Archive for the ‘Books and Writing’ Category
Time and energy for making astronomical observations has been rather scarce of late. My interest in matters astronomical has never been stronger, but writing has taken such a firm hold of my life that other priorities have been set back a notch or two. (Gardening is one of these. You should see the weeds out there!) Until relatively recently I had the time to devote to astronomy (and horticulture) because I’d given up on writing. The creative energy once soaked up by writing needed to go elsewhere. It went into the Earth and out to the stars.
It’s not really a surprise that a return to writing has rearranged my life as it has. Now that modern self publishing (independent publishing, as many prefer to put it) has turned being published from a bottleneck to an open outlet, I have no reason to hold back. And for the past year and a half or so, I haven’t held back at all. Getting the words down, getting the stories told, is priority one, without question. So I turn my eyes back to the Moon and stars only at those times when I have gotten enough writing done that I feel comfortable taking some time at the eyepiece.
Writing follows me to the eyepiece, and has changed the way I practice astronomy in a way that I didn’t expect. With my mind so focused on making words work for me, these days, I find myself wielding a pencil less often, when I record observations. Instead of sketching each object, I find myself taking ever more detailed notes. It was a subtle drift from one method to the other as the dominant technique, and it’s far from a complete change. I still apply graphite to the blending stump on a regular basis, especially when working on something like an Astronomical League observing project. But for observations made for the sake of observing, I just don’t sketch things as often.
Many artists focus on one form of self-expression to the near exclusion of others. (People who can draw, sing, and play a musical instrument with equal facility leave me awestruck.) The art I practice is that of wordsmithing, and it has always suffered competition without much grace. I suppose for me it’s a sort of artistic monogamy. And the more involved with writing I am, the more ways writing finds to express itself in my daily life. For astronomy, writing always had a role, but for years I spent as much timing illustrating observing reports as I did writing them. Words are my thing, now more than ever, the medium in which I best express what I see and think and feel while out under the stars.
I crossed a divide of sorts when I started using a digital voice recorder, instead of scribbling in the dark. Even a faint red light reflected off a white piece of paper (and it doesn’t matter if I’m sketching or scribbling) reduces dark adaptation, a necessary trade-off for effective sketching. With a DVR and a sense for words, I don’t need to reduce my night vision as much, though reading star charts still has an effect. Use of the DVR promotes spontaneity as I search for ways to describe what I see. The following day I use those spoken words for a foundation, and write essays to fill my observation reports. Allowing the medium that comes most naturally to me take over when recording observations has made visual observing a more vivid experience for me. As was true of sketching, making the effort to come up with just the right word or phrase focuses my attention in ways that links my mind more clearly to the process of observing. Just as it happens with sketching, that focus means I see more, and see more clearly. The act of observing becomes an interaction between lenses, eyes, and mind, and not a merely passive collection of photons by the retina.
As with any art, the more you write the more you can write, and with greater facility. The desire to write also grows. The more writing I do, the more I want to write, so it really is no surprise that I practice astronomy the way I do, these days. At least, when I manage time to do a little observing, that is. The writing habit that has taken the sketch pad out of my hands also keeps me working on the next book or short story. That leaves me with little time for star-gazing as I work to get another book written and published.
I’m a bit behind in posting to this weblog, but I have a good excuse. Between working on revisions for Book Two of the War of the Second Iteration and lining a few things up for TusCon 39 this coming weekend, I’ve been a bit tied up. Time that might have been used for the blog went into writing a pair of guest blog posts, the first such opportunities to come my way. The first of these went up Tuesday.
http://indiebookblogger.blogspot.com/2012/11/guest-post-with-tom-watson-author-of.html
I’m quite pleased with the way it turned out, and delighted to find myself on Indie Book Blog.
When the second guest post goes live, I’ll announce it here.
I have a giveaway style contest in progress on Goodreads, right now. It will continue until October 28th. Up for grabs are five signed copies of The Luck of Han’anga. Click here, if you’re interested in taking a chance on this.
http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/34090-the-luck-of-han-anga
So much of this indie author business is about taking chances. I’m taking a chance on finding my way to enough readers to matter, enough that sales will supplement my income to some degree, and keep me free to right more books, essays, and short stories. I take chances on various methods to make my work visible. Likewise, readers take a chance – sometimes a big one – on indie authors. There are a lot of eye-catching book covers on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, these days, that disguise an aweful lot of books that are, well, just plain aweful. Mixed in with all of that are books well worth reading, and of course, I hope more people than not believe my books fall in the second category. You can read reviews (if you still trust point-of-sale reviews), you can browse review sites and book blogs, and you can join discussion groups on Shelfari and Goodreads in your quest to discover new books and authors. But what it comes down to, sooner or later, is taking a chance and trying something new. A new author, a new story, a new style, and no knowing what you have until you read it. With ebooks, at least, you can take that chance without committing a lot of money to it. You still spend time reading that chosen book, however. And if you don’t think that’s as important an investment as the money, well, quite likely you’re a LOT younger than me!
Giving away books and stories provides a way to let a reader take that chance without investing the cold hard cash. A free short story gives a reader an opportunity to sample a new writer without either expense or a major investment in time. And so I’ve gone the short story route. Yesterday I loaded a story, set in the same universe as my novel The Luck of Han’anga, to Smashwords. The link below will take you to this story, entitled “Long Time Passing.” (It will eventually be available directly from Amazon and Barnes & Noble). It will cost you nothing to download it, and at a bit over 7,000 words, won’t take up too much of your time. With any luck at all, “Long Time Passing” will give you an idea of what I’m all about as a writer of fiction, and help you decide whether or not to take a chance on my longer work. Either way, if you download it, I hope you enjoy it.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/244036
Instructions for downloading the story for various ereaders can be found in the Smashwords FAQ:
https://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq
My desire to write is more than likely a consequence of my print addiction. I learned how to read very early, according to my parents, before I learned to tie my shoes. Whether or not that’s literally the case, I can’t say, but the truth is I’ve been an active, even compulsive reader, for so long now that books often figure in my foggiest early recollections. A love for books and reading was actively encouraged by those who had a hand in raising me, for which I will be forever grateful. And somewhere along the line, also very early in my life, putting words down on paper for myself became the flip side of reading, a natural outgrowth of a love of words and the tricks they can play. Writing and reading were soon of equal importance, and by the time I was half way through middle school I was quite convinced I wanted to be a writer. This side of the coin didn’t receive quite the level of encouragement as reading, however, due to concerns that I might develop “impractical” priorities.
The reading I did in younger days was not especially eclectic, with general science and science fiction making up nearly all the elective reading I did in middle and high school. There were exceptions. Somewhere along the way I was required to read Buck’s The Good Earth, a book that took my imagination to unexpected places. Most of the normal high school reading list left me flat, until I was assigned Moby Dick, a book that both baffled and fascinated me. Late in high school someone introduced me to Will and Ariel Durant, and history joined science on the nonfiction hit parade. And then there was Shakespeare. I had my problems with Elizabethan English, but for some reason was so fascinated by what I read (and saw performed in a couple of cases) that I made the effort. But these really were the exceptions to the rule, and the authors I knew best were the likes of Heinlein, Asimov, Silverberg, and Pohl. I read so much sci-fi as a teenager that the adults around me reacted to it the way some did the idea of kids drinking coffee – that it would stunt my growth, in an intellectual manner of speaking. And in time, the amount of time I spent off by myself reading was itself seen in much the same way, as too much of a good thing.
In hindsight, they clearly had a point. I was rather shy in younger days, and averse to taking risks. These traits, combined with a combination of family issues and the very conservative social environment in which I grew up, conspired to make me something of a late bloomer. Being somewhat behind the curve made it harder for me to fit in – anywhere – something that made me ever more escapist in terms of the reading material I sought. When I started writing science fiction and fantasy it seemed only natural to do so. I practically lived by and for genre fiction, those genres in particular. Attending science fiction conventions and hanging with a crowd with the same fixations reinforced the habit. To say that what I wrote in those days was terribly derivative would have been, at best, an understatement. That I sold absolutely none of that fiction, not a word, is in hindsight not at all hard to understand.
Nothing stays the same, though, another aspect of reality I’ve come to appreciate in a different way over time. I met people in the sci-fi crowd who had one foot firmly planted in the “mundane” world from which I desired to escape. Through friendships made with such people I eventually found myself encouraged to try new things in that mundane world, to approach and embrace it with a bit more courage. When you take a chance and succeed, you are more willing to push yourself a bit further and harder. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but if the wins at least give you a sense for facing even odds, you keep at it and keep growing. It becomes a positive feedback loop, an upward spiral, and things really begin to change. You do crazy things, like bicycling the length of Baja California, getting married, and going back to school to earn a degree. You become your own agent of change.
Two things happened to my reading habits as these changes unfolded. I spent more time doing things and less time reading, but at the same time covered a wider range of subjects. Conversations and experiences with a broader range of friends and acquaintances led to the selection of different sorts of reading material. Sci-fi lost its near complete dominance. On the way to the degree I became so caught up by other matters that I nearly stopped reading fiction altogether. Hardly a surprise, I suppose, that I also stopped writing it, although continued lack of sales certainly helped to spill the wind from those sails. Books on history, biography, and science were most likely to stick to my hands in bookstores, with escapist fiction fading to a minor role. I read hard books, works that challenged me, and sometimes confused me. It was a very different escape from the ordinary.
The digital age has brought writing back to dominate my life, these days, and although my first book is nonfiction, I was immediately drawn back to sci-fi. (It felt like going home.) As I’ve worked to develop a credible fictional world I’ve discovered that reading and writing seem to have developed a relationship that inverts the way it was in my youth. Once upon a time reading made me want to write. Now I’m writing science fiction again, and to promote my work I find myself interacting with fans and readers of the genre. They’re talking about books that sound worth reading, and so now writing has led me to read more fiction. It’s a different experience these days, however, and not so much about escaping reality. Reading, which is now the flip side of writing, is informed by a wider range of experience. So is writing. Considering this, I finally understand a comment I heard a long time ago. Live boldly, read boldly, and then write about it.
Most of the fiction I read is sci-fi or fantasy, and this has been true almost from the time I first learned how to read. Tom Swift books featured prominently among the books given to me as birthday and Holiday gifts. My interest in the genre expanded when I joined the Science Fiction Book Club in high school. Having access to the SFBC put a very important book in my hands: The Hugo Winners’, an anthology edited by Isaac Asimov. The introductory material he wrote to preface each story revealed to me a thing called science fiction fandom, generally referred to as “fandom” by those on the inside, a literary subculture that held regular gatherings – conventions – for the sake of the genre long before Star Trek rendered such things newsworthy. The very idea drew me, and I wondered what it would be like to find myself in a gathering filled with people who read – and wrote – the sorts of things that fired my imagination.
Near the end of 1975 my family relocated to Phoenix, AZ. Going from a small farm town to a large and rapidly growing city was one hell of a shock, but good things did come of it in the end. Among these was the discovery, a year or so later, of a bookstore in nearby Tempe that catered to the sci-fi/fantasy crowd. (I believe it was called The One Bookstore. I can no longer find references to it, and so may not have that right.) On one of my first visits I found a flyer on the counter for something called IguanaCon, which turned out to be the Worldcon for 1978. Something I’d been reading about was about to take place in my new back yard. I signed up, and attended the first of what would end up being dozens of “cons” that made up a major element of my life from 1978 to the early ‘90s. Only the decision to return to school and complete a degree finally knocked me out of the habit. Once the habit was broken my attendance became sporadic, then died away completely.
That changed again in 2011 when I embarked on my independent publishing venture. I attended TusCon 38 in November of that year, to get a feel for the whole con thing again after so long. I knew I would need to reconnect with fandom to help promote my work. It was a strange but good experience, being back after so many years, but I was still just a fan. I had fiction in the works, but none of it was published. That changed in June of this year with the publication of The Luck of Han’anga. The first con to take place after the release of my novel was CopperCon 32, held this past Labor Day weekend. I attended of course, and had a very different convention experience.
The drive to Avondale was long, hot, and dull. Arrival and check in echoed every convention I ever attended in the past. The people milling about were just the sort of folk I remembered being drawn to such an event, though few of the faces were familiar. I’d volunteered to be on a couple of panels, and had a signing and a reading scheduled. The last two items were a risk, being unknown, but what the hell? Got to start somewhere, and so I arrived with thirty copies of the novel (and ten of Olcott’s Skies) in my baggage. (Also a box of bookmarks to give away.) It felt good just being there, and I enjoyed the memories that were nudged to the surface. I’d once been a part of the organization that founded CopperCon (the Central Arizona Speculative Fiction Society), and if memory serves was actually on hand when it all came together. I do know I attended the first ever CopperCon. It seemed more than appropriate to be an author at a con for the very first time, at a con with which I shared a little history.
From what I saw of it, CopperCon 32 went quite well. It was much smaller than I remembered, but I understand the event has had some hard times and is now staging a comeback. The first panel was on the subject of creating alien characters, and I ended up with only one fellow participant, Gini Koch (author of Alien in the Family, among other books). We hit it off well and led an interesting discussion with plenty of audience participation. The next day (Saturday) I gave away bookmarks as I took up space in the dealer’s room for the signing, along with Saul Garnell (author of Freedom Club). I sold but a single copy, and signed it. It was an eye-opener for the buyer to learn that his was the first ever copy of my book to be autographed. Of course, it was grand moment for your’s truly, as well! I spent the rest of Saturday meeting people, indulging in long and interesting conversations, then turned in early in order to be well-rested for the reading the following morning.
The reading turned into the only speed bump I encountered that weekend. It was scheduled for 10am Sunday morning, a time slot I accepted without thinking. I should have known better. In my more active fannish days I was always up until the wee small hours of the night, and not fully conscious again until late the next morning. This is typical of con-goers, and so my audience consisted of a single person. The rest of the convention was consuming brunch. Not exactly what I had in mind. The person who showed up sat and chatted about self publishing for half an hour, and that was that. This would have rendered Sunday morning an outright disaster, except that while waiting for my last panel discussion I ran into the fellow who bought the book the day before. The first words he uttered after I said “Good morning” formed a question on the timing of Book Two’s release. I said it would be later in the year, and suggested facetiously that he read slowly. Too late. He’d stayed up the night and read my book straight through. Apparently he liked it. I’d be hard pressed, just now, to say what blew my mind most that weekend, signing a book for the first time or having a new reader get so caught up he stayed up all night to read the entire book.
Okay, no, that’s really a no-brainer, isn’t it?
So after one last panel, on authors using the social media (in the company of authors Deborah Baudoin and Mark Rude), I packed up and made the long, hot, boring drive home to Tucson. I felt pretty good along the way, though. Being in a familiar situation, but playing a very different role, was enlightening. My first time at a con as an author had not been perfect, but I gained valuable experience and made new friends. It bodes well for future events.
I’ve made a commitment recently to update this weblog on a weekly basis. I even designated Friday evening as the time to do it. This week, however, that isn’t going to work. By this time tomorrow I will be in Avondale, AZ, participating in CopperCon 32. I’m looking to promote my novel – The Luck of Han’anga – and continue to reconnect with the science fiction community, where I’ve become a stranger over the past 20 or so years. I will freely admit to having something of a mercenary motive. I’ve written a science fiction novel, after all, and where better to promote awareness of my book than at a science fiction convention?
This business of being an independent author – and yes, I do see what I’m doing as a business – is all about self promotion. Word of mouth will spread your book from reader to reader, and word of mouth, as they say, is golden. It’s got to start somewhere, though, and for an indie author, “somewhere” is yours truly. And so off I go to a “con” to participate in panel discussions, do a reading, and sign books. This last could be seen as a bit risky, I realize, since so few people know of the book. It’s not likely anyone will be coming to seek me out for an autograph. But I’ll be there, out in the open, copies of The Luck of Han’anga ready to sell. It’s visibility, and every way I can find to make myself visible counts to some degree.
I will, I sincerely hope, do similar things at an event here in Tucson, in November, called TusCon. And again in the Phoenix area for LepreCon. I’ll go further afield as my financial situation improves.
When I’m not heading for a con, I’ll wield the internet as a tool for self promotion, of course. While it’s hard to beat meeting readers face to face (an experience I’m looking forward to) the reach of the internet is simply amazing! In a single year I’ve gone from wondering if I could sell books at all to selling them in England in addition to the USA. Selling books overseas! That’s the power of being online.
I’ve only just begun to explore the possibilities of online self promotion, and this past week experienced a “first.” Book One of the War of the Second Iteration has been featured on the Indie Author Anonymous weblog. Here’s the link:
http://indieauthoranonymous.com/?p=148
Not a bad start at all!
The digital revolution has made it very easy to publish your own book, without concern for editorial and marketing department scrutiny. All too easy, some would say, and those who say so point to the errors that are common in so many self published works. You don’t need to make an exhaustive survey of self published material to see that, although the critics are not above a bit of cherry-picking to make it seem worse than it is, there is truth to their claim.
To combat this impression, ever larger numbers of “indie” authors are engaging the services of freelance editors and copy editors. Nothing is truer of writing in general than this: the worst editor for a given work is its own author. No matter how careful you are, no matter how diligent, you will miss typos, word usage errors, and plot breaks. You’re too close, and you know the story all too well. The writer’s mind can be a tricky thing while proof reading, not at all averse to filling in the blanks or smoothing a rough spot, since you already know what is supposed to be there. And so freelance editors and copy editors find they can make a living. It only makes sense.
It also costs money. In my case, it’s money I don’t have. When I decided to leap into self publishing I was fully employed, and making enough money that none of this seemed troubling at all. Between starting out and publishing Mr. Olcott’s Skies, however, the mushy US economy caught up with me. The job folded, and so far I’ve found nothing to fill the gap. This created a huge problem when that first book was done. Should I sit on it until I was working again, and could afford to hire an editor? Many stressed that I “must” do so, or risk creating a very poor first impression as an indie author. Waiting seemed like a very bad idea. I’m not getting any younger, and with politicians on the Left and the Right too busy beating the snot out of each other to do their damned jobs, the economy isn’t getting any stronger. Rather than face a wait of indeterminate length, I did what I could to make Mr. Olcott’s Skies as clean as humanly possible. I talked friends into serving as beta readers. I read the book out loud. I highlighted the entire manuscript file in black, and examined each line one-by-one as I un-highlighted them. Then I did it again. Backwards. And no, I’m not kidding about that. At the very end, my wife went through it one more time, spotting errors and a few missing hyphens. With all that done, I ran it past one more beta reader. Then I took a deep breath, formatted the book for ereaders, and turned it loose.
So far, three typos have been brought to my attention. I suppose that’s not too bad, for a book more than thirty thousand words long.
I did it all again for The Luck of Han’anga. The same routine, but this time with a book of more than one hundred and ten thousand words. (I think I had a brain hemorrhage while reading it line-by-line backwards.) So far, six typos have been brought to my attention by readers. There may be more, but I don’t know about them, yet.
That any errors at all slipped past such an effort is galling. I reacted to each revelation of error the way most people react to a one star review on Amazon. And then, while reading a professionally edited and produced novel by one of my favorite authors, I realized that a main character’s title – a made up word in a sci-fi universe – had been spelled several different ways through the book. And someone neglected to tell that particular copy editor that the word “meant” does in fact have an “a” in it. Every time you use it.
The experience provided a useful perspective. By dint of extreme effort, and with a lot of help from friends and a very literate spouse, those galling errors in my books put me on a par with the pros.
I feel better. And will, until someone spots an error in this piece.
The process of writing science fiction and fantasy seems to fascinate many people, including a few writers. They wonder where ideas come from and how one makes up names for things that don’t exist. They are simply baffled and amazed by the way those of us who practice the art of imagination can create entire histories and civilizations to serve the stories we tell. I feel much the same about sculpture, by the way. How anyone can look at a slab of rock and know where the arms and legs and eyes are hiding is a mystery to me.
Because we can do it at all, many people assume that we are in complete control of the process. Regrettably, that isn’t so, for my part at least. I’ve spent time in the company of enough writers over the years to get the sense that my experience is anything but unique. Oh, you usually have a pretty good idea of how to start it all out, and most of us have at least a sense for where we mean to end up. Somehow it doesn’t ever turn into a straightforward progression from Point A to Point B. As plot ideas begin to gel, and you develop the story and people living in it, an evolutionary process takes off and it’s not uncommon for it to take on something like a life of its own. A stray thought occurs, perhaps a thing a character might say or do, and the story line veers from the predicted path. You can back up and rewrite it all, of course, and try to stay on track, but all too often that idea (especially if it involves a character in the tale) simply will not go gently into that good night. “Nuthin’ doin’, bucko,” you seem to hear as you consider what to do about it. “Listen up. We are the story. We know what we’re talking about!” A smart writer takes heed, and generally concedes. The story begins to unfold in a different way, sometimes only a little bit altered, and sometimes transformed into something the writer didn’t really see coming. Masterpieces of genre fiction are created this way. So are nervous breakdowns.
I made a comment a while back on Facebook about having such an experience with my current work-in-progress. A friend responded with the reminder that I could play God and make the characters do whatever I wanted them to do. I’m sure he meant well by it. But the truth is that while the writer is sort of like a god in that universe he or she decides to bring into the light, the status is much more like a god of Greek mythology than the absolute ruler of the universe. We are gods with a small “g” who can’t really expect complete obedience from troublesome mortals. If you’re a lower-case god or goddess and insist on creating Heroes, you’re just asking for trouble. There’s no sense in complaining about it.
Today marks the 236th time the United States has celebrated the grand decision to take control of its own fate. As I write these words I hear firecrackers exploding like faint echoes of the shots fired in the war our ancestors fought for independence. I can smell the aroma of backyard barbeques firing up – and I wish those people luck, because it’s been a rainy day Tucson. Some of the houses on the street display flags, taken in and then put back out as the weather changed. Typical activities for the 4th of July.
This has not been a typical 4th of July for me. I spent much of this cool, muggy day in the desert involved in something I’ve never done before. I worked to make people aware of the two books I self published this year. They call what I’m doing Independent Publishing, “Indie” publishing ‘for short.’ Many people see this as little different from vanity publishing, a cop-out of sorts for failed writers in denial. I’d point out that this isn’t so, but if you’re inclined to believe otherwise you probably aren’t going to take my word for it. I’ve embraced this publishing option, born of the digital age, and done so with a will all the same. Those who are doing as I do often see indie publishing as freedom from a troubled publishing industry, which certainly seems to be having its problems adjusting to the new age. Some express a strange delight when discussing the problems faced by the publishing industry; as if this is a case of what goes around comes around. I don’t see indie publishing that way, either. For me, this form of independence is neither a wannabe’s cop-out nor an act of revenge against a system that couldn’t find room for me. I’ve never been one to see denial as a viable ‘out,’ and for years I thought the word schadenfreude was a German insult. (And maybe it is, come to think of it.)
In putting those books out there I’ve made my own declaration of independence, one I will celebrate next year on March 21st, an easy date to remember since it happens to be my wedding anniversary as well. (And yes, that was deliberate, but be careful what you read into it.) There won’t be any fireworks, no echoes of ancient gunfire; that would scare the cats, after all. Just a glass of wine, perhaps among friends. But it will mark a sort of independence, all the same, and it has nothing to do with old school publishing. I never got past an editor’s desk when I first attempted to write and publish books. Traditional publishing never had a hold on me, and if that hold had developed I’m not at all sure I’d be fighting to free myself.
What I’ve done since March is to free myself from the disappointment of having missed out on something. Of not knowing what it would be like to have people read the books I wrote. As I’ve said in an earlier entry, I’d given up on all of this, and that was a terrible feeling. It would’ve been much worse, no doubt, if years from now (many years, I hope!) I looked back the way I came only to contemplate the consequences of giving up on the thing I most wanted to do. That’s a fear from which I am now free, and that surely is a thing worth celebrating.
While I worked away on book two of the War of the Second Iteration yesterday, I had one of those moments during which I was completely aware of how much I enjoy doing this sort of thing. The production side of indie publishing can be a bit of a pain (especially waiting for POD proof copies), but the actual writing, and the process of revision than pulls it all together, these are a source of deep satisfaction. I’d use the word “joy,” but for some reason it falls short of what I experience. I have these moments on a regular basis, especially when I hit a rough spot and then successfully think my way through it. It’s such an amazing feeling when that works!
Later in the evening, while enjoying a glass of wine, I found myself thinking of the years just before I decided to give the whole independent publishing thing a try. I’d been selling magazine articles and essays for years before going back to school to finish my degree, but could never seem to get a break on the book publishing scene. I kept trying, for more years than I like to admit. Came a time when it just wasn’t possible to justify the next attempt. I set writing aside and tried to go on to other things, by way of the degree process. There’s an old say about getting knocked down three time but getting up four. After a while, finding a way to avoid being knocked down in the first place seems more sensible. Unfortunately, the switch took me from one dead-end to another, with a resulting lack of employment into the bargain.
Giving up writing had more insidious effects, emotionally. I’m not going to write about those, not yet.
Then along came Kindle and its imitators, and the digital direct publishing so-called revolution. These matters had been going on for a few years before I paid much attention to them. Came the day a friend told me of her efforts to go the indie publish route, and of her initial experiences doing so. I’d heard of the Kindle, but was not aware people could now side-step the publishing industry and do their own thing. It sounded too good to be true, but I looked into it anyway, and discovered that the entire concept of “self publishing,” once upon a time an admission of defeat wrapped up in denial, was being transformed. That same friend suggested that I dig out one of the novels I had in the proverbial trunk, clean it up, and turn it loose to see what might become of it. (Thanks, Frankie! http://frankierobertson.wordpress.com/ ) I followed that advice, rewrote and revised one of those previous projects and now The Luck of Han’anga is out there.
It’s a kick to see a book out there and available to readers. It feels good. But far more gratifying still is this feeling of being a writer again, unfettered by the doubts that plagued me each time I boxed up a manuscript and put it in the mail. I may meet no greater success as an indie author, in the long run, but I will know for certain one way or the other. The books will be out there, finally. I won’t be sitting here growing older and wondering “What if…?” And in the mean time, I’m writing again. That just feels good!
Under Desert Stars 