End of the Year Review Thingy...I Guess?

So 2014 was pretty big for me.  Manged to get TWO novels out.  One of them did really beyond well.  One of them no one really bought, because fans are weird about crossing over to a different series and genres...I think.  It's okay.  I do it too.  Still haven't started Richard Morgan's "A Land Fit for Heroes" despite Altered Carbon being one of my favorite books of all time.  So...I'm not blaming you!  You just crushed my soul for a month, it's no biggie.  You do it all the time with the 'har har look a typo' comments in reviews anyway.

*sob*

Also saw my first month ever with over one thousand books sold (unless I mis-added, which I would never ever do).  Which is a cool milestone!  This gave me paychecks from Amazon big enough that I could show them to my family and go, "SEE!  NOT CRAZY!  GONNA GET BIGGER TOO!  SO THERE!"

Was very productive on the new writing too, since we've started FM5 and Gush, and now a sixth short story for King Henry.  Wrote 20k words in the last week on FM5, which means I actually might finish it within a year of Sky-Island's release and that means you fans don't get to complain because of the At Least One Book A Year Rule, right?

Right?

Still haven't got much into Gush as I would like, but with FM5 being a bigger book than expected it's all okay.  Have been thinking about it a lot too.  I'm really interested in trying a first draft with as little backstory as possible, throwing readers into the events. and seeing how it goes.  If you've ever read Steven Erikson's Malazan series he does something similar.  It's both loved and hated so of course I want to torture my fans with the method too!

KH Short 6 popping up is a bit of a surprise, but a fun one so far.  Trying to get it out by Jan-Feb.  There was a scene referencing the event in FM5 and I thought, 'oh that would be a decent short about mostly nothing at all'.  Now here it is!  It revolves around T-Bone making the mistake of inviting his new business partner over to meet his parents during a Sunday dinner.  Manners...bad thing to have around King Henry Price.

As far as the big release of FM5...you know I hate exact timetables, but barring no problems arising somewhere in the April to July area seems possible.

Long as I don't get the flu.

Or almost break my arm again.

There's not even really any video games or movies or books coming out in the next few months to distract me.

Except for Hearthstone.

There's always Hearthstone.

Top 1 2014 List...

1.  My Fans

Don't OD on eggnog or champagne please.

FM5 Sample Chapter Sneak Peek

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Some Quick Notes

1.  I just did a full read-through and what I've written so far doesn't suck!  So...no huge rewrites for the first third of the mainline or the school timeline.

2.  The book is now over 300 manuscript pages long, so it's a real boy now.

3.  As is often inevitable, I've added a chapter to the outline.  Meaning it will be 21 chapters long at the current estimate and that I have 9 chapters left to write.  I could see myself adding yet another chapter by the time it's all done, but so far we might manage with 9 really beefy chunks of story.  Given how long the mainlines are starting to get I'm very glad the school story will be wrapping up with FM7.

4.  I had a really awesome idea for FM9 the other day...but I think that's getting ahead of ourselves. Like 3-5 years ahead of ourselves.

5.  I got a flu shot, so...here's hoping I'm not knocked out for my usual two weeks in Dec/Jan/Feb.

6.  Dragon Age: Inquisition is pretty awesome when it decides to be awesome and not a MMO grind simulator.

7.  Have a great Thanksgiving.  Please don't get trampled on Black Friday, I can't afford to lose any fans.

The Prisoners Cycle

THE PRISONERS CYCLE is perhaps best described as a series that isn't a series until it is very much a series at the very end of the series.  It's also not so much a world as an overworld where the worlds themselves reside in.

Don't think about it!  It's just turtles all the way down!

It began back before I'd accepted my life as an Indie Author instead of a Major League Publisher-Patting-You-on-the-Head Author (though given my sales this year I dare say Indie or not I've finally broken into at least the minor leagues!) when THE BETROTHAL was finished and languishing, THE FOUL MOUTH AND THE FANGED LADY was in my last edits, I was dicking around practicing with some fan fiction you lot will never see, and I didn't know what to do next.

It was the standing wisdom at the time that writing the second book of series before the series itself was published was a bad idea (again proving that the people who provide the standing wisdom for aspiring writers don't know what the hell they're really talking about) so starting right into THE FOUL MOUTH AND THE CAT KILLING COYOTES as a sequel seemed like a bad idea.  I also had the problem that all my other books and worlds I'd come up with were also series based...so that wouldn't work, right?

So I majorly brainstormed and came up with about 10 standalone book ideas that I could work on.  As is the nature of brainstorming, some of these ideas were much better than others or seemed more interesting than others, so I started in on writing what would one day become SKY-ISLAND 1827-E (alternate titles:  ROCKETS IN THE SKY; WOE, WOE, WOE, YOUR SKYBOAT; and HERE COME THE CLOCKERS).  I also piddled about with a book where the main character was a walking and talking tree, but like a walking, talking tree character would ever be usable or popular, right?!?!

Skip forward three years of Indiehood, four FOUL MOUTH books, an actual thing that might be a career and not a huge mistake, and looking at all those standalone books I realized...hey, these are all kind of about similar themes, aren't they?  Wouldn't it be cool if they were kind of connected like the worlds of Stephen King's Dark Tower or what Sanderson is doing with his Cosmere or...you know...Sliders or something?  And, hey...there's some weird spots where they really do connect...that's cool!

Thus began the idea of making standalone books that are still standalone books but books that will also allow interested readers to pick up on the wider mystery of what is going on and the connections between them.  I did this because the books themselves are different genres, have different characters and styles and POVS, and I didn't want to force people that for example like the Sky-Island world but don't like the Gush world (or vice versa) to HAVE to read them all, but if you wanted to you could get something extra out of it.

THE PRISONERS CYCLE is also an idea, not a UNIVERSAL TRUTH of my future like the FOUL MOUTH books are, where I have everything mapped out and plotted and obsessively planned.  They are instead books were I am trying something new, attempting to be creative, and especially to expand as an author just beyond doing what I'm already good at (first-person, character focused, urban fantasy with a lot of dick jokes).  It's all pay-to-play and experimental and I'm sure I'll succeed with some and fail with others and it could all implode before the end if not enough people are interested in them, but...I'm going to give it a shot and step out of my comfort zone, hopefully enough of you will step out of it with me.

Not everything beside the FOUL MOUTH books will be in THE PRISONERS CYCLE and even those book that are in THE PRISONERS CYCLE will be listed in their own specific world, not in the overworld itself when it comes to my list of published novels at the start of my books.  So you'd have to be a superfan and come to this blog and check this page to even see or know it exists.

Click the page link above for more info.  Excuse me as I get back to writing!

So It Goes Update

Just wanted to let everyone know I'm still alive and still working on the two projects (FM5 and Gush) I've been working on for awhile now.

I still have no estimate for when they might be completed other than being sure it won't be in 2014.  Don't fret if you don't see the status update move for a week or so and especially don't fret about the way the status update for Gush seems to be jumping around all over the place for my estimations.  I do use it to keep you all informed about what I'm doing day to day (because I know long silences are what make fans more nervous than anything else), but it does sort of become a problem when I'm starting a novel like I am with Gush.

I've been playing around with length and what to include in that book.  Do I write a bunch of training scenes?  Do I throw you right into the death race with a small intro a la Star Wars?  How long and how deep do I want the book to be?  This fluctuates when you're starting the process...which is why Gush has gone from 10 chapters to 16 chapters to 13 chapters as I added and cut the outline.  I even started WAY BACK WHEN, wrote 5k, decided it wasn't working, and cut it from the book.  What I've ended up with and what I think I'll keep is a bit of middle ground with not doing the full training/origin but beginning with our heroes arriving a week before said death race.  Yes, death race...with magic!  It's going to be a fun book!

One thing I'm not sure readers realize is that even when authors aren't "writing" we're still thinking.  I don't pretend that every author does things the way I do things, but for me "thinking" is an always on feature that helps the "writing" go much smoother and takes up a TON more time than the actual writing.  There are some scenes in the King Henry Tapes that I've played over in my head hundreds of times in dozens of alternate outcomes before I've even put finger to keyboard to write them.  The Paine reveal in FM3 was one of these...there's also a good one in FM5 and one coming up in FM7 that I continually obsess over to levels only equaled by Gollum with the One Ring.

This process is why more time is sometimes important and why I'm never going to be the kind of author that can pump out a novel ever 3-4 months.  I'm selfish...they're MY toys before I share them with you.

This is sometimes why its the scenes I haven't played through my head that take me the longest to get through.  Like the ones I've been working on in the last month.  Not that Pocket and T-Bone forcing King Henry to take a road trip in an RV hasn't been entertaining...but why would I focus on that when I can focus on...other things?

I guess I'll stop aggravating the fanbase and just summarize with:  still working on it, taking my time to make sure it's awesome, don't freak out, it's all going good, if you're well-behaved I might give you a FM5 sample chapter for Christmas.

Oh, also...I almost broke my arm!  That was a close one!