Vacation Week Productivity Results

So, pretty much as I've done every year I've managed to combine a national holiday with a weeks vacation to maximize the number of days I can stay away from work while minimizing the number of vacation days I actually have to use. Holidays like the Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, and the uber Thanksgiving two day break work great for this strategy.

One additional objective for this year was to write and release 2 additional chapters in the ongoing Forgotten Empire project.

I didn't make it.

There were a number of reasons. Laziness, a host of great books waiting to be read, the fact I'm nearing the end of the first book, and the next chapter is probably the most critical to setting up the story for the next two books, so no pressure on me at all. If I had to choose I'd say it was a combination of all the above. Let's look at each of them in detail:

• Laziness, hey, I was on vacation, so that has to count for something. You're supposed to be lazy while on vacation. Sit back, smell the roses, recharge the battery, all that stuff. So I did.

• A host of books to read. Oh my, I did some serious reading. Pretty much in order I read:

   1. Heartless (Book #4 of the Parasol Protectorate) by Gail Carriger
   2. The John Rain series by Barry Eisler (Hard Rain, Killing Rain, Rain Fall, Rain Storm, and Killing Rain, and The Last Assassin)
   3. Hammered (Book #3 of the Iron Druid series) by Kevin Hearne
   4. Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
   5. Just a Geek, and Memories of the Future by Wil Wheaton

That's what, 11 books for the week? And let's not even count the number of web pages I visited to continue my research in becoming a self-publishing juggernaut. Nope, don't go there.

• The end of the project (Book #1) is coming to an end. As with all projects as I near the end, while I feel charged up to get it done, I'm always conflicted with the fact that I'll soon be done. The two battle it out in my mind and I dither between one state (get it done) to the opposite (this whole project sucks, you should stop before you embarrass yourself).

• Finally, its a critical chapter to the entire series. There's a lot riding on the story reveals in this chapter, its important, and I don't want to mess it up. Sure, it's only a first draft, you can clear it up in the editing phases, but still, the better it is in the first draft, then less work will be needed in the other phases.

Also, to be honest, while I did a lot of plotting and planning for this first book, its still a massive learning experience, and honestly, I'm making up some ideas as I go. Some are working, others are not. The big Macguffin, what Hieronymus is searching for, only just came to me two nights ago just as I lay down to sleep. Before that, I pretty much had nada, zip, nothing. Call it first novel jitters. A learners mistake, poor planning, whatever. Having been here once means I'm going to work harder to make sure I don't hit that wall in Book #2 or #3 or ever again.

It's not like I wasted a lot of time. While the story reveals in chapter 22 are important, there are other plot threads that I could continue just fine, so I did. Chapters 23, 24, and 25 are all half written as well. In fact, the final chapter word count targets were all set for 3500 words, I managed to write 2250, 1680, 1650, 1780 words per chapter for the week, for a total of 7360, or two chapters of material across four chapters. So, I made the word count goal, but not the release goal.

In addition, I awoke this morning with an idea for a side story in the Archer and Hieronymus universe concerning Alethea and Saara and started writing it. Since I've been itching to do a real short story for awhile I dug right in as soon as I could get my butt in gear. By noon I had 1100+ words, and before I started this post, the word count is sitting at 3027. That means I've really managed over 10,000 words for the week, a real first.

Wow, 10k words of writing in a week.

So, the results for the week are mixed, but the trend is good. There's still work to finish chapter 22, The Overseer, it's getting there slowly. Good follow ups to use my energy to write the easier scenes in later chapters so that I am still making progress, even if its not exactly where the roadblock is. And finally, a short story that's just flowing. I was starting to think I'd never come up with anything and then bam, there it is.

I can do this.

Oh, and I was working on a secret project I hope to reveal soon. So stay tuned.

Image: Another one of my artist influences, Jeff Jones, passed away earlier this year. Last year, Frazetta, this year Jones, I hate it. I loved his smooth style and classic presentation. His black & white work was also superb and greatly influenced how I drew woman for years. He will be missed in this household.

Getting My Feet Wet Sooner

When I first envisioned writing stories in my fantasy world I just seemed to gravitate to novels and trilogies and even longer works that encompassed more story then one book could hold.

One of my favorite fantasy series of all time was the Dray Prescot stories published by DAW in mid to late 70's through the mid-80's. A sailor transported to the world of Kregen by a harbinger scorpion that always went out of it's way to make things difficult for the hero, one Dray Prescott. The novels were written in groups of 3 to 5 books that followed a common story thread as the hero tried to solve problems for the mysterious Star Lords, behind the scenes manipulators of the world. By the time DAW was done with the series I had some 38 books in my possession. Later, as the internet came about, I discovered additional books in the series and was able to read them up to #45. The author, Kenneth Bulmer, wrote 53 of them in his lifetime, but the latter ones aren't available in English, only German.

Another series that grabbed my imagination was Perry Rhodan. Published in America by Ace Books, edited by Forrest J. Ackerman, translated again from German by his wife Wendayne Ackerman, it managed 118 books in the series before disappearing. In Germany, it's continued to this day and is some 2700+ stories long.

A total aside, while both my brother Kevin and I were stationed at USMC, Camp Pendleton in the late 1970's, we travelled up to Los Angeles one weekend and decided to drop in on "The Ackermansion" as it was mentioned in the Perry Rhodan books. Mr. Ackerman was home and was kind enough to invite us in for a tour. What a wonderful place for a long time science-fiction reader like myself. The whole tour was a blur, but the library or rare volumes was impressive, and I saw my one and only original Frank Frazetta of Vampirella hanging on his wall. Even Kevin was impressed with the Ackermansion and he'd never heard of it until I demanded we try to find the place. What a great weekend.

Okay, so to get back onto the main purpose of this post, writing large novels, trilogies, and even longer series have been boiling in my head for decades. As I set down to design the Forgotten Empire it seemed natural is should be a trilogy. And Archer and Hieronymus have a lot more stories to tell as well, so their run is currently planned to last at least 12 books.

Short stories were not really on my radar. I have too many long stories to tell. But then something strange happened, publishing changed out from underneath me.

Publishing used to be a stodgy, slow moving target, one that in recent years have concentrated on "event" books rather than a wide good selling range of writers. Sure, an author could make a living but the entire process was geared to restricting books by the gatekeepers (agents and editors). It was the quarterly results that mattered, not the continuous farming of new voices for future stars. E-publishing has now turned those practices on their head. Authors can make more than a living wage by self-publishing their own books, ones that are no longer in print by their publishers, ones many readers would love to get their hands and eyes on, and most importantly, willing to pay for the privilege.

In addition, the old schedule of an author only writing and publishing one novel a year is no longer valid. The more books one had available to buyers of ebooks, the more ways you have to encounter their eyeballs.

Author Dean Wesley Smith has a plan to get more eyeballs on his work. This year his goal is to write 100 short stories, in addition to his normal four novels a year, and self-publish them. Every 5 and 10 short stories are combined into an additional ebook. If he meets his challenge number, at the end of 2011 he'll have 100 shorts stories, 20 5-story ebooks, 10 10-story ebooks, and 4 novels available to readers that like his work. That's 134 chances for someone to find his work and buy it.

I love that idea.

So, the latest idea circulating in my head to try my hand at a few short stories set in Bulinnarm and elsewhere to prime the pump a bit before Book #1, An Empire Forgotten, hits the virtual shelf.

Now all I need to do is think a bit smaller then I have for the last couple of decades. It's definitely a challenge all its own, but one I'm willing to try. So don't be surprised if you see a short story pop up every now and then. I'm just trying to get my feet wet.

Images: Artist Josh Kirby's cover for Transit to Scorpio, artist Gray Morrow's cover for Mission Stardust, and Frank Frazetta pencil of Vampirella.

BTW: I still have all of my Dray Prescott and Perry Rhodan novels sealed and ready to re-read at every opportunity.