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Posts Tagged ‘sff’

Orycon 2012 Panel Schedule

I have my probably final but no promises panel schedule for Orycon 2012.

 

Theme
Ross Island          Fri Nov 2 2:00pm-3:00pm
What is theme?  How do you develop theme in your writing, or should you
even try?  For the sake of future graduate students studying your
brilliant prose, learn about this often-neglected aspect of
storytelling.
(*)Richard A. Lovett, Annie Bellet, Aimee C. Amodio, Wendy N.
Wagner

Writing with all your senses
Lincoln              Fri Nov 2 4:00pm-5:00pm
Writers are always reminded to write with all their senses.  But how far
should they go?  And what about altered senses?  What about characters
that are blind, or in constant pain, or have numbed senses, deafness, or
other disabilities?  Are constant reminders necessary?  What writers can
take for granted, and what they should use to enrich their writing.
(*)Annie Bellet, K.C. Ball, Adrian Phoenix

I Forgot to Get A Real Job
Roosevelt            Sat Nov 3 12:00pm-1:00pm
How to stay alive while waiting to be published
Edward Morris, (*)Nisi Shawl, Annie Bellet, Bill Johnson

How a writer’s workshop affected my life
Hamilton             Sat Nov 3 5:00pm-6:00pm
The pros and cons of attending writer’s workshops. Can attendees be
productive and have fun at the same time or it is all work and no play? Do
online workshops count?  What about workshops that break writers?
Annie Bellet, John C. Bunnell, Grá Linnaea, Edward Muller, Edd Vick

Geeks v nerds v freaks
Madison              Sun Nov 4 12:00pm-1:00pm
To which do you aspire?  What are the differences and similarities, and to
what proportion are they found?  What function (or anti-function?) do we,
er, they, serve?
Annie Bellet, Joyce Reynolds-Ward, (*)Janet Freeman, Anthony Pryor

Refined Cunning Plan

Okay.  After thinking about it a lot and discussing things with some other people, I think I need to refine my plan.  Because of what I already have out, and my writing schedule for the rest of the year, there’s really no way to pull off my dueling genres experiment in anything resembling scientific fashion.

So I’m morphing the plan.  One of the things people constantly try to bring up as a point against putting up ebooks is that there will soon be too many on the market and no one but people with huge marketing dollars behind them will be read.  I have a few things to say about this.

One: Soon? Really? There are hundreds of thousands of ebooks available for Kindle.  There are millions of paperback books available as well through Amazon and other retailers.  Soon has happened. I think it happened a while ago (maybe before I was born in the paperback world).

Two:  How do readers find books now? Word of mouth. Reviews. Search terms and product tags. Etc.  Advertisements aren’t very high on the lists I’ve seen about how readers find things to read.  Putting up a shit load of good books will probably also help, since each one becomes a gateway, a chance for a reader to find you and like your stuff enough to go looking for more.

I tested the waters in ebooks with a few short stories in a genre I don’t write much in (literary) under a name that I don’t use except on legal documents (and now that I’m married, not even those).  No promotion, no history, nothing.  Those stories still outsell my SF/F stories every single freaking month.  Seriously.

But still, anyone following this blog will know that my numbers aren’t exactly buying me more than groceries.  They aren’t covering the rent yet.  SF/F isn’t a popular genre (especially not science fiction, sorry guys. We’ve got like what, 7% of the fiction market?).

So I’m morphing my experiment.  I’m going to try to test two things with one stone, so to speak.  I’m going to write three pulp-era length novels (60-70k words each) and put them up under a pen name that I’m not going to tell anyone about (well, other than my editor and my cover guy- for obvious reasons).  I will let them sit until Jan. 2013 and then report the results.  The reason I’m waiting until 2013 to report is that I don’t think I’ll have time to write the three books until Jan or Feb 2012, so I’d like to give them at least 6-8 months on the market.  So the experiment is put off a little, sorry.

But the good? news is that I’ll still be writing and releasing novellas in the SF/F genres and in Romance, just on a slightly different timetable than my previous experiment.

In other news- one week until Clarion.  Maybe I should think about packing?

I Have a Plan

A cunning plan. How cunning? You could tie a tail on it and call it a weasel. (Yes, I’m sort of quoting Black Adder. I’m that old.)

As I’ve been watching my sales and reading about the sales of others in this brave new e-book world, I’ve noticed some interesting trends.  I’ve watched people promote their little hearts out and then cry about no sales.  I’ve watched people stick up what I like to call “ugly” books (bad cover, bad blurb etc) and cry about no sales.  I’ve watched books I would think were the slightly better-looking cousins of “ugly” books sell like crazy.  I’ve watched books that were actually “ugly” books in disguise sell better than things I thought were actually worth reading.  I’ve watched as my literary short stories under a name with zero internet profile out-sell my SF/F titles 5 and sometimes 10 to 1.

Basically… no one knows what will sell and why.  We’ve got the four principles that Konrath and others go by: Good Book, Good Cover, Good Blurb, Low Price.  I’ve seen plenty of titles with the magic four sell very few copies.  Maybe they will be slower to take off, maybe those writers need to just keep at it and good things will happen (what one might call the DWS principle.)  I don’t know.

One thing I would add to the above however, is “write in a popular genre”.  Now, one might argue that good writing will find an audience, and I believe that.  But would you rather aim at an audience of thousands, or hundreds of thousands?  Does genre really matter?  It’s hard to say.  Mystery and Romance are very popular genres, but there are also a ton of books written in those genres  (Romance on Kindle has more books than Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror combined).  Chicken, egg, right?

But hey, what would be the point of experimenting in this awesome new world if I couldn’t run some tests.  So here’s what I’m planning:

I’m going to write ten novellas (20-30k words each).  Five in SF/F and five in Romance.  When all ten are done (by end of September, hopefully), I’ll stick them all up online at the same time, for the same price.  I intend to do zero promotion of the titles for six months (other than mentioning them here so that people will know when the experiment goes live).  I would say that the Romance ones would be at a disadvantage since they won’t be under the name that has an internet presence, but my lit fic doesn’t seem to suffer from being under a pen name so I’m going to rule that the name doesn’t matter (it isn’t like I’m anybody anyway).  I will do my best to make sure each novella has an awesome cover, a great blurb, and is of course an awesome book.  And then I’ll sit back and watch and see how the numbers do.

My prediction, right now? The Romances will out-sell the SF/F titles 10-1.  That’s my early prediction.

See? Isn’t this new world fun?  All kinds of crazy experiments to run! *grin*

Clarion Funding: Kickstarter

Well, I took the plunge and planned out a Kickstarter project for Clarion.  I’m going to make a book of the best stories I write while there and distribute it to the internets.  But first, it will go out to people who donate via my project.

Here’s the link:  Souvenirs From Other Worlds: stories written at Clarion UCSD

The nice thing about Kickstarter is that if I don’t make my goal, nothing happens.  Of course, that’s the bad thing too.  But nothing tried, nothing gained.

And, of course, there are always my ebooks to purchase (under Read My Fiction in the sidebar).  Every bit helps.  I’m already blessed to have awesome friends, both in real life and here on the internet.  Thanks to all of you for the support and good wishes that have already been sent my way.  You guys cheer me up when I falter and help me keep pursuing my dream.  Thank you.

Writing, I Choose You!

Well, I made my decision.  I am not taking the new job.  I know I wouldn’t have time for writing, not writing anything substantial anyway like a novel.   Thus do I go forward into the unknown.  I can’t succeed if I don’t try, right? Hopefully that thought won’t be a thin blanket in the years to come.

This week I’ve gotten exactly nothing done.  I was on quite the roll with my novel edit last week.  This week I’m working 11 nights in a row (I have 6 days left) which means I have zero energy or brains for anything.  At least I’m getting lots of reading done.

Next week I plan to get cracking.  I want the novel edit finished by the end of April.  I have two more chapters to add that need to be written from whole cloth and about ten more chapters that I have to go over with the proverbial fine tooth comb for errors, inconsistencies, and stupidity. Everywhere in my hard copy notes I’ve written “More Peril”!  While amusing me, it also means more work.  Fortunately, I have the new Dresden Files novel to inspire me.  If Jim Butcher can do one thing perfectly, it is creating peril.  Poor Harry never gets to sleep or eat or prop his feet up.   There are plenty of scenes in my novel where I give my characters a break or gloss over parts where they could be in a lot more danger.  Just one of the many things I’m slowly fixing.  It is mild comfort that authors I enjoy like Jim Butcher or Elizabeth Bear go through multiple drafts that apparently often number in the double digits.  Comparisons can only go so far, however.  Every writer is different, every writing process is the same.  I think this is one of the places where writing lots really does help a writer get better.  We learn about ourselves this way, we learn the HOW of what we’re doing.  Every time I try something I haven’t before with my process, I’m growing as a writer.  Just as every time I continue to do things that work, I still refine the why and how of what’s working.  Maybe in ten years I’ll have more concrete answers. Maybe things will be wildly different.

Also, I joined the Online Writers Workshop, http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com .   I haven’t posted any writing yet.  I will likely post a short story for review once I’ve finished rewriting the first half.  I have reviewed a few stories.  The quality of work on the site is higher than on the random forums I’ve been trolling.  There are still the gems of the “oh my god, why do you even bother thinking you can write a coherent or interesting story?”  I had the entire house in stitches over one such piece (the melodramatic live reading probably amped up the badness factor).  The quality of the criticism is pretty good, so I’m using my 4 week trial to see how helpful it could be for me.  We’ll see.

That about wraps it up for this week.  I’ve been getting about 5-6 views a day, strangely enough.  So if anyone reading this has fiction writing topic  posts they are interested in me writing about, let me know.  I’m trying to think of some more craft related things to write about since as long as all I’m working on is my novel edit, it makes my posts here rather dry.  I do intend to write up a post about writing for comics and how I do it. That’s all for now.

The ten in ten project continues!