Andrew Seiple's Blog: Transmissions From the Teslaverse, page 9

Getting back on the horse...

Whew. It's been a busy couple of months. So, I've got a nice little MG novel done, some freelance work knocked out, and oh yeah, the box set is out there on the market right now.

Time for a well-earned rest- bahahahha! Not a chance. Hard at work on the next Dire book. This one... I'll aim to get it out around March, I think. Got a few other people's schedules involved, so there's no guarantees, but that's life.

In the meantime, I might be able to get a small giveaway going. Tell me, friends and readers, which would you prefer to see? A slipcover for physical books, basically a box for a box set? Or three tarot cards, taken from the art of the digital box set?

Let me know. I'd like to get something nifty to you guys before Christmas, but the schedule's tight...

My first box set...

Took a while to get the cover art together, and edit the danged thing, but finally everything is complete! Muhahahahhahaa!

That does feel kind of good, the whole fiendish laugh thing. I see why Dire does it.

Anyway, my first box set is up. Books one through three of the Dire Saga, all ready to go for the holidays. Also in Kindle Unlimited for those who peruse that venue.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N53O0W7

I honestly don't know how this will go. I'm mainly putting it out there in preparation for book four in March, so I have no expectations. Still, I think it'll do all right.

Conventions and Coordination

I went into Acadecon not knowing what to expect. I had hopes, mind you. What I'd seen so far seemed encouraging.

But when you're dealing with a new convention, you really don't know what you're going to get. So I approached it as I approached everything, hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

Guys, it was the best.

The con was well-run, efficient, and offered a good amount of value for money. The schedule was packed with gaming events, they had plenty of door prizes, and every vendor I know who set up there made a profit above table costs. I'm no exception to that... the books sold were enough to cover my weekend, and a souveneir or two.

It was encouraging, to see so many local folks who share my niche hobby, and to talk to some of them on panels as a subject matter expert. Got to tell five prospective writers about the realities of self-publishing. Also got to lay out my strategy for creating sandbox campaigns. In between I sold books and chatted with local artists, craftsmen, and authors. There's a lot of us in the Dayton area. And barring mishap, most of us will be back next year.

That's how good conventions should go. A solid, well-planned launch leads to word of mouth spreading leads to growth the next year. Back it up by extending advertising, and you end up with a tradition. Sure, it won't all be cake and sunshine, but at the end of the day if you keep smart and remember to try to keep people happy, you can ride out the bad spots.

So good on Acadecon's organizers, and I very much look forward to seeing them next year. Peace, out!

And now an Interview, too!

Well, that was a rough night.

Maybe this might be a touch more cheerful?

https://cathleentownsend.com/2016/11/...

Courtesy of Cathleen Townsend, a fellow writer and very gracious lady. She interviewed me, and it's over at her website. G'wan, check it out. It was pretty fun!

Woohoo! First blog review!

Guess who's got two thumbs and a very positive review on an indie book review blog!

Yep, THIS guy!

https://amazingbooksynho.com/2016/10/...

I'm on Cloud 9 right now. Gonna drift off to sleep with dreams of satisfied readers all through my head.

Timely, too. It'll be time for the next step in the Dire Saga in a couple of weeks... This is a good note to start things on.

Where there's smoke...

Hey, remember Liberties Press, that publishing house which was charging a slushpile fee? I mentioned them last week.

Turns out that this isn't the first time they've screwed people over. They owe their published authors and even some ex-staff large sums of money.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/ag...

So, yeah. Don't submit to these guys, and take note of the owner's name. Make sure he's not in any of your future business dealings.

Always discouraging when a small press turns up bad. I want to like this category of business, I do, but their niche just seems to keep shrinking more and more these days. They should be the gateway, a helping hand to new authors. Some are, but predators like Liberties and others do so much damage when they turn up...

Ah well. As with everything, caveat emptor. And if you smell smoke, run. Don't wait until you see the fire.

Buyer's Relief

The title of this post will require some explanation:

So, I'm a cautious person, prone to overthinking and analyzing. As such, I suffer a condition called buyer's remorse. This is what you feel after you buy something, and then you come to think that maybe you made the wrong choice. Buyer's remorse can hit regardless of whether or not you DID make the wrong choice. It's mostly a form of anxiety.

In this case, every so often, I sit down and ask myself if self-publishing was really the right choice. If I'd have been better off sticking it out, and sending queries out to agents and major presses. Usually my answer ends up being "Nah, self-publishing is awesome," but sometimes I wonder.

Then I saw this:
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/boo...

Long story short, an Irish publishing house (not even a very big publishing house) has started charging authors 100 Euros for unagented submissions.

What this basically means, is that authors who don't have an agent must send them 100 Euros (about $75) for the privilege of emailing them a manuscript. The publishing house then can reject it at its leisure and keep the 100 smackers.

100 Euros to give your manuscript to a guy who's 99.9 percent likely to throw it out the window without looking at it. Seriously, they're not even obligated to send you a response!

So instead of suffering from buyer's remorse, I'm now basking in buyer's satisfaction. I KNOW I made the right choice by self-publishing.

I pity the poor souls that gave this exploitative jerk free money. I pity the folks still stuck in a query-rejection cycle that never ends. And I move on, self-publishing with confidence, knowing that I will never have to depend on a flawed business cycle that allows such abuse of the writer.

Life is good. Life is better when you're not dependent on the validation of arrogant gatekeepers.

Finally, Fall

I live in Ohio. Grew up here, never lived anywhere else. Ohio's one of those states that typically has both extremes... baking, muggy summers and freezing, blustery winters. Sometimes it goes from one to the other in the space of two weeks or so.

But when it doesn't, then Ohio's at its best. In the in-between times, when the humidity vanishes and the it's cool at night but warm during the day, Ohio is at her best.

Fall's my second favorite season. I love the cold and hate the heat, so I'm always happy to see summer fading and my electric bill shrinking as we gain the ability to spend days without the AC grinding away. It's glorious to be able to go outside near night without worrying about mosquitos, or walk through the woods without thinking of all the poison ivy I might get on me.

Fall's pumpkins and Halloween and cold days with rain that's glorious to watch from inside a warm house. It's crunchy leaves and scenic views through bare trees and the hushed prelude before the chaos of the holiday coordination and travels. It's harvest and Oktoberfest and apple cider, and nights that are perfect for campfires.

Winter will always hold my heart hostage, but fall's close up there. It's second place, and I love it when it comes to Ohio.

Dayton Musings

Dayton, Ohio, was an interesting place to grow up.

Mind you, I grew up in the suburbs, in a little place called Huber Heights. But it was so close to Dayton that the city overshadowed everything. Most of the jobs were there. Huber Heights was just a place for the blue-and-white collar folks to come home to.

Then the eighties hit, and it was like there was a change on the wind. The jobs started going away. The last big factories shut their doors, and we started losing corporations. For a while there, Dayton was a solid part of the rustbelt. That lasted through the nineties... but for me it was just business as usual.

When I was growing up my Dad used to take me to fun places. We'd go shop at the Salem Mall every month or so. Sometimes he'd haul me to gun shows and computer shows at Hara Arena, and when the weather was good on a weekend we'd go to the flea maket out at the North Dixie Drive in. Sure, the surrounding areas were places you didn't want to be at night, but those trips? Those were joy.

Salem Mall had the best Waldenbooks around, and a KB toys with tons of neat stuff. Sometimes I'd find D&D sets there! Though I couldn't afford their prices, occasionally I'd find one that some jerk had opened, and quietly flip through the books, trying to understand the rules. I never opened the boxes myself, mind you. That would have been wrong.

The flea market was huge and riotous, with tons of people mingling, and random stuff filling groaning tables. I hoarded my meager allowance and hunted roleplaying games, board games, and old Avalon Hill bookcase games with determined fervor. The best prize I ever landed from that hallowed venue was a set of pewter D&D minis... about twenty or so, for the princely sum of $6. That was eighties dollars, mind you, but still a pretty good deal.

Hara arena was interesting, but it wasn't until we got a home PC in the nineties that the computer shows got interesting. And thanks to my job I had more of a budget, so I'd shell out for shareware diskettes, little 3.5 disks full of sample games. I still remember tweaking the computer to hell and back so it could handle Wolfenstein 3D without choking. Good times...

But nothing lasts.

The Salem Mall was the first to go, just too big for its own good. It never recovered from the unemployment spike of the eighties and nineties, and when the anchors folded, that was all she wrote. Didn't help that it was in a high crime area, and the gangs made it their own. In a way, its fall would preface the general decline of shopping malls across the nation. It's still there today, closed and ruined. A few years back my airsoft LARP had a chance to play there once, but the mall owners would only accept if we agreed to be locked in there overnight, so nobody else got in. I'd seen too many horror movies to accept that sort of bargain.

The North Dixie flea market didn't leave so much as fade away, losing attendance and vendors as time went on. You need a fairly prosperous lower and middle class to have a good flea market, and Dayton was bleeding jobs too badly to make it worthwhile. I hear that it's converted to mostly antiques... not the same, if it went that route. I'll stop by sometime when the construction isn't ripping the road to shreds and check it out. But I'm not holding my breath, there.

Hara Arena was the last to go. An old, sprawling 70s-era compound, it seemed to resist the march of time through sheer stubbornness. Tons of shows used it as a venue, a local hockey team made it their home, and all sorts of events went on in its concrete-floored halls. But it always seemed to get more rundown as time went on. For all the money it was making, it never seemed to get much more beyond the most basic maintenance. And this year I found out why; its owner had passed away in '98 or so, and his heirs had been fighting over it ever since. The money that would have renovated and saved it went to lawyers instead. It closed this summer. I was there to give her one last send-off.

Nothing stays the same.

Dayton is recovering from its rust-belt days, and the loss of several major corporations. The economic upturn's been good for it, but the city's having to scale down from last-century's grandeur. It'll never be Cincinnati or Cleveland, but it doesn't have to be. The days of my childhood will not come again, and that's okay, because new things come in to replace what's lost.

I'll always remember those trips with Dad, sorting through junk and looking for treasure. And when my daughter's old enough, I'll find places to take her where we can do just that.

Nothing lasts, but it doesn't have to. The cycle continues, and new eyes find joy in new things.

The joys of fatherhood

Did I mention I'm a dad? I'm gonna talk about dad stuff for a bit, so if you're looking for literary business that'll be a later post.

It's a good thing to be a dad. I'm a lucky man, with a wife and daughter who love me. My daughter's three and three quarters right now. She's a tall, skinny thing for her age, who'll doubtless tower over me by the time she's fifteen.

She's also, as of this last week or so, potty-trained.

We didn't know how to do it at first. This is one of those things where it's a little different for everyone. We got a ton of conflicting advice, and tried various "soft" methods. Nothing really worked. Finally it came to a head when her preschool told us "Oh, by the way, if she's not potty-trained she can't attend."

Cue a three-week training montage. One week leading up to pre-school, then a quiet agreement with the school to go for more training.

If she'd missed it she would have been unable to attend until next year. But she's smart, and she made it.

We basically just put her in panties, rather than diapers, and took her to the bathroom every couple of hours until she got the idea. We gave scoldings for accidents, and positive encouragement for successes, and eventually it took.

Yeah, she made a mess a few times, and the laundry machine saw some overtime. But my girl came through.

I'm glad. She's very happy at pre-school, and she's socializing fast. Heck, she's actually upset to go home after it's done. I'm wondering how long that'll last, but it's cute while it's here.

So good on you Genevieve. Not sure when or if you'll read this entry, but know that your dad's proud of you.

Next step: Teaching her to read! Probably with something more kid-friendly than the Dire books.