Hugh Howey's Blog, page 58

Let the Countdown Begin!

One month from today, DUST will be released.

It’s hard to believe that this journey began two years ago. It was right about now, back in 2011, that I uploaded WOOL. I had no idea that this short story was going to consume my writing and my imagination for so long. I have a mix of feelings now that DUST is complete and in the hands of editors. There’s a sense of accomplishment and finality. There’s also a twinge of sadness to find myself leaving that world to go write in another.

There are pre-order pages up for both the e-book and the physical book on Amazon. The e-book should go live on other outlets right around the release date or soon after. Some of the distributors take a few days to populate. Some take weeks. I’m hoping to get Tim Reynolds to narrate the audiobook and have that available soon after the book release.

My plan is to have the next Molly Fyde book out before the end of the year. And then it’s off to SAND, I hope, a world grittier (har) in many ways than the world of the silo. Until then, and until the 17th of August, thanks for everything, for all of the support and for the company these past two years.

I Find Shark Teeth

I grew up hunting for shells with my mom on Figure Eight Beach. My favorites were Olives and Drills. Hers were Scotch Bonnets. When I was young, shells seemed to be everywhere you looked. They grew harder to find as I grew up. Or maybe I stopped looking so hard.

My dad taught me to hunt for shark teeth. I found a few along Figure Eight. I even found some stuck in the shell-laced pavement they used on the driveways there. I would dig them out with a screwdriver and add them to my jar of shells.

When my dad saw how much we enjoyed finding shark teeth, he took us to a place on the other side of Pamlico Sound where you could buy a bucket of sand and sift for teeth. We went wild over this. You could find dozens of large teeth with almost no trouble. Dad purchased a ton of sand and brought it back to the farm with us. We built screens out of scrap wood and wire mesh and sifted for teeth all day. I felt like I was panning for gold.

Amber and I moved back to the beach a year ago, and I immediately resumed my hunt for shells. We’ve found some keepers, but they are few and far between. So many more people looking, I suppose. Maybe fewer washing up on the beach. I’ve taken to wearing my snorkel and mask and swimming just offshore to spot them before they wash up. But I notice a few others doing the same.

What’s impossible to find are shark teeth. I looked and looked every day we went to the beach. I would kneel in the surf, waves crashing against my back, and paw through the fine shells looking for that small triangle amid the broken fragments of the once-pretty. I never found a single one. I spent hours trying.

And then I ran into a couple of hippies on the beach. The woman was twisting wire around a shark tooth, fashioning it into a necklace. She had a similar necklace around her neck. “I can’t find any shark teeth,” I told her. I wondered if she’d give me some pointers or tips.

“You find shark teeth,” she said. With utter conviction.

“No. I don’t. I’ve tried.”

“You find shark teeth,” she told me. “You have to start saying it. Say ‘I find shark teeth.’”

I said it, but mostly to placate her. I didn’t really believe that would make a difference. I don’t believe in magic or karma or any of the awesome things that would make life more interesting if they were true. But I do believe in the power of determination, and so the next time I was out hunting in the sand, I kept telling myself, “I find shark teeth.”

And I did. Three of them in that same spot. I ran like a young child to Amber, who was reading under an umbrella. I showed her each one as I found them. They were tiny things, no more than specks. I started to wonder if I was finding them now because I was trying harder, or because I had a false sense of confidence to spur me along, or because I was looking in each palm of shells a few minutes longer before dumping them into the surf.

I told myself similar things while I was writing my first novel. Even though I’d tried and tried to write a novel for twenty years, always failing, this time I told myself that I was a writer. I told myself that I finish novels. I came home from a writing convention where another wise guide, Caroline Todd, lit a fire under my ass. And so I lied to myself about what I could do . . . until I did it.

Now I know that I can write a novel. I know I can find shark teeth here on Jupiter Beach. And so I do both with more diligence, with more time and care than I invested into these pursuits before I truly believed in myself. All it took was listening to someone say something kooky or crazy, tell me something about myself that I didn’t believe, but say it with such utter and complete conviction that I began to doubt my own doubts.

I find shark teeth. And so do you.

Better Late than Never

When it comes to robots, the futurists have been over-promising since the Jetsons. Popular Science magazine has been trumping robots and flying cars for so long, that we now assume they aren’t coming. Which is going to make their inevitable appearance in our everyday lives a most-talked-about surprise. Prepare to be amazed.

Seeds of Change

If you love short stories and discovering brilliant new talent, check out this ridiculously underpriced anthology from John Joseph A

dams. Entitled SEEDS OF CHANGE, it features an all-star lineup of writers. One of my favorite new authors, Ted Kosmatka, has a short story in here called N-Words (also available to be read for free on John’s website).

It’s a crazy amount of entertainment for $3.99, and the short stories are the kind you can knock out in a sitting — but they’ll stay with you for a long time after.

Jet City Comics!

Amazing announcement this morning. Alongside comic adaptations of George R.R. Martin and Neal Stephenson works, a WOOL comic is under full development. Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray are writing with Jimmy Broxton illustrating. I’ve seen some character sketches and a script, and I really think you all are going to enjoy this. I’m totally geeking out.

Here’s the coverage from Entertainment Weekly.

And the kick-ass cover:

Happy Independence Day

It’s July 4th, 2013. And yes, it would make much more sense to list the date in order of specificity: 4 July 2013. But we whipped the Redcoats so that we could drive on whichever side of the road we liked, measure things in base 12 instead of base 10, and write our dates like we spell Aluminum (which is to say: nonsensically).

Happy 4th, everyone.

In the U.S., our thoughts go back to beginnings, but the day is long enough to think about more than powdered wigs and firecrackers. Yesterday, I was reading about the ouster of a government in Egypt, and Amber and I talked about the protests erupting all over the world. It occurs to me that these protests, however they differ in details, share something with my country’s revolutionary roots.

Europe must’ve seen what happened here over two hundred years ago as a bunch of rabble rousers asking for more than they ought to expect from their government and themselves. Nothing good could come of such protests. Perhaps, if you view these global outbursts in a negative light but you value what came of our own revolution, there’s room to soften your heart and root for a people who demand a better life. I know I’m rooting for them. Not just in Turkey, Iran, Brazil, and Egypt. But also in Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, and everywhere that great swaths of people demand more freedoms. There’s also room to root for people here in the U.S. who are just now earning liberties that the rest of us take for granted. Many have yet to earn them.

The other place my mind wanders on this Fourth of July is that it’s the one rare day that we list in British order. We don’t call it “Happy July Fourth.” And there isn’t another day that we call “The Sixth of September” or some-such. We still can’t break completely free of those damn Brits. At least . . . I can’t. For the last week, I’ve been ostensibly on vacation, which has meant editing and revising DUST for my UK editor and publisher. They rule me from across the pond! And how can an island dare hope to govern a continent—

Damn. Another email from Jack Fogg. I’ve got to get back to work. Happy July 4th, everyone!

Brandon asks about ISBNs and LCCNs

Hey Hugh,

I have a question about how you handled the issues of the ISBN and LCCN.

 

When it comes to an ISBN, I don’t think I’m ready to drop $125 (for 1) or $250 (for 10) so that my publications can have them but I would like them to be more “official,” and also to apply for an LCCN which you apparently can only receive with an LCCN (unless I have been mistaken in my research).

 

Did you go the route of accepting Create-Space’s $10 ISBN and do you view any con’s over doing this versus buying your own directly from Bowker? What choice did you make over your imprint on record?

 

If you have any wider advice about this topic/issue I think alot of members may benefit from the wisdom of Hugh on your blog : ).

Thanks for the question, Brandon. I think this is an important issue for self-published authors, because there is a TON of information and opinion out there. I’m going to disappoint you with my lack of wisdom on the topic, however. I have the opposite of wisdom when it comes to ISBNs. What I have instead is dry experience, which isn’t nearly as exciting, but maybe we can glean something from it.

ISBNs are expensive. I purchased a lot of 10 for $250 back when I was making $300 a WEEK while shelving books. That was a massive investment, and I made it after reading a bunch of posts on a website for aspiring authors. It turns out that almost everything I’d read about ISBNs was wrong.

For WOOL, SHIFT, I, ZOMBIE, HURRICANE, and several other of my works, I use the free ISBN assigned to me by CreateSpace. With that ISBN, WOOL has been on the NYT Bestseller list on three occasions. It appeared in numerous Barnes & Noble bookstores as a print on demand book. It was sold by dozens of independent bookstores. At no point in the work’s success was it helped or harmed by not having an ISBN that I paid money for. Anyone who tells you otherwise is operating on false assumptions, personal bias, outdated thinking/data, or just talking out their butts.

This is telling, I believe: I have only used 5 of the 10 ISBNs I purchased back in 2009. I will never use the other 5, not when I can just allow CreateSpace to assign me one. As for LCCNs (Library of Congress Control Numbers), I really don’t concern myself with my works being registered at the Library of Congress. As long as readers can access them, that’s all that matters to me.

Is any of this wise? Probably not. Maybe you should be purchasing these numbers and concerning yourself with LCCNs. I don’t. And it hasn’t put up a single roadblock or speed bump. I concentrate on the writing and on my customer. I’m not suggesting at all that this approach is the best, only that it can work.

To infinity! And beyond!

Some of the best years of my life were spent in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s where I went back to college, where I met my best friends, where I discovered myself. It’s where my mother and sister now live, and the place I most fondly return to.

The College of Charleston is an absolute gem. I signed up to be a physics major and left with 100+ hours toward an English degree. I went back twice, sidelined all three times by the allure of the sea.

The first time was when I sailed off on my own boat to the Bahamas. The second time was when I jumped on a ship bound for Hong Kong. The final time was to take a job on a boat in New York. I will go back one day and finish that degree.

When the College of Charleston magazine got in touch to run a story on the changes in the publishing world, it led to a series of interviews, emails, and a funky photo shoot. It culminates in this amazing article by Alicia Lutz. Dennis Goldsberry, a professor we both had, should be proud. He changed the major of an old hack like me, and he produced a brilliant journalist like this.

 

Amazon’s Kindle Worlds Program is Live!

The Silo Saga is now open for exploration! You can write WOOL fan fiction and upload it for review. And get this: I found out today that a WOOL story was the first through the gates and first accepted! I feel so lucky and honored to have been invited into this program, and even luckier to have talented writers out there who care to explore these worlds. The fact that some of them are now making history is just too cool for words.

If you want to read an incredible write-up on how all of this got started, you should check this out. It’s an amazing read on the LOOW group of fan fiction writers. Really amazing stuff going on right now in the world of publishing. So fortunate to be a part of it all.

The Upcoming Issue of Forbes

Pretty cool mention in this story by Forbes. It should be on newsstands in the next few days!