Matthew Hughes's Blog: barbarians of the beyond, page 10
May 14, 2016
Downshift, my second novel, now in ebook, POD, and audio
A few people know the story of my debut novel, Fools Errant, first sold to a Canadian publisher that was taken over and dissolved the week my book came out.
Now here’s the story of the second . . .
My work came to the attention of L.R. (Bunny) Wright, one of Canada’s top mystery writers, who introduced me to her editor at Doubleday Canada. She read Downshift, the first in a projected series about a freelance speechwriter on Vancouver Island (which was what I was) who gets involved in situations that require him to solve a mystery or die.
The editor loved the book and wanted to sign me but the marketing department wanted to go more “literary” and not sign another genre author. A five-month argument was finally won by my editor, who put the book into the process and asked me to write a second in the series. Which I started to do.
Then, three months before Downshift came out, my editor departed for another publisher– a nonfiction house, so she couldn’t take me with her. Immediately my print run was cut, my tiny promotional budget went to another book, and the marketing effort, except for library sales, was a few mouse-sized squeaks. Months later, when I asked if there were remaindered copies I could buy, I was told, “Nope, as the returns came in we sent them straight to the pulper.”
A couple of years ago, I gave the rights to Five Rivers Publishing, a Canadian no-advance small press producing ebooks and POD paperbacks, but sales were skimpy. They did want the sequel, though, so I finished Old Growth, the second in the series, that had been sitting about three-quarters done on my hard drive since 1997. It didn’t burn up the track, either.
So I’ve got the rights back and I’m self-publishing Downshift as a $3.99 ebook and a $12.99 POD paperback. It will be on my website bookstore, on Amazon and Kobo, and any downstream booksellers that connect to their distribution channels. Old Growth will follow in a little while.
By sheer coincidence, as I was preparing to put the books out, I was approached by Bob Gonzalez, an excellent voice artist who narrated an audio-book version of Downshift for Five Rivers, though the title was withdrawn when the audio-book producer messed up. So Downshift is now available wherever audio books are sold, and Bob is preparing to record Old Growth. It will follow along at about the same time as I bring out the ebooks and PODs.
Here’s the thing: I think Downshift is a pretty skookum little mystery. It got some good reviews when it came out. Old Growth is even better, because the character has matured between the books, which are set five or six years apart and because I’ve become a more skillful writer over the past twenty years. But, as my Tor editor, the late (and much missed) David G. Hartwell once told me, “Publishing is a hard, hard business.” Some good books don’t get the chance they deserve, just as some baby sea turtles never make it down the sand and into the surf.
The opening of Downshift is on the Excerpts section of my web page with a link to where to buy it. The first chapter of Old Growth is also there, but it only links to the Five Rivers paperback, which was kind of pricey. I hope you’ll give both books an opportunity to catch your interest.
Now here’s the story of the second . . .
My work came to the attention of L.R. (Bunny) Wright, one of Canada’s top mystery writers, who introduced me to her editor at Doubleday Canada. She read Downshift, the first in a projected series about a freelance speechwriter on Vancouver Island (which was what I was) who gets involved in situations that require him to solve a mystery or die.
The editor loved the book and wanted to sign me but the marketing department wanted to go more “literary” and not sign another genre author. A five-month argument was finally won by my editor, who put the book into the process and asked me to write a second in the series. Which I started to do.
Then, three months before Downshift came out, my editor departed for another publisher– a nonfiction house, so she couldn’t take me with her. Immediately my print run was cut, my tiny promotional budget went to another book, and the marketing effort, except for library sales, was a few mouse-sized squeaks. Months later, when I asked if there were remaindered copies I could buy, I was told, “Nope, as the returns came in we sent them straight to the pulper.”
A couple of years ago, I gave the rights to Five Rivers Publishing, a Canadian no-advance small press producing ebooks and POD paperbacks, but sales were skimpy. They did want the sequel, though, so I finished Old Growth, the second in the series, that had been sitting about three-quarters done on my hard drive since 1997. It didn’t burn up the track, either.
So I’ve got the rights back and I’m self-publishing Downshift as a $3.99 ebook and a $12.99 POD paperback. It will be on my website bookstore, on Amazon and Kobo, and any downstream booksellers that connect to their distribution channels. Old Growth will follow in a little while.
By sheer coincidence, as I was preparing to put the books out, I was approached by Bob Gonzalez, an excellent voice artist who narrated an audio-book version of Downshift for Five Rivers, though the title was withdrawn when the audio-book producer messed up. So Downshift is now available wherever audio books are sold, and Bob is preparing to record Old Growth. It will follow along at about the same time as I bring out the ebooks and PODs.
Here’s the thing: I think Downshift is a pretty skookum little mystery. It got some good reviews when it came out. Old Growth is even better, because the character has matured between the books, which are set five or six years apart and because I’ve become a more skillful writer over the past twenty years. But, as my Tor editor, the late (and much missed) David G. Hartwell once told me, “Publishing is a hard, hard business.” Some good books don’t get the chance they deserve, just as some baby sea turtles never make it down the sand and into the surf.
The opening of Downshift is on the Excerpts section of my web page with a link to where to buy it. The first chapter of Old Growth is also there, but it only links to the Five Rivers paperback, which was kind of pricey. I hope you’ll give both books an opportunity to catch your interest.
April 24, 2016
Another reprint sale
I've just heard that I've sold another reprint. "Petri Parousia" ran in F&SF back in 2008. In January, I submitted it to a Kickstarter-funded indie anthology to be called Arcane Arts, edited by Kai Herbertz.
"Petri Parousia" spun off from the then popular novel The Da Vinci Code, to the extent that it was about a research scientist who discovered he could recreate the DNA of anyone's ancestors so you could clone your great-grandfather. Or Napoleon. Or anybody you thought deserved a second coming.
As with the recent sale of "Nature Tale" to Tesseracts 20, the acceptance came as a complete surprise because I did not remember submitting the story (I have an increasingly unreliable memory which may turn out to be a precursor to Alzheimers).
Still, it's very nice to receive acceptances for submissions I don't remember. Like an unexpected birthday present.
"Petri Parousia" spun off from the then popular novel The Da Vinci Code, to the extent that it was about a research scientist who discovered he could recreate the DNA of anyone's ancestors so you could clone your great-grandfather. Or Napoleon. Or anybody you thought deserved a second coming.
As with the recent sale of "Nature Tale" to Tesseracts 20, the acceptance came as a complete surprise because I did not remember submitting the story (I have an increasingly unreliable memory which may turn out to be a precursor to Alzheimers).
Still, it's very nice to receive acceptances for submissions I don't remember. Like an unexpected birthday present.
April 20, 2016
Luff Imbry in Tesseracts Twenty
Sometime today, Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing will announce the table of contents for COMPOSTELA, the twentieth annual iteration of the prestigious Tesseracts series of anthologies of Canadian science fiction. It will include my Luff Imbry story, "Nature Tale."
Every Tesseracts is built around a theme. This year the publisher has said: "The stories in this anthology in their own way tell the tale of futuristic travelers who journey into the dark outer (or inner) reaches of space, searching for their own connections to the past, present and future relics of their time.
"Nature Tale," which originally ran in the quarterly anthology, Postscripts, fits the description. It's about how Luff travels to a far-distant world to settle an old score from his school days.
For each edition of the Tesseracts series, the publisher selects as editors two luminaries of the Canadian speculative fiction scene. This year's are Spider Robinson and James Alan Gardner.
The book will be out in the spring of 2017.
Every Tesseracts is built around a theme. This year the publisher has said: "The stories in this anthology in their own way tell the tale of futuristic travelers who journey into the dark outer (or inner) reaches of space, searching for their own connections to the past, present and future relics of their time.
"Nature Tale," which originally ran in the quarterly anthology, Postscripts, fits the description. It's about how Luff travels to a far-distant world to settle an old score from his school days.
For each edition of the Tesseracts series, the publisher selects as editors two luminaries of the Canadian speculative fiction scene. This year's are Spider Robinson and James Alan Gardner.
The book will be out in the spring of 2017.
April 13, 2016
New story sale to F&SF
I’ve had official word that Charlie Finlay, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, has bought another story from me. This one’s called “Ten Half-Pennies,” and it features my new series character, Baldemar. I hope Charlie won’t mind my quoting from his acceptance letter, in which he said, “I loved this story -- probably my favorite thing from you in a while, which is saying something.”
I created Baldemar for the anthology, The Book of Swords, edited by Gardner Dozois and due out in 2017, or possibly very late this year. The story in the anthology, “The Sword of Destiny,” finds the character at the end of his career as a wizard’s henchman. “Ten Half-Pennies” starts him out as a young boy and tells how he came into the service of Thelerion the thaumaturge, a wizard even less dependable than the average spellslinger.
I plan to do the same thing as I did with Raffalon the thief, who was created for the cross-genre anthology, Rogues, co-edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. While waiting for Rogues to come out, I wrote several stories about the earlier life of my thief and sold them to F&SF. Next summer, I will put together all the Raffalon stories, including an extra I have yet to write, and self-publish them as an ebook and POD paperback.
Meanwhile, I’m halfway through another Baldemar story, as he pursues his career as a young henchman to Thelerion. I’m about to send him off to Khoram-in-the-Waste, a ruined city in the desert, to recover an ancient magic object for his master. How that’s going to work out, I don’t know yet, but it’s always fun to see where these stories go.
I created Baldemar for the anthology, The Book of Swords, edited by Gardner Dozois and due out in 2017, or possibly very late this year. The story in the anthology, “The Sword of Destiny,” finds the character at the end of his career as a wizard’s henchman. “Ten Half-Pennies” starts him out as a young boy and tells how he came into the service of Thelerion the thaumaturge, a wizard even less dependable than the average spellslinger.
I plan to do the same thing as I did with Raffalon the thief, who was created for the cross-genre anthology, Rogues, co-edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. While waiting for Rogues to come out, I wrote several stories about the earlier life of my thief and sold them to F&SF. Next summer, I will put together all the Raffalon stories, including an extra I have yet to write, and self-publish them as an ebook and POD paperback.
Meanwhile, I’m halfway through another Baldemar story, as he pursues his career as a young henchman to Thelerion. I’m about to send him off to Khoram-in-the-Waste, a ruined city in the desert, to recover an ancient magic object for his master. How that’s going to work out, I don’t know yet, but it’s always fun to see where these stories go.
April 9, 2016
Raffalon before the end of the year
A little bird tells me -- actually, it's Charlie Finlay, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction -- that he expects to run the Raffalon story he has in inventory before the end of the year. When I sold it to him, it was called "Genius." But Charlie, being a good editor, has told me that there are already several other stories in the sf universe with that same title and it's not likely to draw the reader's eye. So the story has been renamed "The Amateur Vindicator," which I'm pretty sure makes it unique.
This will probably be the last Raffalon story to appear in a magazine. My intent is to write a new one and put it with all the others in a self-published collection. I'll have to wait six months for the exclusivity period for "Vindicator" to expire, which means the Raffalon collection will probably be out in the summer of 2017.
Unofficially, I can announce that I've also sold another story to F&SF, but the official announcement mustn't come until I get the contract and check from Gordon Van Gelder.
This will probably be the last Raffalon story to appear in a magazine. My intent is to write a new one and put it with all the others in a self-published collection. I'll have to wait six months for the exclusivity period for "Vindicator" to expire, which means the Raffalon collection will probably be out in the summer of 2017.
Unofficially, I can announce that I've also sold another story to F&SF, but the official announcement mustn't come until I get the contract and check from Gordon Van Gelder.
April 8, 2016
typo correction
In my last post the section about the panel on Creating Believable Characters had a number missing from the scheduled time. It takes place on Saturday, May 7, at 10 a.m.
Creative Ink Writers' Festival
The weekend of May 6 to 8, I’ll be doing panel and blue-pencil work and presenting a workshop at the Creative Ink writers’ festival at the Delta Burnaby Hotel and Conference Centre, In Burnaby, BC, where I went to high school and university, all those years ago.
I’m doing three panels:
Getting Started – how to begin a writing project. It’s on Friday, May 6, at 4 p.m.
Creating Believable Characters – tricks and techniques to take the cardboard out of characters. That’s on Saturday, May 7, at 0 a.m.
Adding Mystery to Your Fiction – there are different rules for writing mysteries compared to other genre categories. Saturday, May 7, at noon
The workshop is Elements of Story. I’ll run through the basics of story mechanics then we’ll make up a story or two from the usual components. Saturday, May 7, at 6 p.m.
On Sunday, May 8, from noon, I’ll be doing Blue-Pencil Café, a standard part of writers conferences. Individual writers bring a pro author, editor, or agent a few pages of their work and get an instant critique. Tip: it’s best to bring me the opening pages of a novel or short story. I can tell a lot (and often help a lot) from an opening.
I’m not the only attraction at Creative Ink. Guests of Honour are bestselling author Carrie Vaughan and World Fantasy Award-nominated artist Galen Dara. Good old Robert J. Sawyer, who always gives excellent value for money at writers’ conferences, will deliver a keynote speech.
This project is the brainchild of my SF Canada colleague, Sandra Wickham, who deserves a medal and a big slice of cake for putting her heart into helping other writers. I wouldn’t be surprised if the conference sells out, so get over to the website now and sign up.
http://www.creativeinkfestival.com/re...
I’m doing three panels:
Getting Started – how to begin a writing project. It’s on Friday, May 6, at 4 p.m.
Creating Believable Characters – tricks and techniques to take the cardboard out of characters. That’s on Saturday, May 7, at 0 a.m.
Adding Mystery to Your Fiction – there are different rules for writing mysteries compared to other genre categories. Saturday, May 7, at noon
The workshop is Elements of Story. I’ll run through the basics of story mechanics then we’ll make up a story or two from the usual components. Saturday, May 7, at 6 p.m.
On Sunday, May 8, from noon, I’ll be doing Blue-Pencil Café, a standard part of writers conferences. Individual writers bring a pro author, editor, or agent a few pages of their work and get an instant critique. Tip: it’s best to bring me the opening pages of a novel or short story. I can tell a lot (and often help a lot) from an opening.
I’m not the only attraction at Creative Ink. Guests of Honour are bestselling author Carrie Vaughan and World Fantasy Award-nominated artist Galen Dara. Good old Robert J. Sawyer, who always gives excellent value for money at writers’ conferences, will deliver a keynote speech.
This project is the brainchild of my SF Canada colleague, Sandra Wickham, who deserves a medal and a big slice of cake for putting her heart into helping other writers. I wouldn’t be surprised if the conference sells out, so get over to the website now and sign up.
http://www.creativeinkfestival.com/re...
March 22, 2016
Me at Eastercon
I’m going to Manchester for the weekend for the big annual UK con called Eastercon. I don’t have much on the agenda, just one panel and a signing.
The panel is Supporting the Short Stuff, about writing and selling short fiction. It’s on Sunday, from 13:00 to 14:00, in Room 7 at the Hilton Deansgate – that’s the hotel where all the events are.
The signing will be on Saturday, from 11:00 to 12:00 at the PS Publishing table in the dealers’ room. PS will have copies of the new Luff Imbry novella, “Epiphanies,” for anyone who wants one.
Otherwise, I’ll be wandering around the con, probably spending time in the hospitality suite if there is one, and (even more probably) in the bar. Anyone who wants to talk to me or get something signed is welcome. I’m not shy or stand-offish.
In other news, Black Gate’s short story reviewer, Fletcher Vredenburgh, finds “Telltale” the only sword-and-sorcery short story worth talking about in February. He says, “The Raffalon stories are delightful gems that any fan of the off-kilter humor of Jack Vance’s Cugel the Clever or Michael Shea’s Nifft the Lean should enjoy.”
The panel is Supporting the Short Stuff, about writing and selling short fiction. It’s on Sunday, from 13:00 to 14:00, in Room 7 at the Hilton Deansgate – that’s the hotel where all the events are.
The signing will be on Saturday, from 11:00 to 12:00 at the PS Publishing table in the dealers’ room. PS will have copies of the new Luff Imbry novella, “Epiphanies,” for anyone who wants one.
Otherwise, I’ll be wandering around the con, probably spending time in the hospitality suite if there is one, and (even more probably) in the bar. Anyone who wants to talk to me or get something signed is welcome. I’m not shy or stand-offish.
In other news, Black Gate’s short story reviewer, Fletcher Vredenburgh, finds “Telltale” the only sword-and-sorcery short story worth talking about in February. He says, “The Raffalon stories are delightful gems that any fan of the off-kilter humor of Jack Vance’s Cugel the Clever or Michael Shea’s Nifft the Lean should enjoy.”
March 19, 2016
What the Wind Brings
Yesterday, I printed out the manuscript – 467 pages – of What the Wind Brings, the historical novel I was “meaning to write” for more than forty years. I sent it off to a top agent in New York. He is not my agent – I’m without representation again – but he will be if he likes the book well enough to represent it.
Here’s how it happened. In my mid-teens, I used to read a lot of historical fiction. I especially liked the novels of Lionel Sprague de Camp. The summer I turned sixteen, I started to write one, but didn’t get far. I’d read somewhere that Alexander the Great, after he’d conquered the world but before he died in Babylon, had ordered someone to take a ship south through the Red Sea and along the east coast of Africa. The idea was to circumnavigate what the ancients thought was a big island, eventually coming up the west coast and back into the Mediterranean at Gibraltar.
I never got beyond a couple of chapters, but from time to time after that I would poke around in libraries, trying to find any more information about the quite possibly mythical voyage. Along the way, I came across Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki Expedition, which mentioned a legend about a supposed tribe of white-skinned folks living down near the pointy end of South America. That legend could have played into a scenario explaining why Alexander’s explorers were never heard from again.
It was while I was trying to find more information about this probably apocryphal tribe that I saw a footnote in some book that mentioned that a group of African slaves, shipwrecked on the South American coast, managed to establish an independent polity that survived for generations. I thought, “That would make an interesting historical novel.” Thus began a desultory process of trying to learn more about these self-determining Africans.
I ran into some difficulty because almost all the scholarship about the events was in Spanish and published in academic journals in Latin America. They were hard to get and my Spanish was of the “¿Donde esta la pluma de mi tia?” variety. But I gradually began to get a picture of what had happened and where and when. And against that background I began to think about the characters – historical and fictional – who might figure in a story I would want to tell.
Years went by while I wrote all kinds of other stuff, years that turned into decades. Finally, in 2014, the Canada Council for the Arts awarded me a major grant to write the novel. I did some more focused research, established a proper timeline and got a good sense of what was happening in Ecuador in the middle to late sixteenth century. In 2015 I started writing.
Now it’s done. Three drafts. A big stack of paper. And it’s winging its way to New York.
Now I cross my fingers and wait.
But here’s the thing: I’ve written some thirty books of many different kinds over the years, and sold all but a few of them, so the experience of saying “that’s a wrap” is not new to me. Except this one feels different. I have a sense of having completed a long-running process that has been humming away in the background to my life since I was a very young man. It’s an odd sensation. Mostly, as a result of my strange rootless upbringing, I live in the moment. The past fades as soon as I take my eye off it, and especially now that I’m closer to seventy than sixty. But right now I’m feeling connected to that sixteen year old I left behind on some curve in the highway, long ago. It’s as if there has been a cord that tied us together but it was always slack. Now, suddenly, it’s grown taut. I can feel the me I used to be.
And I’m thinking, that Alexander the Great boat trip might make an interesting novel.
Here’s how it happened. In my mid-teens, I used to read a lot of historical fiction. I especially liked the novels of Lionel Sprague de Camp. The summer I turned sixteen, I started to write one, but didn’t get far. I’d read somewhere that Alexander the Great, after he’d conquered the world but before he died in Babylon, had ordered someone to take a ship south through the Red Sea and along the east coast of Africa. The idea was to circumnavigate what the ancients thought was a big island, eventually coming up the west coast and back into the Mediterranean at Gibraltar.
I never got beyond a couple of chapters, but from time to time after that I would poke around in libraries, trying to find any more information about the quite possibly mythical voyage. Along the way, I came across Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki Expedition, which mentioned a legend about a supposed tribe of white-skinned folks living down near the pointy end of South America. That legend could have played into a scenario explaining why Alexander’s explorers were never heard from again.
It was while I was trying to find more information about this probably apocryphal tribe that I saw a footnote in some book that mentioned that a group of African slaves, shipwrecked on the South American coast, managed to establish an independent polity that survived for generations. I thought, “That would make an interesting historical novel.” Thus began a desultory process of trying to learn more about these self-determining Africans.
I ran into some difficulty because almost all the scholarship about the events was in Spanish and published in academic journals in Latin America. They were hard to get and my Spanish was of the “¿Donde esta la pluma de mi tia?” variety. But I gradually began to get a picture of what had happened and where and when. And against that background I began to think about the characters – historical and fictional – who might figure in a story I would want to tell.
Years went by while I wrote all kinds of other stuff, years that turned into decades. Finally, in 2014, the Canada Council for the Arts awarded me a major grant to write the novel. I did some more focused research, established a proper timeline and got a good sense of what was happening in Ecuador in the middle to late sixteenth century. In 2015 I started writing.
Now it’s done. Three drafts. A big stack of paper. And it’s winging its way to New York.
Now I cross my fingers and wait.
But here’s the thing: I’ve written some thirty books of many different kinds over the years, and sold all but a few of them, so the experience of saying “that’s a wrap” is not new to me. Except this one feels different. I have a sense of having completed a long-running process that has been humming away in the background to my life since I was a very young man. It’s an odd sensation. Mostly, as a result of my strange rootless upbringing, I live in the moment. The past fades as soon as I take my eye off it, and especially now that I’m closer to seventy than sixty. But right now I’m feeling connected to that sixteen year old I left behind on some curve in the highway, long ago. It’s as if there has been a cord that tied us together but it was always slack. Now, suddenly, it’s grown taut. I can feel the me I used to be.
And I’m thinking, that Alexander the Great boat trip might make an interesting novel.
March 18, 2016
It ain't me, babe
I checked my Goodreads author dashboard a little while ago and was surprised to discover I’ve authored four more books. I went over to Amazon, and there they were, too.
They were Kindle editions so I opened one up and read the first few words. And it was really awful. I don’t know if they were written by a badly coded piece of software or if they're the natural end products of a modern education system in which no one is ever told they’re not doing something right.
The books are so poorly and oddly written, I suspect they’ve been produced solely to fool readers looking for undiscovered works by me into clicking and buying. Though it escapes me why anyone would want to do that through Amazon, since you can instantly return an ebook whose first sentences make you turn green and need to lie down.
Anyway, the titles of these non-books are: The Captive and the Godslayer (ASIN B01BMWHFO8); The Urban Year (ASIN B01BG2KI6G); The Planet of the Stormed Game (ASIN B01BG6JO80); and As I Am (ASIN B01BSU9VFU).
I don’t think there’s much I can to stop Amazon’s algorithms from aligning them with my works, but I’ll send them a note and see what happens.
They were Kindle editions so I opened one up and read the first few words. And it was really awful. I don’t know if they were written by a badly coded piece of software or if they're the natural end products of a modern education system in which no one is ever told they’re not doing something right.
The books are so poorly and oddly written, I suspect they’ve been produced solely to fool readers looking for undiscovered works by me into clicking and buying. Though it escapes me why anyone would want to do that through Amazon, since you can instantly return an ebook whose first sentences make you turn green and need to lie down.
Anyway, the titles of these non-books are: The Captive and the Godslayer (ASIN B01BMWHFO8); The Urban Year (ASIN B01BG2KI6G); The Planet of the Stormed Game (ASIN B01BG6JO80); and As I Am (ASIN B01BSU9VFU).
I don’t think there’s much I can to stop Amazon’s algorithms from aligning them with my works, but I’ll send them a note and see what happens.
