Kyell Gold's Blog, page 25

Things I Learned from Camouflage

Last week, about seven months after I posted the beginning, I posted the last part of Camouflage, a 99,400-word novel. I’ve written previously about how it came to be (in the introduction to the novel itself), and now that it’s over, I thought I’d write about a few of the things I’ve learned.

I’ve learned that when a story grabs me the way this one did, I can ride it all the way to the end. When I came up with the twist that makes Camouflage a novel rather than a short story, I was intrigued enough that I never grew bored. The characters came to life for me, and the story has a simple enough formula that I can hang decorations on it and still plow forward.

I’ve learned that I can keep interest in an episodic novel online, which is harder than it sounds. Writing bite-sized scenes was–well, mostly I wrote the way I always do and just chose the segments to highlight suspense. To my delight, there were ample moments for suspense in the story. I first tried this back when I wrote Shadow of the Father (though I didn’t post that online), but sometimes it’s good to go back and refresh your skills.

I’ve learned what an orchiectomy is.

I’ve learned a lot about medieval Europe, and Lyon (Tigue) in particular. I could study that stuff for ages (ha ha).

I’ve learned that I have a fair number of white (and one grey) tiger fans. Hopefully one or two more now.

I’ve learned that my readers are pretty smart, or at least have learned a lot about the way I write. Several people guessed where things were going, and even if they weren’t right, they enjoyed speculating, and I enjoyed being able to watch the experience of reading in slowed-down time, as it were. I’m going to miss that, although I confess it’ll be something of a relief to not have to post something every Tuesday and Thursday morning.

Would I do this again? Maybe. A lot of it depends on what happens next, and that’s something I’ve been asked over and over. Right now, I don’t know. I have interest from a publisher and an artist, so it will likely be a print book at some time in the future, but first I want to go back over the manuscript and fix a few things. I already have some ideas for places I want to smooth the story over, little things to change here and there. The main story won’t change, but I think the writing can be improved (it can always be improved). So I’ll work on that this year, and hopefully toward the fall, I’ll be able to announce something about where you can find Camouflage in print. And e-book, and maybe audiobook if I can find someone willing to narrate gruesome scenes.

Anyway, it’s been really a wonderful ride. Thank you guys for sharing it with me–your encouragement and enthusiasm really made this a great experience. I had imagined getting to part forty or so and posting it to one or two comments, wondering if anyone would still be interested…but you guys bugged me when I forgot to post on time, jumped on the segments when they went up, and talked about them a lot, and so it never became a chore. All the

But not too soon, okay?

Why E-Books Are Not MP3s

One of the things I get asked a lot is “I bought the print version of your book; can I get the e-book version for free?”

I get the thinking behind this. Companies are now regularly offering free MP3s when you buy a CD. Pick up a DVD or Blu-Ray movie and you also often get the digital version. Amazon also offers reduced price audiobooks and reduced price or free Kindle books when you buy a print book (Barnes & Noble, interestingly, doesn’t).

On the face of it, it makes sense. Hey, I get a free digital movie or album when I get the firmware; why can’t I get a free e-book? Well, there are a couple things going on, and some things specific to my books, which are not immediately obvious. So I’ll try to explain them here so I have something to point at when I get this question in the future.

First off, Amazon, because it is a huge company and owns the Kindle store and Audible.com, can do things like offer a free or reduced-price Kindle book or audiobook when you buy the print version. At the scale they operate, they can afford to make tiny amounts or even lose tiny amounts if it means they bring in more business. It’s telling that Barnes & Noble doesn’t offer free e-books with purchase (at least not as far as I could tell from a quick scan of the store and some of their most popular books, and I haven’t seen that deal offered to NOOK store publishers as I have on the Kindle store).

But my print books are published through Sofawolf and FurPlanet; my e-books are created and published by me. Neither one of us has the business model and volume that Amazon does, where we can afford to give away products whose revenue we depend on just for the promise of increased future business.

And the second point that people often overlook is that e-books are not the same as MP3s or digital movies. Creating an e-book is not as easy as pushing a button in InDesign and coming up with a fully formatted e-book. It usually takes me about ten hours of work to put together an e-book (in both Kindle and ePub editions), in addition to which I pay the artists separately for the license to the digital work. That money isn’t covered by the print publishers. On top of that, I stay of top of the stores and the books, make corrections when needed, respond when people have issues with them, and so on.

The e-book I made for Red Devil includes the fonts used in the print version to set off the sections. I had to learn how to embed fonts in e-books and do a not-insignificant amount of coding to get them to work. It makes for a better e-book, I think, and it was worth the work. It was also worth it to pay Rukis the additional licensing to be allowed to use the images in the e-book. I hope you guys think so, too.

Red Devil e-book on sale!

I’m doing another one-month exclusive with Bad Dog Books, so for the month of February (starting now!), Red Devil will be on sale in MOBI (Kindle) and ePub formats on their store.

March 1 (or soon after), you should see it on Amazon, B&N, iTunes, all the usual suspects. But if you haven’t already checked out baddogbooks.com, give them a try! They’re furry owned and operated, and so your money stays in the fandom. It’s easy to get the books onto whatever device you have (please check your device’s guidelines; I am not a reliable tech support hotline), and you can get not only my books but a large selection of FurPlanet’s titles there.

Anyway, short version: Red Devil on e-book now!

An active college player comes out as bisexual

Not much I can add to this story: http://www.examiner.com/article/death...

He’s on Twitter at @connermertens if you want to tweet him some support. Thx to @ferinoch for the heads-up.

Camouflage isn’t over quite yet…

Apparently not everyone read the FA journals where I was talking about how to end it, because I had a couple people worried that this last update was the end of the story. In a word: no.

In more words: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/54...

Don’t worry, guys, I will let you know when it’s over.

How I got a ticket and did some story research

The intersection is COMPLETELY EMPTY, and it’s a bright sunny day and I can see far enough that I know I can make it across the street before a car comes. There’s no car in sight in either direction, just one motorcycle right on the top of the bridge a quarter-mile away as I reach the middle of the road. It occurs to me as I’m walking across in front of it that it would be really bad if it were a cop, and so of course it is.

So I got a ticket for jaywalking–even if I’d stopped midway, he still would’ve seen me going across the road against the light. And he as much as said “what you did isn’t unsafe, but people have been just walking out into traffic and we have to be fair about enforcement and a guy got killed RIGHT HERE AT THIS INTERSECTION (at night, he adds in a grudging footnote).” Anyway, I didn’t try hard to talk him out of the ticket, though I could’ve pleaded the “I’m being safe and I’ll learn my lesson” angle; I mean, I ran in front of a cop against the light. It’s on me.

But I didn’t want it to just be a crappy encounter ending with the shame (deserved or no) of getting caught by the police. I’d had a couple questions I wanted to ask police about a novel I’m working on this year, so when he was done writing up the ticket, I asked if I could ask him an unrelated question. So I asked, and he was actually happy to talk to me for about ten minutes to give me the answer. I ended up shaking his hand and then he had to call after me as I walked away because he’d forgotten to actually give me the ticket.

Anyway, I was pleased that I managed to take a little bit of control of the situation and get something useful out of it. Kit now says I can write the ticket off on my taxes.

Back from FC!

It was a good weekend! We paneled, sold books, talked to people, ran around and basically did con stuff. I am sifting through e-mails today and if you are one of the two Goodreads winners, I have your books! They will go into the mail tomorrow.

Lots of people picked up Red Devil and I just got an e-mail from someone who liked it, so yay! Okay, back to e-mail. Yap at y’all later.

Where to find me at FC

My usual con rules apply: if I’m behind the Sofawolf table, I will sign books for you, even if you didn’t buy them there. I will sign e-readers as well, or clothing. At panels, if you catch me just after and I don’t have to run off quickly (Friday after the 1p panel, for example, I probably will not have had lunch and will have half an hour ’til the next panel), I’ll sign books and chat. As with any author/artist, please use discretion when deciding whether to bother me at other times. During meals, probably not. If just chilling in the lobby with people, probably okay. And if you really need to give me a hug, ask first.

Note: you can also look up my panels on fc2014.sched.org!

Friday

11a-1p: Dealer’s Den (signing)

1p How to Release Stories (with Franklin Leo and Watts Martin) – Small press publishers, self-publishing in print and ebooks, archive sites–what’s the best way to get your work in front of people? And once it’s there, how do you get an audience?

3p Furry vs. the Mainstream (with Jakebe and NotTube) – Is furry fiction science fiction and vice-versa? What would the mainstream gain from paying more (positive) attention to furries, and what would we gain from it?

5-6p: Dealer’s Den (signing)

10:30p Adult Furry Writing (with NotTube and WhyteYote) – You know.

Saturday

10a-11a: Dealer’s Den (signing)

11a Why a Fox? (with Bradley Cohen and Jakebe) – “Furry” isn’t a genre in and of itself: we have furry sci-fi, fantasy, slice of life, mysteries, even westerns. What do furry characters bring to our stories?

2p Furries and Historical Fiction (with Mel. White and WhyteYote) – Yes, furries aren’t historically accurate, but what happens (and what should be watch out for) when we create alternate histories with them?

4p-6p: Dealer’s Den (signing)

6p Sofawolf Presents – I’ll be reading a bit of “Red Devil.”

Sunday

11a Grounding Your Fiction (with NotTube and Mel. White) – Sci-fi and fantasy is full of strange worlds, and furry fiction can be just as–if not more–exotic. How do we keep our settings and characters relatable to our readers?

9p Unsheathed Live (with K.M. Hirosaki and NotTube) – Yay!

Sunday afternoon I may end up in a hotel bar watching football with Kit, but I will try to be in the dealer’s den at least the hour before it closes (5-6p) and maybe for a bit in the earlier afternoon as well.

Hey, I wrote song lyrics

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12489534/

It was seriously amazing to get the chance to do this and to work with talented musicians like   foxamoore and   colson. Many thanks specifically to Fox for having the confidence in me, and to Colson for helping me through the process.

(Edit: Wow, when I copy from FA, the icons work? I will have to do this more often…)

Ruminations on Language

This is a medium-length article on language and dialects like LOLcats and Doge and Internet-speak in general (“series of tubes”), but if you go and read the DFW piece(*) and the Grantland piece it links to (they are totally worth it), it will take a lot longer.

 

* I am somewhat saddened that the footnote in this version about “I want this conversation to be over and you to be out of my apartment” has been redacted from this version of it.

There’s relevance to the furry community, because although we don’t really have our own syntax, we do have furry-specific phrases and words that don’t mean much to non-furs; or which they may have heard but don’t quite know how to use. Yiff, of course (and its relatives yaff and yaff-yaff and yerf), but also fursuit, fursona, “this is my murrsuit,” the ironic usage of bad furry puns (“murrsecution”), not to mention the associations we have with various species (often related to how much they want to have sex and what position they want to be in, which also says something about our fandom, not only what we talk about but how openly we talk about it) as distinct from the associations in cultural literature about those species, and more examples, so anyway, there’s probably more thoughts in there, but if you’re interested in the way we use language and the way other people think about how we use language, it’s worth checking out.