Ricardo Pinto's Blog, page 3

giveaway proofs

Happy Twenties! Let’s hope they’re cheerier than the Tens or Noughties.

As I run up to the release of the first volume of the Second Edition of The Stone Dance of the Chameleon, I have a stack of proofs to giveaway. They sat by my stove for a while, but I couldn’t bring myself to burn or recycle them, and a friend suggested I give them away. They are from different phases of the proofing process, and one or two may be covered in corrections. These unique if flawed versions of the new text might be fun to own.

We need to work out who gets them. A competition of some kind has been suggested, and so I am asking you to please write any ideas you may have for one, below . . .

(only people on my mailing list are eligible for this giveaway)

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towards 2020

City living eclipses solstices. Their significance is more obvious in the countryside. Cresting the summer solstice could be sad—starting the toboggan slide down into winter darkness—but the ease and glory of midsummer makes it hard to be glum. Besides, here in Scotland, with sea to west and north and east, our summer only peaks in August.

The winter solstice is a more ravenous beast. At this darkest time—here the sun sets before 4pm—our bodies do not make vitamin D, and so we fall prey to colds and flus, and are more prone to the blues. On our bellies, we squeeze under the heavy dip of the year and begin the climb to summer.

Events have cast shadows over 2019, but the birth of a new year brings hope, and I am looking forward to re-engaging with you in 2020. Until then, happy solstice!

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Stone Dance Second Edition release schedule

Before writing this, I read my last post on this issue and discovered that I’d claimed that the new Second Edition Stone Dance books were going to start coming out in weeks… and that was weeks ago. Oops! I thought that plan had only been in my head, and had forgotten I’d ‘said it out loud’. Oh dear. My apologies. If you read the First Edition, you will know that I missed my delivery times by years. I have put a lot of work into this new edition, and I want to ensure that, once I start releasing the books, everything goes smoothly. Another issue with my proposed launch in November was that it would have meant a second book in December—I felt it better to avoid all the carnage of the festive period.

So, my plan is to release the first book, The Masters, on the 31st of January, 2020; the second book will come out in February, and the rest will follow every two months after that. I am hoping to launch the third book, the Second Edition of The Standing Dead, at Eastercon in Birmingham in April. The last book is slated for November, a month after the sixth book is released, so as to avoid more December confusion. By stretching the whole launch process, I hope to make absolutely certain that none of the books will be late. The proofing process—among others—has turned out to be more involved than I expected. To be honest, everything about this process has turned out to be more involved than I expected! As an example, The Masters is on its eighth proof! I will get better at this…

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engaging with people here

Hi peeps,

I'm emerging from my cave of isolation blinking into the light. Hadn't really been here for ages... and so hadn't even noticed that the blog on my site was no longer connected—because I split it into two: News and hermitabroad—the latter all kinds of philosophical ramblings that I don't want to inflict on you willy nilly.

I'm hard at work getting stuff the Second Edition of my Stone Dance books ready for release early in 2020. If you want to get the latest news directly, do please go to my site and sign up for my mailing list.

good to be back :O)

R

self-publishing

In response to an email from Ryan Calvey about my instagram post I wrote a few things that it seems to me worth sharing here.

Ryan wrote: “I don’t know much about book promotion, but I imagine doing it in the current environment must be quite a challenge! Though I’m guessing it might also feel good to be in control of the process yourself rather than hoping a publisher makes the right choices.”

This was my reply:

Book promotion is nothing more than just finding ways to get people, who may be interested, to hear about your work. In my experience, it has rarely been about my Publishers making the right choices: their choice was not to bother promoting my books almost at all. When I launched The Third God—the culmination of ten years work—they got me to go down to London, I did two signings, that had been so poorly publicised that not a single person turned up at either. (Admittedly my dropping off the radar for years might have had something to do with that.) I signed a few books in a couple of book shops… and that was that. I don’t blame them really, they were just doing what they needed to do to survive. The internet has joined up myriads of smaller markets into a single enormous one in which the winner takes all and everyone else gets almost nothing. The publishers have to push their bestsellers… and there’s little incentive to support anyone else. Sad, but there it is.

When you has been ‘cradled’ by a publisher, the move to self-publishing is psychologically arduous. But the notion that there was any actual ‘cradling’ was an illusion that I—and many other ‘published writers’—clung/cling to. When the market changed, I, with many others, was thrown out with the bath water.

A turn to self-publishing requires the climbing of many steep learning curves. However, by far the most difficult barrier to break through is the grieving over the fantasy of having a publisher that does everything for you; that enables you to write your books in a cocoon. And you have to overcome the perceived diminishment of status of falling from the dizzy heights of having a ‘proper’ publisher. This is an ego problem. As I make this transition, with every step I take, I am feeling more confident and energised, and I realize that being ‘cradled’ robbed me of agency.

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instagram

I’ve opened an account on instagram in preparation for the launch of the new Second Edition Stone Dance books and Ric Cross has connected it to this site, so that new posts will appear on the homepage.

My instagram account will start by providing a sort of ‘biography’—for anyone who is interested in my work history—as well as some stuff about my personal life, my dog Toby and my chickens, my bats and my bees, and even some film reviews. (heaven help us!)

Once I start launching the new books, I will distribute little visual bits and pieces on instagram—this is likely to be of more interest to new readers than to the rest of you who are already on my mailing list.

The images will be tagged to allow them to be separated into different streams. If you click on the tag #RicardoPintoWriter you will only get a column of posts relevant to my work. #RicardoPintoReviews will produce a stack of… you guessed it… reviews. I’m making this up as I go along. We shall see how it goes.

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Stone Dance Second Edition Proofs

I have been hard at work on the Second Edition of the Stone Dance—it feels like an endless task but I’m getting there. Proofs of the first five volumes exist, and here’s a photo to prove it! :O). The sixth volume is almost at proof stage, but I put it aside so I can get my head around ‘marketing’.

The first volume is ready to go, and a proof of the second volume is out for proofreading. I hope to publish the first volume in a few weeks. The second will follow perhaps a couple of weeks after that, and I will release the rest, one a month, until all seven are out. There will be ebook versions of each volume.

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WorldCon Dublin 2019—comments

Dublin was the first Worldcon I’ve attended—in truth I attend very few of these conventions. Given how much fun I had, I’m now wondering whether I shouldn’t attend them more frequently. 4000 people were supposed to attend, but 5500 came (6000 by some reckonings). A second building had to be hired at the last minute to accommodate the multitudes. We all discovered, quite early, that if you didn’t start queueing for an event early enough, you wouldn’t get in. There was a vast number of fascinating talks and discussions on every topic imaginable—and some not imaginable—and a wonderful concert, in a concert hall on top of the conference centre, with a full orchestra, that included a premier of some arias from a wonderful new opera with dance, composed and choreographed by my friends Gary Lloyd and Bettina Carpi, respectively, and based on Mary and Bryan Talbot’s graphic novel, Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes.

My old chum, Alan Campbell, accompanied me on this expedition—he had two trilogies published some years back with some success, but has been writing film scripts and part of my agenda was to encourage him to write a few more books.

I met a lot of old friends, and made new ones. I met some of my fans—which is always a delight.

People who have been going to conventions since before the Flood tell me that they are not what they used to be. I would be interested to know if you attend these conventions and, if so, what do you get out of them?

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Worldcon Dublin 2019

Having a major (the major?) sci-fi convention materialize on your doorstep—well, across the Irish Sea rather than the Atlantic Ocean—seems an opportunity too good to miss. So, I’m going to be there from Thursday 14th to Sunday 18th of August—and would also be there on Monday if I hadn’t assumed it ended on Sunday. So, if you see me wandering around, do please come and say hello (assuming you’re there in the flesh rather than watching through some kind of surveillance).

I have been hard at work on the Second Edition of my Stone Dance trilogy (transforming it into a ‘septad’)—working so hard indeed that it is going to be a bit of a wrench to tear myself away to attend the con. News about the imminent release of the Second Edition will follow shortly after I return.

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the Stone Dance Bible

Richard Cross and I have completed a rejigging of this website that includes putting the ‘support material’ for the Stone Dance into a stand alone SDC Bible. This ‘Bible’ has a sub-section for the First Edition and another for the Second—to accommodate their division into a different number of volumes. In the sub-section for the Second Edition you will see blurred versions of the new covers that I am working on.

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