Jay Swanson's Blog, page 4

Full Circle South Africa

Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

Just over four years ago I touched down on African soil for the first time. Dec 1, 2010 – Durban, South Africa. It was the beginning of a season that would alter my life forever.

The chapters into which we divide our stories are important, even though in real life some might seem more innocuous than others. How those divisions are set is up to the person living the life, but I believe we intrinsically know when we’re moving from one stage to the next. This chapter was easy enough to spot. Four years ago I stepped on an airplane from the freezing cold and walked off it into a wash of humid warmth.

As I prepare to board yet another flight, this time heading from warm to cold, it seems fitting to reflect on the last four years.

I finished my first book while in South Africa on Christmas of that year. I did so in Applesbosch, a place so remote that few if anyone we met in Durban knew it existed. A black teaching college that was shut down after Apartheid ended, we were the first to inhabit Appelsbosch in twenty years. It was quiet, a bit run down, and surrounded by beautiful green territory.

South Africa was my gateway. I flew in. Three months later I sailed out for Sierra Leone.

While I was in Durban and the greater Natal area, I saw third world poverty openly displayed – slums literally separated from mansions by a single highway. I didn’t realize just how helpful this picture would be for me, though the shock of it certainly stuck. What I would come to realize over three years in Africa was that this scene was abnormal only at first glance. At a conceptual level, it was a clear picture of how the rest of the world operated.

South Africans are lovely people. While there is tension and strife here, the people of South Africa are friendly, helpful, and generally kind. There is a relaxed atmosphere to Durban and Cape Town. I tend to think of their inhabitants as surfers with manners. The accent is in strong competition for “sexiest ever” with the French (I know a French woman with a South African accent and pretty much die when she speaks).

When I left South Africa the first time, I was embarking on a journey that would surprise me at every turn. I would see death in person, and it would greet me again and again under different guises. I would meet joy in the midst of the deepest poverty, and resilience in places where only despair had a rightful claim.

I would traverse riots, rescue climbers off a volcano, drag bodies from a trampled pile, and wreck my motorcycle hundreds of miles from help. Multiple times.

I would see corruption, generosity, anger, love, hate, compassion, greed, and the struggle between them all in new ways. I would never see the world the same again. Eventually I would recognize my self-righteousness, my arrogance, my weaknesses, my pride, and I would struggle to overcome them before they overcame me.

Marceles is going through the same thing now. He’s blind, arrogant, and self-righteous. There are so many holes in the world around him because he simply cannot see them yet – but that’s beginning to change. His self-assessment grew harsher over this first season as he realized the depths of who he had become. Thankfully, as he hoped in the wake of Bolton’s death, it isn’t too late for either of us.

As I leave South Africa for the second time, I’m in the midst of a new transition. Into the Nanten (Season 1) wrapped while I was in Cape Town, and my fourth book (Dark Horse) is on its way. It seems fitting that Africa should continue to play her role in my life and my writing. The future remains as opaque to me now as it ever has. I find myself rejuvenated and ready for whatever comes next. Having grown through what has already passed, I know I am better ready to face whatever that will be.

That’s the beauty of having lived a little. Marceles writes as much when he wrote “Only with time and experience do we cease to fear that which deserves none. Such is the gift of perspective.”

Perspective is a painful thing to gain, but so far in my life it has been worth every ounce of flesh lost. I can’t wait to live a little more.

Be sure to check out the Kickstarter for Into the Nanten – Season 2 – Before it’s too late!

The post Full Circle South Africa appeared first on jayswanson.me.

Into the Nanten – Season 2 on Kickstarter

Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

If you haven’t seen it already, we have a Kickstarter live right now to fund the second season of Into the Nanten. Check it out, and after you’ve chosen a reward you’d like please take a moment to share it with your friends!

 

Week One

Now that you’re back, let’s talk about week one. In a nutshell: it went very well.

I shared a statistic in my first update that if you reach 20% funding in the first week, your likelihood of success supposedly rises to 80% or above. In fact, at 32%, we’ve already risen above most of the danger of failure. At least according to this infographic. If we fail we will do so in the company of a very small and distinguished group.

Who knows what will happen? What is certain is that we still need your help. Sharing the Kickstarter for ITN Season 2 with people who will enjoy it is what will make all the difference.

Getting the Word Out

I’ve made a connection with Alex Shvartsman over at Unidentified Funny Objects 4, with whom we will have our first cross promotion next week. I’m pretty excited about that (and am open to others with the right folks). We’ve only just started promoting the project in certain channels. There were some we felt would appreciate a little visible financial backbone before hearing about the project.

Crossing the $2,000 mark this week felt really good. I think it shows all the backbone we need to demonstrate that we’re headed in the right direction.

 

Fantastic Backers

It’s also been fun to hear from fans who had never spoken up before. I’m accustomed to the fact that you’ll never hear from the majority of your audience, but it’s always really fun when the minority break free. We’ve had a number of encouraging encounters that warm our hearts and get us excited for Season 2.

Speaking of which, we’ll be announcing the new title for Season 2 very soon. This will come in conjuncture with the release of the Season 2 poster.

Thank You!

Thanks to everyone who has backed us already! We cannot wait to get your swag to you, and I am dying to release Season 2 to you all. This journey with Marceles into the heart of the Nanten has only just begun. Let’s see where it takes u

The post Into the Nanten – Season 2 on Kickstarter appeared first on jayswanson.me.

First Draft, First Season, Into the Nanten is Unedited and Ready to Roll

Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

I just finished the first draft of Into the Nanten (ITN) tonight. Then, in one of those deflating moments of self-awareness, I realized that’s all it is.

That’s not to say I didn’t get excited. The sensation is much the same as finishing a book (and at 107,114 words, ITN might qualify) which is a really satisfying feeling. But as I look at reviewing the last batch of posts to edit them, I was struck with a fear that has followed me through the entire process.

If there was one thing I’d hope people would understand, it’s this: Into the Nanten is an unedited piece of fiction.

Unedited – Unfiltered – Unflattering?

This won’t come as a shock to the people who have pointed out some of my more grievous and repetitive errors (for which I am always grateful – I do go back and fix them when I find them). But I always wonder whether or not there are people who get started and go, “meh,” simply because ITN doesn’t have the full polish.

Dionus in his unedited, unfinished glory from Entry 116

I could have waited, but that wasn’t what this project was supposed to be. The idea was so vibrant in the moment that the few months it took to get the ball rolling felt like torture enough as it was. If I’d had to write the whole thing up front, edit it, revise it, then start posting it, the whole experience would have been different. And I wanted to write while it was live. I wanted to be nimble, to be able to let it evolve on its own and take some unexpected turns. I didn’t want it to be rigid, and it’s been rewarding to see it grow in ways I didn’t expect.

The problem is that when I’m writing, and as I see improvements in my writing over time, I start to feel confident. For a fleeting moment I know I’m good at this and I’m getting better. I know the story is good. I know that at the very least I am excited by what I’ve written and am doubly so by what I know is to come.

Then I get a bit of perspective and that all comes loose. I start to wonder, am I like Patton Oswalt’s wizard?

It’s in that most unfortunate of wizard moments I realize that I’m probably writing drivel. And now people are getting to see my unedited wizard drivel? They get to see how terrible I really am at writing? There are no filters. No one is actively watching for mistakes to point them out before it hits the internet.

[No one wanted to – my usual crew opted out because none of them wanted to spoil the story for themselves! They wanted to read along with everyone else.]

So here I am, doing battle with grand wizards in my head like a badass when in reality I’m just chilling out in a psych ward somewhere cuddling a stuffed Alf.

Unedited Appearance

Creating ITN has been a blast. It has forced me to write regularly, to think in a different form, to reveal myself in a new way. Marceles and I have so little in common, and yet we share so much. You all get to see that in a very unfiltered way.

We share in our ignorance, moments of self-righteousness, and blindness to ourselves. Marceles walks through life on assurances he’s held for his entire life only to have them melt in the face of the challenges a new world brings. He’s oblivious because he took what he knew to be fact before he ever stepped outside and put it to real tests.

Like I said, we share a lot. And you get to see that without anyone combing through it for me.

Moving Forward

All that scares me less now. I’m just happy that I’ve managed to make it this far. I will feel doubly accomplished when it’s all out and available for you to read. That’s what can be maddening, having no one to give me feedback until it’s already out in the open. “Oh there was a glaring error in paragraph three? Well, I’m really glad only 200 people read that before you told me about it.”

Have you enjoyed it? Will you want a second season? Those are the fears that linger still.

Whatever happens, I have no regrets with this season. And if you found any typos along the way, feel free to tell me where they are. I’d love to hunt them down and kill them for you.

The post First Draft, First Season, Into the Nanten is Unedited and Ready to Roll appeared first on jayswanson.me.

The Neglectful Nanten – What I Love About the Experience

Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

I promised to write more about Into the Nanten, the stats and the experience, but writing Into the Nanten (ITN) by itself is enough work. This blog has been thoroughly neglected, and for that I’m sort of sorry. Only sort of because I’m having so much fun writing ITN (an acronym Nimit started using from the get-go).

You can tell I’ve been away from “real” blogging for way too long just by how poorly that opening paragraph reads. Anyways.

My Experience Writing Into the Nanten
Why I Love It

I love writing as Marceles for about 800 reasons, but chief among them has to be how naturally it comes to me. I stink at writing blog posts, although my time in Africa produced quite a few that I’m still proud of. Still, I never know what to write about. Do I write about writing? Do I write about other fantasy writers? Do I review books? All valid options, but none that get me going.

I waste time with cartoons misinterpreting Gandalf quotes, and I presumptuously talk about the challenges in chasing the life I want – as if anyone else wanted this sh*tstorm of crazy. But none of it really ever gains traction. It feels hollow, even forced sometimes. I don’t enjoy writing most of it.

But I love writing ITN.

Stories are my lifeblood; I never run out of made-up material. As I step into Marceles’ day and start sharing it how I think he would, inevitably I do not want to stop. I get the chance to wrestle with his problems as if they were my own, and sometimes mine leak in there and get resolved in the process. Marceles is me in the same ways that all of my characters are me. Marceles is undergoing a transformation that I had to undergo (though thankfully with far fewer leeches involved), only he gets to do it with a cleaner resolution.

Did I mention that I LOVE Nimit’s illustrations with all my heart? He knocks so many out of the park it’s hard to believe. Opening our shared Dropbox is like Christmas morning EVERY FLIPPIN’ WEEK.

From Journal Entry 94 – Illustration by Nimit Malavia

What Other People Love

I’m actually not 100% sure on this. There were 1,244 people on the site in the last month according to Google, and the bounce rate remains below 9%. So at least the crickets have been drowned out. I’ve found a few holes in my approach to the site design, like the fact that there was no call to action at the bottom of the individual pages to start from the beginning (which might make it confusing for first timers). I fixed that last night:

And my fan count on Facebook has more than quadrupled now. I have no idea why that’s happening or what it means. Still, I sent excited screen shots of fun numbers (like 777) to my buddy Rob as it happened. It’s a miracle he still likes me after receiving like 80 of these:

I hear some things from fans (like clever limericks about pickles), but most of the readership remains silent. I guess that’s normal, what with the lurker to interactive user ratios that generally happen. What’s not normal is one of the girls who won a free print never messaged me to give me her address (Abigail Ramirez: if you’re out there, it’s waiting for you).

But I’d like to hear more. I’d like to know what people think and start some discussions. I don’t know exactly how to do that, but hopefully I’ll figure it out as I go. If you have suggestions, don’t be shy! That’s what comment sections are for!

What’s Next

We’re getting ready to run a Kickstarter as soon as this first season of ITN starts winding down. It’s a really expensive project to maintain and I’m bearing the brunt of, well, all of it. I’m ok with that, because it has been both fun and fulfilling the whole way through. I just can’t keep it alive on my own. There have been challenges and stressful moments, but overall I have loved producing Into the Nanten. So why let it stop there?

If the readership that has formed around this story would like it to continue, I’m going to ask them to help keep it going. I have two more seasons planned and a lot of crazy adventures for Marceles to try and survive. We’ve already filmed for the Kickstarter video some in Toronto (Nimit’s base) and what we have looks beautiful thanks to the mighty skill of Martin-Andre Young.

We are super excited for the perks we have in mind (real, leather-bound copies of Marceles’ journal anyone?) and are extremely hopeful that we can continue the journey with you. I’m also writing a book to tie some of the stories together which I want to release before the second season begins. But I’ll have to tell you more about that later.

What Do You Think?

Are you enjoying Into the Nanten? What are your thoughts so far? I’d love to hear more from you guys. Let me know by leaving me a note in the comments section below!

The post The Neglectful Nanten – What I Love About the Experience appeared first on jayswanson.me.

Fan Limerick (I didn’t know those existed)

Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

So we’ve all heard of fan art, and fan fiction, but what about fan limericks? After Marceles’ entry recalling Balthandar’s fable went up the other day, I received what may be an early (if not the first) instance of fan limericks from Wayne:

Once there was a man named Toron,
Who needed more pickles to gorge on.
He tried to make,
So as to slake,
But just showed everyone he was a moron.

I thought I would share it with the rest of you. Thanks for the contribution Wayne, I love it! If you’re wondering what inspired Wayne’s jump into lyrical expression, you should read Toron and the Pickle Famine.

If you’d like to submit any fan art/fiction/limericks/surpriseme, you can do so via the contact form on this site, and soon I’ll have a P.O. Box you can send stuff too as well.

Also – I’ll be posting more details soon – you might want to check out that store link in the menu when you get a chance.

There are lots of really fun things happening, and I’ll start telling you about them here soon! Into the Nanten is growing steadily, more and more people are discovering it (and me!), and my new home is super comfy. I have tons to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

The post Fan Limerick (I didn’t know those existed) appeared first on jayswanson.me.

Setting Up Shop

Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

Next week we will launch an online shop dedicated to the artwork of my world, mostly from Into the Nanten, as well as signed copies of the Vitalis Chronicles paperbacks. Considering that we have no idea what it is you’d like to buy (you can tell us in the comments below), we’ll offer a smattering of options in the form of limited-edition canvas prints of 21 different entries from Into the Nanten.

These prints are very high quality, heavy and sturdy. Each is printed on real canvas at 8.5″ x 11″ as shown below – with white all around the edges so you can frame it as you please. The colors look beautiful. I’m really happy with how they’re turning out.

There will only be two of each print available in the store, with free shipping on Cyber Monday. After that we’ll offer some standard quality prints on an unlimited basis, and see which ones people actually want. I’m always surprised to hear which ones are people’s favorites, so I know I’m not the best judge of this. We also plan on selling some T-shirts, jewelry, and stickers. I’ll keep you posted.

The shop is looking very slick, with only a few minor issues left to work out. We’ll give some stuff away for free after we launch as well, in exchange for a little help spreading the word. I’m really really excited to finally start sharing these parts of my world with you in a tangible way. The prints look amazing, and we have a lot of fun ideas bouncing around for the future.

Do you have a particular illustration from Into the Nanten you’d like a print of? Would you like posters of the Vitalis Chronicles covers? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Setting Up Shop appeared first on jayswanson.me.

Three Ways You Can Better Enjoy Into the Nanten – Starting with Feedly

Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

Into the Nanten can be kind of hard to consume if you’re on the go, and depending on how you like to read or what parts of it you’re enjoying most, the website itself may not be the easiest or best way to follow along. The site is designed primarily to be immersive – lots of green texturing, the fonts, all of it is meant to suck you in and keep you involved in Marceles’ journey. No distractions, no advertising, nothing but pure story.

As we saw from the first week’s statistics, people really are sticking around (and this trend has continued uninterrupted). So at least it’s succeeding at keeping people engaged.

But organizing a story like Into the Nanten into something that’s easy to read can be difficult. This is both because of its strictly chronological nature and because it’s always growing. How do you keep track of where you last read? How do you remember all of the characters’ names? Where are all the pretty pictures?!

What follows are a few suggestions for how you can follow along outside of the website based on your preferences. Suggestions for the mobile reader, visual consumer, and deeper immersion for both. If you have any other ideas I’d love to see them in the comments below!

I Want to Read on the Go!

If you’re always on the move, an RSS reader for your phone may be your best bet. Google Reader is long gone, bless her beautiful zombified soul, so we must all get on without her. Though none have truly taken her place, there are some very cool options, of which I’ll be highlighting Feedly.

Feedly

Once you’ve subscribed, Feedly presents each post of Into the Nanten starting with the latest first – but what’s really nice is that you can invert this and start reading with the oldest first. Notably the photos all display well on Feedly. While you don’t get the same look and feel as the website, you can more easily differentiate between what you have and have not read. Feedly keeps track of it all, and as you progress will knock each read post off your list.

This is especially helpful when you don’t have time to read posts every day. You can let them accumulate in Feedly and pick up right where you left off. You can bookmark your favorites, tweet straight from the app, even post to facebook or save it in evernote – it’s beautiful and simple. It’s so simple, in fact, that when my mom asked for an alternative to the site, Feedly is what I set her up with. Not that my mom is simple or anything… ’cause… boy, is this hole getting deeper?

If you’d like to see some more options check out this list of alternatives. There are plenty out there, and I think it would be interesting to hear which ones you prefer and why.

Subscribe by Email

You see that little “Subscribe to Marceles’ posts by email” box in the sidebar at the top of intothenanten.com? It’s that easy. Just put your email in there and confirm your subscription. Every time a post goes live you’ll receive it in your inbox from the same people that manage wordpress.com. Now that’s service.

Note that this is not my newsletter, so if you want to receive that you need to sign up for that here on jayswanson.me.

I Want to Spend Time Staring at the Illustrations!

Well that’s totally understandable. Nimit has done a fantastic job rendering Marceles’ illustrations and I enjoy staring at them myself. There are a few places you can do this with ease, depending on where you prefer to do your e-stalking.

Instagram

If you’re an Instagramaholic, like my sister, and you can’t think of any better form of visual stimulation than that which is bound in a neatly-cropped square, look no further. @mindofjayswanson is where I post each quote and take a look at each illustration as they go live.

There will be some sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes snaps along the way as well, and it’s a great place to get clues as to when my next book is coming out.

Pinterest

There is an Into the Nanten board on Pinterest that I’ve also been sure to keep up to date. If you need a break from organizing your treehouse inspirations and scarf wishlists, take a moment to gander through the images there. No square-cropping necessary.

 

They even have a widget I can add so you can poke around from here.

Follow Jay’s board Into the Nanten on Pinterest.

Tumblr

No intro necessary here. The only drawback to tumblr currently is that it’s only a parrot of @mindofjayswanson on Instagram – I’ve gotta combine efforts somewhere – but if you love it enough I could be coerced into doing more with it.

If Instagram isn’t your cup of tea, and you love the tumblr, here’s your solution:

I have no fishing boat proceeds to declare for this, tumblr, it’s just pure old fashioned square posts for now.

I Want to Feel Even More Immersed

Last but not least. There’s one really fun way to feel even more immersed in the story: Twitter. Marceles has his own Twitter account @MTetrarch, as do Bolton @SladBolton and Starlark @StarlarkC. And yes, they tweet.

Of the three, Marceles tweets the most. His tweets are predominantly random thoughts over the course of the day that either tie into his entry or give us a little extra insight into his mindset or the world around him. You’ll see his latest tweets in the sidebar of the ITN site. As for Starlark and Bolton, they pretty much just insult each other.

This is where things get a bit tricky for me – because I don’t want to break the magic of the story – so Marceles won’t be responding to any of you. It’s not that he doesn’t want to, he simply can’t. You’re getting a window into his mind, it’s not a two-way street. That said, exceptionally good tweets aimed his way might get fav’d at one point or another.

In Summary (TLDR)

If you want to get even more into the story of Into the Nanten:

Download Feedly for your iDevice or Android, follow along with the visuals on Instagram or tumblr, pin your fan art to Pinterest, and listen into the monologue and dialogues through Twitter.

What Did I Miss?

Any suggestions? What are other ways you plug into the story? Do you have any suggestions of ways to make the experience more fun for everyone? I’d love to hear them in comments below!

I’m currently organizing two more pages, a character/names/places cheat sheet, and a summary to date in case you need some refreshers. Hopefully those will be up soon, but they won’t pop up in Feedly or anywhere so be sure to check the site.

The post Three Ways You Can Better Enjoy Into the Nanten – Starting with Feedly appeared first on jayswanson.me.

The Nanten: Reached – a Recap and Some Stats

Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

If you’ve been following along with my real time fantasy blog, Into the Nanten, you’ll know that Marceles has finally reached his destination. After 124 days in exile, and eight days of journal entries, he’s finally under the vast canopy of the Nanten jungle.

I thought I’d write a little recap of this first week for you as well as dive into some of the early statistics on the site.

The Recap

What we know: Marceles is a member of an elite order known as the Tetrarch – an order that has exiled him to the Nanten jungle for the crime of killing Lystra. A crime he seems to think was justified. Who Lystra is and why killing her was such a grave offense remains a mystery. What we do know is that he is following in the footsteps of the only other person he has ever known the Tetrarch to exile: Brin Salisir. And he hates Salisir.

He’s traveling with four companions: Balthandar, Bolton, Starlark, and Dionus. Already Starlark and Bolton are at odds with each other.

The final step in their journey was to cross the Blight Sea, a feat they accomplished by hiring a man called Tarsh to ferry them across on a rickety barge. He even regaled them with some lore of a goddess in the jungle. They didn’t trust him, and that mistrust has grown with the sense that he was hiding an ability with magic from them. But what he did give Marceles was a name: Bantish.

Whatever or whoever Bantish is remains a mystery as well, but Marceles seems convinced that it holds the key to their next clue.

Some Statistics

So a week in and we have some statistics to look over – because I love web stats. I’m going to give you my amateur interpretation of them, and then hopefully someone more knowledgeable can fill us in on what I misunderstood. We also have to figure out how to bridge gaps between Google’s statistics reporting and that of WordPress.com.

WordPress.com powered statistics:

These are generated by visits alone, of which WordPress claims we have had a total of 1,167 as of the writing of this entry. The boost on Wednesday (the 10th) makes sense, as the site didn’t go live until about 8PM (est) on Tuesday (the 9th). We have a steady decline, and then I promoted a post on Facebook – which explains a good chunk of the last two bars. But we can see there’s an “organic” upward trend going on again as we hit the 15th.

As of this moment WordPress.com claims that September 10 has been my biggest day so far by about 20 views.

I’m not going out on any limbs as to what the slump in the middle could mean. For one I didn’t really push the site beyond the normal outlets that get daily attention (Instagram, Twitter, and tumblr). The outside pushes came around both Wednesdays: Nimit’s post on the 10th sent somewhere over 100 of those visits, and Facebook would like to claim a lot of the visitors on the 16th and 17th.

But direct traffic is the biggest contender. Let’s take a look at Google.

Google Analytics:

There’s some juicy stuff here. First off I think it’s valuable to note that the shape of the graph is the same as the WordPress.com one, regardless of the nuanced differences. From there certain things don’t translate (WordPress views vs. Google sessions/users). I feel like we have to treat them separately.

First off Google claims there were more unique visitors this Wednesday (as of this post) than there were at the peak of last Wednesday. This is the inverse of what WordPress claims.

What got me the most excited was my bounce rate.

Bounce rates, if you’re unaware, are the percentage of users who left your site after only one pageview. In other words: they came, they saw, they bounced. My bounce rate is an astonishing 2.4%! And that’s skewed by the first Tuesday’s 16.67% – which is still impressive considering that for the entire day the site was just two pages declaring “Coming soon!” and “Featuring Artwork by Nimit Malavia.” Otherwise my bounce rate only rises above 1.5% once, and hits 0% three times.

In other words, practically everyone that visits Into the Nanten spends time on it and navigates around the site. I’ve never had a website that accomplished that. Ever. For contrast, jayswanson.me (this website)’s bounce rate is 58.6% – abysmal. But where is everyone coming from?

Google does tip its hat to social referrals, but direct traffic wins week one. This could be skewed by the fact that anyone coming from Instagram can’t click on a link in the caption, they’d have to type it in on their own. Odds are good that the social piece of the pie is significantly larger.

So far readers of Into the Nanten are also 74% male, but we’ll get into that later.

I’ve experimented with two ad campaigns which I’ll go into soon as well. Facebook’s seems to have been fairly effective, but expensive – where Goodreads has so far proven completely ineffective.

Do you have any insights into these statistics? It looks like a healthy start for a no-name blog by a no-name author to me, but I’m biased. What do you think?

The post The Nanten: Reached – a Recap and Some Stats appeared first on jayswanson.me.

Gandalf the Punctual – A Wizard is Never Late

Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

A wizard is never late, he arrives precisely when the eagles deliver him.

It’s a good thing that giant snails weren’t involved, for any number of reasons. They’d probably be a more comfortable ride, it’s just that I get the feeling the forces of Mordor have access to a lot of salt.

If you’d like more of this outrageous silliness (and an explanation as to why on earth I’m posting poorly paraphrased Gandalf quotes with disjointed cartoons) you should start from the beginning.

You’d be better served investigating Into the Nanten, my latest project. It has much better illustrations by Nimit Malavia, and no misquotations of Gandalf. Promise.

The post Gandalf the Punctual – A Wizard is Never Late appeared first on jayswanson.me.

Launched: Into the Nanten – The Goals

Written by the illustrious Jay Swanson

This week I finally launched my latest project, Into the Nanten: the real time fantasy blog following a man who has been exiled into the world’s most hostile jungle in search of the one person he hates most. We’ve released it to no real fanfare, with no advertising push and no real plans for such. The whole goal, and hope, is that it will grow organically over time. Hopefully it will grow to the same epic levels as the jungle in which it takes place.

I tend to avoid writing about, well… writing – but I think that’s going to change in some ways. The main reason for this has been that conventional blog wisdom insists you shouldn’t write about writing, otherwise you’ll attract writers. I hope to attract readers. But you know what, writers aren’t so bad – and I want to share some of what I’m working on from behind the scenes.

If you are a reader, and you find this sort of thing boring – don’t worry. I have a lot of extra materials surrounding Into the Nanten and my world at large that I’ll begin releasing here as well to spice it up for you.

And maybe some sneak peeks

Into the Nanten – The Goals
1. Tell a Good Story in a New Way

While it may be presumptuous to call Into the Nanten a “new way” of telling a story, there aren’t a lot of other examples out there that I’ve found to draw it up against. The concept itself isn’t entirely new, I’m serializing a story. That’s been done since long before the written word was invented. And as Solomon so wisely stole from some poor chump, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” But the only real example we keep finding to liken this to is a web comic.

I want to tell this story in an engaging way. I want you to feel like you’re really watching it unfold, and I want to remain nimble enough to respond to whatever audience finds it. I think the twitter feeds help add a level of depth to it (Marceles, Bolton, and Starlark are on Twitter), and the frequency of the posts along with the illustrations should do the same.

2. Grow My Readership

Among the goals, this was the driving one. It was formed from the longstanding struggle of how to build an audience for my work. This story is set to run for at least six months in hopes of doing just that. Will it work? Will people even enjoy it enough?

Will they tell their friends? There’s no way to know if this will even work – it’s an experiment, but there’s no set formula for growing your readership anyways. At some point you have to take some risks.

2.5 Encourage That Readership into a Community

This is something I have no control over, thus the half-goal, but I want to do what I can to encourage my readership to interact among themselves. To share what they’re enjoying. I hope that they branch out and follow Nimit’s other work, that they support him as well. I really hope that we enter into that special relationship as a group where Nimit and I don’t just create, we share. What I mean is that the readership doesn’t just consume, but they feed back and feed into the process.

3. Generate Greater Interest in my Other Works

Then of course I hope that the people who find and enjoy Into the Nanten will also find and enjoy the rest of my work. I have three books out, and a new one on the way this fall. I don’t want them to languish in obscurity – what creative soul wants their work to go unnoticed?

I plan to let this story lead us into some new ones as well.

Depending on whether Google Analytics or WordPress’ statistics are more trustworthy, there have been a few hundred people who have joined in on the adventure already. My first hope is that those who have found it enjoy it – that they read it and love it. That’s the biggest of the goals – that this is something people can engross themselves in (perhaps that’s a hope more than a goal). It’s from there that I hope that it grows on its own.

I’ll keep you posted.

The post Launched: Into the Nanten – The Goals appeared first on jayswanson.me.