(I Also Write Children's Books!)

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

A Rough Tease

I'm sitting on at least half a dozen chapters of Quite Contrary. I love posting my roughs, and from a business perspective as long as I don't post the whole book, it's just a teaser. I'm over halfway through the book now, approaching what I think will be the three quarters mark, and I have to make the painful decision when to stop posting roughs. I don't get feedback anyway except from friends privately reading, but it makes me feel good that some people are reading. But it feels unwise to post the whole gol dang book. Now, as I write the last chapter of Part 3, I have to figure out what to do.

On the plus side, no amount of distractions have made me lose the thread. Mary demands my attention, and things are about to hit the crisis point - if a book about being chased by a wolf doesn't come pre-crisised.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Kindle All Stars like me!

So, I'm here to make a very exciting announcement that everybody who will ever read this already knows about. I have been accepted for the Kindle All Stars anthology project thingy sorta ebook. The editor has a web page that I will TOTALLY READ SOMEDAY.

Here is the thing, as I understand it. I'm taking the epublishing route, as are a lot of new authors. Bluntly, the legacy publishing system is a mess and there's no guarantee anymore that you'll get published, ever, no matter how good you are. On the epublishing side you can at least keep writing, build up a library and followers, and create something from nothing. And you WILL start from nothing, which is where I'm at.

This used to be sort of true with legacy publishing, and sometimes you'd get successful people who would find New Talent and show off collections of their stories because... well, honestly, authors look at each other and go 'Dude, EVERYONE needs to read that story you wrote about the guy with the bees in his brain.' So now with the epublishing market the anthology thing is starting again. Harlan Ellison and Alan Dean Foster are both sponsoring this and putting in their own stories, and New Talent will get to have their own stories appear side by side with these big name legacy authors.

We don't get a penny off of this. No one does. We get people to learn we exist. All the money goes to the Center For Missing And Exploited Children, and they could NOT have chosen a charity I like more.

So this is all extremely awesome.

Now I just have to rename my entry. Seriously, it was a fairy tale and I was under no pressure to name it properly at the time. I've never been good at naming anyway, and I left it at 'A Rat Tale'. That just won't do.