- Posts tagged kindle
- Explore kindle on posterous
The Copper Promise: Some Post Publication Thoughts
The Copper Promise started, in my mind at least, as My Small Self Publishing Experiment. The idea was to produce something longer than a short story that I could pop up on Amazon as an ebook – it would be written, edited, re-drafted, edited, edited some more, and then it would go out into the world and I would see how it would do. Originally this was going to be a horror novella, but that idea became The Snake House instead and was much too long in the end.
Well, in my usual tradition of making everything more complicated than it needs to be, My Small Self Publishing Experiment turned into a serial, and then a series of novellas, and then a series of fantasy novellas that will be, once they are all finished, as long as your average fantasy book. So the project wasn’t so Small anymore; in fact, it had become The Self Publishing Experiment That’s Going to Take Up About Six Months of my Life, Crikey, How Did That Happen?
And so, the first part has been out in the world for about a month, and part 2 is busy being poked into readiness for a release date hopefully at the end of February. And so far, it has been an almost entirely positive experience. Mostly the people who have read it seemed to have enjoyed Ghosts of the Citadel, and I’ve had some overwhelmingly lovely feedback, including blog posts and reviews that have made me very happy indeed. I’ve also received a tremendous amount of support from people (through buying it, spreading the word and general encouragement) which has been genuinely touching and confirms that the writing/reading community online is one of the best around.
One of my favourite parts of having a novella length work out there to read rather than a short story has been watching how people react to my characters – what sticks in their minds about them, which ones are popular with readers and why, and what they hope happens to Wydrin, Sebastian and Frith in the future. It’s exciting, and scary too, because beforehand these characters only really existed in my head and on tattered bits of paper, and now they exist in other people’s heads too, which is a strange and marvellous thing. And it is nice to know that I am no longer the only one who cares what happens to them.
Yeah, it’s been good. So thank you everyone. J And I’m looking forward to sending part two out into the world very soon.
Some Things I've Come to Know About Writing: Or, Stating the Blindingly Obvious
I thought that for my first post of the year I would do a bit of a round up of some of things I’ve learnt about the writing process. I’m not keen on those “These Are The Rules Of Writing, So Listen Up!” posts, so this certainly isn’t one – indeed, the stuff that I’ve come to know about my own way of writing may not apply to you at all – think of it as more of a “Hey chaps, here’s some points I think I should make a note of because you know I’ll only forget otherwise” post.
Write Every Day/Don’t Write Every Day
Yes, I shall start off by being very vague and indecisive! Write Every Day is one of those writing rules that gets bandied around quite a lot, and largely it does indeed make sense; the more you write, the better you get at it. However, I have come to realise that it’s just as important not to beat yourself up if you don’t manage it. Writers have lives too, with day jobs and families, relationships and birthdays and video games, and there are days when you just can’t do it. For example, I have found that I’m pretty terrible at writing at the weekends, but quite good at writing in the mornings before work. So I devote my mornings to stories, and don’t get all guilt laden on a Saturday when I’ve done nothing but sleep and eat toast and push goats off of mountains in Skyrim.
Your Muse is a Flighty Cow
Like every romantic idiot that wore a lot of black jumpers and stared moodily out a lot of windows as a teenager, I do love the idea of a muse; that a winsome, mysterious figure will tap me on the temple on a dreary afternoon and fill my bonce with the greatest idea there has ever been. It’s bollocks though, unfortunately, or at least, it is for me. It’s true that I’ve had the occasional idea drop fully formed into my brain while I’m having a shower or waiting for the bus, but mostly ideas come from thinking a lot, all the time, and writing bits of ideas down and herding them around until they actually work. The key is: don’t wait for your muse. She’s probably off gambolling in the woods somewhere anyway.
Finish It/Or, the 60,000 Word Wall of Pain
I’ve written six books and finished them. With every one of them, I got a sizable chunk of the way in (usually around the 60,000 word mark) and I suddenly found that I violently hated it. Hated everything about it. Hated the characters, didn’t know who they were or what they were doing. Didn’t know or care where the story was going. Worse than that, it was suddenly very clear that everything I’d written up to that point was a massive pile of fetid garbage. How could I have been so deluded to think it was worth writing in the first place? WHY?
This is the dangerous time. It is a demon of writing. The voice that tells you, always at least once during the writing of a book, that you’d be better off scraping the whole thing and starting again.
Do not listen to it. It will say, “Oh hey, what’s this other idea your flighty muse just appeared with? That’s a lot better than this one. Look at it, all shiny and new and not stinking of garbage. And I bet it would be twice as quick to write as well...”
Do not listen! Squash that demon, keep going, and finish. I have written six books, and in truth I probably only really like 3 of them, but everything I’ve ever written to completion has taught me loads and has been invaluable.
Do Not Let Them Taste the Unbaked Cake
Or, resist the temptation to send your first few chapters around to friends to gather their opinions. This is hard, because you might want to know if you’re heading in the right direction, or it might just be that you’re proud of something you’ve done and want to share it, but either way, it’s best not to. Your first draft should be a secret, private thing that only you ever see, so that you’re allowed to make huge mistakes, and the story is entirely yours. Other opinions so early on could change the flavours and make it taste funny.
Be Brave!
Because in the end, you can’t please everyone. It’s a terrifying thing, to share your work with the wider world and watch as it raises its eyebrows in a sceptical fashion, but we are word-warriors, book-wranglers, and story-smiths. We can do this. Tell your stories, listen to your characters, and when in doubt, add a three-page long fantasy banquet. That’s what I do (there's even a mini one in The Copper Promise, no honestly, go look...)
Waving a Blood-Stained Flag for Old School Pulp Fantasy
Hello all, hope you had an excellent Yule and all that. I'm spending today eating too much chocolate and playing Skyrim (death to all giant spiders!) but I thought I'd just pop up to point you in the direction of this rather lovely review of The Copper Promise.
I am tremendously proud to be described as a "successor to the Pulp authors of the 1920s and 30s"; it's a part of fantasy I love dearly, and I hope I'm doing it justice.
(and of course you can go and buy the first part of The Copper Promise over here, and secret invisible pixies will bless your bottom...)
Wishing You a Fabulous Yule! With Optional Sprouts
I hope you're all having a most excellent and joyous Christmas holiday, with the teeniest of hangovers and no sprouts (unless you like sprouts, in which case I hope everyone around the dinner table donates theirs to you).
And if you happen to be getting a Kindle for Christmas, I hope you might consider entering the universe of The Copper Promise for a bit of pulp fantasy action - it's here, and it wants to give your Kindle an xmas smooch.*
*apologies for the blatant plug, but the novelty of hearing people say "I've bought your book!" has yet to wear off. I doubt it will.The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel is here!
Well, technically it was here yesterday, but Amazon were a little faster out of the block than I expected, and my book was all suddenly available and I had no time to write a blog post! Goodness me. So, you can buy it here. I hope you do, and I hope you like it. J
But yes! Very exciting. It was a strange feeling, seeing my cover up there on that big proper website, next to other books with proper covers, and now anyone can read it. Excitement! Terror! Snoopy dancing! I went through the whole range of writerly emotions (snoopy dancing is an emotion, shhhh).
So, what do I think you should know about The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel?
It's a novella, and it's the first of a series of four. I wanted to write a sword and sorcery serial, one that would be a quick and fun read, full of adventure, peril and occasional scary bits.
You can download it straight on to your kindle if you have one, or you can download various bits of kindle software from Amazon that will let you read it on your computer like a kindle. It's also possible, I am told, to get an "app" on your "super-intelligent awesome-phone", although that level of technology is a bit beyond me, to be honest.
I have been lucky enough to get a few good reviews already. There is this rather spectacular one over at Colin F. Barnes' website, which I am well chuffed about, Adam Christopher has done a marvellous blog post about it, and there are a few great write-ups on Amazon now too. The reviews that are up are especially lovely for me as they all (so far) seem to really get what I was trying to do with this series; the novellas are, in their own small way, a love letter to Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, as well as the reams of adventurous fantasy they inspired, and it seems there is a great deal of love out there for this kind of “pulp” fiction.
And so, I must say a huge thank you to everyone who has bought a copy so far, and all those fabulous people leaving reviews and spreading the word; you are aces, and I owe you all some sort of fancy drink with an umbrella in.
The Copper Promise: An Early Review
Part one of The Copper Promise will be with us tomorrow (probably around lunchtime, by my estimates) but until then here is a lovely review by Colin F. Barnes, a writer and editor responsible for many cool and scary things, such as The City of Hell anthology (a beautiful looking thing which is currently lurking on my kindle).
Now, I shall go back to staring anxiously at the amazon page, hoping I don't experience some sort of technical cock-uppery...
Beware, Here Be Covers: The Copper Promise has its face on
Here it is! Partly to stop myself from getting overexcited and plonking The Copper Promise up before everything is quite ready, and partly because it is so pretty... a little look at the cover. The Copper Promise Part 1: Ghosts of the Citadel will be available as an ebook on the 22nd of December, which is to say Thursday, which is to say the winter solstice, which is to say... soon.
If you would like to receive exclusive news, stories and general blatherings about the series, drop me a line at copperpromise@sennydreadful.com
Extract of The Copper Promise at GeekPlanetOnline! Snoopy Dance Ahoy!
Choosing the extract was a tricky process: what can I put up without spoilerfication? How long should it be and what do I want to reveal? In the end I chose a sequence that I hope is fun but also poses a number of questions. I'd love to know what you all think!
The Copper Promise: Frivolous Anticipatory Post
It’s been a busy week or so, what with getting The Copper Promise ready for its Winter Solstice release date, and all the other December related nonsense that crops up at this time of year (bah, humbug) so I’ve been a bit light on the blog posts recently – many apologies.
Hopefully, it will be worth it. This whole project has subjected me to a pretty steep learning curve; writing a serial, writing a serial made up of novellas, self-publishing, marketing, how to spread the word without being annoying... And in a way it’s a weirdly personal project too – ultimately, I have to trust my own judgement and hope that my eventual readers are as ready to embrace old school serial fantasy in the same way that I have done. I am very aware that I have taken certain risks… Sword and sorcery done for fun might not be very, well, fashionable, at the moment, and I’ll admit I’m not sure how people feel about novellas these days, especially novellas that are designed to leave you wanting to read the next one... is that annoying? Will everyone hate me? Will I receive tiny decapitated goblins in the post, with cut and paste notes demanding “UPDATE OR THE UNSEELIE GETS IT!”? Will people leave steaming piles of dragon dung on my doorstep? Will burly knights give me dirty looks outside Morrisons? I do not know.
Oh well. The Copper Promise has been a lot of fun to write, regardless of supernatural vengeance, and either way it will be released out into the world kicking, screaming, and smelling faintly of mead on the 22nd of December (please address all dragon dung to my upstairs neighbour).
The Copper Promise Part 1: Release date!
I am pleased to announce that the ebook of The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel will be available to buy from Amazon on the 22nd of December.
The Citadel of Creos: silent, forbidden, haunted. No person in their right mind would attempt to explore it, but then, as Wydrin was fond of saying, adventurers are rarely in their right mind, especially when large amounts of coin are involved.
For the young Lord Frith, the secrets within are his key to a bloody revenge; for Sebastian, exiled from his order for crimes he’d rather not talk about, thank you very much, it is a distraction from his recent disgrace. And Wydrin? For Wydrin it means fortune and fame, or at least the seeds of a good story she can embellish later.
But something ancient and hungry lies restless in the hidden depths of the Citadel, and the long years of its imprisonment are nearly at an end. The three adventurers are about to find out that ghosts are the least of their problems.
The first in a four part novella series, The Copper Promise: Ghosts of the Citadel is a sword and sorcery adventure full of danger, discovery, and dubious ale.
Ghosts of the Citadel is the first of four novellas, but it will not end there. Next year I will be releasing a number of short stories set in the same world, featuring events taking place before and after The Copper Promise storyline.
If you have any questions, thoughts, suggestions or sexy fanart (please send me your sexy fanart) then you can contact me at copperpromise@sennydreadful.com Email me also if you would like to be included in the Copper Promise mailing list; this way I can tell you exciting things, like when the second part is coming out, and sometimes send you lovely things, like snippets of artwork, competitions and exclusive short stories only available to people on the mailing list. Eventually, I hope there will be badges.
