Science fiction and mainstream books by award-winning author M. Darusha Wehm
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Chuck “if you aren’t reading his blog, you are totally missing out” Wendig has issued a call to arms (call to pens?) for authors to talk about why people shouldn’t illegally share digital book files. I’m probably not going to do that, exactly, but here’s my post on that subject. I’ve touched on this before, but maybe Chuck is right and it’s time to make my thoughts clear.
First, let’s stop calling it piracy. As a cruising sailor, real piracy affects my life directly. I personally know people who were held hostage by pirates; friends of friends were murdered by them (1). Equating the illicit sharing of digital media with the violent hostage and murder trade is inaccurate, unhelpful and borderline offensive.
So, what about sharing files? Does it piss me off if people are trading my books instead of buying them? Not really. Would I rather that everyone who wanted one bought a copy? Of course I would.
The truth is that I don’t really think that file sharing is a problem. Does it devalue art, by creating the conditions where people believe that entertainment should be free? I suppose it could, but I don’t think there’s any evidence of that. People still pay top dollar to go to the cinema or own copies of films, people buy music and go to shows, people buy books. People spend massive amounts of money on entertainment; I just don’t see that changing.
Sure, there are some people who won’t pay for anything they could get for free. I’m never going to sell a book to those people, so why should I fight it? Most people, though, resort to illegal file sharing because they don’t care that much about the product in the first place or it’s the easiest (sometimes only) way to get it.
I know that I’m competing with free, so I price my books reasonably and make them available in all storefronts I can find and in all formats. It’s easier to just buy one of my books than to find a free file-sharing version.
But, if you really don’t want to pay, there’s no point in me getting all worked up about it. If your friend gives you my books on a usb stick or lends you the paperback, I’m cool with that. In fact, I encourage it. More readers is great! If you get a copy of my book on some weird forum or file sharing site, well, okay. If you like it, leave a review somewhere or tell your friends or buy one of my other books.
And if you’re actually totally broke, seriously don’t buy my books – buy some beans and rice with that three bucks. If you’re broke but really want to read my books, send me an email and I’ll give you copies for free.
The first story on my new magazine is up and available to read.
I loved this story from the first sentence. Maybe it was the nautical talk, maybe it was the atmosphere, maybe it’s because you could just tell that things were not going to go well. Deliciously not well.
Attentive readers might be wondering where the new book is. After all, it’s a new year, and I do usually release a new novel in the new year. So, what gives?
Well, the quick answer is that my previous schedule is no longer my usual schedule. I finished the first final drafts of two novels in December, so they are now being read by beta readers and getting ready for whatever final lives they will have. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do with them, either, since neither of them are Dex books. One of them isn’t even genre fiction. When I know, you’ll know, but for now there’s no new novel news.
What about Dex?
People specifically ask me when the next Dex book is coming out, and the answer is I don’t know. I don’t even know if there will be a next Dex book. At the end of The Beauty of Our Weapons things are changing for Dex and co. and I’m not sure where they are going from there.
I don’t want to be one of those writers who keeps churning out series books just to ride the wave – if I don’t have a great story I need to tell about Dex, I’m not going to write a Dex book. So, we’ll see. I’m not saying there won’t be any more, I’m just saying that if there are more, I don’t know when they’ll materialize.
So while there’s no news in this post, I’m not idle over here. I’ve also got short stories on the go and another project to keep me busy. Hopefully there will be new stuff for you to read soon. For some value of soon anyway.
In the meantime, I’ve posted The Interview, a short story not about Dex but set in The Cubicle Men universe. It was originally published in Podioracket Presents – Glimpses, an anthology of stories by podiobooks authors giving a taste of the worlds of their novels. I hope you like it.
In case anyone is inclined to nominate anything, here’s a list of my publications this year that are eligible for awards.
Novel:
The Beauty of Our Weapons, 2012
Novelette:
“Fire. Escape.” November 2012
Short story:
“The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1.” Escape Pod. November 2012
“Modern Love.” Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. May 2012
“I Open My Eyes.” Luna Station Quarterly. March 2012
All of the above are eligible for the Hugos, Nebulas and Sir Julius Vogel Awards. Anyone can make a nomination for the Vogels but only members of SFWA can make nominations for the Nebulas.
I am also in my first year of eligibility for the John W. Campbell award. The criteria to nominate for the Hugos and the Campbell award are:
Any person who was or is a member of the 2012, 2013, or 2014 Worldcons as of January 31, 2013, is eligible to nominate for the 2013 Hugo Awards. (Even if you’re a member of more than one of those three Worldcons, you may only cast one nominating ballot.) If you are not a member of any of those conventions, you may join LoneStarCon 3 or Loncon 3, the 2014 Worldcon, before January 31, 2013 to become eligible. (from the Hugo Awards site)
And, we’re off! The fundraising to support Plan B becoming a paying market for mystery and crime ficiton has begun. If you’re a reader, you can get pre-orders for the ebook anthology, and anthology subscription and exclusive paperbacks.
For indie authors or anyone else with something to promote, there’s also an affordable sponsorship option available.
If you want to follow the progress of the campaign, or just want to bookmark the page for future story-reading time, go to plan-b-magazine.com. There are a bunch of subscription options there to keep you up to date.
In the meantime, enjoy the video I made for the campaign:
Astute readers may have guessed that I’m up to something a bit mysterious. And while I’m going to tell you what’s going on, that won’t end the suspense. In fact, I hope, it will only make things more thrilling.
Okay. Enough beating around the thesaurus. I am pleased to announce my new project: Plan B Mystery Magazine.
In the new year, Plan B will be posting weekly short fiction in the mystery, crime, suspense and thriller genres, free to read online. We will also be compiling the stories into quarterly anthologies which will be available as ebooks. An annual subscription to the anthologies will be available for purchase as will the individual anthologies.
As you know, I believe that quality work should be compensated, so we intend for Plan B to be a semi-pro paying market. To that end, we will be launching an IndieGoGo campaign in January 2013 to raise the funds necessary to pay our authors.
Want to be a part of it? If you’re a reader, just hang on. When I launch the campaign there will be lots of opportunities to contribute and get great goodies. If you are a writer or a visual artist, we are accepting submissions now. Go read the guidelines then send us your best mystery work.
For those of you who are more interested in my SF writing, worry not. I’m still working on plenty of speculative work. This is just another project, not a change of focus. But I am really stoked about it, so there’s a good chance I’ll talk about it a bit. That’s how it goes.
As an adjunct to last week’s post, I’m on the hunt for folks who write short fiction in the mystery, detective, crime and thriller genres. I’m also looking for readers of same.
I am working on a not secret but not yet officially announced project that I plan to launch in the New Year, and could use a little signal boost. If you know of a mystery writer or fan, please pass their name on to me or pass this post on to them. Feel free to hit me up on twitter, facebook or G+ with links to likely folks.
I thank you and I suspect they will, too.
Most people know me as a science fiction writer. That’s not terribly surprising, given that I’ve got four SF novels out, plus a bunch of SF stories in various markets. I’m active in conversations about SF in various online locales (Google+ is a hotbed of great discussion lately) and I’ve attended SF-themed conventions as a participant and speaker.
If the above isn’t a description of a science fiction writer, I don’t know what is.
But.
I’m not just a science fiction writer. Aside from the fact that I’m not just a writer, I write things that don’t even come close to being classified as SF. Not wanting to get into a “this is SF, this isn’t” argument, I definitely write outside my most recognizable genre.
I started writing seriously as a poet and I’ve had classic haiku published recently. I’ve got a mainstream novel cooking away in edits and I’m getting into straight-up mystery writing. That’s just what’s going on now – who knows what I might do in the future.
Plenty of writers don’t stick to a single genre, and there are certainly anecdotal stories of well-known writers being hamstrung by their readers’ (or editors’) desires to make sure they keep doing what they’ve always done, rather than what they want to do. Which is a shame.
Genre shouldn’t be a cage, whether gilded or rusty barbed-wire. As writers we need realize that one genre-based readership isn’t necessarily going to be interested in our work in other areas, but that should not stop us. Working in other genres is a way to create new readers, plus it keeps us excited about our work. A win-win.
So what do you write that’s not what you’re known for?
About a year ago I started planning to crowdsource funding the release of my upcoming novel. I’ll spoil the ending right now: I did it, and it was successful, raising just over $1000.
Recently, I’ve mentioned that I’m working on a couple of novels and I’ve been asked if I plan to crowdsource funding for their release, too. I hadn’t really thought about it (I’m not quite at that stage yet), but that made me think about the process for The Beauty of Our Weapons and whether or not I do want to give it another go.
As I’ve said, the previous campaign was financially successful. However, it was also stressful. Really stressful.
The campaign met its target on its last day, and it was met thanks to a very generous donor who chose one of the major packages that I’d included mostly for completeness. I was completely shocked first that the target had been met and doubly so by the generosity of this donor.
Though, nearly missing the target wasn’t the most stressful part of the process. I used an IndieGoGo campaign which allowed me to keep any funds raised regardless of whether I’d met the goal, and I’d structured the campaign in such a way that I had different things I could accomplish at different levels of success, so I was reasonably happy with the money aspect early on. What was much more stressful to me what the constant sense of nagging everyone I knew about it.
I am not a natural salesperson. Not even close. I find it kind of distasteful to ask for money under any circumstances, so promoting the campaign was really hard for me personally. I don’t know whether I did a good job or not; no one told me to stop talking about it, but people tend to be pretty polite about that sort of thing.
I did notice that almost all of the people who contributed were people who had previously supported my work. This wasn’t surprising, but it does make me wonder about the value of using this kind of method for the future, especially since I’d be tapping the same people over and over again.
So, I’m asking you: do you regularly use Kickstarter/IndieGoGo as a way to support the creative people whose work you like? Is that a method you prefer or would you rather just buy their thing once it’s commercially available? Do you like the aspect of many crowdsourcing projects where you can get limited edition or special physical products? If so, what kinds of things do you like to get?
And finally, if you are in favour of this method of funding, how would you suggest that campaigners share their news without being annoying? How do you like to be asked for money?
There are two things you need to know about me for this story:
1. I am a creature of habit. I love schedules and plans, and have been known to turn down the opportunity to do something awesome because I’d scheduled something lame and totally unimportant for that time. More than once.
2. I used to be a real wrong-tool-for-the-job kind of person. I’d use whatever was handy for just about anything. I once built a set of patio furniture on my balcony with only a handsaw and electric drill. Nothing really wrong with that, except that my balcony wasn’t flat, I had neither a workbench nor a vice. At one point I used a stack of old CDs shoved under one end of a piece of wood to try and recreate a more or less 90° angle to attach the table legs. It sort of worked – good enough for me.
However, living on a cruising boat for several years has broken my attachment to both of these aspects of my character. They’re still there, but I can usually recognize when they have to go. When you’re at the mercy of the weather, plans are written in the sand at low tide. And using the wrong tool can ruin a lot more than your day. When the gale starts ablowing, you reef those sails.
So, I’m getting better at realizing that just becuae I’ve always done something a particular way doesn’t mean I have to keep doing it that way. Which brings me to why I abandoned Nanowrimo this year.
I’m an 8-time successful participant in Nanowrimo, and those writing bursts have all been useful. Several have turned into parts of now-completed novels and the couple of attempts which will never see the light of day in any format were extremely useful writing exercises from which I learned a lot. And so it was that I entered the ninth consecutive November where I anticipated getting down 50000 words of a long form project.
I started on Nov 1, as usual, and by the first weekend of November I was on track wordcount-wise. No problem, right? Except there was a massive problem. I was ruining my writing.
Unlike previous years, I now have a daily writing schedule that I’ve been keeping. It’s been working out really well for me, as I share my time between writing new fiction, editing works in progress and the inevitable administrivia of a self-employed writer. It’s a good schedule (I love schedules!) and it’s been making me crazy productive. Until I screwed it all up with Nanowrimo.
It was obvious that it wasn’t working for me, and when a tool stops being useful I’ve finally learned that you put it aside and get one that is. It was hard, though. The power of the unbroken streak, the call of the familiar – they are very hard for me to ignore. But it became clear that if I carried on with the Nano schedule, I’d be doing it only to have done Nano again. And what’s the point of that? I already know I can do it. I also already know I can write novels without the Nano machine behind me. So why was I doing it again?
No one knows.
So, I quit. The day I decided it was over, the project I’d been working on got better. My ideas crystalized and the writing improved considerably. I’d gotten back on to the writing schedule which was working for me – I’d picked up the correct tool.
It dawned on me today that I haven’t yet posted here about a couple of my stories which were recently featured on a pair of quality podcasts.
“The Foreigner” was episode 43 of Toasted Cake and “The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1” is episode 370 of Escape Pod. Both are free to listen – go check them out!
