Dan Harris's Blog, page 12
February 26, 2013
In The (SFF) News This Week…
A super-nerdy but awesome explanation of the Kardashev scale, which is ‘used to classify hypothetical alien civilizations according to the amount of energy at their disposal’.
‘This led him to speculate about a Type II civilization. For an [extraterrestrial intelligence] to reach K2, it would need to capture the entire energy output of its parent star. The best way to achieve this, of course, is to build a Dyson Sphere.
Conjured by Freeman Dyson in 1959, this hypothetical megastructure would envelope a star at a distance of 1 AU and cover an inconceivably large area of 2.72 x 1017 km2, which is around 600 million times the surface area of the Earth. The sun has an energy output of around 4 x 1026 Watts, of which most would be available to do useful work.’
As anyone who’s read Ascension Point knows, I’ve always been more of a Dyson Swarm kind of guy, but each to their own.
Next up, are you ready for season three of Game of Thrones? I know I am.
We should stop using nuclear weapons as a unit of measurement, says annoyed atomic historian.
“In general,” he added, “What I don’t like is … the idea that kiloton or a megaton is just an energy unit, that it’s equivalent to so many joules or something. Because you could do that. You could claim that your house runs so many tons of TNT worth of electricity per year, but it sort of trivializes the notion.”
Also at The Atlantic, a spectacular NASA video of three simultaneous solar phenomena.
‘ …a solar flare, a coronal mass ejection (CME), and coronal rain, “complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun’s atmosphere,” NASA explains.’
Finally, in Dan-specific news, Venus Rising goes to my editor on March 8th, which means it should be out in just a couple of months!
February 22, 2013
Fifty and/or Ten SFF Works Every Socialist and/or Conservative Should Read
This is great. Wonderful spec-fic author and renowned socialist China Mieville put together a list for The Weekly Ansible of ‘50 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read‘. Then The American Conservative, just for fun, did a counterpoint list of ten equivalent works for those of a more conservative bent.
intriguing stuff, and a great shopping list for readers who like some political theory with along with their hyperspace travel/dragons.
February 19, 2013
Spectacular Meteor Footage
Just in case anyone hasn’t seen the news in the last four days, a 56ft-wide asteroid weighing around 10,000 tons and travelling at 40,000 miles per hour entered the Earth’s atmosphere over Russia on February 15th. (At which point it became a meteor, not an asteroid, I’ve learned.)
It disintegrated under the force of atmospheric pressure nine miles over the city of Chelyabinsk, causing a shockwave that shattered windows across the city and injured 1200 people.
This write-up at the New Yorker sums it up pretty well, and io9 has some science here.
The key lesson in all this? Space is very big, and IT IS TRYING TO KILL US.
February 15, 2013
Venus Rising Cover Reveal!
Hey there, folks. It’s been a while, what with the Carnaval vacation down here in Brazil and a particularly busy few weeks at the day job. But I’ve still found time to work with the talented Stephanie Mooney on the cover for my upcoming second novel, Venus Rising.
And here it is…
Yup. That’s some barren-looking desert, right there.
February 4, 2013
Review: Ascension Point
Reblogged from The Spidereen Frigate:
Hello, my hearts! I hope your weekend was spectacular. For my American friends, I hope the sportsball team of your choice won the annual championship. I don’t pay attention to that kind of thing, as you can see.
What I did over the weekend was think about this book I just finished: ASCENSION POINT by Dan Harris.
The book is a science fiction novel, and Harris’ self-published debut.
Marvellous. ASCENSION POINT has earned itself another excellent review, courtesy of our new friend Jackie Hames over at the splendidly-named The Spidereen Frigate blog. One line summary: cracking sci-fi, not so good romance. But I could have told you that ;)
Rise of the Machines–With a Twist
You’ll want to watch this one. It’s a short film by 22-year-old indie filmmaker Kaleb Lechowski. A neat twist on an old premise, and the production quality is outstanding.
Oh, and while you’re here, you should read this flash fiction piece too. Fun!
February 3, 2013
Top 100+ Stories From The First 5 Years of io9
Well, there’s my Sunday gone.
“Over the past five years at io9, we’ve explored a lot of strange frontiers, and asked a lot of ridiculous questions. Some of our strangest discoveries have been the ones that hung around, as if we adopted a baby alien and it grew up eating out of our hands.”
Spend the next five hours reading here.
February 1, 2013
January Sales Report: The Slowdown Begins
Another month, another sales report!
As I predicted in last month’s report, January saw a big drop off in sales compared to December and November.
January Sales and Earnings
Copies sold: 8 (Kindle–3, Paperback–4, Kobo–1)
Earnings: $22.37
Overall
Copies Sold: 69
Earnings: $196.91
% to Profit: 22.6% (or % of expenses recouped)
Graphs
Big drop!
Promotion
I ran an interesting one this month, which should see some results in February.
I ran a free giveaway of the book on LibraryThing. I offered 100 free ebook copies, with a request for a customer review somewhere in exchange. 61 folks took me up on the offer, and so far 39 have downloaded the book from Smashwords. Hopefully I’ll see a few more reviews appearing in the coming weeks, which will be vital in allowing me to sign up for the more demanding promotions in future.
I also got a few more Amazon reviews organically–good ones, I’m happy to say–and as before, for every review I tweeted it, e.g. ‘Another 5* review for #AscensionPoint’ then the link to the review. And, again, I’ve no idea if these prompted anyone to buy a copy.
Thoughts
WIth the continuing slowdown from mid-December, and complete drop-off in mid-January, I think I can safely say that all of my ‘early adopters’–friends, family, blog and Twitter followers–have now bought their copy of the book.
Those sales were driving the book’s visibility on Amazon, and prompting sales to other random readers, but that push has now gone; as a result, the book is dropping down the rankings into obscurity.
However, all is not lost. The plan is still that the release of VENUS RISING in April, and the initial promotional kick for that book, should trigger a bump in the sales of my other books: i.e. ASCENSION POINT. This is from readers seeing the new book, then spotting that’s it’s marked ‘Book Two’ and checking out the first one as well.
I mentioned BookBub last month, too. I’m going to wait until VENUS RISING is out before running a BookBub promo for ASCENSION POINT. That way the readers have a second book to buy after picking up ASCENSION POINT at a discount. Hopefully this provides another nice bump in sales and visibility.
I’ll expand on those last two points, as that concept is pretty fundamental to my business plan as a writer. My expectation is that my monthly sales figures will be a series of occasional spikes, triggered by a new release, or a successful promo, each followed by a gradual tapering off until the next spike.
My hope is that as I release more books, the sales ‘baseline’–i.e. my minimum monthly sales number–is higher after each spike, So the graph might end up looking something like this:
We’ll see.
In summary, we trundle ever onwards. It’s a marathon not a sprint, etc. Happy reading!
January 30, 2013
Real Wars and Star Wars
There’s a really interesting article on io9 about SFF authors who served in the military, and how this informed their later works. Well worth a read, and features this blunt but powerful quote from Kurt Vonnegut:
The firebombing of Dresden was an emotional event without a trace of military importance… I will say again what I have often said in print and in speeches, that not one Allied soldier was able to advance as much as an inch because of the firebombing of Dresden. Not one prisoner of the Nazis got out of prison a microsecond earlier. Only one person on earth clearly benefited, and I am that person. I got about five dollars for each corpse, not counting my fee tonight.
It also reminded me that I somehow haven’t read Starship Troopers yet, which I should really get around to.
Oh, and Tor has a perceptive article on why J.J. Abrams directing the new Star Wars movie might be a bad thing. I don’t entirely agree that he’s not one to take artistic risks with his work–Lost was pretty out there at the time–but I accept the point they make about his Star Trek movie being awesome, but not really Star Trek. Hmm. Thoughts?
January 29, 2013
What’s Going On (Right On, Baby, Right On)
It’s been a little while. What have I been up to? There are a few strands.
Venus Rising is mid-edit. I’ve got feedback from a couple more beta readers coming in the next week or so, and then some edits to make. After that, the MS goes to Misti at Red Adept on March 11th for a good tearing apart and putting back together again. Stephanie is working on the cover, and I hope to have that ready to reveal in the next week or so. Can’t wait.
Meanwhile, I’ve pulled together the outline for the next book. It’s going to be a novella, and the third book in the still-unnamed series. I have a title which I love, but which I’m not quite ready to announce yet; I’ve got three parts, and a brief summary for all of the scenes. I still need to expand the character bios and write those up, and then I’ll be ready to start the first draft.
But before I do that, I’m doing something a little bit random. I’ve realised that it’s got to the point where I can’t quite hold all of the important details of the Ascension Point universe in my head. It’s crucial for the continuity and consistency of the other books in the series (and the trilogy I’ve got planned after that–watch this space) that I keep track of all of the people, places, factions, groups, landmarks and technology that I’ve created. So to help me do that I’ve started indexing everything in an already-massive spreadsheet. It’s pretty damn tedious, but it should mean that when I’m halfway through a draft of my sixth novel I don’t spontaneously change the canon I set up in the earlier books. That’s the idea, anyway.
So that’s my update. I’m still on track to release Venus Rising in April, so look out for that!
(P.S. If you didn’t get the reference in the title, it’s from ‘What’s Going On’ by Marvin Gaye. Do yourself a favour, and familiarise yourself: Marvin Gaye – The Best Of Marvin Gaye.)
