Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 83

The Five Year Plan, Part III

If you’re joining this series already in progress, check out Part I and Part II.

Yesterday, I talked a bit about my business goals and operating in a deficit for the first few years. Obviously, it’s not ideal, but these plans are fluid and built on, what I hope, are realistic expectations. I wouldn’t have a very good business plan to say, as a virtual unknown, that I’m going to sell eight million copies by November and then fail marvelously. No, I think modest achievement is the best route in these early, leaner years of development. Besides, like I said, the plan is fluid and open to readjustment as needed. Additionally, all those sunk costs are a one-time deal. Once the book or short stories earn out, it’s all profit after that. Remember, e-books are forever and the more work you can get out there, the more eyes you’ll attract. And who doesn’t love finding a new author and discovering their copious amounts of prior work? So, an initial deficit is OK because you’re looking on capitalizing the investment at a later date. Of course, if you can get an immediate return, all the better, but let’s not to be too delusional simply for the sake of practicality.

Today we’re going to look at the second half of my five-year plan, focusing on production schedule and writing plans, target audience, and goals beyond the initial five years.

And, of course, if you have any suggestions feel free to comment below.

 

Production Schedule and Writing Plans

For the first draft of EMERGENCE, I committed to a 1,000 word minimum per day, for a minimum of five days per week. Often, I was able to beat this daily writing goal, and in less than three months I produced an 86,000 word first draft.

Future first drafts should abide by that same standard. I will allow the work to “rest” for a period of three to four weeks, in order to fully divest myself from the work and re-approach it with a cleaner perspective as I work on the second draft.

Depending on the nature of my first-pass edits as I build toward a finalized second draft, I estimate a period of two to three months between the start of second round edits and submission to a professional editing service, such as Red Adept for novel-length work.

I began working on EMERGENCE in February 2014 and finished near the end of April. What I had not counted on was the production of my short story, CONSUMPTION, the writing and editing of which occupied the first week of June. I had begun editing EMERGENCE in the latter half of May, but paused for the entire period I was singly invested in my short story. As a result, I’ve had to alter my production schedule for my second novel as follows:

June – August 2014: second pass edits and development of the second draft of EMERGENCE
July 1, 2014: submit second draft of CONSUMPTION for content edit and incorporation of edits
August 2014: cover design for CONSUMPTION
August 2014: proofread of CONSUMPTION
September 15, 2014: Submit second draft of EMERGENCE to Red Adept
No later than October 2014: Submit CONSUMPTION for formatting development
October 2014: Release CONSUMPTION
October – December 2014: Review edits and incorporate changes for EMERGENCE
January 2015 – Line Edits for EMERGENCE
February 2015 – Cover design for EMERGENCE
March 2015 – Release EMERGENCE
April 2015 – Begin first draft of MUCKRAKER

This production schedule is a combination of hard and soft dates, with some built-in flexibility. It’s entirely possible that I will be able to complete the suggested content edits prior to the end of 2014 and begin line edits sooner than January 2015. The release of EMERGENCE in March 2015, nearly a full year after the release of its predecessor, CONVERGENCE, is a very realistic goal. Depending on the fluidity of my workflow during this period, it’s possible that my next novel will release sooner than March 2015. And, once all of the editing work is done, I’ll be able to focus fully on my third novel. April 2015 is sort of a last-gasp guesstimate, but I actually expect to be able to begin writing it sooner, rather than later. This timeline can be updated accordingly, as needed.

Targeted Audience

By targeting readers of speculative fiction, I expect to build a wider fan-base than I would by focusing on single-niche market. CONVERGENCE, for instance, is (I think) more of a mystery/thriller/espionage read that just happens to have some science fiction elements in it. I think it has a very contemporary feel to it, and is grounded in a familiar landscape. EMERGENCE continues this presentation, but is geared toward drawing in fast-paced action-thriller readers. Both function entirely under the auspices of speculative fiction.

Horror readers and dark fiction fans are the natural target audience for CONSUMPTION. Again, though, it falls nicely in the speculative fiction category. I think there is plenty of overlap in the sci-fi/horror/thriller genre that my body of work, when taken as a whole, should be able to garner some attention and a devoted readership.

Planned Marketing and Promotion

The first year is fairly conservative. As of June 2014, marketing efforts have been geared toward Twitter and Facebook. An eBookSoda promotion was purchased for cheap ($5), but failed to draw in any sales. I suspect there were a number of factors playing into the lack of success – few reviews available, a lack of promotional price (I kept the price at $3.99, treating the eBookSoda more as an announcement tool than a sale advertisement), and a lack of awareness surrounding my identity as an author.

If another eBookSoda promotion can be secured, I plan on purchasing an e-mail ad blast for the release of CONSUMPTION, which, I think, at a price of $0.99 will make blind-purchasing easier to swallow. Time will tell, of course.

Initially, I will be relying on the books themselves to promote my work. After three or four years, I will begin playing with price adjustments, and hopefully enough positive reviews will have accumulated to consider a BookBub advertisement.

The release of MUCKRAKER would be an ideal time to experiment with cheaper sale prices on both CONVERGENCE and EMERGENCE, in an effort to build up awareness of the forthcoming release.

Web Plan

Having established an official author site, the key will be in maintaining the site’s blog with regular updates and news of forthcoming releases. I expect that platform to be the central stopping point for readers. Of course, I can also be connected with on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.

News release announcements will also be made through my mailing list, once that becomes a viable option and I have a healthy number of subscribers to merit its use. My mailing list is still in its infancy, but I fully expect it to grow with future releases. Also, I did not have a mailing list prior to publishing CONVERGENCE, which, in hindsight, was a mistake. I’ll be able to readily advertise the mailing list to buyers of future works and will seriously consider reformatting CONVERGENCE at a future date to incorporate updated links, as well as excerpts of other available works.

Long-Term Goals

The first and foremost of my long-term goals is to make my independent author-publisher production a viable business, with a sufficient annual income, enough to allow me to quit my full-time day job and concentrate on my writing career.

I am approaching these first five years with an eye toward this business as a part-time endeavor, but a full-time passion. As these goals stretch beyond 2018, I would expect to have a demanding readership that relies on me for quality stories, and for the multiplication effect to take a firm hold in both sales and earnings, as well as audience.

So, my primary long-term goal is to make an additional $50K annually, with repeated success, prior to leaving my full-time job and focusing exclusively on writing and promoting my works. By 2020, and even further beyond, 2025, I should have a nice enough catalog of works to draw in more new readers, and have the flexibility to test a greater number of promotions.

So, there’s the plan!

Now, of course, the big question: how successful will I be? Only time will tell, naturally, but at least I have a stronger methodology in place and established goals to reach and parameters to work within. I’ll also be able to conduct routine reviews of these goals over the next few years and chart my progress. If I am successful, I can then make the necessary adjustments in goals. If I’m not successful, I’ll need to take a long, hard look at the plan, figure out where the failings occurred, and set a corrective course and re-plan.

The Five Year Plan, Part II

[For previous entry, see The Five Year Plan, Part I]

Yesterday, I introduced my need for a Five Year Plan, in the vein of Denise Grover’s three-part business plan and Susan Kaye Quinn’s longer-term strategy for managing your own independent publishing business. Go check out the previous post, linked to above, for the links to their articles.

Over the next two posts, I’ll be talking about my own Five Year Plan and briefly discussing my goals, financial plans, production schedule, pricing philosophy, and long-term goals. Hopefully other authors can find this helpful, and if you have any suggestions, concerns, comments, please sound off below!

Here we go!

 

Goal

My goal is two-fold:

1)      Present the public with solid, high-quality reads in multiple genres, under the overarching umbrella of “speculative fiction” (this is, fiction built around a “what if” conceit). My first two novel-length works, CONVERGENCE, and its follow-up EMERGENCE, will both be character-driven, science fiction thrillers. They are in the vein of works by Barry Eisler and Lee Child, with a dash of William Gibson high-tech “tomorrow’s future” technology. Future works may include horror, high-tech political thrillers, and additional novels that expand upon the world-building established in CONVERGENCE and EMERGENCE (collectively known as the DRMR series).

2)      Whereas the first goal is entirely driven by creative forces, the second goal deals with financial success in the arena of indie publishing. I fully expect to operate at a loss on the first two novels, as I will be an unknown name not in only the larger scope of publishing, but within the smaller community of independent author-publishers. Sales-wise, my first-year goals are quite small, bordering on non-existent, but reflect an increase with the publication of subsequent novels over the next five years.

Year One – 2014               100 sales

Year Two – 2015               500 sales

Year Three – 2016            1000 sales

Year Four – 2017              2000 sales

Year Five – 2018               3000 sales

These sales goals are quite modest, and I am not expecting to make a substantial enough living on my independently published work to supplant the income of my full-time day job. However, they are also completely fluid – target goals may be reached ahead of time and allow for readjusted goals as necessary.

Products

CONVERGENCE (sci-fi/thriller) – published (Feb. 21, 2014)
CONSUMPTION (horror, short story) – expected release Fall 2014
EMERGENCE (sci-fi/action-thriller) – expected release 2015
MUCKRAKER (political-crime thriller/mystery/suspense) – 2016
Third DRMR novel or horror novel – 2017

Pricing Strategy

This pricing strategy is meant to reflect the consumer demand, willingness, and perception of eBook prices, particularly in the realm of indie author-publishing. EBooks are cheaper, quicker, and easier to produce. Current etailer platforms allow for 50-70% royalties at higher price points (typically, $2.99 or above).

I believe that $3.99 is a very reasonable price point for a novel-length work that has been professionally edited and formatted. By keeping the price below the $5 threshold, buyers may be likelier to impulse purchase, and perhaps even buy more work in a single sale (binge-purchasing) as my catalog/backlist grows.

Short stories or novellas will be priced cheaply, between $0.99 – $1.99, depending on page count or word length. Ideally, these short stories would help to act as a gateway to longer works and capitalize on impulse purchases for readers of both short stories and cheap reads.

Financial Plan

The plan is to release at least one novel per year. Accounting for current finances, this appears to be a realistic goal. As my backlist of available titles grows, I expect sales to increase in correlation to a widening fan-base.

The first year will operate in the red. The expenses for editing (content and line edits, as well as proofreading), design work, and formatting were around $1500. Priced at $3.99, with a 70% return in royalty earning, I would need to sell roughly 555 novels to break even. Given that I am a virtual unknown with zero name or brand recognition, I’ve set a goal of making 100 sales in 2014, which (based solely on eBook sales) would generate an income of only $270.

I am counting on a multiplier effect to take hold within two to three years, allowing me to break even on my expenses by the third year. Fourth year income should offset production costs entirely, and allow for a positive net income by fifth year sales.

For future novels, I expect to spend $1500 – $2000 in production costs, but will work to reduce cost wherever possible. However, editing and cover design should are premium expenditures and there should not be any corner-cutting in those areas of necessity. For shorter stories or novellas, if CONSUMPTION is any sort of benchmark, I can produce equivalent products for under $500, depending on cost of editing and proofreading. The use of high quality pre-made covers, should I be able to find one that is sufficiently in synch with the story itself, can also be relied upon and help diminish the cost required to but the book to market.

 

Tomorrow, I’ll wrap up the discussion of my plan, so check back for part three in the a.m.

The Five Year Plan, Part I

Last week, I hit my thirty-fifth year on this rock.

One of my big life goals was to be a published author. I’d carried this dream around with me for at least half of all my years, if not longer, and I think this desire really solidified during a high school creative writing course under the guidance of Lisa Hunt. In some ways, I think she was my first fan and first really vocal supporter. I remember penning a series of detective fiction short stories over the course of five assignments, and I put a little “to be concluded” at the end of the fourth story. As we approached that final assignment, she returned our stories and mine had a big smiley face next to my end note with a “Yay!” [I prefer to think that this 'yay' was regarding the resolution of a growing theme that developed across the series and that she was genuinely happy about my work, and not the more pessimistic view of "yay, I never have to slog through another one of these stupid, piece of shit "stories" he turns in...."]

Those short stories have disappeared in the intervening years, but the fundamentals of story-telling that Mrs. Hunt instilled in me have remained. In fact, a short time after finishing that creative writing course, I returned to those detectives to produce my first novel. This was before self-publishing was any sort of viable option, so I did what all other writers of the early 2000s HAD to do and sent that book out to a number of literary agents. I then waited, and waited, and waited, then spent sporadic amounts of time rolling around in rejection letters or being duly ignored. (Mostly the latter.)

It’s probably for the best that I’ve lost that novel with the passage of time, along with many of those short stories. Looking back on it, the work strikes me as immature, although I think the core idea was sound and there might even be enough fodder to someday return to if it has merit.

But, this post isn’t really about looking back, even though I often find my own post-birthday reminisces to be about all the things I haven’t done, the things left unaccomplished, the failures I’ve collected rather than the successes I should be proud of. But that’s a whole other ball of wax.

Now that I’m a little bit older and probably none-to-only-a-little-bit the wiser for it, it’s high time I tried something different by looking ahead. Mostly because I did get to fulfill one of my big ambitions, which was to be a published author. Shortly after 2014 rolled around, I released CONVERGENCE, and went from writer to author-publisher. Which now means, I need a plan.

If the goal was to be published before I hit 35, then I nailed it with little time to spare. But what comes next? What do I need to do by the time I hit 40? Or 45?

Writing is its own pursuit, and that’s fine and noble. However, being an author, and, I think, particularly when being an author-publisher where one individual has to wear multiple hats, a bit more is needed.

Being an author-publisher means running your writing operation as a business, and businesses need, yup, you guessed it, business plans. I need to forecast, I need to set goals, I need to work my ass off to hit my own self-defined levels of success. Success comes in a couple different ways – there’s financial success and creative success – and I need to weigh which is more important at this time, in the immediate, and figure out how one type of success can lead to the other over the next few years.

Hence, my Five Year Plan.

This is a topic I’ve been thinking about since hearing Denise Grover’s interview on the Self-Publishing Roundtable podcast in April. Grover wrote a three-part business plan (part One, Two, Three), which is collected, along with a number of other valuable business tips for indie writers at The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing. Also, a very timely tweet popped up not long ago on the topic of planning from Indie Author News and Susan Kaye Quinn’s guest post on thinking long-term in the realm of indie publishing. Quinn is the author of INDIE AUTHOR SURVIVAL GUIDE, and the Mindjack trilogy. And I’m pretty sure she gets all the credit for inventing Bollypunk with her The Dharian Affairs trilogy.

In order to figure out how to build my own five-year plan, I turned to both of her very helpful posts, as well. First up was this excerpt from her INDIE AUTHOR SURVIVAL GUIDE, as well as Grover’s own five-year plan and how she created it.

While I’ve recognized the indie publishing gambit as a self-starter business on its own, I have been a bit lazy in carrying out the full implementation of what it means, exactly. My efforts have been limited, and little of it committed to paper or word processor. I keep track of the one-time expenses, monthly net profit, and monthly net sales of my one book across its various outlets in an Excel spreadsheet, and that’s about it currently. Whatever little bit of long-range planning there is rests rather uneasily in my head, which makes setting benchmarks goals and measuring success a rather iffy proposition.

The importance of having a plan in place, rather than winging it, crystallized a bit further earlier this month. Back in Oct. 2013, I had submitted the manuscript of CONVERGENCE to Angry Robot, during their two month open door period. After growing decidedly impatient at the continual delays in decision from the Harper Voyager open sub period, I never expected to hear from ARB. Until, in early June, I did. Angry Robot requested the full manuscript, a rather surprising, if not short-lived, bit of excitement. Now, let me say for the record here, Angry Robot Books is hands-down one of my absolute, drop-dead favorite publishers. They really seem to have their act together, and their cadre of authors that I follow all seem to be really happy with them. If there was one publisher I’d really be enthusiastic about signing with, it would be Angry Robot. Getting an offer to review the full manuscript was no small thing, so I was truly delighted at their reaching out to me and responding well to my effort. However, not wanting to mislead them or risk damaging things later on down the road, I explained that I had already self-published the book. Any chances of having it published by ARB and joining the ranks of Lauren Beukes, Chuck Wendig, Chris F. Holm, Michael Boatman, and Adam Christopher quickly evaporated, but I do have a solid contact now for future works, should I want to pursue a traditional path with them later. And that’s really freaking awesome, I think!

Also evaporated – the chance to have any books in this series published by ARB alongside CONVERGENCE. Which means, no editor, no cover designer, and no marketing or publicity for any past or future DRMR novels. While they expressed a desire to see any future work not in the DRMR series (and I’ll certainly consider them, once I approach those future ideas), as far as this brand of books go, I’m on my own. And it’s simply not enough to stay the course and do what I’ve been doing.

When I set out with publishing CONVERGENCE, the intent was to stick with self-publishing for the long hall. Nothing has changed in that regard, although there is certainly potential to grow into more of a hybrid-author model, rather than purely independent. And with CONSUMPTION on the docket for a fall release, and EMERGENCE dropping in 2015, I really need to sit down and examine the state of affairs of this thing I do.

So, the plan. Much needed.

And I’ll be talking about it some more tomorrow, so check back then!

UPDATE: Part II is now live.

Where to Find Me

Facebook has become a bit of a headache lately, with the service opting to focus more heavily on filtered feed content, advertising, and promoting paid posts over basic updates and content.

As such, I started dabbling a little bit with Google+ recently and figured it might be a good time to post a comprehensive list of all the various ways you can find me online. It’s always nice to hear from readers, so hopefully those of you out there will connect and engage.

You can find me here at this blog, obviously: http://michaelpatrickhicks.com. You can subscribe to the site or follow by e-mail over on the right. Feel free to check out previous blog posts in the archives and drop a line in the comments at the bottom. There is also a Contact button in the upper menu that you can reach me at. In the future, I expect to be making greater use of my mailing list, so feel free to sign up on the upper right-hand side, or by clicking here.

On Google+ http://plus.google.com/u/0/118298043352697628891/posts

Twitter: http://twitter.com/MikeH5856

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7909523.Michael_Patrick_Hicks

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authormichaelpatrickhicks

Anyone of these options is a great way to stay up to date, and I’ll have some big announcements on future works in the coming months that you won’t want to miss!

On Editing

Now that I’m neck-deep in editing duties for the rest of the summer (year?), I thought it a good time to talk about my approach to mining my awful first drafts for something a bit less reprehensible.

The ability to edit your own work is an empowering tool, but don’t dare to think that your own skills, single-handedly, are enough. Unless you have a ridiculous command of grammar, sentence structure, plot development, and character arcs, treat your own edits as nothing more than a first pass and then hand the manuscript over to the professionals.

You need multiple sets of eyes going over your work multiple times. When you’re editing, you need to be merciless, but, odds are, you’ll still be wearing your kid gloves and harboring some reticence over what scenes should be trimmed (or cut altogether) and how clunky the dialogue may be. You need a trained word-murderer on your side who lacks compassion and pity. That’s how final books are made – with tears, blood, and booze, on the wrong side of a pointed blade in a dark, stanky alley, next to the rotting corpses of dead beatniks.

So, editors, yeah. They’re pretty damn vital and very helpful.

When I’m writing the first draft of any work, I’m aware of the crutch-words I lean (way too) heavily on. The whole point of the first draft is just to get the story down and produce the work in full. Finishing the damn thing is the only goal a first draft has, and, by nature, it is going to suck. It will be imperfect and crass, but not impossible to salvage. You need to get some distance between yourself and that first draft. I tend to let the work sit for a while, maybe a month, before returning to it for the second draft. This gives me plenty of time to forget about the story and come back to it with fresh eyes, and as a more critical reader.

Now, one caveat – when I say I’m aware of my crutch-words, I mean I have a vague notion of what they are in general. It’s always a bit of a surprise when I learn how frequently I rely on any given crutch-word in that first draft. Sometimes, I even discover new ones depending on the nature of the work at hand. But, that’s why it’s a first draft.

While the work is festering, I’m working up a spreadsheet of known crutches and tallying up those heavily used filler words and constructs. You’ll have your own crutches, of course, and likely you’ve got crutches you aren’t even aware of (but a good editor will certainly make you aware of it!). After working with a content editor for CONVERGENCE, I came away with a much stronger grasp of my deficiencies as a writer, so I have a better idea of what I need to watch out for and what needs to be weeded out. Below is an example of one of the spreadsheets I keep between first and second draft for my own first-pass edits. This will be modified again between draft 2 and 3 when my editors come back with their notes, but it’s a solid place for me to begin. It’s also a measurable illustration of progress, in addition to the lovely red marks, slashes, and notations of Word’s Track Changes (another very valuable tool that I highly recommend using).

Draft 1
Draft 2


like
198
80


look
188
54


it was
186
71


so
173
67


just
127
42


only
119
37


well
113
48


there was
97
28


blood
86
40


dead
61
39


there were
47
29

The numbers for some of those words and constructs, such as ‘there was’, ‘there were’, and ‘it was’, are still pretty high in draft two. I’ll be able to knock them down further as I go through the second draft and continue my first-pass edits, and further still with the help of a skilled line editor. With a handy thesaurus, a bottle of Jack, and a straight razor, I’ll be able to tighten things up even more. There’s no easier way of getting rid of shitty “There was…” sentences than by slashing and burning the whole damn page away. Or you could just, I dunno, figure out a more active construct for your phrasing. Whichever.

Another big stumbling block for me is the dreaded infodump, which is throwing a hell of a lot of dense information at a reader. It was a sticking point in earlier drafts of CONVERGENCE, and my content editor helped me overcome a lot of these problems. I was only vaguely aware of how serious the problem was as I worked solo on the first few drafts, but wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. Of course, the biggest problem was in thinking that all of it was necessary to tell the story even though I knew it was problematic.

So, side point: trust your gut instincts and look at your work critically. If you get a tingling sensation telling you something isn’t quite right, then get to the bottom of it. Figure it out, manipulate it, see how things flow by deleting stuff. While it’s important for you to know the world you’re crafting as a writer, the reader doesn’t necessarily need to know every little detail. Odds are, your manuscript is a lot more flexible than you realize. This is also where that old adage of Show, don’t tell comes into play. Say your characters are walking a long distance in that epic fantasy behemoth you’re writing. Are you better off writing about their blood feet, starving bellies, and drop-dead exhaustion, or do you want to tell the reader that from Point A to Point B it is 111,578,357 kilometers and attempt to describe, in excruciating detail, soil composition, the shape of every freaking rock and plant along the way, the contents of each person’s rucksack, Bloshnarfrog’s love of pickles and how many rotting teeth he has, and the 11 millenniums of history between those two points? Be judicious, but also be smart; try to put yourself in the reader’s head and ask yourself, does any of this shit really matter to the story I’m serving?

OK, back to that infodump problem. Naturally, it turned out all those little details I was throwing in for page upon page? Damn near all of it got edited right the hell out of the manuscript. What little was left was more evenly distributed, broken up with dialogue, and heavily modified. So, if you read my book and found yourself frustrated by the infodump…be glad you didn’t read an earlier, unedited draft.

Infodump was big on my mind when writing EMERGENCE, and, given the nature of first drafts, I wasn’t quite sure how untamed it would be. It didn’t take me too long to discover how bad it was and to set about correcting it. A part of me thinks I wouldn’t have known to really be on the lookout for it if not for my previous hurdles with CONVERGENCE. Instead, it was at the forefront of my mind, and I was determined not to repeat some of those same huge mistakes.

And there’s the good news – editing is a cumulative, educational experience.

A few years ago, I had taken a copy editing course and was able to apply some of that knowledge to my own writing. While it helped, my own efforts paled in comparison to a professional editor. Before submitting my work to Red Adept, I’d probably gone through three or four drafts of CONVERGENCE and had read through it multiple times, marking it up and making lots and lots of changes. The sample edit I received from Red Adept when shopping for an editor contained nearly 250 revisions in a 1,000 word sample and 25 comments/notes in four pages of material. This bit of evisceration was humbling and entirely helpful. So, again, I must stress the importance of having a professional editor on your side.

I learned a lot just from that sample edit. Notes from the content editor and line editor made my weaknesses even more apparent, and gave me a great place to begin making corrections to build a stronger manuscript.

Those notes from CONVERGENCE helped me get through the first draft of my short story CONSUMPTION, and built a very solid foundation in preparing my first-pass edits on EMERGENCE. Of course, those notes are only a starting point. My new manuscripts are very different beasts than CONVERGENCE, and each will have their own unique flaws and problems and wrinkles that only an editing pro will help catch and correct.

Much like the first draft, the second draft’s goal is not to create a perfect, final manuscript. It’s only to get closer and closer to a far-flung, likely unreachable, ideal. These are baby steps of varying sizes. Even with some short-hand knowledge of the editing process under my belt, I know there is still a long road ahead of me before I can say this book is finally done, but I will, at least, be just a little bit closer.

Things To Do

Now that summer is nearly here, I’m looking ahead to the things I need to accomplish over the next few weeks and back-half of 2014. The agenda may be small, but the tasks are large!

I need to:

Finish developing my Five Year Plan (and post about that here soonish)


Send CONSUMPTION to the editor in July and work with my cover artist in August


Work on the third draft of CONSUMPTION and send it off for formatting for a Fall release


Edit the second draft of EMERGENCE by September, when I ship it off my content editor


Incorporate all those necessary changes the content editor discovers and get the next draft of EMERGENCE ready for my line editor before the end of 2014


Schedule cover design and formatting for EMERGENCE for a 2015 launch


Start researching for my next book and be ready to write once (if not before) all the finishing touches are put on the above-listed works


Make sure all of this years expenditures are organized and ready for 2015′s tax preparation


Get organized for 2015 and 2016′s output!

ELEANOR: A Review

Last week, Jason Gurley sent out a free advanced copy of Eleanor to his mailing list subscribers, of which I am fortunate enough to be one (you should go join it!). I’d been looking forward to reading this one for a while, so, naturally, I dug in as soon as I could on the afternoon it hit my in-box.

Maybe it’s the brief mention of Peter Benchley’s Jaws early on, or the frantic consternation of a mother single-handedly dealing with her young children, but for whatever reason, the opening chapters seemed to be channeling a very strong early Steven Spielberg vibe for me. Maybe it’s just being an 80s kid, but I could see the young Eleanor and her sister, Esmerelda, as an E.T.-era Drew Barrymore, and the horrific automobile accident that sets the story in motion was gut-twisting and horrific.

Whatever that ephemeral it is, or maybe it’s simply the sepia-toned gleam of nostalgia, unrequited love, and sentimental what-ifs that surround his characters, Gurley is able to capture it with aplomb. His writing sucked me in from the get-go, and I found his ability to form portraits of his characters and their sadness, their heartache, their recriminations, and the horrors that life inflicts upon them, to be utterly compelling. The language is clear and precise, and at times I felt a bit like Eleanor herself after learning of her new ability to pass through multiple worlds. More than once I felt as if I’d been physically transported to the rain-soaked coasts of Oregon, sharing in the sorrow of his strained creations.

Eleanor is a weighty book, heavy with emotional strife, but also a resonance of brilliant importance and one that deftly maneuvers between life’s ordinary and extraordinary moments. Most of all, the story is eminently relateable – we all wish we could undo the damage and take back the pain. In some ways, those horrors are what ultimately define us, our scars are a collection of life lived, but if we had the choice, if we had the ability to redo certain things, wouldn’t we? And depending on the nature of those wounds, wouldn’t there a be a certain moral necessity in hitting a reset button?

There’s no easy answers, but Gurley’s work certainly provokes a reaction, ranging from tear-jerking scenes to emotional triumph, and certain philosophical thoughts after the last page is read. While Eleanor’s story is wrapped up at the novel’s end, and I felt supremely satisfied by the work itself, I still wanted more and wished there were more pages to read, more worlds to jump through. This story will be staying with me for a long, long while.

Eleanor releases on June 27. I highly recommend that you pre-order at Amazon, and let Mr. Gurley know that you support his work in exchange for a lovely, complimentary, and very limited sketch book.

Michigan’s Blue Economy

Michael Patrick Hicks:

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes it inspires a whole book…

The Blue Economy is a concept that’s been on my mind for a while, and I touch on it a bit in my next novel, EMERGENCE, along with seasteading. But, that stuff is for the future. Be sure to check out the report from University Research Corridor for more information on where Michigan, specifically, could soon be headed.

Looking at this picture, though, the first word that popped into mind was “refuge.” Maybe just because it’s a Monday work-a-day struggle and I’m longing to get back up north for a summertime weekend getaway… Or, maybe, because there’s a larger story shaping up in my head, and that little concept of refuge is so much bigger.

I’ve got some research ahead of me, but the ideas are boiling and melding together pretty quickly. I may need to revise some future release plans, so we’ll see what happens next. But I’m definitely feeling those story-telling gears grinding again.

Originally posted on Michigan in Pictures:

Where Two Waters Meet, photo by Robby Ryke

Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, the three universities that make up Michigan’s University Research Corridor (URC), have released a report titled “Innovating for the Blue Economy“. The report cites nearly $300 million in awards for water-related research and outreach from 2009 to 2013 that have led to innovations from dealing with invasive species and monitoring water quality to finding ways to optimize water use in agriculture. Their news release on the report prepared by the Anderson Economic Group (AEG) says in part:

AEG’s analysis showed that Michigan ranked fourth in the nation in the percentage of jobs associated with industries related to water, at 718,700.

“One in five Michigan jobs is tied to having good and plentiful water,” said AEG founder and CEO Patrick Anderson. “It is an important economic driver in Michigan, and…

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The Big 35 (For Me) and a CONSUMPTION Preview (For You)

Today’s my thirty-fifth birthday, and I thought I’d give you all a sneak peek at my next release.

CONSUMPTION is a dark, adult short horror story revolving around six guests who have been invited to a blind twelve-course tasting meal. Of course, they have no idea what they’re in store for, nor do they realize the true nature of that peculiar tasting meat plated before them. Not until it’s far too late.

You can read the Consumption PDF excerpt here, but first a word of warning. The material is pretty raw and graphic, and definitely not intended for all the kiddos out there. Also, it has not yet made its way to an editor, nor a proofreader. I did some small work on it, but I am fully aware that it needs much, much better guidance than I can provide alone. It’ll be going to an editor this summer, though, and I’m hoping to have plans for a fall release finalized soon. These few pages of the story may, or may not, reflect the finished piece, and you’re getting only part of a story that is not yet entirely finished and in its final form. So, consider this and heed it well.

Feel free to share your thoughts below. Thumbs up or down on what you read? Am I on the right track with this thing, best as you can tell? If you read CONVERGENCE, what do you think of this rather drastic jump from sci-fi thriller to food-gore horror? Sound off below!

To stay up to date on the release of CONSUMPTION and other future works, be sure to subscribe or follow this blog. You can also sign up for my mailing list, or join me on Facebook and Twitter. And, be sure to check out CONVERGENCE, available now!

Sick Day Productiveness

This past weekend, I took a small break from editing the first draft of my second novel to work on a short story whose kernel of an idea demanded immediate attention and then blossomed, nearly fully formed.

In between having a new water heater installed by my awesome brother-in-law and trying to get our overgrown yard back up to snuff after lots of rain (and during the course of said lawn work, I managed to twist my ankle…), my weekend was filled with a ton of writing. I think I hit some personal bests pounding out this bit of fiction, typing up more than three thousand words each day.

Then, last night, I got hit with some kind of stomach bug or a severely upset stomach. Anyway, it waylaid me for Monday and forced me into taking a sick day from the day job. On the other hand, despite feeling like crap, I managed to finish up the story and topped out at over 4K, so definitely a new word count record for me.

And, I managed it despite the “help” of my frequent collaborator.

Writing Cat says, “Write harder!”

I also hewed pretty closely to my proposed ten thousand word limit, with the story topping out at a smidge over 11,000.

I’m not ready to say too much about this short story yet, other than to tell you it’s not a science fiction piece and it has nothing whatsoever to do with my novel, CONVERGENCE. Nope, instead, this one is a straight-up horror gore-fest, (and a horror story that I haven’t seen approached in a manner quite like this, but if I’m wrong, I’m sure I will hear about it), so consider yourself warned. There is a fair amount of editing to do on it, particularly since it’s currently a very rough draft and with much of it written in a sickly daze, but hopefully I can release it by the Fall. Look for more details in the near future!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to have some more hot tea and a nice bland tortilla.