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torn_world this weekend. Leave some prompts! (You can look at past months to see examples. You don't have to be that familiar with Torn World; prompts can be generic as long as they fit with the general setting.)Status of the me:
I’m going on vacation! \o/ … to visit my sister in Ithaca, New York, from Oct. 1-24. So I will be kind of intermittently available; I have no doubt I’ll still be online quite a bit, but I will probably be slow (slower than usual, I mean) responding to comments, emails and whatnot.
State of the books:
I have ordered proof copies of the Freebird book. I’m on track to have copies available the first week in November. Sadly, I’ve missed the deadlines for the local holiday bazaars (… fail, self, fail). But unless something horrible happens with CreateSpace, I should have it available in a few local stores and online by November. Sequential Tart interviewed me for their November issue; I will link to the interview when it’s up!
I’ve also been working on the Hunter’s Moon book, and have realized there is a lot less prepwork to do than I’d thought. I actually typeset it back in 2008 … so really, it’s just a lot of miscellaneous work to update those old pages and make sure they aren’t riddled with inaccuracies. I’ve done updates and corrections on a number of pages since then (fixing typos, changing titles …), and I need to find a bit more filler and proof all the text to make sure there are no references to parts of my website that no longer exist. I still don’t know for certain what I’m putting on the cover, either. But it’s not like I’m facing a blank 360-page document. I think I’m going to shoot for a February or March release date; that’ll let me get through the holidays and then focus on it in 2013.
Now if I could just figure out why I can’t seem to draw pages, despite knowing (at least in general) what I want to put on them. Is there such a thing as artist’s block?
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
I sent out a bunch of short stories at the end of August, which are now trickling back in with little rejection notices attached. Pfoo.
It’s funny; I alternate between two modes when it comes to writing: “I HAVE THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD”, and “Why am I doing this again, what’s the point, blah …” Because I really DO have the best job in the world! I know that I am incredibly, incredibly lucky right now to be able to stay home and write all the time. I have a supportive spouse with a good job, and we don’t have kids and aren’t carrying a load of debt, and that makes me unbelievably fortunate. But on the flip side, this is my job now, and sometimes I struggle with the feeling that I’m drowning in a sea of rejection notices and that I’m either not actually good enough at it to make money this way, or just not commercial enough to manage to sell anything. Wah wah, etc.
Of course, there’s always self-publishing. Which brings me to the actual, practical reason why I’m making this post! I’m finishing up the final copy-editing on the Freebird book, and I’m trying to figure out what to charge for it. I have a pretty good feeling for the going retail prices for books of typical size and shape, but this isn’t a typical size and shape. It’s going to be 8.5×11″ and 80 pages. I had initially roughed it out to be 144 pages and comic-strip-shaped (basically, 9×6″ or whatever the closest equivalent was that I could get printed). But it turns out that most POD printers either don’t handle landscape-shaped books, or charge a lot more for them. (Because irony loves me, I didn’t investigate CreateSpace until typesetting the whole book — and come to find out, you actually can do economical landscape-shaped books on CreateSpace. Except now that I’ve got the whole thing typeset at 8.5×11, I kinda like it that way …)
Anyway, my question is – what’s a fair price for an 80-page, 8.5×11″ book? I was initially thinking $10, but for selling it wholesale, I’d be scraping the edge of my profit margin. It really would make better economic sense to charge $12. But is $12 too much for a book that’s so thin? It’s got all the same content as the 144-page book (and I think I’d have no problem charging $12 or even $14 for that) but I’m worried that it’ll look overpriced.
Or should I go back to my original plan and reset the book at the smaller-but-thicker size, so that it looks like a better value for the money?
What do you think?
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
Sketch Fest today! (And shortly I will be off to Ellen’s house for lunch and art!)
Here’s a poignant and thought-provoking article I ran across: Top five regrets of the dying. I think it’s worth pointing out that not all of this, or every aspect of this, is within everyone’s control. Not everyone can choose whether to work long hours or not. People with brain-chemical imbalances (which includes most of us at one point or another) can’t make themselves happy through better decision-making. And so forth. But I also think it’s worth looking at this list and thinking about how you’ll feel looking back on it in twenty years or forty. Are there things you’re not doing now that you’ll regret doing later? I remember when I was in my teens how I used to ask myself “Will this matter to me when I’m 25?” (25 being the oldest that I could imagine myself, I guess. *g*) And now I’m 36. What, of the things I’m doing now, will matter to me when I’m 50?
We had a windstorm a few days ago and a lot of the leaves fell off the trees, but before that I took a few pictures of the colors. I love this time of year — with all our aspen trees, the woods behind the house look like the ground is covered in gold coins.
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
Things have been busy around here on the self-publishing front lately. I can finally say with certainty that there is going to be a Freebird book! In fact – soon! There was a years-long delay involving a publishing deal that wasn’t, but ultimately, aside from being later with the book than I would have hoped, there’s no harm, no foul — I never signed away any rights and I’m still on excellent terms with everyone involved, but now I’ve pulled out completely and I’m all set to self-publish. I’ve spent the last week typesetting files and getting price quotes, and barring circumstances unforeseen, I plan to have the book out in November (using POD through Amazon’s CreateSpace), for the holiday shopping season. Unfortunately I am traveling for most of October — well, it’s not unfortunate at all, really, because I’m greatly looking forward to the vacation, but it’s making it difficult to figure out exactly when the book will be available. Right now I’m aiming for early to mid November; at the very least it will be available by mid-November from Amazon, from me, and (hopefully) from stores in Fairbanks. I’m going to try to do a couple of holiday bazaars and book signings, but this is all quite tentative since I just today worked out a rough publication schedule/plan and haven’t started contacting anyone yet.
The book will be 80 pages, 8.5×11″, with about 30 pages of new (i.e. not online) strips and bonus material. Retail price will be either $10 or $12; that’s another thing I’m still working out. (Currently leaning towards $10, depending on how my cost calculations come out.) I’ll keep you guys posted here, of course.
And here’s the cover:
ETA: And after the Freebird book will be the Kismet: Hunter’s Moon book … at long last! I’m doing Freebird first because the timing is just too good to pass up — Freebird is a book that I think might work very well as a holiday gift (plus I think it’ll sell well locally). So Hunter’s Moon will be a project for early 2013. But at long last, it’s gonna happen.
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
Author Jonathan Moeller is very kindly interviewing participants in this year’s SWORD & SORCERESS anthology (he has also done the past few year’s authors as well). My interview is up today:
http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/writer/?p=2575
You can read an excerpt from my story, “Netcasters”; I also talk about writing a bit.
I asked Jonathan if he would like to do a reciprocal interview for me, and he was quite prompt at getting me the answers back! So here are Jonathan’s answers to my questions:
1. Please tell us a little about yourself and your books.
My name is Jonathan Moeller, and I write both sword-and-sorcery books and nonfiction books about computers. My most popular books are the five in the DEMONSOULED series, about the wandering knight Mazael Cravenlock, and THE UBUNTU BEGINNER’S GUIDE.
( Interview continues under cut )
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
I made my first submission using a pseudonym today, so apparently I’ve stopped dithering and decided to take that particular plunge. I’ll be writing romance and contemporary fiction as Layla M. Wier (which is 2/3 of my maiden name, so not really that pseudonymous anyway). I haven’t actually published anything under that name yet. I’ll keep you posted when I do! (I plan to make a separate blog for “Layla Wier” at some point, but it’ll still be closely connected to this one; I plan to keep the connections between the two names quite obvious.)
It’s a branding thing, mostly. My genre fiction and comics will still be under my regular writing name; the Layla Wier name will be for the more mainstream stuff. Doing this feels very weird, very commercial, but I figure that if I don’t like it, I can always go back to using just the usual name (which has the added advantage of being my actual, legal name).
( Further rambles about writing romance under the cut. )
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
SO. TIRED. Autumn is really hitting us with a vengeance, but I finally have nearly everything battened down for winter. I got the garden harvested on Friday, and then we were hit with our first frost Friday night (a major, unforecasted, plant-killing frost, too! If I’d been one day later with the harvesting … I definitely feel like I dodged that bullet by a hair!). The greenhouse is all cleaned up and ready for spring, the chickenhouse is repaired, tools and things are tucked away, we have a load of coal coming next week … there are still a few things I haven’t done (my planters of pansies are still blooming, so I think I’ll wait to put them away until they die back), but all in all, I think we’re basically ready for winter. Which is good, since it’s starting to look like it might be an early one.
On the creative front, I want to start making more posts about writing. This would be easier, I guess, if I was actually selling things, so I could announce story sales rather than just rambling about the writing process. But … I feel like I’m getting closer? I have a novel that I plan to start submitting to agents this winter (it still needs one more rewrite), a handful of short stories that are currently being shopped around, and a novella that I just finished rewriting this week. Sadly, the comics have been suffering, because I’m still having a lot of trouble shifting back and forth between “comics mode” and “prose mode”. I do plan to work on that! And to post more in this blog, in general.
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
At a time when the rest of the U.S. is probably wondering if summer will ever end, we in Alaska are starting to notice yellow in the trees and a hint of bite to the air. Hence the new autumn-themed header image on my WordPress blog (from last year’s autumn photos — this is an aspen tree in the gravel pit between our house and the highway).
EMG-zine is now in the last half of their final year. They’re not a paying market, but they have good-quality short fiction, art and articles; they’ve published two of my short stories. Themes for the issues still accepting submissions are:
October – Magic
November – Wolves
December – Stars
(I’d like to try to write something for at least one of these! Deadlines are one month before the issue comes out: so the deadline for October is Sept. 1.)
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is a signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.”
– Annie Dillard from The Writing Life
I first encountered this quote (well, a paraphrased version) in the absolutely wonderful Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. I want to print it out and tape it in about five places around my writing area.
Because, yes. This is something I really struggle with. I’ll come up with a clever idea or a neat title or a character name I really love or a wonderful introductory paragraph or an archetype that really speaks to me — and I’ll want to save it for a better project. I’ll think, “Oh, this character is only going to be in one short story; I don’t want to waste that name on him!” Or: “I’ve had this character in my head since I was 12; I have to wait for the perfect story to use her in!” Or: “What a nifty idea; I should save it to use in a better story later.”
I hadn’t realized until reading this quote that other people feel this way too. I sometimes worry about running out of inspiration, but the world is a never-ending well of it; I probably already have more ideas than I could write in a lifetime, more character names than I could use, more titles than I will ever have stories for. The more of these I clear out, the more room there will be for other, newer, fresher ideas and characters and titles. And if I write the very best I can, I suspect I’ll just learn how much better I can write. (At least, that’s how it seems to be working so far.)
Besides, if you save all the good ideas for later, you’ll never write anything good now. And since everything we write is (technically) being written now, that means you’ll never write anything really good. You’ll just daydream about the awesome stories you’ll write someday when you’re good enough.
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
Today I’m testing various crossposting options between the new WordPress blog and LJ/DW. The Livejournal Crossposter plugin (despite the straightforward name, it’s one of at least a half-dozen, and the second one I tried) is awesomesauce. First of all, despite the name, it works with LJ clones as well, and while it can only be set up to crosspost to one other blog, turns out I don’t have to crosspost to both LJ and DW — when I crosspost only to DW, the DW blog automatically picks up my post and crossposts to LJ. I’ve also tested editing and deleting posts, both of which work like a charm across all three sites.
I don’t plan to crosspost everything. The WordPress blog is mainly going to be for writing/creative process stuff and project updates (all of which will be mirrored to my other blogs when I post them, which means you can follow wherever you prefer). But I’m delighted with how seamless this is — one click of a button and bing!, my post pops up in all three places with appropriate footers and tags and everything.
*clicks*
Originally published at Layla's Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.
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