B.C. Laybolt's Blog, page 10
December 27, 2013
To Hold in Hand Completion.
Everybody does this now. I hate to be everybody. But there’s nothing else like it, and now I get why.
The first unboxing. The birth of the Galley, and the delivery into your hands.
One very, very surreal moment.
Wow.
The hand stops a-tremble when the eyes read the words.
600 pages of work. Sitting in your hand.
Now THAT’S why we do this.
Please forgive me while my innards glow.
If you’d like a copy for your very own hand, here’s where you can get one:
https://www.createspace.com/4556165
December 1, 2013
To Announce in the Grandest but most reserved manner possible.
It’s done.
2.5 years of 5 am mornings, writing on night shifts, waiting for my precious Beta copies, revisions, rewrites, and brain-numbing grammar crawls.
During a front step reno that grew into a pyramidal monster, three computer deaths, a bathroom reno (yet unfinished), a full-time job, struggling to keep an aging body from turning into oatmeal, my beloved job coaching minor football, my little dog Emma blowing out her hip, the nightmare potential of parenting two teenagers.
But it’s done.
I am proud to announce the online sale of my first novel, To Drown in Sand.
And I’m not proud because it’s done.
I’m proud because I know it was ready. I know that my Betas and I’ve worked like dogs to make it good.
Not many Indys are lucky enough to have a rocket scientist and a Sergeant editing their novels to make them better. Or a smashing graphics designer to do the art and formatting.
And I still got help beyond that. From some very picky people.
But that’s not the biggest reason I’m proud.
I’m proudest because it’s Indy.
Please help me spread the word, and if you have an extra $2.99 laying around, maybe you could give it a read.
I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Issep, Bivka, Hitter and the rest of the squad are waiting for you.
I think you’ll find they are most excellent company.
They have been for me.
November 27, 2013
Of Lessons Earned: Notes for the Indy E-Pubber.
Upload day at my house is like Christmas Eve. The wrapping has to be protected from the cat, everyone wants to sneak a peek at the packages, and some of us would much rather drink, hope the power stays on, and text to see if that Uncle Terence made his flight without breaking a hip.
Add to that the pleasure of knowing that today a massive storm is hitting the eastern seaboard, and will probably kill power to anyone who might want to download my book on the eve of it’s release.
Figgers.
It wouldn’t be me if it weren’t ridiculous.
But it’s ready.
Done.
Really, really done.
I’ve said that about 14 times in this process, but each time knew I was missing something. There was some kind of discord that twanged from the base of my spine through to my skull with each text to my formatter, the amazing Dylan Edwards.
But this morning, no twang.
Done.
And thus, the pic of the day:
I’ll be wearing out the refresh button in a few hours.
A few lessons learned for those Indy Pubbing for the first time (mostly, so that next time, I go back and read this to stay sane):
~ Amazon and KDP likes Word. It does not play well with Rich Text Format (RTF), and will commit gross Chaos and Buggery with your meticulously edited document. Such as remove italics.
So your characters thoughts become sentences.
THAT is a bad thing.
Imagine the horror.
~Amazon uploading takes TIME. And that TIME will drive you stark raving mad. Your family will threaten divorce, your dog will wonder what she did wrong, and your pants won’t fit. If possible, go do something else. Like hang from the rafters of your basement for as long as you can.
~Listen to your inner writer. They are usually right. If a little voice says “One. More. Proofread”, then do it. Even if it means missing your deadline. Because that voice KNOWS you missed something Important. And when you find it, you’ll squee. Besides, you’re an Indy. It’s YOUR deadline.
~ Word’s Grammar system, in my humble opinion, far surpasses RTF’s grammar scanner. And for that, the writer was most grateful and swollen with exaltation.
As in, it totally saved my A**.
~No one, absolutely NO ONE, understands how difficult it is to force yourself to read your own work for the 23rd time, and find ANOTHER mistake. As an Indy, you must do this to yourself. Imagine staring at the head of a hammer, whacking yourself with it, then realizing you did it wrong. And have to do it again.
47 times.
I had to learn, quite quickly, that the people around you love you, care about you, but will not withstand your cranky because you missed ANOTHER gender switch word in your book.
~ We uploaded To Drown in Sand, then told NO ONE. I bought a copy, threw up, texted Dylan in horror, and we went to work to fix the nightmare. Because Amazon allows editing, re-uploading the Final Copy is a much better idea. The book on your Ereader will tell you things you just can’t see in your computer’s document.
~ Having to switch from a Windows laptop to an Apple mid-novel is a mixed blessing. MacBooks are for writers. But everything has to start from scratch if you are like me, one of those “I have to go to work and walk the dog and build front steps and raise children” people. Learning new formats is usually done after disasters, as was the case with Sand’s original Amazon upload, and that’s OKAY. Mistakes are how we learn.
~Dealing with the IRS to get an EIN is nowhere near as terrifying as one would expect. The lady on the phone was quite nice.
~ISBN’s are free here in Canada, and that’s just awesome.
~There is NO WAY you will catch every single typo, quotation mark, and extra space. But you must give it 100% to try to. Once you have, then you know you did.
~And then, let it go. It’s Done. Really really done.
Sit back, and stare at the tinsel, watch the kids get nervous, and let the cat sniff the needles and bat the ornaments. You have done the full deal, and earned the right to wait for Release Day.
Which, I think, is so much sweeter than Christmas.
The Grind.
So. THAT was a long time between posts!
Italics and commas.
Grr to them.
Over 360 pages of Grammar-grind, and an eternity of comma hunting. Like sniffing out ants from timber.
Maybe next time, I’ll be able to hire someone to do the proofreading for the final copy. Doing such things oneself makes one want to put one’s head through one’s kitchen table and weep and Never Write Again.
And thus, this:
The final hard-copy manuscript, ripped apart, revised, Beta-shredded, rewritten, gouged, red-inked and mercilessly edited.
That was about a week ago.
Then, the arduous page-by-page change entries, edits, double-checks on the new edits, finding new errors because of the new edits in places I didn’t edit, and next proofread.
Then, going back and doing all the military edits, as directed by my military editor.
Then, the science edits as per my rocket scientist.
Then, back again to check for all the missed grammar after those changes.
No wonder people don’t do this.
Tired? Yep.
Frustrated? Yep.
At any point willing to give up? Oh, no, my friend.
I would rather be doing no other thing in the universe than making my novel better.
So far, we are still on track for our November release. (He says this looking at the calendar with one raised eyebrow).
Just gotta kill those commas.
August 17, 2013
The excitement of release. (Wow…that could sound so wrong).
Well, that was fun. We cringed, we howled. I revised and rewrote, interviewed soldiers and rocket scientists, went back again and again to the keyboard until we all agreed that it was ready.
It’s ready.
It’s done.
The short story prequel to this November’s To Drown in Sand is up and live.
It’s called Upon a Wake of Flame, and it is now up for sale. The link is here, and on my sidebar.
Upon a Wake of Flame was supposed to be a promotional piece that served as a test for the upload and editing process. It evolved into so much more; an invaluable lesson in writing, revision and completion.
And as always, Dylan’s cover and design are incredible.
Upon a Wake of Flame is available on Amazon and Kobo E-Books for $0.99 Canadian. If you enjoy it, please rate it and post a review.
July 12, 2013
Upon a Wake of Flame. A short story. Part 1 of the prequel to To Drown in Sand.
As promised, Part One of the prequel for my novel, To Drown in Sand, to be released in November 2013.
Upon a Wake of Flame
A story of the 10th Lunen Regiment
By
B.C. Laybolt
Cast:
Petty Officer Second Class Fiodek Berr – Callsign: ‘Bear’.
Master Seaman Owiqued – (Pipes): Callsign: ‘Howler’.
Master Seaman Thuigrae – (Manta): Callsign: ‘Stomps’.
Master Seaman Bonfodighen - (Flamer): Callsign: ‘Steambath’
Able Seaman Yuekijae – (Medic): Callsign: ‘Gauzer’.
Able Seaman Edroit – (Rifleman): Callsign: ‘Milk-crate’.
Able Seaman Clurrid – (Rifleman): Callsign: ‘Paperback’.
Able Seaman Kepeht - (Rifleman): Callsign: ‘Dogfood’.
Able Seaman Bavdemix – (Rifleman): Callsign: ‘Badmix’.
Able Seaman Rokemigveuse – (Rifleman): Callsign: ‘Migve’.
Lieutenant Bob Griare – Callsign: ‘Tailflip’.
~Orksen Isle, in the Derry Atrus Atoll, 30 kilometers Due South of the Alseiry Peninsula on the dwarf planet Shastre.
The shot cracked across the road from up high. Its echo bounced and barked across the cratered street from doorway to doorway, looking for a place to celebrate.
The heavy bullet punched him in the chest and threw him into the mud-brick wall on the wrong side of the alley, crackling the rough, hand-pressed plaster behind him. Scabs of gritty sand-plate tumbled over the rim of his helmet as he slid down into the dirt.
He watched the man who shot him nestle in behind his large black scope, high on the second floor, tucked in under a wooden kitchen table, the sides hung down to block the sun.
Black lightning-bolts of capillaries split his vision.
Shot in the chest.
And here it was his thirty-eighth Saints-damned birthday.
Petty Officer Second Class Fiodek Berr; Third Squad, Threadfin Boat, Second Company; Sturgeon Battalion, Tenth Lunen Regiment, dragged in a hissed breath that screamed against his sternum. He tried to roll over, to tip out of the sniper’s view.
“Frock!” Berr heard Clurrid, his stern-guard rifleman, holler over the rumble of his pulse in his temples. He watched as the sky stained with water-colour black. “P.O. Down! Gauzer! Bear is down!”
“Huh…Huh…Hold it!” Berr managed, and pointed his medic back to the safety of the alley wall.
“He’s waiting for you.”
Berr watched panic flash across their faces. Spearing pain rippled through his chest, hammering his ribs and breastbone with every jagged, shuddering breath.
Berr wobbled his head to check again at where the shooter was perched. He could make out a grin spread from behind the long, tubal optic.
Berr squinted at the sniper’s scope and smiled back.
The top floor of the shabby, smashed hut exploded in a roar of ripping splinters, blasting clouds of dust and clay, and wet chunks of the enemy sharpshooter.
Berr chuckled, then grimaced and let his helmet thump into the dirt.
“Oh, for frock’s sake! They got him. The bastards finally got him!”
Two sets of hands scrambled over his dented chest-plate, and grabbed the curved, heavy gorget of his vest. His boots bobbled and carved shallow trenches in the dirt as they dragged back up the alley.
Above him, the sunlight thinned and died to embers. Nine blots of shadow crowded into what was left of the sky, bumping for access.
“Nice shot, Stomps. Took dat roof right off of ‘er!”
“That’s irrelevant. Is he alright?”
“For frock’s sake! Get back! How the frock am I supposed to get at him? You know what to do! Form a frocking perimeter, cover us, and let me do my job!”
“I said is he alright?”
“And I said Steady Up!”
Mumbles of their barely-contained panic bubbled in his mind and started to swirl, lost in the reaching darkness.
Berr groaned.
Today of all days. Eight hours into thirty-eight years old, and millions of cables away from the only person who knew it.
Despite her fiery, naval language and raised voice, his wife had still, at least, wished him that much in her comm-send that had finally arrived last night. Her voice had been terse; loaded and cocked with warning.
That’s the problem with interplanetary arguments while you’re on deployment, he thought. One-way only, and weeks to send.
Takes too long to fire back.
His pulse calmed. He inhaled, and fresh pinpricks of pain riveted across his shoulders, gathering in the bones over his heart.
He had heard the dit that there was that delay in all the soldier’s sends, too. At first all the troopers had mumbled about the usual scanning for intelligence material. Tactically Sensitive information. Later, that had begun to change.
Overhead, clouds crawled by, a convoy of fist-shaped, relentless frigates shrouded in billowing white in a blue sea, stained black by the shock of the shot.
Weeks of delay. Berr thought.
That’s new.
The comms-monitors were scanning the infantry’s correspondence home more carefully than usual. Crawling over their words like ants on a corpse. Scouring and seeking.
And he suspected it had a lot to do with the secessionists that they were fighting here on the Derry Atrus island chain.
He was a veteran. Fifteen years with the Tenth Lunen Regiment. He had seen blood, rebellion, and his slice of the pie of war had been monstrous.
But the enemy they faced here on this small planet called Shastre were different. And the data-crawlers knew it. They weren’t protecting themselves by trying to catch leaks.
Berr knew they were protecting the innocents. Those at home. From learning the truth.
That there were monsters here.
The sound in the alley swallowed him. Third Squad’s boots ground into the grit. They mumbled curses that betrayed their panic, their fear that he was dying. The shuffle of Gauzer’s hands, digging and prodding into his chest, searching for an entry wound. The wet squish as he found the laceration of the shoulder-strap that had cut into his deltoid.
The ping of a syringe-cap tapping into the clay.
After a moment, all sounds became one, rushing through his mind like water, on a platform of another haunting, echoing noise that lingered around the walls of his skull and forced his eyes shut.
The echo of that sniper-round.
“I got him.” Gauzer, his medic, said. “He just needs a minute.” Gauzer slipped closer now, a whisper next to his ear. “You had the air punched out of you. Your armour held. I don’t know how. But it stopped the round.” His voice was shaken, but solid enough.
Berr thanked the Saints. He blinked quickly, blinded by the sky that now flooded back to blue. Gauzer reached out a hand, and he grabbed it.
Sitting up felt like having his chest ripped open.
“Third Squad. Get back in the stack.” Berr’s voice was wet gravel. “Jonah’s down.”
Berr gingerly pulled in a deep breath, shook his head, then staggered over and leaned into the scarred alley wall. He sighed, and carefully peeked out around the corner. His skin submerged into a tide of Gauzer’s warm spread of pain-narcs.
He peered down the debris-littered road, rough with tossed stones and scattered shell casings; toppled, kicked-out doors and collapsed walls that spilled out onto the hard clay road like guts. Behind him the rest of Third Squad stacked in a crouched line against the wall, pressed tight against each other.
At the end of the road squatted a fat, mud-scabbed hill, its top punched flat by aerial bombardments. Third squad’s first objective of the day. Beyond that, a field that Int had said would be spotted with more ruined huts. A small village that had been smashed open by the retreating enemy soldiers, but held intact enough to offer cover for Berr’s squad to advance.
Berr winced as he swung out and sighted down at the end of the road. The side of the hill that faced them was covered in the rough scabs of boot-prints left from the enemy’s retreat.
Hundreds of boot-prints.
The intelligence operator who briefed them had been a tall, strong-shouldered black sergeant named Omram, from Cixca, the Triumvirate’s headquarters planet. Omram hadn’t been able to accurately assess how many of the secessionists would be left in the ruins of this town, or how many had retreated over that hill to wait in the field beyond. All he had been able to tell Berr and his lieutenant, Griare, was that whoever was left of the secessionists here on Orksen Isle had nowhere left to run. The Tenth Lunen had pushed the enemy militia back all the way across the island, and now they were trapped. Their last and only option was to try to swim to the mainland from here. Or surrender.
Which these maniacs never did.
“Good luck, Bear.” Lieutenant Griare had said, with a slap on his Petty Officer’s shoulder-pad. “Don’t let anything happen to you until I catch up to you. I won’t be able to find my arse or my elbows without you.”
“Aye to that, Sir.” Berr had said. “But that’s fishguts. And we both know it.”
Griare had become one of the best officers he had ever worked with. Organized, thorough, and knew when to get out of the way. And when to listen. He was a random rarity, in Berr’s experience. They respected each other, and better yet, they seemed to be becoming friends.
“Fiodek?” Griare’s grip had lingered on Berr’s shoulder. The Lieutenant’s glare made Berr pause as he fussed with his gear.
“Sir?”
“I mean it.” Griare had said.
Berr coughed now, spat white chips of stone dust from his teeth, and wiped flakes from the corners of his eyes. Orksen Island was covered in chalky fragments that crept everywhere, coating their hair and skin in a skin of crusty, dry white slivers. He coughed again, dry and pointless.
The Shastre cough. He was still adjusting to the change in pH on this planet, where the air was like breathing deck-cleanser. At least at first. The three weeks of injections aboard their battlecarrier had helped his lung’s surfactant adjust, but the cough lingered, stabbing fingers of irritation and pressure into the inner edges of his ribs.
Now, with the round he had taken, his chest flared into fissures of pain, angry at every cough.
Berr grunted and pivoted behind him, signaling to the male and female trooper next in the stack who squatted there, waiting on his word. They stared like tigers watching Berr decide on his orders.
“Badmix. Migve.” Berr whispered. “Cut across this street.” He knifed his hand at a blown-out, two-storey wreck across from him. “Grab cover on that corner. Sight down the starboard angle, on my two o’clock, and see if we’re clear for that side.”
“Aye, Bear.” They said.
“On my signal.” Berr said, pivoted back, and sighted down the street.
So, so quiet. Like a hunter waiting in a hide.
Just like it was a second before that bastard shot me.
A dry, crisped leaf tumbled across the two ruts in the clay road, pirouetted in a breeze, and tumbled against a shattered curb.
He held up a finger.
“Go.” He grunted, and pointed across the road. He squinted through the twin alloy pins at the end of his muzzle, and waited to kill anything that twitched.
Badmix outpaced Migve as she sprinted into the alley opposite Berr, followed fast by her larger counterpart. They slammed the backs of their dirt-scuffed, blue armoured vests into the clay-brick wall of the building and looked to the clouds overhead as they caught their breath. Badmix swung into a low crouch and leaned out over a pock-marked set of mortar steps, scanning down Berr’s side of the street. Migve’s rifle muzzle panned just above her head. The solid azure line and arrowhead, that designated her rank of able seaman, crested to the brow-rim of her black helmet and pointed down the road of roofless homes and smashed-out stores.
Berr remembered painting the arrow’s wings on her helmet just four weeks ago to celebrate her promotion. He had never seen Badmix cry before. That night, around a blazing beach-fire, he had seen tears rise in her eyes in a tidal creep of pride.
But she had managed to keep them contained.
They perched on the corner for three minutes, waiting. Badmix peeked over at Berr, and then nodded at him.
Berr turned and pointed at the next two in the stack.
“Gauzer. Dogfood.” Berr said, thumbing at the medic and his best friend. The two were inseparable; their matching tattoos read Not for glory; For my brother in scrolling script on their right shoulders. “Haul taut up into the starboard line. On the lee of the staircase and doorway. Clear it and stack it. Then lie to until you hear otherwise. On my signal.”
“Aye, Bear.” they said in unison.
“And knock that bilge off.” Berr muttered. “It’s creepy as frock.”
The two men grinned and bounced on their heels.
Berr glanced back over to his two prone shooters across the road, and signalled them that he was sending more forward. Migve nodded. Berr saw that his shoulders were anxious and tight, his hand wrapping and re-wrapping around his rifle-grip.
“Go.” Berr said, and they loped around him and sprinted off, their shoulders scraping against the cracker-dry bricks as they picked their way to safety, sighting into the shadows and blown-out windows ahead and across from them.
Just five more to tuck in to safe slots along this road. That’s all he had to do. Three more positions, including himself, just one more time, all safe, all fine, all ‘Lunen Blue’.
Then repeat it a hundred times until he got them all home. Or at least back to the battlecarrier. Then he could finish his argument with Lois.
It would take forever to be able to send back to his wife now. He’d have to wait until he could breathe without her noticing the pain, or any hesitation when he spoke.
Better not to bother, he thought, and not try to hide the hit I just took.
She’d only see it anyway. Somewhere.
We’ve been married so long, we’re probably psychic.
He nodded behind him at the next two.
“Paperback. Milk-Crate.” He pointed laterally across the street, to a doorway that arched open like bowed legs. “Doorway, Port side. My eleven o’clock. Go.”
He listened at the scuffy, reassuring slaps of his men’s boots as they dashed for safety across the killing zone, then thump into the solid haven of cover in the doorway.
Berr counted them all again. Even though he didn’t need to, even though he knew he only had three left to send, and that they were accounted for. He counted them again.
He rolled back against the wall. Next to him, his comms operator perked his eyebrows.
“De Big Dogs, eh?” Howler said, in the clipped, twisty accent of the Chireesh. It had taken Berr four months of their eight-month voyage aboard the Tenth Regiment’s dropship-battlecarrier, the Whaleshark, to master the accent and decipher Howler’s subtexts.
But, as difficult as it had been for Berr to learn the Chireesh’s accent, Howler’s keen intelligence had made the struggle worth it. He’d been thrilled to discover his Pipes was a genius with languages. Howler had already pieced together the basics of the enemy’s tumbling, guttural dialect through his careful monitoring of their sparse comm-sends.
The black shark-fin antennae of Howler’s Tactical Information Management Array System, the Timas, bumped the back of his helmet as he nodded at Berr and waited.
“Big dogs.” Berr said.
Behind the comms-op, the massive, brooding black shroud of the Manta mech-pack cloaked Stomps, his heavy gunner. The turbine housed in the rear of the mech whispered and whined, and the servos in the mech-arm hissed a thin hydraulic thread of noise as it helped the muscular woman hoist her Narwhal heavy-gun. The gun clunked as she thumbed the barrel selector, and threaded a round into its receiver. The three barrels of the weapon yawned, waiting to smash her enemies apart with torrential rapid-rounds, large-bore shots, and grenades. Hungry for more devastation like she had wrought on Berr’s sniper.
She had originally balked at Berr using himself to flush out the shooter and leaving his safety up to her. But as always, she had proven herself.
The mech’s legs unfolded silently as Stomps stood up from where she crouched, silently hoisting the massive turbine that powered and cooled the gun. Fingers of her brown hair spilled down from her helmet and curled around her determined face, framed by the Manta’s cowl. Behind her, Third Squad’s flame-man, Steambath, squeezed out around the Manta and leaned forward.
“We’re ready as that wind now, my son.” The Torcher muttered to Berr. “Today ain’t getting any younger squatting here on our arses. Let’s get at her.”
Berr couldn’t suppress his grin. He bore a genuine reverence for the older flamer operator. Steambath was a genuine shellback. He had burned his way across every island in the atoll, always at the front of the flanks and immune to fatigue, like most of his people from his rocky, barren island back on Lunen. His eyebrows and close-trimmed hair, shingled with thin grey patches, were permanently singed and curled from the charring burn of his weapon. The flamer in Steambath’s hands seethed and drooled droplets of fire from its charred muzzle, sizzling into a puddle of black sludge next to his dirty, chipped boot.
“Aye.” Berr said. “You two have the farthest. Get up to the bow. I need you in the nose when the rattle starts. Up the deep starboard, ahead of Gauzer and Dogfood.”
“Right where I should be.” Stomps said, and thumbed her gun onto large-bore. The weapon thunked as it primed a fist-sized sabot round, and the turbine’s high whine lowered to a growl.
“On my signal.”
“Aye to that, Bear.” Stomps said. She turned back to the Torcher. “You ready?”
“Stomps, by’s, don’t be wasting my time with fishguts interrogatives.” Steambath chuckled and waggled the long cylinder of flame-fuel screwed into his weapon’s belly. “I was ready when your father’s seed was swimmin’. Let’s get on with it, now, my sons.”
Berr levelled his rifle out. The tether-cable that attached his gun to the hub in the center of his chest-armour squeaked as it spooled out. He sighted down the street.
Still nothing.
Potentially hundreds of them.
And nothing.
Saints-damn this place.
“Go.” Berr said.
He watched Stomps and Steambath jog around him, then hug the cover of each building’s buckled walls as they bolted to where Gauzer and Milk-Crate hunched into balls of aiming tension in the recesses of their crumpled stairway. The Manta-mech and Torcher swept past their two squadmates, and crunched into cover ahead of them all.
Howler stiffened next to him. “Movement.” He said, his voice twisted by the butt of his rifle.
“Where?” Berr said, and cursed. Howler had eyes like a Heron-gunner. But Berr should have seen it.
“Down d’air. Deep Port. End of dat road.” The Pipes-man whispered. “Two ‘eads. Peekin’ out around deh corner. I think d’air gonna do deh run for deh ‘ill. Stragglers, maybe.”
“Let everybody know, Howler.” Berr muttered.
~
The rest of Upon a Wake of Flame will be released on Amazon for Kindle and on Kobo in August 2013.
© 2013 B.C. Laybolt
July 11, 2013
“Where have you been? ” They asked. “Why, writing, of course.” He said.
One day, one of my all-time favourite old-school Warhammer writers, William King, wrote a short story, and my head exploded.
Which kept me very, very busy over the last two months.
To promote his independent production of his Kormak series, King wrote a prequel short story that is very, very good.
It might even be better than some of his books. (I say this having started his first in the series, Stealer of Flesh, free on Amazon right now.)
http://www.amazon.com/Stealer-Flesh-Kormak-Book-ebook/dp/B007OWVJ4I/ref=pd_sim_b_1
I was disappointed with ‘Stealer’. The lack of a solid editor seems obvious, even to me.
But that’s when I felt my author cortex swell, pop out through my forehead, and splatter the wall of the kitchen like old spaghetti.
Because I realized that I could do that. I’m an Indy. I can do anything I want. Joe Konrath says so (http://jakonrath.blogspot.ca/).
As long as it’s Good.
So, that’s what I did.
After seven drafts of revision and editing , I think I might have gotten close to the Good horizon. I can see it if I squint.
So that’s what I’ve been doing in May and June. And it paid off. I learned tonnes about completing a project.
And, posting the short to Amazon will be an excellent dry run for my book’s release in November.
Ah, you say, HE may think it’s good. But HE may be delusional.
And you may be right. That’s why I’m going to post the first section tomorrow here on the blog, naked as a jaybird, for your perusal, in my next post. And you tell me if you’d turn the next page.
Deal?
The short story, Upon a Wake of Flame, will be available this August.
July 10, 2013
Hanging out with heavily armoured dudes. Chills; I tell ya!
Catherine Croft and her gang did a wonderful job organizing a great day for the kid-nerds at Mill Village Consolidated School for the May the 4th Be With You event, and I was lucky enough to get to go.
The gang from Maritime Heavy Armour (https://www.facebook.com/MaritimeHeavyArmour?fref=ts) thrilled the kids, and me, by showing up and posturing with us all in an appropriately menacing way.
We played some tabletop 40K, chatted about figs and gaming, and I got to do a dry run of my book promotion in front of real people. So that was cool.
And my mom bought me fries.
It was the only event of it’s kind permitted by the Lawyers of the Empire (Star Wars, not Warhammer, the Inquisition would never have allowed such a thing) to show a screening of all the Star Wars movies. Catherine even had a large outdoor projector, and showed it as a drive-in feature.
The Vulcan intimidated me most.
One never usually gets this close to a Space Marine. And Deathwatch sightings are especially rare. And one never, never gets to actually HUG a Deathwatch Space Marine. But I did. Turns out I shared an ancient secret Mechanicus armour technique, and he was most grateful. And hugs are nice. He deals with a lot of Grim Darkness, so I thought he could use the bro-love.
And then there was THIS, which the caricature guy did for me, which shall now be framed in my office. Terribly, I never caught his name:
Awesome time had by all!
May 1, 2013
It Must Be a Sign.
(Or, how to try to market a book that is not yet available).
Ah, Staples. How I do love you so.
My display sign for the Mill Village May the 4th Be With You Comic-Con has arrived, along with 48 postcards for To Drown in Ash, to hand out at our l’il convention.
My mom’s even coming.
So you know it’s gonna be big.
Neat experiment in marketing there. The blurb, blog address, wiki address and release information are on the back. Plus there’s room for a signature (if anyone there is into that sort of thing).
The poster turned out to look amazing, in my humble opinion. I’m basking a bit.
And my awesome art guy even came up with a hand-stamped pattern indicating the top-secret, intelligence-type military theme for the back.
Snappy.
April 14, 2013
Regarding a little Comic-Con in the middle of the forest on the Medway River.
Pleasant surprises are nice. And finding out about new gatherings of Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Comics fans are nice too. Especially after a long, dark, yucky winter. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself invited to one.
The May The 4th Be With You weekend and Comic-Con is in its first year, tucked away in the Mill Village Consolidated School on the sprightly Medway River in Queen’s County, Nova Scotia. A handy map to the event is included in the linked ad. It’s on Friday and Saturday, May 3rd and 4th, 2013.
I’ll be there, skulking around grumbling about how Warhammer was so much better in the old days, and displaying some of my painted figs, dioramas, and other antiques. I may bring my boxed version of my all-time favourite RPG, The Call of Cthulhu, to wave small children away from.
I’m told that a member of the 501st, my favourite clone squad, may make an appearance, so I’ll need to be there to tell them that they should recruit me into their unit, as I know how things turn out at the end of Star Wars Battlefront 2, and could therefore be very important to their well-being. Rumours are that the Canadian Heavy Armour Group will also be making an appearance, and that’s very cool indeed.
I might also be passing out some promo cards for To Drown In Sand, and could be easily intimidated into signing them, should anyone see fit to menace me thoroughly enough. While I understand it’s a bit odd to promote a book before its available (we’re charging full speed at our first week of November 2013 release date), the mighty Catherine Croft assures me that it’s perfectly acceptable to promote the book’s upcoming release while helping celebrate the convention.
The Comic-Con starts at 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 4th, and I’ll be giggly happy to answer any questions about RPG’s, module writing, Game-Mastering, or have a chat about writing or Independent E-Pubbing.
So, if you happen to be in the area, and if you need to scratch the nerd itch (I constantly do; it chafes so), come on out on Friday night and Saturday, and support the event. Bring your friends!
(I still plan to warn the 501st about the Emperor’s plan. It has to make a difference).
