Brian McClellan's Blog, page 27

Holiday Sale!

Hey everybody! It's almost Thanksgiving here in the US, and that means the ol' infamous shopping week - including Cyber Monday and Black Friday. To make things a little easier for you book-present-givers this holiday season, some of my author friends and I have put an assortment of our books on sale for the next week or two.

These are all signed (except for the ebooks, obviously) and coming straight from the author, meaning they take home an extra cut and have a little more money in their pockets for the holidays. I hope you'll take a look!

Brad Beaulieu - The Lays of Anuskaya and 12 Kings in SharakhaiBrian McClellan - The Powder Mage novels and novellas.Jason Hough - The Dire Earth Trilogy and Zero World.Michael J Sullivan - The Riyria books and Hollow World.Wesley Chu - The Tao Trilogy and Timesalvager (25% off with coupon code "DABLIGHTDAY")

Here are my own books I've put specifically on sale, so you don't have to sort through them:

50% off Promise of Blood10% off The Crimson Campaign10% off The Autumn Republic25% off the Powder Mage Trilogy15% off the Powder Mage novella bundle

In the Field Marshal's Shadow

As many of you know, I've written a number of pieces of short fiction in the Powder Mage Universe over the last couple of years. Due to popular demand, I've turned the novellas into small, collectible hardcovers for those of you who prefer print books. I've never done the same with the short stories, however, because they're just too small to print.

Now, though, I've taken the five short stories so far and collected them all into one, 44,000 word collection. These include Hope's End, The Girl of Hrusch Avenue, The Face in the Window, Return to Honor, and the never-before-printed Green-Eyed Vipers. Happy days, it's big enough to print - and you can pre-order the hardcover now!

You can currently get the new collection in ebook from my bookstore. I'm adding it to all of the usual places (Amazon, Kobo, etc) and will put those links in the space below as they go live. "Official" launch date is November 17th.

Links:

Ebook DirectPre-order Hardcover

Housecleaning Audible Codes

I'm cleaning out the ol' digital attic and I have a big stack of Audible codes to get rid of. Head on over to /r/powdermage to find out how to win one.

Why Writing Groups Are Awesome - And I Don't Use Them

This is the latest of my essays about being an author, brought to you by my Patreon page.

One of the most common questions I get from amateur writers is "how do I know whether my writing is any good?" It's a great question because, in my experience, writers tend to fall into one of two camps when it comes to self-evaluation; either nothing they produce is ever good enough, or they think they are the second coming of Tolkien. Even if they're right one way or the other, it's always good to get some outside perspective on this sort of thing. But you're going to exhaust the goodwill of your friends and family pretty quickly if you're frequently asking them to read your work-in-progress.

This is where writing groups come in. It's a fairly straight-forward concept; you and a group of peers get together and critique each other's writing. The reciprocal nature of it means that not only do you have people telling you whether your writing is worth pursuing, but you also get experience on the critical side of things that might aid you in your own writing.

Creating/joining a writing group, especially in this age of online communication, is really easy. It might be a good idea to start with real-life friends that share your interests or, if that's not an option, to check with your local library to see if they host a weekly group that might be looking for a new member. A writing class at your local college will probably force you into writing groups; a lot of people I know still use the same group they met through class decades ago.

If you're more comfortable with the ease and not-having-to-talk-to-people-face-to-face of the internet, there are tons of forums and websites dedicated to this type of thing, where you're going to have a much easier time finding people who write in your same genre. The impersonal nature of an online group might get you better, more honest critiques, but it might land you with a couple of trolls too, so beware.

Once you're settled in, you'll have to set rules (or abide by those of an existing group), which include frequency of meetings, weekly word limit, negative vs positive feedback ratio—all the stuff that comes with organizing a new group of people. Be warned that it can end up as an enormous headache. I said that getting a writing group is really easy. Getting the right writing group is difficult as hell.

I'm going to take a moment and stress just how important writing groups are. I learned huge amounts from my writing groups through college—I learned how to give and take criticism, and how to be realistic about my own failings as a writer and how to make myself better. There was also the confidence boost that came with it. A big part of why I'm a full-time author today is that I took a writing class when I was seventeen, and a cute girl told me I was the best writer in the class of twenty or so kids—and then everyone else agreed with her. That may sound stupid, but increments of positive reinforcement like that over the years kept me going, helping me believe I was actually good at something.

Now I'm going to tell you why I can't particularly stand writing groups. Keep in mind this is my own personal experience—mileage will vary.

As I've alluded, there are a lot of problems that come with a writing group. Egos are a big one. Even the most open-minded, introspective people will get prickly when you're dissecting their baby. If someone says they can handle constructive criticism, spend ten minutes telling them how terrible their dialogue is and see if you're still friends. Now imagine doing the same with strangers who may be vain, overprotective, or just looking for the confidence boost without the criticism. It gets real old, real quick.

This may sound like me being a stuffy old man and believe me, it is. But it's more than just me not having the patience to deal with the people. I quickly found after school (and sometimes during it) that people in my writing groups were not on my level. Not in a skill way, though sometimes that was the case, but in a "I want to make this a career" way. That's not a bad thing, of course—you can have whatever ambitions you want with your writing, large or small—but it meant I was coming to group each week with 10K words of prose, constantly editing and devouring feedback, while they'd bring in a tenth that and understandably didn't want to have to slog through all of mine.

I also don't like the repetitiveness. Someone (including me) would get critiques on a chapter, rewrite it, and (again understandably) want to see if they'd done a better job, so resubmit for the next week. Everyone would have to read the same chapter, rewritten, four or five times and then a month has passed and what do you have? A single chapter. That speed works for some people, but I can't handle moving along that slowly.

Thing is, whether they want to admit it or not, people don't always come to writing groups for the reason you'd assume (to get better). They come for the social aspect, for an echo chamber, to get out of the house on a Tuesday night; sometimes just to find something new to read. And that's all fine. But you have to be honest with each other so no one has false expectations and that doesn't happen very often because human nature.

I'll reiterate, writing groups were immensely useful to me. I met awesome authors and good friends—people I still keep in touch with today—through my writing groups in Brandon Sanderson's class and OSC's Literary Bootcamp. But I eventually dropped writing groups all together. They weren't, at the end of the day, worth my time.

Hopefully that doesn't sound too arrogant. Writing groups are important because of the outside feedback they provide and thankfully I've been able to find that elsewhere. Since college my wife has been my first reader on everything, so she could tell me whether or not I was going to embarrass myself submitting to an agent or editor. And now that I'm a reasonably established author, I have a fanbase and professional friends I can ask for beta-reads even before my agent or editor sees a piece.

Don't get me wrong; the right writing group may still come along some day. I don't have experience working with a long-term, pro or semi-pro writing group, where everyone has serious writing credentials and a career at stake. Given the chance to join one of those I may very well change my mind about the "worth my time" thing. Or maybe I wouldn't. I'm a bit of a fuddy-duddy.

At the end of the day, most people don't have the benefit of an established fanbase, a professional editor, or someone literally in-house who can tell them to fix a chapter or work on their dialogue. Despite the misgivings about writing groups I mentioned above, I still think they're an absolute necessity for newer writers. You need some kind of outside input if you ever want to get better. That means dealing with egos, trolls, and even your own social anxiety to get it. But it's worth it. No one ever gets better without being told what they're doing wrong.

Brian's previous Patreon essays:

The Psychology of Being a Full Time AuthorAn Author's Complicated Relationship with Self PromotionAttending a Convention as an AuthorHow Much an Author Makes Off Their BooksHow an Author Gets Paid: The Big PictureBook Formats and YouAttending a Convention as an Author - Panels

First Page of My Story in UNBOUND

We're just a month away from the release of UNBOUND, a mega-anthology of short stories edited by Shawn Speakman. My contribution is a powder mage short story, and you can see the first page of it below!

If you'd like to pre-order UNBOUND, you can find out how here.

Fan Art Contest II

It's time for a new Powder Mage fan art contest! The last one was a huge success, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys put together this time.

The rules are simple:

Produce a piece of visual media (painting, photoshop rendering, drawing, photos of cosplay, whatever) that has something to do with the Powder Mage Universe, whether it be the books or the short fiction.Send it to me as an Imgur link, or somewhere you've posted it on social media, via email to brian (at) brianmcclellan (dot) com. Put the words POWDER MAGE ART CONTEST in the subject line. Please be sure to include a mailing address so I don't have to chase you down later if you win. Your address will not be used for any other purpose.You have four weeks from today to enter (until the 18th of November). Afterwards, I will have selected my favorite pieces and inform the winners. Winners will be announced on my website.By entering you've agreed to let me show off your art via social media and my website.Multiple entries are allowed!

Prizes:

Grand Prize: two artists will be awarded with a silver powder mage keg pin from Badali Jewelry.Four runners-up will be awarded with signed hardcovers of Promise of Blood.I reserve the right to award no prizes (say, if the only entry is a hand-drawn stick figure with a gun or some other good reason). You can check out the entries from last year here.

Thanks for reading everyone, and have at it!

Powder Mage Jewelry

For those of you who follow me on Facebook and Twitter, I've been teasing this for a few months now. For those of you that don't: earlier this summer I signed an agreement with the awesome Badali Jewelry to make officially licensed Powder Mage merchandise! Badali creates jewelry for some of my favorite creative properties, including Lord of the Rings, The Dresden Files, Mistborn, Stormlight Archives, Kingkiller Chronicle, and much, much more.

So, what are they making for me? Well, we've got a bunch of cool ideas in the works, but the first piece debuted a couple weeks ago at Salt Lake Comic Con. You can now get your hands on a silver Powder Keg Pin, like those carried by Taniel, Vlora, and the rest of Field Marshal Tamas's powder cabal.

photo by Hillarie Billy Gowers

This was actually a pretty cool process. I've been wanting to create one of these pins since Promise of Blood came out, and I've been getting requests for them for almost as long. So at each convention I'd eye the jewelry tables and pick up cards, and try to budget to have something commissioned.

At Phoenix Comicon in 2014, Kevin Hearne was kind enough to introduce me to Badali, whose work I had already come to admire. We chatted, I expressed interest, and left it at that. Then, at the following Salt Lake Comic Con, I was able to go take a tour of their facilities in Layton, Utah where I met Paul Badali, the head jeweler. They made it clear that they only take on work by authors whose books they enjoy, and so I sent them a box of books and crossed my fingers.

I didn't hear anything for almost six months. I didn't want to be a bother, and I was pretty busy, so I stayed mum about it. Then the 2015 Phoenix Comicon rolled around. I casually sidled up to the Badali booth, resolved to commission a pin if they weren't interested in outright licensing.

Janelle Badali spotted me and came around the table, gave me a big hug, and immediately asked if they could license Powder Mage jewelry. Yay! It worked out!

I couldn't be more thrilled with the results of the first piece. You can now order pins directly from me and (within a few weeks) from the Badali store.

Earning Out

Yesterday, I got an email from my agent telling me that The Powder Mage Trilogy had earned out it's advance. This is fantastic. This is like, holy crap freaking awesome, and I'll tell you why. Warning: I'll be patting myself on the back a bit here.

TL;DR: I'm awesome, my fans are awesome, my publisher is awesome. Everyone is awesome. Except you. You know who you are. Oh, and money.

So, why is earning out my advance a big deal? It basically means that I'm no longer living on "fronted" money. An advance is just that; an advance against royalties. Authors don't see any money beyond their advance check until they've earned enough via their royalties (I broke down how much money an author actually makes off each sale here) to "pay back" the publisher their advance money (in quotes because if you don't earn out you won't actually have to pay that money back, unlike the music industry). The rule of thumb thrown around the publishing industry is that only about 20% of books earn out.

The Powder Mage Trilogy is, for accounting purposes, viewed as a single book. So I wouldn't earn any extra money from it until all three books, together, have made enough money to cover the whole advance (as opposed to counting each book against a third of the advance). It also sold for six figures, which in itself is pretty rare for a debut series.

Now, the series is earning out on the royalty statement for the first half of 2015. As far as I can tell from my own spreadsheets, it earned out about three weeks after The Autumn Republic hit shelves, which was just a little less than two years after Promise of Blood. The powder mage books are not bestsellers by any means, but to have this happen means they've sold at a solid, consistent pace for those two years.

There are too many people to thank for making this happen - from my publisher, editor, and agent on the business side, down to the readers who recommend my stuff to their friends and family. However a handful of people, including my old writing professor Brandon Sanderson, fellow fantasy authors Brent Weeks and Peter V. Brett, and my favorite online webcomic Howard Tayler, have been particularly loud about their support of me and my books, lending their immense platforms to help get the word out, and for that I'll be forever in their debt.

Earning out on the trilogy means that I'm now, in my own small part, helping pay the bills at Orbit, which is a point of pride for me. It also means that from now on, I'll get a check every six month, hopefully for the rest of my life. Each check will be a little smaller, dwindling over the years, but for now it's enough to let me keep writing full time.

Which is a good thing, because I have no other useful talents.

Thanks guys. You're all great. Keep reading.

UNBOUND Cover and ARCs

Hey guys, Grim Oak Press now has a cover for the UNBOUND anthology. Check this out:

For those that don't know, UNBOUND is by the same people who did UNFETTERED, and has an equally-huge list of mega-SFF authors (you can see that list here). It's also going to contain a brand new Powder Mage short story about a young Sergeant Tamas in the Gurlish Wars. UNBOUND will be out in December and you can pre-order it either from me (with my story signed) or direct from Grim Oak Press.

But here's something else neat. ARCs (advanced review copies) are normally available only to vendors and reviewers. Because Grim Oak is a small press that works with big authors, they do this special thing where they sell hardcover ARCs to regular readers that just can't wait to get their hands on these stories. Only 250 will be printed, and you can order one from Grim Oak here.

Brian's Salt Lake Comic Con Schedule

This week is Salt Lake Comic Con, and for the second year in a row I am delighted to be attending! The convention goes Thursday, Friday, Saturday (September 24th, 25th, 26th) and I'll be there all three days, signing books, going to panels, and just generally hanging out. You're most likely to find me at Badali Jewelry (booth 1023), the lovely people who are hosting me and selling my books and who will have a special new treat on sale for fans of the Powder Mage series. My full schedule is as follows:

Thursday, September 24th, 2PM: Writing Advice: The Good, the Bad & the Very Ugly room 151A

Thursday, September 24th, 4PM: Book signing at Badali Jewelry booth 1023

Friday, September 25th, 12PM: Character Development for Novels and Film room 255E

Friday, September 25th, 1PM: Book signing Shadow Mountain booth 1401

Friday, Sepember 25th, 6PM: Book signing at Badali Jewelry booth 1023

Saturday, September 26th, 6PM: Book signing at Badali Jewelry booth 1023

Saturday, September 26th, 8PM: The Military in Science Fiction and Fantasy room 253A