I may just call it an early night. We will see!
Hope everyone is staying healthy and safe!
Deadlines!
So my editor reached out earlier this week to ask if I had a new novel for her to work on in the near future. I said that it should be done by early July… which gives me 3 weeks (more or less) to get it finished. 23 days to finish about 50k words… I think I can actually do that.
I mean, I kinda have to now, since I do have a deadline… so that’s that! Looking forward to getting it finished up and then published late July!
But since I’m working semi-regular hours again, this means really cramming in those words on the days I do have off, between school work writing and reading (for example, I have a big assignment due in 4 days that I need to get finished!). But I’m going to try and get back on my multiple-posts-per-week schedule.
Lastly, keep up the good fight everyone out there able to do so. Stay healthy and safe!
Helluva Month
It seems almost insensitive to point out that I hard a pretty hard May with everything going on these days. I guess I could point out that just because other people have it worse doesn’t mean I don’t have a hard time… although by some standards I’m not having much of a hard time at all.
These are interesting times, friends. And I think a lot of people in the USA are going to lose their lives, either to riots or sickness or government lash-back, before this is all over. And it hurts to think about that, about how blind some people have become to suffering because those who suffer “deserve it”.
Well, what can ya do? I will leave it to wiser, smarter minds than mine to propose solutions and to take measurable actions: I just write sci-fi, and try to imagine better worlds than ours, ones that have their own problems but small, personal problems rather than cultural wounds that run deep and long. Things that can be solved by a laser sword and a spaceship.
Stay safe out there, everyone. Fight the good fight, but go home at the end of it if at all possible. The world needs you.
Back to Reality
So I had a full day of work yesterday. It was better than I feared, to be honest, although still not fantastic. Wearing a mask for 8 hours straight isn’t a big deal, but going 4-hour-stretches without being able to drink water or coffee… that’s going to take some getting used to.
But that’s okay. A small inconvenience, really. And I get Mondays off, so I can actually have 2 day weekends (have to work Saturdays, natch), so I can’t really complain.
In other news, I paid for two waves of advertisements, and fingers crossed that they work. One through a podcast I like (The Greatest Generation, a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast), and the other through the usual Amazon channels.
This means May has seen my highest advertising expenses ever (currently just under $300CAD), but that’s okay! Hopefully a few more people pick up my books and like them and then pick up a few more.
Speaking of which, I’m going to get back to writing those books today! Hope everyone out there is safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 67: The Last Day
Whelp, this is it. The last day of my self-isolation.
Possibly the last day of my first wave isolation, but as much as I love staying home and writing I obviously hope the province and country are recovering and moving towards something resembling “normalcy”, whatever that means.
I can’t claim I’m excited to be going back to work, but my boss is being pretty conscious of the health and safety risks, and I’m in a privileged position in a lot of ways, so things could be much, much worse. And my workplace is pretty chill in the grand scheme of things, so there is that.
I have a mask for tomorrow and a few more that hopefully will show up early next week, but it’s going to be weird to be wearing it for 7 straight hours. And I’m not sure how to handle lunch… I may just skip it tomorrow, since I only have the one mask and you shouldn’t be taking it on and off during the day. Such weird times, such weird times…
Anyway, it is what it is. I’ll keep everyone updated on how things progress from here out, as per usual, and try to keep up the multiple-posts-a-week jive I’ve got going.
In unrelated news, I finished (re)reading Watchmen, and that was a pleasure despite how grim it is. The next book I have to read for class is The Giver by Lois Lowry, and this will be the first book for this course I haven’t read yet! Looks depressing at a quick glance, but I love me some good sci-fi (obviously!) so I look forward to the inspiration I will gain from it!
I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 63: "Holiday" Monday
Writing continues apace, which is nice, and I’m still enjoying the week I have before I had back to my other job on Saturday.
On the same note, I am taking things very easy this weekend. Since it is basically my last weekend off until who-knows-when, I’m trying to check-in with myself, make sure I’m happy with my progress.
As a result, I’ve been doing a fair number of writing. I just finished the short story collection Burning Chrome by William Gibson, as well as the short story Fermi and Frost by Frederick Pohl. These are both required readings for the course I’m taking (“Contemporary Science Fiction”), but it’s nice to do deep-dives on what really drives genre, or at least what drove genre.
I mean, I write sci-fi. I know I write sci-fi, but I write very soft sci-fi without too much analysis of the hard numbers and science (although I do dabble with that occasionally… I have a few paragraphs that are pretty number-crunchy in Tintian and the King’s Claw, although I have tried to avoid too much in my more recent novels). But if I wanted to write a cyberpunk novel… could I? There is a whole discussion about whether cyberpunk still exists, for one thing (since the ‘worst case’ of many of them are now in the distant past and we are sailing towards brand-new ‘worst cases’). What about a Humanist or Solarpunk? It’s interesting to think about, even if the novels I’m working on at the moment don’t fit into those subgenres.
Anyway! Hope everyone is having a great Monday, and is staying safe and healthy!