I have a post up at SF Novelists today, talking about my visit to two 4th grade classes last week, a story we made up about patriotism zombies, and the lessons I take from that process.
http://www.sfnovelists.com/2011/04/24/lessons-from-fourth-graders/
Welcome to First Book Friday.
Today I am delighted to welcome Catherynne M. Valente (yuki-onna on LJ) to the blog. I’ve been trying to figure out how best to introduce her here, and have come up with the following. Cat is a beautiful person who writes beautiful stories, and our world would be a poorer place without her.
#
These days, most people think The Orphan’s Tales [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] was my first book.
Not so.
I suppose in a technical sense it was my second book–I started The Orphan’s Tales right after finishing my actual first novel, The Labyrinth [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], in the same tiny Rhode Island apartment, ricocheting between the table in that little kitchen to the opulent local Starbucks to the gothic tower where I was working as a fortune teller. But in publication order OT is my fourth baby, the first one to get into a really good New York school and win a few blue ribbons.
But my first was The Labyrinth. This is how it came to be.
I had just graduated from college and was in that purgatory between the diploma and what-are-you-actually-going-to-do-with-your-life. I’d been writing poetry for years but beyond a short story in undergrad, I’d never tried fiction. A friend of mine linked me to a little website called Nanowrimo, which was then just a baby itself. Well, that seemed like a great idea to me, and before I tell you what happened next you must remember that I was 22, and being 22 I was full of piss and vinegar and not knowing what I could and couldn’t do. A big part of that space after college is figuring out what you can and can’t do–and this was where I figured it out.
I said: It’s October. I don’t want to wait til November. Also, 30 days is way long. I’m going to do it in 10.
And I did. Everything I’d been keeping inside me for years while I learned Greek and Latin and got my varsity on the sailing team–and struggled with depression and a wholly crap childhood came out in a flood. It helps to be an insomniac already, and to have a job where I could pull out my laptop between Tarot clients. And at the end of that I had a (very short) surreal novel that I was reasonably sure I could never sell to anyone. Sure, I started writing that weird fairy tale thing, but I didn’t think I’d sell that either. It was just a Christmas present for my niece.
Fast forward a year and I’m in grad school, and very tentatively submitting The Labyrinth around. Around is a relative word, though–I knew absolutely nothing about the SFF world. Less than nothing. I got a few notes from editors saying it was so beautiful and they were definitely not buying it. (I still get those.) I ended up selling it to a small realist press just before I moved to Japan. A few weeks after arrival I was informed that they were pulling the contract, and it seemed reasonably clear to me that this had occurred not because the book had suddenly gone bad in the fridge but because I had declined the editor’s request to sleep with him before departing the US.
This dejected me in a big way–I couldn’t believe such things still happened, and I was afraid that no one would buy my book who wasn’t motivated by other and uglier considerations. I sat on it. I worked on the fairy tale thing which was getting longer and longer. I wrote another book, Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams. I learned how to navigate the Tokyo subway system.
And I started a Livejournal.
I’d been blogging for years on Diaryland, the Ur-LJ, but Livejournal was where I really started to make friends and find an online home. After a few months clicking around and doing what LJers do, I came across nihilistic_kid (Nick Mamatas), who had just had his first novel, Move Under Ground, published. I left him a comment and said that I wasn’t asking him to look at my chapters, as that is awful and gross from a stranger, but only a few suggestions as to small presses I should submit to if I have a wildly uncommercial bizarro book. He obliged, and I sadly discovered that I had already submitted to all but one of them and been rejected. The one remaining was Prime Books–which, according to their website, was closed to submissions.
In an act of kindness that I certainly did not deserve and poor Nick should not be pressured to repeat[1. Editor’s Note: if I hear that someone has e-mailed Nick saying “Hey, I saw on Jim’s journal that you looked at Catherynne Valente’s novel, so will you read mine?” I’ll feed you to the goblins.], Nick said he’d look at my chapters and send them to Prime if he liked them. He did, and Prime accepted The Labyrinth within the week. I got an email from Jeff VanderMeer asking to write the introduction, and a little while later a box full of wonderful indie press SFF books from Jeff with a note that said: “Welcome to the Family.” It remains one of the dearest gestures anyone has ever made to me.
Nick and Jeff and the kids at Prime were the first people to believe in me, and think that I had something to offer. Everything else came later, Bantam and Tor and S.J. Tucker and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland and, yes, some book with a bunch of nested fairy tales in it. But that’s where it started. With a Livejournal and a lost kid in Japan trying to figure out how to write a book.
After I got that email telling me, in effect, that my life was changing right now, I closed my computer very gently. I was happy, of course I was happy. But my overwhelming feeling was: Oh. Oh. I get it. Publication isn’t the point. It’s just the beginning. I have so much more work to do now. I can’t slow down, not even a little. Now comes the part where I will work as hard as I can as long as I’m alive, to be able to keep doing this. I’d better get started.
—
I met Scott Nicholson in 1999. We were both first place Writers of the Future winners that year, but Scott snatched the grand prize with his tale of a vampire shortstop. Scott was also the first of our WotF group to “make it big,” landing a deal with Kensington for his novel The Red Church [Amazon | B&N]. Yes, I had much envy 🙂
These days, Scott has switched over to self-publishing, where he’s been quite successful. He and I may not agree on everything, but he’s certainly made it work for himself. I invited him to share some of his thoughts and experiences, and he was kind enough to accept. (Translation: I conned him into doing the real work for one of my blog posts while I was out doing a few school visits. Heh…)
Welcome, Scott! I wanted to start with a comment you left on my blog: “I don’t make the case for indie or trad because I don’t know what’s best for anyone else.” Why did you personally make the choice to self-publish your work, and have you been happy with that choice?
I’m ecstatic. Despite working with respected agents, I wasn’t seeing any decent prospects and I had wandered afield a bit into comics, where almost everything is self-published outside of the top few companies. So that made the “do-it-yourself” ethic cool, because there is no stigma in comics like there is in fiction publishing. I had received the rights back to The Red Church, my first novel, and I had explored various ways of getting it back into print, but ordering up a print run and investing thousands of bucks only to begin a distribution struggle just didn’t sound like a productive way to spend time. I’d been watching the Kindle a bit, but from failed dabbling in e-books seven or eight years back via Fictionwise, I’d concluded that there was no market.
I hedged my bets a little by figuring, “Well, this novel has already been published, so it’s vetted, even if I am self-publishing.” See, I was foolishly being guided by ego decisions and what I “thought I knew,” instead of what was really happening—just as I’d clung to the erroneous idea that “nobody reads e-books.” I published it on New Year’s Day, 2010, along with an out-of-print novella. It immediately found readers, just a few at first, and then more and more, and I realized there was an entirely new audience waiting that the book had missed by being dead for six years. I then began collating all my old short stories into collections—all stuff that had been professionally published. Somewhere during the summer, when I got the latest “I can’t sell this” from an agent, I realized, “You can’t, but I can.” I have not looked back since. Eventually the dinky little check I was getting every month became the little check that paid my mortgage, and by the end of last year, with multiple titles, my day-job check was the dinky little check in comparison, and that’s when I realized it was time to go for it without a net. More
ETA: By request, I’ve added a mug and T-shirt with this design to my Zazzle store.
This is where my brain goes when I’m stuck on a plane for several hours…
Rape Center Fundraising Update: Over the weekend, we passed the $1000 mark, which means one donor will be getting a cameo in Libriomancer. Thank you all, and I’ll be adding a 4th prize if we hit $1500 by the end of the month.
#
I have survived my second-ever Guest of Honor gig, this one at ConStellation in Lincoln, Nebraska.
The hotel left a bit to be desired, but overall it was a wonderful weekend. My 
TSA experiences at the airports were thankfully grope-free (though they did have to search my bags and examine two very suspicious pewter figurines). I arrived early Friday afternoon and promptly tried out the miniature carousel in the hotel.
I’m still figuring out the whole GoH thing, but in my mind, the guests of honor are there both because the con staff think they’re pretty darn cool, but also (and primarily, in my mind) for the other attendees. So I figure my job is to be entertaining, to share what knowledge and experience I’ve got, and to try to add to everyone’s weekend. I did my best.
Panels were fun, and thanks in part to Matt Rotundo, we’ve now conclusively established that fantasy is better than SF. You’re welcome. It was a smallish con, but panels and my readings were well-attended. I read “Creature in Your Neighborhood” and “Mightier than the Sword,” both of which went over well. Particularly Creature … nothing I’ve written tops muppet werewolves for public readings 🙂
And there was cake! Artist Guest of Honor April Lee and I were 
both born on April 15, which was properly celebrated. And yes, that does say “Jon and April” … but misspelled names do nothing to decrease the deliciousness of cake!
Media guest Christopher Mehm was born 10 days too late, but we allowed him to share our cake anyway.
April and I judged the masquerade together, which was a lot of fun. For a small con, ConStellation had a good number of people in costume. April and I were masquerade-judging newbies, but fortunately we were able to get help and advice from the folks running it.
Basically, I got to spend the weekend hanging out and having conversations with wonderful people, being taken care of by a very hard-working con staff, eating too much (especially the Saturday night pizza and ice cream trip!), signing lots of books, and basically having a good old time.
Somewhere there should be a few thoroughly entertaining pics from the GoH photoshoot after the masquerade. One is here, but it’s got a bit of cellphone-blur. Still fun, though! I’ll post links to others when and if I see ’em.
My thanks to ConStellation for the invite, to the con staff for taking such good care of me, and to everyone who attended for making me feel welcome and just generally making it a great weekend. (Thanks also to my father for driving me to the airport at butt-crack-of-dawn o’clock on Friday!)
Welcome to First Book Friday!
In the past eighteen months, Sean Sweeney (aka John Fitch V) has self-published nine novels (three in the past two months), along with a novella. He’s also a sports writer for the Fitchburg-Leominster Sentinel & Enterprise and a few other publications. I’ve been chatting online with Sean for years, and invited him to share the story of how that first book came about…
#
Before I begin, let’s all wish the proprietor a happy 37th birthday. I’ve been friends with Jim for a few years now; we met back when MySpace was actually cool, and we’ve built a nice rapport since then. After we first met, I picked up Goblin Hero and nearly pissed myself while reading it. Now I’m a devoted follower; I love his concept for Libriomancer. Can’t wait.
But anyway. My story…
A little over eight years ago, I started writing the manuscript that became Obloeron: The Quest For The Chalice [Amazon | B&N]. I started it about 13 months or so after I spoke with celebrated fantasy author R.A. Salvatore; we had spoken at the WaldenBooks I had worked at at the time (2002), and I was interested in writing fantasy/sci-fi.
I’ll admit it: I had no idea what I was doing. For the first month, I just wrote. I didn’t know anything about character development. I didn’t know the difference between active and passive voice (something that went on for quite a while, too). I only knew that I wanted to write a fun story with some blood, some gore, and quite a bit of action. And, as one local author said, I was writing about a halfling with a Conan complex. So I had that going for me, which was nice.
After that first month, I had four chapters written. I was proud of those first four chapters. I even had the first line of Chapter 5 written … and then I stopped. I had no idea where I wanted to take the story from there. I put the MS on the shelf for a few months, wondering where the story would take me. When I finally figured things out, a terrible thing happened to my family: my father died. For two weeks, I spent time at Massachusetts General Hospital, supporting my mother. On the subway, I brainstormed out the start to Ch. 5, and after we held the funeral, I went up to Maine with friends, mainly to get away from everything. I brought the old IBM laptop and my notebook, and at night I typed away while my friends watched horror movies. I did additional brainstorming on the beach. (I secretly want to live on the beach and just write; don’t let that get out.) Once I finished Ch. 5, I put the MS back on the shelf once again, this time for over a year. Yes, a year. It’s also why I no longer fly by the seat of my pants when I’m writing.
In August 2004, I went up to the Westminster, Mass. library to see Salvatore speak; in fact, I went there to cover the event as a journalist. As the event evolved, and as Bob spoke about how he doesn’t believe in writer’s block, something sparked in me. He inspired me to finish the book that night, regardless of how long it took me. I pulled that manuscript off the shelf, blew the dust off – this may be why I have serious allergies now – and started writing. I even tried to edit while I went, trying to make it a better story. It was in these latter sessions I conceptualized the Obloeron prequels, the first of which I released a few weeks ago.
One thing about Quest that still makes me shiver: that Christmas, I was closing in on the ending. I brought my laptop to my grandparents’ house and worked while Gram and mom cooked away. I had a saving issue – this laptop had a 3.5-inch disk drive, and it wouldn’t save. No idea why. I got home that night, and the file was gone. I bawled my eyes out; all that work, two years worth, gone in an instant. Thankfully, a friend of mine told me about file retrieval software, and I was able to retrieve the manuscript.
I looked into self-publishing practically from jump street: I liked the control aspect, but yes, I’m sure I have a few more gray hairs now than I did when I started writing. Now, though, it’s a little easier for me: practice makes perfect.
Obviously, Quest is one of my favorite stories, despite the mountain I traveled to get the story onto the screen; it’s the one that started me on this journey into publishing.
Comments Note: I’ve turned on low-level screening of comments with links on LiveJournal. It’s awfully satisfying to see spam getting trapped, but if you post a comment and it gets screened by mistake, please just post a quick follow-up comment (sans links) letting me know, and I’ll unscreen it as soon as I can.
#
My birthday is tomorrow. If you’re gift-inclined, might I point you toward my Rape Crisis Center Fundraiser, which is currently only $87 away from the $1000 mark?
I’ll be spending my birthday weekend in Lincoln, Nebraska as the writing guest of honor at ConStellation. And yes, according to their Facebook page, there will be cake!
The program schedule was posted yesterday, and is available here. My panels and such look like so:
Friday, 5:00 p.m. – Altair
Fantasy vs. Sci Fi
Friday, 9:00 p.m. – Con Suite
Reading
Saturday, 11:00 a.m. – Youth Programming
Meet the Author
Saturday, 1:00 p.m. – Con Suite
Reading
Saturday, 10:00 p.m. – Altair
Elements of a Good Story
Sunday, 1:00 p.m. – Altair
The Future of Publishing
This is my second guest of honor gig, and it really is an honor. I’m following Brandon Sanderson, who was last year’s GoH. (No pressure there, eh?) I’m very much looking forward to it. The staff have been great to work with so far, and they’ve done a nice job on travel arrangements and such. It should be a fun weekend!
For the two readings, I’m thinking about doing “The Creature in Your Neighborhood,” the muppet werewolf story (because it’s so much fun), and … hm. I could do the first chapter of Snow Queen, or a goblin short story, or something else. I suppose I could even read the opening chapter of Libriomancer. Any suggestions or preferences?
So, is anyone here going to be attending? If so, please feel free to come up and say hi! The best part of these things is getting to meet so many new members of my extended SF/F tribe. (Disclaimer: I’m horrible with names and faces, so may not automatically make the connection that John Smith is Tardis42 on LiveJournal.)
I’ll be taking the shinynewphone, and will hopefully be posting updates on Twitter throughout the weekend.
I haven’t done a comic in a while, so figured I’d share my two cents on Amanda Hocking’s commercial publishing deal and Barry Eisler’s decision to self-publish.
Yeah, I know. Jim never posts twice in one day. But I had a lot to babble about, and I’m going to be gone this weekend for Constellation, so figured I’d get the latest e-book data up now.
Let’s start with an update on Goblin Tales [Amazon | B&N | Lulu]. The book came out on March 15, and the March sales were pretty darn good, in my opinion.
Amazon: 130
B&N: 55
Lulu: 20 (18 print and 2 PDF downloads)
The book is also up on iBooks, Kobo, and Wizard’s Tower Bookstore (which will hopefully help international readers). However, I don’t have sales data for these sites yet.
Overall, that’s close to $400 in sixteen days. Nice, eh? Especially for short fiction. So the short term results are looking nice indeed.
The long term? That’s harder to say. April sales for the first week show 20 copies sold at Amazon, 12 at B&N, and 5 at Lulu (4 print, 1 download). Not bad, but a definite dropoff. I’m not going to make any confident predictions here, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see the same sales curve I get with my print books, where there’s an initial spike in sales followed by a dropoff to a lower long-term rate.
Moving on to overall e-book sales, I received my royalty statement from DAW, which had some interesting data. I graphed e-book sales of the goblin trilogy and the first two princess books below. (Red Hood hasn’t been out long enough to generate multiple data points.)
E-book sales jumped in July – December of 2010 for all five books. Even for Goblin Quest, which is a four-year-old book. Not as dramatic an increase for the goblins, but a noticeable one. A number of people have commented on a spike in e-book sales around the end of last year and the start of this one. I’m guessing some of that is due to the holidays, and all of the people who received e-readers and gift cards to spend.
I have no idea if this trend will continue. It would be rather silly to base predictions on a single-period jump. But it’s interesting.
All total, e-book sales make up about 4.3% of total goblin sales and 6.8% of princess sales, but those percentages appear to be increasing over time. For Red Hood’s Revenge [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], which came out in July of 2010, e-books represented 6.7% of total sales.
So there you go. I’m happy to say I’m continuing to earn royalties on all of the goblin books and the first two princess books, and Red Hood should start paying out as well once the reserve against returns goes away.
Good morning, all!
First off, I wanted to thank everyone for all of the support on yesterday’s post, and to welcome the new readers. I’ve gotten a lot of comments and e-mail, so my apologies if I haven’t responded to everything yet. I’m working on it.
I’ve spoken to several of the authors who pulled their WPT stories, but if those authors choose to take me up on my offer, it will still take some time to read the stories and get contracts drawn up and signed and so on. That said, I’ll definitely announce things as soon as I have anything to announce.
Other assorted updates:
1) Author Lisa Mantchev posted on Twitter yesterday that the Wicked Pretty Things anthology has been cancelled by the publisher. Given the number of authors who pulled out of the project, and the public outcry, I’m not surprised. I haven’t seen any announcement or release from the publisher yet.
2) Cleolinda on LJ has a good roundup of the WPT situation, including some background information.
3) The unraffle fundraiser I’m running for rape crisis centers has raised $840 so far. If we pass $1000, I’ll draw another winner and give that person a cameo in Libriomancer. Details here.
4) Being kicked in the kneecap hurts. (This brilliant insight is brought to you courtesy of last night’s karate class.)
