Black Belt

So far this week, the release of Goblin Tales  [Amazon | B&N] has pretty much dominated my brain (91 sales and counting), but I did have other news I wanted to share. On Monday, my sensei gave me my promotion form for shodan (first degree black belt).

I’m sorting out my emotions on this one. Excitement, definitely. Some anxiety as well. And there’s certainly a bit of pride in the mix, though I get pounded regularly enough that I don’t think I’m in danger of developing a swollen ego.

It’s been just over three years since I started studying Sanchin-Ryu. From what I’ve seen, that’s faster than average … but I had some martial arts background going in, and I’ve been attending extra classes for much of those three years, as well as working out with a few more experienced (and higher ranking) friends at their place.

My first Sanchin-Ryu post from March of 2008 is here, where I talk about my initial impressions and how I was invited to join my daughter in working out. (She has since chosen to stop attending classes.) I still enjoy this style and the overall atmosphere: supportive and noncompetitive, but also practical and results-oriented.

They say black belt is a beginning. That now you have a foundation, and can start to truly learn and understand the style. It reminds me a bit of selling that first novel, and the realization that after working so hard to reach that point, there’s so much more to do and learn.

Sanchin-Ryu doesn’t have the same kind of formal tests as the Tae Kwon Do classes I took as a kid. Rather, as Master Cataline puts it, every class is part of your test. Your promotion begins the day you first walk in the door.

There will still be a promotion night probably later this year, once I get my paperwork completed and turned in. And I expect to get my butt whooped that night, but it’s very different from the kind of thing Peg Kerr has been describing as she prepares for her black belt test. (Not saying one way is better or worse; just noting the differences. Also, I need to make a Sanchin-Ryu LJ icon!)

I’ve gotten a lot out of the past 3+ years of study. It greatly helps me to manage stress. I enjoy the people and the physical workout. And while I’m not ready to start moonlighting as a superninja, I do feel more confident about my techniques. Even though I know there’s so much left to learn. Or maybe because I recognize that there’s so much to learn … that perspective better highlights how much I’ve learned, too.

It’s been a good journey so far. I’m excited to see what comes next … especially if I get to learn the legendary Boot-to-the-Head technique.

Goblin Tales: Day One

Well that was an interesting 24 hours. In the first official day of being on sale, Goblin Tales sold a total of 66 copies.  The breakdown between Amazon and B&N was:

Amazon: 47 (+2 at Amazon.uk)
B&N: 17

That’s over $120 in royalties in one day. I don’t expect the book to maintain that level of course, but it’s not a bad first day at all, and far better than I’ve ever done with Goldfish Dreams. Goldfish Dreams has sold 52 copies on Amazon since it was first released in October of last year. I’m taking this as strong confirmation of the very reasonable assumption that authors will do better with self-publishing if they have a preexisting fan base. (Goblin fans I have; mainstream fans, not so much.)

I’m very curious to see the longer-term sales. And while I doubt there’s any way to figure it out for certain, I’d love to know whether Goblin Tales in turn leads to any extra sales of the other goblin books.

Lessons Learned Thus Far:

1. I checked the box for worldwide distribution at both Amazon and B&N. Despite this, I’ve gotten several reports that non-U.S. readers have to jump through hoops, or are flat-out unable to buy the books. Not cool. I’m looking into why this is happening and what I can do to make the book more accessible. (It sounds like getting the book posted on Kobo may solve some of this.)

2. I asked folks on Twitter how they felt about “Retweet this!” contests, as I was torn about trying it. Lots of strong, if mixed feelings out there. It might work with some people, but it will also piss off and get you blocked by others. (I decided against doing one.)

3. I have truly wonderful friends and readers. Thank you to everyone who blogged, Facebooked, and Tweeted about the book!

4. The immediate reinforcement that comes from being able to instantly track sales is dangerous, and I can understand why some self-published authors go overboard with promotional posts. “I posted a link on Twitter, and look, I sold three more books! I should do more of this!” Dangerous indeed.

5. The best Amazon rank that I saw was about 1700. I’ll have to sell a lot more copies if I ever want to crack the top 100 list for Kindle.

6. Anyone who says an e-book can be quickly and cleanly slapped together and posted for sale … let’s just say this does not match my experience. Quickly or cleanly, yes. (Lou Anders at Pyr blogged about this last week.)

Other Links:

Melanie Nilles interviewed me about the choice to e-publish.

Sherwood Smith posted a nice little review of the book.

And Sean Sweeney posted the first Amazon review. (He likes the libriomancer story 🙂 Yay!)

Happy Goblin Day!

Today marks the official release of Goblin Tales, an electronic collection of five goblin-related short stories, available for $2.99 for Kindle and Nook.

Purchase links: Amazon, Amazon.uk, B&N
Coming soon: Kobo, iBooks, Lulu (print edition)

So why should you rush out RIGHT THIS INSTANT to plunk down your hard-earned lunch money for this book? Here are ten reasons in no particular order.

1. Goblins are stereotyped as one-dimensional villains, low-level obstacles to be slaughtered by so-called heroes on their way to the “real” quest. By buying this book, you help fight harmful anti-goblin rhetoric.

2. In keeping with traditional goblin humor, one of the stories features what can best be described as a “tactical diaper.”

3. Gay Fire Spider Fights to Save Science Fiction Convention! Yes, this is an actual story in the collection.

4. If this one sells well, I’ll be much more likely to do other e-releases.

5. Daniel Ernle’s wonderful cover art.

6. The fifth story was the seed for my current project, Libriomancer, meaning you get a taste of what’s to come in another year or two.

7. Pat Rothfuss has talked about buying the rights to Firefly and putting it back on the air. Well, if I make enough money off of Goblin Tales, I’ll buy the rights to The Muppet Show and bring that back!

8. If both Pat and I succeed? Muppet/Firefly Crossover, baby!

9. Lots of nice people have said lots of nice things about my goblin stuff.

10. The book is DRM-free, and I turned off regional and lending restrictions when I posted it for sale.

If any goblin fans would care to spread the word, I’d be much obliged. Cover art is available in small and large.

I’ll be posting announcements and maybe a contest or two on Twitter and Facebook as well, and will probably be talking more about the book, the process, and the numbers later this week.

Japan

ABC has a number of vivid before/after photos of the devastation in Japan. The quake moved Japan by eight feet. According to the police chief in Miyagi province, “more than 10,000 people are estimated to have died in his province alone.” NPR also has an update on a second explosion in one of Japan’s nuclear plants.

Donation Links:

From George Takei: Today we are all Japanese. Give $10 to help. Text REDCROSS to 90999, or click http://ow.ly/4ctzx. For an alternative to the Red Cross, you can also give to the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund.

Doctors without Borders

Save the Children (link from tammy212). And from Alethea Kontis, “You can  also text JAPAN to 20222 to donate $10 straight to Save the Children for Japan relief.”

PayPal donation site to various nonprofits (link from Tom Smith)

Richelle Mead links to Charity Navigator, “an excellent site that reviews charities and provides tips on which are the most legitimate to give money to.”

First Book Friday: Cindy Pon

It’s First Book Friday time again! Today we have Cindy Pon (cindy-pon on LJ). In addition to writing, Pon also does gorgeous Chinese brush art. Check out one of her recent works, titled Surly Cat. I love it! Bonus trivia: she was also the seventeenth Dread Pirate Roberts, having passed the name on to DPRXVIII a few years back in order to devote more time to her writing.

Pon’s second book, Fury of the Phoenix [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], comes out at the end of this month.

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I’ve been writing creatively since around age twelve, beginning with poetry that rhymed. To this day, I still enjoy a good rhyming poem. I soon moved on to short stories in high school, and wrote a little through college. But I basically stopped writing creatively for a decade, too busy with “grown up” stuff like grad school, marriage, work, major moves, etc. It wasn’t until I had my two bubs back to back and was staying at home full time that I found my first love again — creative writing. I really needed something to call my own again, and began taking writing classes at the local university extensions at night. From there, I went on to take a novel writing class.

“Writing a novel” had always been on a checklist of mine, that I never even considered seriously. But now that I was home full time, why not take the time to try and do this? I began writing Silver Phoenix [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], not knowing anything other than that I wanted to write a classic heroine’s journey and incorporate Chinese mythology and folklore. I wrote forty pages — more than I had written for anything in my life — and kept going back to revise those forty pages over and over again. I was stuck. Immobilized by my own fears and insecurities. How could I go on to finish a novel? I needed at least two hundred more pages! It seemed daunting and impossible.

I stopped working on the novel for six months.

In the fall, I was fortunate enough to meet Margaret Weis for a private session on my first pages at a local writing conference. That meeting really helped to give me drive and courage to keep going. In the fall of 2006, I joined NaNoWriMo for the first time. I had no intention of writing 50k in a month, but I did intend to use it to plow through The Dreaded Middle. I proceeded to write around 1k words five days a week, and by the end of November, I had 35k more words for my novel.

I finished the rough draft of Silver Phoenix in January 2007, then proceeded to revise the novel at least six times that year, with the help of critique group friends. At the end of January 2008, I began querying for agents. I never set out to be published. I wanted to challenge myself, but when I actually finished the novel, I loved it so much I wanted to share Ai Ling’s story with the world. I knew I had to at least try.

Like so many other YA fantasy author friends, I had originally written Silver Phoenix thinking it was a straight adult fantasy. It wasn’t until I began querying and one big fantasy agent asked, “Isn’t this YA?” that I began querying YA agents. In the end, I was lucky enough to find one after querying 121 (with over 100 rejections to my name). I was seriously considering submitting directly to publishers who didn’t require agented manuscripts if I couldn’t find representation when Bill Contardi agreed to take me on in April 2008.

In the end, Silver Phoenix went to auction in May 2008 and I had as many editors interested in the manuscript as I had full requests from agents. I had such a difficult time finding an agent as they’d look to the books currently on the shelves and say, there is nothing like this on the market — I don’t know who would buy it. When really, it’s a very straightforward fantasy story, like so many of the ones that are published, the only difference being it is inspired by ancient China.

Silver Phoenix debuted in April 2009 and was named one of the top ten fantasy/science fiction novels for youth by America Library Association’s Booklist. It’s been a huge learning curve since I became published, and I’m looking forward to the release of my sequel this March, Fury of the Phoenix. It’s a true joy to be writing for the YA audience, as teens make some of the most wonderful reading fans. I’ve experienced many highs as well as many lows as a published author, but I honestly wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Sale and Snippets

Earlier this week, I got the official acceptance for my story “Corrupted,” which will be in the anthology THE MODERN FAE’S GUIDE TO SURVIVING HUMANITY, edited by Patricia Bray and Joshua Palmatier.

To celebrate, have a pair of snippets. I’ve posted a bit from the short story beneath the cut, along with a bonus piece from LIBRIOMANCER.

More

Is Amanda Hocking the New Christopher Paolini?

Someone on Twitter asked for my opinion on self-published author Amanda Hocking, and whether she was the new Christopher Paolini.

My gut response? No. She’s Amanda Hocking.

Hocking is very much a self-publishing success story. She wasn’t previously published with a commercial publisher. She’s self-published eight novels and one novella as e-books. She reports having sold close to a million books, and she’s been on the USA Today Bestseller list.

Paolini was also a success story, of course. (I’ve written a little about his story here.) But his path to success with Eragon was very different than Hocking’s. Paolini’s parents owned the small commercial press that first published his book, and they devoted themselves pretty much full-time to publicizing it. More importantly, Paolini broke in almost a decade ago, and publishing is in a very different place today than it was then.

What Paolini and Hocking both have in common, aside from their impressive success, is that they’re both outliers. So are J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer, for that matter. All four of these authors are hanging out at the extreme end of the curve, and I think that’s important to keep in mind. Consider it a “RESULTS NOT TYPICAL” disclaimer.

I was reading Hocking’s blog, and I’m impressed with her take on things. She seems very down-to-earth about her success, and much more realistic than many authors I’ve read. From one of her recent blog posts:

“Self-publishing is great, but it’s not easy. Most people who do it will not get rich, just like most authors signed up at Scholastic books aren’t billionaires.  Traditional publishers are not evil any more than Amazon or Barnes & Noble are evil. Things are changing, hopefully for the better, but it is still hard work being a writer.”

She also touches on something I’ve pointed out before, which is that holding up someone like Hocking as an argument for why you should self-publish makes exactly as much sense as holding up Rowling to prove you should go with a commercial publisher. (See “outlier,” above.)

I understand why so many people are talking about Hocking. I’ve seen analyses of exactly how many Twitter followers she has, how many Facebook friends, how often she blogs, her cover art … authors scrutinize every  move she makes, because most of us would really, really like to duplicate her success. I know I’d love to make it onto the USA Today Bestseller list, and the money would be awfully nice too.

It doesn’t work that way. There are certainly things I can learn from Hocking, but I’m not her. I can’t follow her path and expect the exact same results.

So no, Hocking is not the new Paolini. She’s someone who has worked very hard to make her own path, and continues to do so. I would recommend reading her blog and getting her own thoughts on her success and the state of publishing. I found her comments both smart and … refreshing.

10 Years in the Day Job

In late 2000, I was looking at two job possibilities. One was computer support for a private company. The other was an equivalent position with state government, which paid about $15K less each year. On the other hand, the state job would have very little overtime (leaving more time and energy for writing), and it was a unionized position, meaning I would get a one hour lunch break pretty much every day.

In February of 2001, I accepted a job as a government employee here in Michigan. It was a deliberate choice to give up that higher salary in order to take a job better suited to my goals as a writer.

That choice was a turning point for me, and it meant I had to decide whether I was truly serious about this writing thing.

Taking this job was a risk. There was no guarantee I’d succeed as an author. But it turned out to be the right choice for me. It’s not the most satisfying or fulfilling position, but it allows me to support my family and do what I love.

Ten years later, I have six books in print with a major publisher, with a seventh on the way and two more under contract. I’ve sold forty-plus short stories. I’ve gone through three departments and four managers at work, but I’m still writing almost every day from noon to one o’clock, churning out a book a year and a few short stories.

Writing is a marathon, and very  much about long-term persistence. But there are turning points and milestones too, and it’s strange to realize it’s been ten years since I made that choice.

I talk about writing and the day job a bit more in an interview at the Booklife blog.

Troll Poll

At what point do you label someone a troll?

Some of the discussions on my blog get pretty intense and heated. I have no problem with people disagreeing with me. I appreciate it, actually. I learn a lot from people challenging my ideas or offering different perspectives.

I do have a problem with people who consistently violate Wheaton’s Law. But I’ve also watched people swoop into a conversation at Dick Factor Nine, only to eventually turn around and say, “Huh … okay, I guess maybe you have a point there. Sorry for being a dick.”

Yeah, it doesn’t happen often. But it has happened.

To me, a troll is someone who shows up solely to stir things up and piss people off. There’s zero interest in the conversation, zero interest in listening. It’s a game for the troll’s amusement, to poke buttons and see who s/he can piss off.

To me, clueless =/= troll. Angry =/= troll. Even blatant violation of Wheaton’s Law doesn’t necessarily equate to trolling. We all act like jerks sometimes. (I might still ban you for repeated offenses, but I wouldn’t automatically assume you were a troll.)

I think we tend to label people trolls too quickly. And from what I’ve seen, I think we sometimes do it as a way to dismiss people we disagree with. (I’m including myself in the “we” here, by the way.)

What do you think? We can’t read minds, so when do you decide someone is just trolling and no longer worth responding to?

  • Is the “Men’s Rights” advocate who shows up in one of my rape posts to argue that “Rape is a weapon used by feminists to attack men!” a troll?
  • What about the anonymous commenter who says, “I know it’s off-topic, but I wanted to tell you I read your latest book, and it was utter trash.” Does it make a difference if they aren’t anonymous?
  • Does the guy who shows up using offensive language (i.e., “That’s so gay/retarded!”) count as a troll? What if he continues to use that language after being told it’s offensive?

It’s possible I’m overanalyzing this. But I’m curious what others think.

The Demon Trapper’s Daughter, by Jana Oliver

Jana Oliver‘s first YA novel, The Demon Trapper’s Daughter [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], came out at the beginning of last month. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an advance review copy of this one, and finished it earlier this week.

The book is set in Atlanta in 2018, and worldwide Hell has begun to break loose. There’s a pre-postapocalyptic feel to the story … we’re not fully postapocalyptic yet, but civilization is certainly going downhill. School is taught wherever they can find space, such as the back of an old grocery store. Commerce has moved away from big stores and back toward the street vendor model. And demons lurk in the shadows and the pitted ruins of the streets.

Enter Riley Blackthorne, 17-year-old daughter of Demon Trapper Paul Blackthorne, and well on her way to being a trapper herself. When her father is ambushed and murdered by demons, Riley must figure out how to survive on her own, paying bills and protecting her father’s body from the necromancers, not to mention dealing with her father’s former partner Beck, her abusive new master Harper, and a potential new boyfriend.

In many ways, this is a setup novel, laying the groundwork for the series and the conflicts to come. The ending isn’t a cliffhanger, but an awful lot is left unresolved, and I found myself wishing for a few more answers.

The worldbuilding was fascinating: the economy of the trappers, who sell their demons to middlemen who then transport them to the church for disposal. The high volume of holy water sales, and the way increased demon activity drives up the prices. The slow and uneven technological backslide (we still have working cellphone networks, but we’re using computer disks again). One of my favorite touches was a homeless man who carryied around a Grade One demon (small, weak, and at times almost cute) to help him survive.

Riley was a believable 17-year-old. Stubborn, still seeing things a bit too black-or-white sometimes (especially with Beck), but smart, skilled, and determined to succeed … even when that determination crosses the line into foolishness. (At one point, she sets out to trap a Grade Three demon on her own. An understandable choice given her circumstances, but not a wise one.)

Overall, I wanted a little more story and a little less groundwork, but it was a fun read, set in a vividly decaying Atlanta with a flawed but sympathetic heroine.

Has anyone else read this one yet? If so, what did you think?

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