So one of the things that makes its rounds in my circles is how difficult it is to make a living as a writer of fiction. I once bemoaned that fate to Mr. Sawyer and he, once again, called bullshit on it. It can be done. It takes dedication, hard work, and a few other things (not to mention a dash of luck) and we talk all about it in this conversation.
Let us know what you think, particularly if you disagree and why.
PS – Here’s part one.
Dan Sawyer laid down a challenge back in June of this year. He called it The Great Ass-Moving Experiment. He wanted to get off his backside and send his written works out to publishers and he wanted to take some people with him, make it interesting.
Here’s the proposition:
We’ll go from now till the end of the year (or perhaps we should go to next Balticon?). Everyone bets $10. Every story we submit gets 3 points. Every novel proposal we send in gets 4 points. Every nonfiction submission/query gets 1 point. Every sale – of any fiction – gets 8 points. Every sale of nonfiction gets 3 points. Any sale that pays money and has a contract counts. Non-paying and/or clickthru and/or under-the-table markets do not count.
At the end of the year, the person with the most points wins the pool (which will operate on the honor system – those of us that lose will paypal our $10 to the winner).
I, and several other authors, took him up on it. Recently he skipped way ahead and I wanted to know how he did it, since it looked like he was bending “the rules”. (Not the rules of his game, the rules of the publishers’ game.) I wanted to know why and this conversation resulted.
If you want to know how to move your ass, give it a listen. You should also check out the Association’s website too.
Here’s my reading from Dragon*Cant! It’s a story I’m selling at Smashwords.
Here’s an excellent zombie story from Brand Gamblin.
And here’s DDog‘s reading.
Doing/listening to these was fun! Thanks to Allison and Brand and all the rest. And it’s not over yet. More to come tonight and tomorrow. Check the schedule.
I was unable to attend Dragon Con this year due to lack of fundage/planning. In years past the temptation to whine about that has been strong. People that couldn’t go would commiserate by tweeting about it using the hashtag #DragonCant.
This year a good Twitter/Podcast friend, Viv, challenged us with a post on her blog. She will be doing a wide variety of new things and blogging about them through the weekend. I applaud that.
In what I’m pretty sure was an unrelated move Brand Gamblin and Allison Duncan made DragonCant a reality. You can hit the site here. Throughout the weekend you’ll be able to hear readings and engage in panels both real and imaginary.
There’s another reason for this post. I will be doing a reading tomorrow at 4:00 PM. It will likely be one from my Smashwords stories. In the spirit of stealing from the best, I’ll steal an idea from Laura and ask if you have any input. Feel free to drop me a comment! And come to UStream for the readings.
I had the pleasure of going to the first Great North Carolina Beer Festival in Clemmons, NC this past weekend. Overall it was awesome. It was hot and there were literally around nineteen-thousand people when all was said and done. I had beer from the Olde Mecklenburg Brewery, Thomas Creek, and Foothills. There were also big names there that you’d recognize and they all had out what passed for (and in some cases what I’d consider) craft beers.
A craft beer, in my opinion, is a product that the manufacturer truly put some time, energy, and passion into developing. Maybe they take a BIG chance (as one home brewer did with a smoked Weizenbock that was awesome) or maybe they were just wanted to do something a little different (as Newcastle did with their Summer Ale). Regardless, in most cases they tried to put their best foot forward and they were doing it for free.
“So Scott, is this the beer blog now?”
Well maybe from time to time, but this post is about passion. A few of these people had it in spades. I think that the homebrewers that were their had it the most. There was nothing for them to sell. They literally couldn’t legally sell their products even if they wanted to. All they can do is give it away for free. Why? Because they want to share something they made and believed in. So these guys were standing in the only shade around, pouring their beer for the thirsty public (who may or may not give a darn about what they were drinking), and having a grand time.
The next step up were the microbreweries. In quite a few cases the faces you saw at those tents were owners. In some cases they were employees, but there was more of a connection there. They wanted you to know about their beer, their brewery, and in what time they had available would tell you all about it. Yeah they wanted to sell stuff. A few local breweries were selling full pints or glasses and other nick-knacks. They wanted to spread the word and incidentally sell some beer.
There was less passion from the Big Beer tents. The people pulling taps their were likely employees hired just for the day. They had no connection to the process of making the beer or selling the beer. They were just pretty faces. No need to spread the word so much since most of us consumers already know about Guinness or Leinenkugel or Bud. So I guess they were just there as sponsors and in a few cases to get out the word about a particular new product. It was one hundred percent a business arrangement. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
So here we are, three “tiers” if you will and all giving away all the free samples you were willing to queue up for. Sure it cost you $25, but my feeling is that that went to the music and other expenses (designated drivers still had to pay $20).
This whole day struck a chord in me. There’s a great deal of passion in the podiosphere for giving away stuff for free. Those that choose to do it are doing it for the same reasons that the homebrewers and microbrewers are doing it for. In the one case maybe they can’t sell it (or haven’t tried) and are just honing their craft until they can take the next step. In other cases maybe they have started selling, but they still feel the need to build some name recognition. Regardless, there’s still that passion in creating and putting out their wares for people to sample.
The part that’s missing from this analogy are the big boys. While there are some “big names” out there giving away free samples, it doesn’t sound like that’s catching on with the bulk of big story business. There’s a fair amount of fear (perhaps founded, perhaps not) of things like piracy or watering down the brand. And big publishers put a lot of money into developing and selling what they have and want to recoup those costs. It’s all about the business for them.
So, is there a lesson to be learned in this? I think if you’re passionate about what you’re doing, if there’s a way for you to give some of it away without cutting your own throat, do it. I understand the notion that if you’re writing short stories, you don’t want to give them all away if your short term goal is to sell those particular stories. So maybe you write a story or two just to give away? Share your passion with people and once you’ve hit the “big leagues”, where it most cases it’s still hard scrabble when it comes to making a living from wordsmithing, maybe drop a freebie from time to time. Remember that you got into this writing business not do much to make a million dollars (cause that just ain’t gonna happen for most of us) but to tell that story that made your brain itch. Pour a pint every now and again for your fans and I think you’ll find it will pay off in the long run.
Instead of ranting on the state of work, publishing, or why the anti-Mosque movements are so dumb I think I’ll list my top twenty “go-to” beers. These are solid performers that I tend to enjoy while I’m not chasing the newest micro/nano/femto brewery’s efforts.
This was inspired by Billy Brew’s list (flawed though it may be in some ways) and Geistbear’s list (which serves a different purpose but is no less awesome for that). These will be beers that so far as I know are widely available since I can get them in the state of NC (where we still have a cap, though a much more reasonable one).
Fruit Beers – Yes, beer and fruit go sooo well together. Nothing wrong with that.
Blue Moon’s Harvest Moon
Sam Adams Cherry Wheat
Arbita’s Purple Haze
Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy
Stouts – You’ll notice one that’s missing.
Sammy Smith’s Oatmeal Stout
Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
Duck Rabbit Milk Stout
Sam Adam’s Cream Stout
Witbiers – Unfiltered, spiced, heaven. Perhaps one of my favorite beer styles.
Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat
Sam Adams Blackberry Witbier (okay so this is also a fruit beer)
Blue Moon
Shocktop (Yeah, I know. But it’s decent.)
IPA – Not my favorite style, but there are some good ones.
Harpoon Leviathan (A BIG boy, this might not be widely available. If not their regular IPA is good.)
Sierra Nevada
Dogfish Head 90 Minute
Other – A catchall for some of my favorites.
Pipeline Porter
Fat Tire (This one’s become REALLY popular apparently.)
Old Chub Scotch Ale (Good beer in a can? YES!)
Boddington’s Pub Ale
Swithwick’s
Shane, Sean, and David post ten words and you creative types bang out a little “cohesive, creative short story tying all the words together”. The creative copy challenge is an excellent idea and one that I hope you will all take up!
Here’s my … stab.
Adrenaline flowed through Jake’s system. It was a feeling that he both relished and feared. It meant that he was in just the kind of situation he had longed to be done with. A man like him didn’t really retire though, that just wasn’t in the cards.
He tightened his grip on the Kraton covered knife handle, feeling more than hearing his knuckles pop. He had gotten used to the adrenal high, but never the bloodshed that was so often required. Killing men, women and children for a living meant that he had to at least learn to shove the self loathing down into his gut….
Click here to read the rest and see what the rest of the crew did!
I’ve been charged by my buddies at Flying Island Press to participate in defining sci-fi and fantasy. That’s a mighty big elephant to eat. My response on Twitter was “As far as what SF/F is or is not, in my case I sort of know it when I see it. Which is why I like the umbrella term speculative fiction.”
That was kind of a cop out, but defining things in 140 characters or less is a bit more than I’m up to before lunch. Now in a blog post I think I can take a stab.
Science fiction is incredibly broad as a genre. You’ve got everything from Jurassic Park to Ender’s Game. It can be gritty and “hard” where science is king and every jot and tittle needs to be explained and “realistic”. Or it can be soft and take place in such a far flung future that the science almost takes a back seat. Almost. I think that science needs to be an integral part though. There needs to be some aspect of technology or a rational explanation of the universe and its hard core mechanics that forms a significant part of the story.
For me character always comes first and the science might be a part of that character. A good example of that would be PC Haring’s Cybrosis. The main character is a cyborg and her tech is fully integrated into the plot of the novel as well. That’s not to say that the science necessarily needs to be completely accurate. When you’re supposing what the world might by like in a hundred or a thousand years the details are by necessity fuzzy. Most writers are no more scientists than they are wizards and research can only take you so far. Still it should be sound. Master that technobabble!
As big as science fiction is as a genre, I’d argue that fantasy is even larger. In SF, the distinctive element is, well, science. In Fantasy I’d say it’s the numinous. Most, if not all, fantasy has something of the spiritual about it. That’s not to say that it has to be religious (though I’d argue that most Christian fiction falls into the Fantasy realm), but it often speaks to things that can’t be observed or measured. The more important elements in the story, be they plot, mechanics, or character, should focus on the mystical or the transcendent.
A good example of that would be South Coast by Nathan Lowell. And that’s an interesting one too, since it takes place in a far flung future with space ships and the like. It has that in common with Star Wars. Both are Fantasy pieces since, imo, both have a stronger connection to the mystic than the motor.
The wonderful thing about these genres is that they lend themselves well to being crossed over/blended/mashed/folded/spindled. After all, the Dune series has elements of both. The Dragon Riders of Pern does as well. Science Fiction and Fantasy can easily be just like a Reese’s Cup, though that’s not everyone’s favorite candy bar.
So that’s my stab at a definition. Look for a post later today over at Flying Island Press to get more on the ins and outs of defining these genres.
Some friends of mine are selling an anthology of stories to benefit the Office of Letters and Light, a charity affiliated with NaNoWriMo. It’s called From the Dark Side and you can find a number of excerpts and all the info you could possibly want to know about it here.
They’re selling an electronic version at the moment and eventually hope to put out a paper version down the road. All proceeds go to the aforementioned charity and you get twenty stories and poems in a variety of electronic formats on Amazon.com and Smashwords.com for $4.99. That strikes me as a good deal. I know a few of the writers represented and their shouldn’t be a bad story in the bunch.
I know I’ll be buying mine very soon. In fact they’re trying to break one hundred sales by Sunday, July 11 at 11:59 p.m. ET and I want to be counted in that number. They’re about a third of the way there as of my writing this. So go get yours! (As a side note I think they get a better cut if you get it through Smashwords.)
I hope you guys had an awesome 4th of July. You all had one, contrary to what some may believe. Only Americans celebrate the anniversary of their independence on this day. 
I know it’s been a LONG time since my last post. I’ve been a busy little bee and not much in a blogger mode. I did want to share something special with you though. As some of you may know I’ve been working on an electronic magazine called Flagship for a new publishing company called Flying Island Press I’ve helped launch alongside Zach Ricks, Jeff Hite, Philip Carroll, and J-P Losier. We had our launch date yesterday and it was AWESOME.
I know there are some of you out there that might not want to buy something sight unseen and I respect that. As a result, we’re giving away one story in both audio and e-pub format. If you buy the magazine, you’ll get this story and five more for $1.99 for just the audio or text versions or $2.99 for both. I think that’s an outstanding deal.
The story we chose was “Inciting Incident” by Blake M. Petit. Choosing was hard, but we felt his story was indicative of the tone and quality we were shooting for. We at Flying Island Press hope you enjoy them!