You Only Live Twice…Things Done 2x May 24, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in autographing, business, charity, conventions, fantasy, iPad, steampunk, writing.add a comment
Thanks to Mike Stackpole for letting me sit in for him again (even though he was there) at his office hours last night. But the title of this blog is things done twice. I will be reading in Second Life (second time in 2 days) tonight for Relay For Life. Which is the second time I have participated. Come by at 6PM SLT for my reading of a short story, “Memory of Wind.” Maybe even contribute a few pennies for cancer research.
In response to my “Strategy and Tactics” blogpost of a few days ago, I received this from Copyblogger. Sonia Simon has written an article on “the difference between ‘work’ and work that moves you toward your goals.’” Good stuff in the article and in general on Copyblogger.
For some reason the term “sprocket watch” keeps rattling around in my head. Sounds rather steampunkish. Might just be in anticipation of Steve Sullivan posting his entry into Empires of Steam and Rust–this will be passage two.
Also my second gig at Albuquerque Comic Expo is coming up fast. Get your tickets now!
The burdens of work hardly qualifies as 2x since it is pretty much constant. I need to get the story I’ll read tonight all gussied up and into epub format so I can read it off the iPad and not drop pages like I did last time I read. On this note I leave you with a Calvin and Hobbes that seems especially appropriate
Calvin the writer, waiting for his Muse
Packing Up, Moving On Down the Road April 22, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in business, e-books, fantasy, sci-fi, science fiction, steampunk, writing.add a comment
I’ll be away from the blog posting for a while as I venture into Tornado Alley. I hope there are no “stories” to tell when I get back. I don’t want “adventures” or “thrills” due to dodging F5s or being pummeled with grapefruit-sized hailstones. If all goes as planned, I’ll be delivering a big screen TV and that’ll be as exciting as it gets.
Until then I’m leaving you with a bunch of links. While I’m gone, buy my books. Help me pay for $4/gal gasoline out on the road. My online store has lots of great stuff. Some free stories, a couple novels under $3 (in the case of Lord of Death and Life, only until I return) and super fantasy, sf and other genres. Sign up for the newsletter and be eligible for a promotion after I change hosts in a couple weeks.
You like sexy spy books? Hot Rail to Hell is what you’re looking for.
Steampunk? You can’t go wrong with the initial story in the Empires of Steam and Rust series.
Great fantasy? You can read the complete Accursed trilogy, which has never been published in the US before (only in the UK).
Or here is the entire 9-book series, Swords of Raemllyn.
SF? Space opera? Give the complete Weapons of Chaos a read.
Or the entire Biowarriors trilogy.
Check out the comprehensive catalog on the Kindle or the Nook
And I’ve done some editing. Want a sampler of some mighty fine writers? Try this one…
Career Guide to Your Job in Hell
Report from the Frontlines January 13, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in business, e-books, fantasy, Free, science fiction, steampunk, VIPub.1 comment so far
I tried out the Amazon freebie promo route on anthology Career Guide To Your Job in Hell and my standalone sf novel Moonlight in the Meg. The former was put up for three days, Moonlight on January’s full moon for one day. Question was if giving away copies somehow increased visibility and sales.
After almost a week here is how it comes down. But first the number given away and where.
Career Guide:
US(924), UK (28–and one poor soul actually returned a free copy, maybe thinking he could get $4.99 or Brit pound equivalent refund in the confusion?), Germany (21)
Moonlight in the Meg:
US(315), UK(37), Germany (4), Italy (1)
Since then each book has been loaned out once (which is a good thing since the lending pool has been increased to $700k. Prior $500k pool equalled about $1.70 per loaned copy.)
Breaking into the Italy market is good though this is not a sale (and so far I have sold only 1 book, Hot Rail to Hell in Germany)
I have sold 3 copies of books since the end of the promotion. I’d say nothing moved the sales needle with the giveaway, since the books sold were part of the Swords of Raemllyn series and reducing the first book (until Feb 1) to 99cents as a different promotion.
That seems to have worked better, since I saw a slight uptick in sales on that series.
Summary: the free promotion doesn’t work. Possibly reducing the price for a limited time on the first book in a series does. Still to be determined: whether giving Amazon exclusive listing for 90 days into their lending library will be worthwhile compared with combined sales on Nook, iTunes and my own store. That will be reported later, my droogies.
I leave you with a glimpse at a new project.
Empires of Steam & Rust: The First Passage
Are You Being Undercheesed? January 1, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in business, e-books, End of the World, movies & TV, sci-fi, serial fiction, steampunk, VIPub, westerns, writing.add a comment
That’s what an ad for a pizza joint asked me. I had never considered life in those terms, perhaps because I drop in on Cheese Magnet regularly. But “undercheesed?” If so, I need to watch more cheesy sf movies. (I did watch This Island Earth last night and no, it is not a cheesy movie. It’s pretty decent and one year Santa will bring me an interocitor.)
I doubt the world will end, but watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ NY last night made me think it is possible. Poor ole Dick looked like a zombie. Any year that begins with Lady Gaga and Michael Bloomberg co-pressing the lever to drop the ball already has 2 strikes against it. My option was watching “Hair Removal at Home” on Ch 2. Or watching metaluna monsters menace Faith Domergue.
The year is already filling with projects. Have 2 westerns under contract, have agreed to take part in a Western Fictioneers project of a story collection set in Dogleg, Kansas and have lots of other projects begging to be done. No lack of work. Now all I need are sales, so pitch in, everyone, do your part, feed those e-readers you got for Christmas.
I have a small window of opportunity to work on the first of the Empires of Steam and Rust stories so will cut this short. Already up to 15k words in the “First Passage” and just getting into the plot after introducing the situation, the bad guy and the two good guys. And the compressed-air powered dog, Fulton.
Off to see if yet another brick and mortar bookstore has bitten the dust. I leave you with this snarky cartoon hope for 2012.
F-Minus by Tony Carrillo
Technology Trudges On December 29, 2011
Posted by bobv451 in business, e-books, iPad, science fiction, serial fiction, steampunk, VIPub, writing.add a comment
Over on FB Bobbie posted this about an iPad USB drive. Amazing wifi connection to the iPad. The price tag at $160 is steep but if you need it, you need it. That it can be read 150 ft away makes me hope the security on it is topnotch. But progress!
Not so much progress on my part came in finding Thunderbird no longer sent my replies or new emails. Rather, it claimed they were sent but the recipient never recipped. I have no idea what trouble this has gotten me into but I suspect I will find out since I use the comcast email account as a business clearing point. The mail was still coming in (I think–how would I know?) But sending was not happening. Two days spent playing with security protocols and all that availed me nothing. I was in hot water anyway with Thunderbird since it updated and erased all my address book and archived emails. I suppose they are still on my computer but simply changing the profile did not reveal them and now I can’t do even that small fix.
I changed to Outlook Express. Things seem to work ok there.
And this morning Firefox went berserk on me. Rabid firefox. Bad firefox. Loading endlessly and erased my homepage and…it was not working and nothing I could do even got me to the Mozilla help page. After such frustration with Thunderbird (I had tried to change to Eudora and found it is a Mozilla product, too, and migrated all the same problems I had with Tbird), I bailed fast. I changed to Chrome, which seems to suck up more memory but works faster and has less functionality. I liked being able to go to Twitter off the Firefox toolbar and get stock quotes updated every few minutes. At least I can’t seem to find add-ons for Chrome. And also it seems to assume I want to use Google as a search engine. Fancy that. I use ixquick so it doesn’t keep an 18 month record of everything I look up and report me to attackwatch as being a terrorist for wondering if it’s potassium permanganate or potassium manganate that blows up. I’m a writer. I need stuff like this. Last night hunted for types of German WWI era machine guns (yes, have started writing Empires of Steam and Rust: Passage One).
On VIPub front, have shifted A Career Guide to Your Job in Hell and Moonlight in the Meg exclusively to Amazon Select. Check ‘em out. And if you want to give me a present that doesn’t cost you anything (but time), how about reviewing some of my work and posting it on Amazon and B&N? Tis appreciated.
Non Sequitur 12/29/11
Gangrene Sunday November 27, 2011
Posted by bobv451 in business, e-books, Free, gummint, ideas, iPad, iPhone, steampunk, westerns, writing.1 comment so far
Well, why not? We have Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I am officially appalled at the goings-on to get a bargain. Fisticuffs over a $2 waffle iron? A shopper pepper spraying others so she could get a better shot at the goodies? (Pepper spray is now officially a vegetable–look it up on the gummint’s new food pyramid). Camping out for days prior seems so meek and mild now. I’m afraid I don’t need that 51″ plasma TV that badly. Or at all, if truth be known (more and more I’m finding the iPad works just fine for me–and no, I wouldn’t bayonet another shopper to get a new iPad2 0.8 microseconds sooner. Maybe 0.5 microseconds…no, not even then.
This is the year the ereader has come into its own. With the Kindle Fire and the Nook tablet out there now, ereading is going to maybe double in the coming year (my guesstimate. Like all economic forecasts these days, the actual number will be “unexpected.”) For us VIPubbers, tis the season to plot and plan and market like fiends.
Luckily we don’t have to do it in the midst of bargain-crazed TV buyers. Some goodies you can get for free right now:
Michael Stackpole’s At the Queen’s Command on the Kindle. Yes, free, for a while longer.
steampunk screensavers or whatever they call them for the Kindle (free)
Some nifty free steampunk stories here, too.
the 40 best Android apps (for free)
Of course, you should check out my online Cenotaph Road Store for free stories like “Me and Mr. Jones”
100 Kindle ebooks for $3.99 or less
And you simply *cannot* pass up this collection, The Traditional West, at $3.99 for a limited time. Over 100k words of traditional western stories. Imagine that.
Isn’t shopping this way better than getting poked in the eye or trampled?
Traditional West by Western Fictioneers
The Best Way to Kill Time November 21, 2011
Posted by bobv451 in fantasy, iPad, steampunk, writing.add a comment
is to work it to death. Being on jury duty means a lot of sitting around. The iPad is wonderful for doing some work, such as this blog, but there isn’t a wifi connection in this courthouse, though there is in the one down the street. Mostly I sit here, watching the History Channel and their special on the V-2 rocket program, how Patton was assassinated and reading.
Reading has proven to be the best use of the iPad so far. Finished the RAH book For Us, The Living and Viridian, a Steampunk romance. Downloaded Clementine! A Steampunk spy book with stuff about Allan Pinkerton and the Civil War, all sure fire topics for me (finished it, too!), as well as Mike stackpole’s first book in his Crown Colonies trilogy. The way things are dragging–which seems to be the usual way they go–I can read Mike’s and even think about something else. Maybe an old Sax Rohmer?
Somehow, playing endless games of solitaire doesn’t appeal to me because I keep thinking I need to be working on the western. Deadline less than a month off now and I need to print out, yes, actual hard copy, another western sold to Avalon and ship it off. It was in the contract they wanted hard copy and not electronic unless specifically stated. And it wasn’t.
But all this still takes me away from work on the new western since I haven’t mastered the techniques of actually producing serious work on the iPad. The cold glass virtual keys under the fingertips remains an alien way to work. For short pieces, great. For a novel, it’s much the same as trying to dictate using Dragon Naturally Speaking. I can do it but it doesn’t feel right.
Insamley Different November 18, 2011
Posted by bobv451 in business, Chain story, fantasy, ideas, movies & TV, science fiction, serial fiction, steampunk, VIPub, westerns, writing.2 comments
In the old pulp magazine days, it was claimed that there was so little difference between sf and westerns that you could find stories about the rangers heading the outlaws off at the pass…and the same story rewritten to read that the space rangers headed off the bug eyed monsters at the galactic rift. Maybe true. Probably true.
But whether it happened it shows the connection between westerns and sf. Action. Adventure. Derring-do. This carries over to present day and how the same techniques might be used to market westerns and sf. Give this blog from Jim Clay a read. Serial westerns. Action. Adventure. Good reading. And it is exactly what Mike Stackpole, I and others have been saying is an effective VIPub technique.
Give the story out one chapter at a time. Episodic fiction. Archive it for people who don’t want to wait for the next thrilling episode. Or maybe get 75% of the way through and publish the entire piece for a couple bucks while slowly putting up the remaining episodes for free. Want to finish before the end of the month? Buy it now. Will this work? The only way to see is to try it. No harm, no foul since nobody is getting miffed because you have failed to publish it all.
Serialized fiction can build anticipation but you have to leave every chapter with a cliffhanger. Remember the old Republic serials? Gene was always being chased by the Thunder Riders from Murania or in danger of losing Radio Ranch and having to sing before the radium thieves stop him. Or the Copperhead’s car was going over the cliff. Or the robots were attacking and the door to his super-secret lab was locked. You get the idea. Leave the reader/viewer with a reason to come back. It works. At least it always worked for me.
Others do similar things. Check out James Reasoner’s (and Bill Crider’s and…who else?) more ambitious Rancho Diablo. And maybe the poster child for this is Lee Goldberg’s Dead Man books. Those are longer (novel length) work but the idea is the same. You want to get more of the character, to find out what new and horrific challenge will be faced and how he/she/it escapes? This is the heart and soul of serial
“After I pulled myself off the poisoned spikes at the bottom of the pit before the tiger ate me, I climbed the glass slick walls to escape in time to rescue the Princess of Mars!”
A Space Islands story
Wrapping Up November 6, 2011
Posted by bobv451 in business, Chain story, conventions, e-books, food, geocaching, iPad, iPhone, movies, science fiction, serial fiction, steampunk, VIPub, writing.add a comment
Odds and ends. First off, today’s the centennial of Roy Rogers’ birth. The King of the Cowboys.
Next is my website being down. Think it might have gotten hacked. Guru Leif has been informed and will see if it can’t get back into action ASAP. Or at least RSN.
One benefit of face to face meetings such as at World Fantasy Convention, is brainstorming. Or maybe that’s barnstorming. Mike Stackpole, Nathan Long and I got together and have plans brewing with a potential launch on a brand new project come January. And not satisfied with this, Mike’s come up with another project playing off the successful Chain Story concept. Working idea is heroic fantasy and killer stuff. That’ll develop and be a couple months later than the aforementioned steampunk project. The benefit of WFC (or any other con) is tossing out an idea, having it turned over and inside out and revised and added to and subtracted from and coming up with a synthesis better than any of the people involved could have come up with alone. Writing may be a solitary profession but group effort pays off now and then, especially in these days of VIPub. Pooling talent and information is so necessary.
Also at WFC, I got the chance to do some geocaching, with Alice Henderson as well as on my own. I’d bought my android smartphone in June with an eye toward using it with Square to accept credit cards for my book sales. The more I use the phone, the more things I find to do with it. Reading ebooks isn’t as easy as on my iPad but it can be done. The 3G connectivity I lack on the iPad comes in quite handy, though. I can’t say this is a tool for any writer but it is proving useful. I put on the geocaching app and found it quirky but adequate for the task. That sums up the other apps, too. At one time it struck me as peculiar to use a cell phone to call someone who was only across the room–but it is less so now. The sheer immensity of bouncing a signal off a tower, maybe going to a geosynchronous satellite and then back is so….stfnal. Great for getting in touch with people, especially on a 40 acre hotel site such as WFC’s this year. And with internet google capability, factoids can be summoned up fast (as well as maps, restaurants and all the rest of things con goers need).
This is what I found about Angels Flight in LA. And am I wrong thinking this was used in a terrible movie of the great Lawrence Block book 8 Million Ways to Die?
World's shortest railroad
Stop, Look, Listen November 4, 2011
Posted by bobv451 in business, conventions, e-books, education, fantasy, ideas, steampunk, VIPub, writing.add a comment
What you need to do at a convention like the World Fantasy Convention. There is so much talent drifting around, it’s hard to know who to listen to, what notes to make, how it is all going to affect your work and the way you conduct your professional life.
Talking with editors is, of course, a necessity. But there are new players in the game worthy of more than a few minutes attention. Panels are a good place to pick up ideas (I went to the airships panel. I am a huge airship fan.) As informative as the panel was, talking to other writers afterward probably gave more information. Questions could be asked and speculation trotted out for wonderful results. Engineer-minded Dennis McKiernan came up with the way to conduct air-to-air warfare (you need a belly gun if you’re opting for cannon. Otherwise, rockets are best.) Firing a cannon so you cause the airship to rotate is, well, stupid. The entire mass of the ship has to be used to absorb the recoil.
Newer “professions” are actually offshoots of ones that should have been done by legacy publishers. Publicity is a necessity for VIPub authors, but there is only so much time in the day. Mike Stackpole just sent me a great link about how to best use Goodreads. I don’t have hours enough in the day now. How much more do I add learning the ropes there? I spent a fascinating 45 minutes listening to a woman who had jumped with both feet into the e-advertising game. Mlg lists, places to go (she said Goodreads needs a minimum of 10 recommendations and probably 20 before others will even notice a title–getting a reader to give even one rec is a chore. A Career Guide to Your Job In Hell has solid reviews–but only 6. Does the 10 minimum carry over to Amazon? Maybe. These are things that someone needs to learn. YMMV but every author is in the same boat when it comes to such things. It’s good to learn from pioneers what works and what doesn’t.
Freelance editors abound and Andrea Howe has announced an anthology based on the utterly creepy “Blue Girl” art print in most of the hotel rooms. Looks like fun and who knows, it might garner a touch of publicity for the included authors.
Another of my fascinations (which I have never cadged a ride in)
Goodyear Blimp over LA
