And here... we... go.

Dragonwriter said:

It was good to see you at Origins! Nice to put a face to a name.

Click to expand...

Haha, likewise! I'm tickled to find we've a couple of friends and acquaintances in common, thanks to the Catalyst connection. (I used to GM Origins and Gencon for them, back when fourth edition just came out.)

Dragonwriter said:

Congrats on the SFWA membership, and good luck getting into the Origins Library next year. They're a very cool bunch of folks.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I just want to hang with the cool kids. Maybe some of that will rub off on me! But joking aside, I'd very much love to experience the convention from the other side, and be on the other end of a few panels. I may not know much yet about the publishing industry, but I'm far more solid on the RPG industry, self-publishing, and writing.

Dragonwriter said:

Hopefully I'll see you there (or at Gen Con, though it's harder to connect to anyone there since it's so fraggin' huge compared to Origins!) I'll be hanging around the Writers' Symposium area (not part of the program this year, sadly) or the Catalyst Game Labs booth, if you want to say hi.

Click to expand...

I might! Catalyst is always worth a walkthrough. And I keep hearing good things about the Symposium, so I'll probably see if their panels and setup measure up to the bar set by Origins.

Though y'know, I'll be working the Mindworm games booth this year for at least half the con or so, so if YOU want to stop by and say hi, that works too. I'll be the grizzled plains drifter wearing the noose, most likely.

Richard White said:

Hmm, I hadn't put Robyn and Dragonwriter together. Darn it.

Well, if you stopped by to speak to Sheryl and didn't say Hi to me (since I had the table to her right), I'm likely to be grumpy.

Click to expand...

Oh! Hey man! Yeah, I think we spoke. I know I was definitely attending one or two of the panels you were on. Please don't be grumpy, I'm still sorting out the names of everyone I spoke with and associating them with the books I bought. Bad memory, you see. Horrible at names, faces, distinguishing marks, voices, reputations... ah, who are you again?

Richard White said:

No, seriously, glad you had a good time at Origins. I'm doing my first Writer's Symposium at GenCon this year, so I have no clue what's going to happen outside of my panels. I'll just play it loose and see how things go (esp. since I'm trying to get some freelance work with some game companies).

Click to expand...

Thanks! I hope you have a good time at Gencon.

I'm trying to get freelance work with more game companies myself. Just pitched a novel to one of the Indy games that came out this year... I played a session with the creator, loved the setting, and think I can do something for him. Since he's planning a kickstarter soon, if he accepts then my work might be a stretch goal. He indicated tentative interest and requested an outline. I've sent it on, so we'll see how it goes.

Richard White said:

My first Battletech story, No Rest for the Wicked, went live in May on the BattleCorps web site. Just waiting for the collection (Slack Tides) to come out later this year.

Click to expand...

Ah, Battletech fiction! I used to read it voraciously back when the Mechwarror clicky tie-in book line was running strong. Not so much lately, but I wouldn't mind revisiting that universe.

Quick update! My con buddy and I just got our table confirmed for WISHcon!

So, I've got a friend who makes tiny little polymer clay dragons. Cute as hell! (Rawr Dragons Creations if you're into that sort of thing.) She's been crafting these li'l guys and selling them through Etsy and local conventions for the last couple of years. She loves my books, I love her dragons, it works out! We share tables for the local cons.

(Also she's got a Square credit card reader. I don't yet. I shamelessly sponge off her technological superiority.)

We heard about WISHcon early this year. It stands for Women in Science-fiction and Horror. It's a bit far for a local convention, being in Columbus. We're an hour away. But my wife has family in the area, so we're going to turn it into a family visit. My con buddy's my spiritual sister anyway (I keep saying I'm her brother by another mother) so she's allowed to hang with the in-laws too.

This is the first year for the con, but it's looking like it'll be pretty big. Three days is nothing to sneeze at. I'm planning on getting a dolly to help move the books in. Thirty of each of the three should be more than enough.

My rationale for trying to sell here is that well, I write science fiction and my flagship series is about the journey of a strong female protagonist. That said, I'm male, so I dunno if this con will be a perfect fit. Don't know if I want to be presumptuous and offer myself up for panels... that's been a hot button in the past, I'm given to understand, with other conventions and other people. And while I've got a decent working knowledge of sci-fi, horror's not my field.

I do know that I want to see more women in sci-fi and horror. There's some already, yes, but it's a huge field, and the more the better.

Whatever the case, this con is something new. I hope it's good. I'll do my part to support it.

SBibb said:

I've seen a lot of authors sharing booths with each other to help split the cost. Good luck with the convention! :-D

Click to expand...

Thanks! Got to admit, that's one reason I want to network more with the local authors. I'm cheap that way, and like hanging around with other writers.

One last update... it's been an eventful few days, really. I finally bit the bullet and bought my own domain.

It's a strange feeling, shelling out cash to use your own name. But empowering nonetheless. Now I can use something else for my mailing list emails besides my gmail account. Gmail accounts sometimes have interaction problems with Mailchimp. So if you buy your own domain, and set up email for it, that solves the problem.

Now I'm gonna need a website... and here I'm going to be lazy. I could refresh my two-decade-old website construction knowledge, learn how to put one together bit by bit, spend hours and days tweaking it. Could do that.

Won't.

I'm gonna drop some royalty money and buy a good one and good support from someone who knows what the hell they're doing. Got a few leads from friends, I'll explore around for more. Take a few weeks, get it right, then make my choice and buy it.

Now that I've got the domain, I've all the time in the world to make sure it gets utilized correctly.

Mid-month update. Went in with a collaborative ad and social media campaign with nine other superhero authors.

Figures, we picked the weekend for our sale that lined up to the Pokémon GO launch.

That's one of the reasons it didn't do so well for me. I only sold 13 of the Dire:Born books that I'd marked down to ninety-nine cents for the duration. Solidly average, maybe a bit above average for the three days. My other books sold at their average rate, so there's that at least.

Other authors did a bit better. Still, I don't think any of us sold into the triple digits.

I'm not upset by it. My $10 contribution toward the ad wasn't earned out, but it was affordable. Average daily profits more than cover it. But I won't be doing this again for a few months, I think. I'm well past the ninety-day cliff of my last launch, and need to focus on finishing book three. Once it hits, I'm hoping that things build up again. That's how it seems to go for most of the other self-published authors I follow.

But overall it put me in touch and let me in a facebook group with a bunch of other indy superhero authors, so I can't complain. Made a few friends and acquaintances there, and that's more than worth the price of admission so far.

I think I'll buck the trend this month, and update now. Got a bit more of a feel for how the numbers go than I did when I started out, and it doesn't look like I'll have any surprises. I'll still update the numbers com the end of the month, but I'll ruminate here and now.

Been musing over this journal, and why I do some of the things I do. We've come far enough, I think I can tell you a few secrets. Not huge secrets, mind, but things that explain my logic, such that it is.

I suffer from depression. It isn't always there, it comes and goes. Most of the time it's low-key... I've learned to work around it. Hell, there are times it actually helps me out. Nothing breaks me out of a black mood quicker than creating something, and now that I've learned to have confidence in my work, writing is one of the more reliable ways to create a worthwhile thing.

It especially helps with depression over finances now that I've learned how to monetize the writing. It's actively working to alleviate one of the root causes, and that's no small thing. Makes me feel like I'm DOING something.

Why am I telling you this? Well, one of the things I've noticed is that I tend to report the positive here far more than the negative. Part of this is quite legit, there's a lot more positive happening to and around me because of this career I'm trying to launch. But part of it is that when I hit a setback, I often leave it out or just downplay it. And there have been setbacks. Not huge ones, thankfully.

One hit in June. In June I went hunting for an accountant, to try and help me through quarterly taxes. But after checking one, he pretty much blew me off. Told me I wasn't making enough from it to be worth bothering. That I should just save thirty percent, then pay the fines because they were lower than the interest I'd gain from leaving the percentage in the bank.

We didn't get along at all. I couldn't make him understand I wanted to do things PROPERLY. He couldn't comprehend that I wasn't focused on getting the most money out of the situation.

But...

...when you talk to an expert, you need to listen to them, even if you disagree. So I'm taking his advice. For now.

Next year I'll try the quarterly taxes. With a different CPA. The chemistry just wasn't there.

Emailing bloggers for reviews hasn't been working out either. I got about five down into the list, and realized I'd spent an hour reading specs and preparing files. An hour. I pushed the list aside and went back to writing. And to this date, none of the ones I contacted got back with me.

Will I try it again in the future? Maybe. But I'll need more free time, first. Hours are precious.

So yeah. I don't always report minor setbacks when they happen. I should... this is a journal, not a commercial. I don't want to paint too much of a rosy picture. That said, things ARE going well. The numbers are still good. Like someone mentioned in a different thread, I seem to have found a good niche for myself.

I finished the first draft for Book 3 of the Dire Saga last night. One hundred and sixteen thousand words, give or take. Hefty, but necessary. Been feeding it piecemeal to my editor chapter by finished chapter. The cover art's ready to go. Just got to clean it up a bit, run it past the betas, and await beta/editor feedback. I wanted to launch it in July, but I'll settle for August. I'll have to. It would be substandard product if I kicked it out the door now, and I won't have that. My readers deserve my best.

But after this, it's time for a break. I'm going to go back and fart around with fanfiction for a while, maybe under an alias or two. Then I'm going to hop over and try my hand at those MG cute dragon books I've been planning. Then on to do a little more western work for my freelance RPG contract, touching up and editing the microfiction for his website. And some mailing list short stories, to reward fan patience.

After that... well, I might have an opportunity.

Back in June I attended Origins, a gaming convention, and played a session of a superhero RPG with its creator. I enjoyed it greatly, and found the world rich and evocative. After hunting down a copy of the game, I read it over and realized "Y'know, I can work with this..."

I contacted the creator and asked if he'd be interested in a novel set in his game world. He said maybe. I sent him the outline I'd whipped up for the book. He said yes.

So, long story short, my novel is going to be a stretch goal for his next kickstarter. He's trying to put out another book for the game, and crowdfund the initiative. He's looking for around six thousand for the main project. If it gets to eight, then he'll commission me to write that novel. If it doesn't go through, then we'll discuss alternate means of getting that book out there, with the understanding that it might take a while. Which is fine.

Now, what interests me, is that I've got a decent-sized fanbase, and this game seems right up their alley. So when the Kickstarter goes live, I'll lay out the initiative, and point them to it. Some won't be interested in it, but I'm betting that enough will that it'll make a difference for the Kickstarter. Enough of a difference? I don't know. Been thinking over the ethics of the situation, and I've decided that it's all right to promote this a bit through my channels. It IS announcing a new book, and that's one of the things my mailing list signed on to hear about. It's just not a hundred percent guaranteed that the book will come out anytime soon.

To me it's a scenario I can't lose.

If the Kickstarter fails and the guy's not interested in other means of getting the book out there, then I'm out nothing. I can alter the setting details and put it in my own superhero setting.

If the Kickstarter fails and the guy still wants the book, then we'll discuss alternate means of getting it out there. We're both small potatoes, we're both local, and we're both interested in mutual benefit, here. We can come to some arrangement.

If the Kickstarter succeeds, then we'll negotiate a contract. In which case I hit up the relevant parts of this board like an extinction event asteroid going after sweet, sweet dinosaur meat, and bone up on the things to watch out for. And then, sometime late this year or early next year, I take two to three months and write a beautiful little gritty/dark Iron Age novel.

Win/win/win.

Let's start with the numbers. Got some thoughts, but I'll save them until the end of things, here.

(Note: Edited to reflect sales report, and count KENP properly.)

The Thin Black Line Between Infernal and Divine sold 41 copies, bringing the running total to 337.

Keep an Ace in the Hole sold 30 copies, bringing the running total to 355.

Dire:Born sold 68 Ebook copies, 6 Print copies, 1 Direct Sale Copies, and had 71 KU reads. This brings the running total for 2016 to 2519.

Dire:Seed sold 72 Ebook copies, 5 Print copies, 0 Direct Sale Copies, and had 67 KU reads. This brings the running total for 2016 to 1827.

Continuing the trend, profits from this month look to be about half as much as the last month. This would bode poorly for next month, but fortunately I've got the third Dire book written. Just waiting for my last beta readers to do their thing before I dive into editing. So it'll be out, sometime after Gencon. Probably only a week or so, if all goes to plan.

I've already got the next book outlined. This'll be one of the MG cutesy dragon books, and I think I've got an awesome story here. Just have to, y'know, actually write it. Definitely looking forward to getting by with fifty or sixty thousand words, versus the usual hundred thousand block I shoot for with the Dire books.

You have to mix it up every once in a while. If you don't, you go nuts. And with the anticipated profits from Dire three, and the box set thereafter, I've got about half a year to experiment and try different things. Maybe even writing to market! Shock, I know, right?

I found a niche and I've been hammering it to good effect. But now it's time to check around, and see if there are other niches open too, so I don't have all my eggs in one basket.

It's funny. I seem to be following an elemental cycle, with life in general. The first twenty years or so of my life was fire... I had big dreams, I fought for my beliefs and causes, and I struggled to grab myself a place in the world. Though much came to naught, it let me blaze into a toehold for the next phase, which is earth. I spent about twenty years there, and still have a foot in that world... solid, steady work and learning to be reliable and tough. Taking the hits, walking through them, and making continual progress.

Now, with writing, I'm starting to move into water. Things move in tides, with waves rolling out and coming back in, and the market throwing up eddies and currents as I steer across this unknown sea. Storms threaten at times, and like most of us, I've spent periods in the doldrums, becalmed with no sales to keep my little book-ships moving.

Too much on the metaphor? Heh, sorry. I can never tell.

I'm in a philosophical mood. In three days my first small-press published work appears at the convention, part of a greater whole that is the game itself. But a good part, and another effort to expand my niches.

It's also two weeks past the anniversary of my first foray into self-publishing. One year, already, and it's worked out well. I'm having fun, I'm making money, and I just might have found my true calling in life. Gods, let it last. Gods, let it grow. This is good, and I am bringing honor and riches to my family. It is such a luxury and a joy to be able to say that.

I will write until I cannot anymore. I will publish through others or my own self if need be. My work will be written, and I will not stop. The only way I fail is if I stop writing. I will not fail. I will not be stopped.

And I am so very, very glad you are here with me, taking this journey as well or just watching me go.

Come! Let us grow strong together! Let us be fellow sailors on the seas of words! The course is uncharted, the storms of the market are fickle, and the only thing I can tell you for certain is that over there, there be dragons.

Yep, I'll be there! I'll be working a couple of four-hour shifts at the Mindworm Games booth, and doing two more shifts of gofer work, but I'll try to make a few seminars. I'm there on the company's dime, so my time is only a little my own. Still, there's a lot of con so odds are good I'll run into ya at some point.

If nothing else, and you want to do lunch or think a cool seminar's coming up and want a buddy along, you can always stop by the Mindworm games booth and ask after me. The dude running the show has my number, and absolutely no hesitation to pester me at all hours.

Oof. Ow.Back from Gencon. I don't know why I expected to accomplish anything significant there, it was glorious chaos and work and exhaustion.But in a good way, mind you.

I was working as a gopher for my buddy while he launched his game, and only ended up with one shift of booth duty. Which is good, because they didn't have chairs and it was seriously hard on my ankles. I'm out of shape. Need to fix this before next year rolls around, or I'll risk injuring myself.

So I only made one writing seminar, only got to one LARP, only saw one film screening, and only got in 1-2 games.But each and every event was awesome.

I was a roleplayer before I was a writer, and the old magic never went away. Hell, a lot of the skills cross-map nicely.

I came back with a small bag of fun products to spur my imagination, a lot of good memories, and plans for next year. Life is good, and thanks to book royalties, friends, and careful planning I did the whole trip without touching my credit cards.

First time that's happened in a long time.

Now it's back to the grind, editing my book for release. I think I can do it in a week or less. Everything else is in readiness, just a matter of integrating things, sending the final draft around for one last review, and uploading everything to KDP.

Here's hoping there are no unexpected bumps...

And that's a wrap.

After the last beta got his revisions in, I spent a harried few nights fixing everything, and altering a few select scenes.

Four and a half months from my March release, I've managed to get the third Dire book out there on Amazon.

I could've done it in four, I think, if I hadn't attended the conventions. But to heck with that, I'd rather have the leisure time. Relaxation's a necessary part of the process, and vacation's a good way to ensure relaxation.

Woke up an hour earlier this morning and took care of the mailing list notification, and alerting the usual suspects and online haunts. It's already resulted in a decent launch day so far. Now it's just a matter of waiting until the Amazon algorithms take hold, and the also-boughts start snapping into the store page. My first trilogy. And I would've had all of them published within a year of each other, if I'd taken it more seriously. But y'know what? I'm okay with this. Within 13 months is just as good. Either way they're done before I hit 40, so I'm happy.

Now I can turn my back on Dire for a bit, and go experiment. Now I'm freed up to relax and try my hand at other things.What a lovely day. What a lovely, lovely day...

@lizo27: Thanks! I'll letcha know how it goes, all through this journal.

@xbriannova: Heh, thanks for the ad for libreoffice. But I may switch at some point. Right now Openoffice is still working out fine for me. When the day comes that it doesn't, I'll investigate other alternatives. Either way, glad you've found my stuff a fun read! It's been one hell of a trip...

@CindyT: Ah, you mean Createspace? Yes, I've been very happy with them too. Good quality, good response time, reasonable costs... and pretty much free, if you do most of the gruntwork yourself. I like free. But Lulu? Hm... well, if you like. I've heard it compared to a used car dealership, in that they'll try and sell you all sorts of things you don't really need. I considered and discarded the notion early on in my... Jeeze, I guess it is a career now, isn't it? Yeah, I gave up on the idea of Lulu early on in my career. But hey, things change, don't take my word for it. Just read everything over carefully before you commit.

It is numbers time again! (As a side note, if the formatting goes screwy you have my apologies. It's been about 50/50 on my posts lately. I'll fix it tonight if it turns out weird.)

(Note: Edited to reflect sales report, and count KENP properly.)

The Thin Black Line Between Infernal and Divine sold 43 copies, bringing the running total to 380.

Keep an Ace in the Hole sold 44 copies, bringing the running total to 399.

Dire:Born sold 98 Ebook copies, 9 Print copies, 1 Direct Sale Copies, and had 103 KU reads. This brings the running total for 2016 to 2730.

Dire:Seed sold 85 Ebook copies, 6 Print copies, 0 Direct Sale Copies, and had 84 KU reads. This brings the running total for 2016 to 2002.

Dire:Time sold 519 Ebook copies, 1 Print copy, 1 Direct Sale copy (A proof, sold to a friend) and had 279 KU reads.

It's a little surprising at how easy this process is getting. Oh, not the writing, that's about the same struggle as ever... I'm talking about the various formatting wriggles and button pushes to get things up into Kindle and Createspace. Stuff that would have stymied me or gotten me spending an hour checking help files and youtube video guides when I first started now takes minutes to settle, if that.

Launchwise, this is doing a bit better than my last sequel did. Don't know if it'll keep up, but I certainly hope so. It does seem that I'm making progress... maybe not as fast as I hoped, but certainly far more than I feared. I admit to being worried about negative reviews, but so far they're within boundaries. I took some risks with the plot of this one, and the story ended up a bit darker than expected. But most of my readers seem to grok where I'm going with this, and they're showing support.

Minimal returns, thus far. I think I was afraid for nothing.

More musing... I've heard it mentioned, a time or two, that the superhero literary genre is in its infancy. If so, then this is an exciting time! I'm positioning myself in a good spot if and when the genre hits a boom. And I'm not the only one doing so... people who got in the game before me with long-running series are keeping to high output, and more and more authors are entering the genre.

Who knows? Maybe at some point we'll be awesome enough to take our top 10 list on Amazon back from the supernatural romance authors?

Mm. I wouldn't mind seeing something like this happen, but I'm not going to rely on it. The Dire books are solid enough on their own, they're the bedrock I can put my back to and trust in its solidity, come what may. They'll be there in the future, whatever I do, and they'll be just as good a read then as now.

Next stop: A Dire box set for November, and mostly free money!