Benedict Jacka's Blog, page 17

Post-Release

Well, Gardens is out and is most of the way through its first week of sales.  Numbers have been pretty good so far – it’s already up to about 40% of the sales of Favours, which isn’t bad for something that’s only been out for four days.  Early reviews have been very positive as well, so there’s a decent change that it might end up overtaking Favours in time, despite my earlier novella having a head start.

These novellas have been surprisingly fun to do – they let me try out new things, and since they’re relatively short they’re much less of a slog than a full novel.  I wrote both Favours and Gardens in only a month or so of focused work each, though once you add in editing and planning time both took more like two months than one.  And since I often have a spare month or two in between novels, there’s a good chance I’ll find the time to keep doing more in future.

However, as I said last year, these novellas/short stories are not going to become my focus – my main job is ‘novelist’ and that’s not something I’m planning to change.  On that subject, I think we’re about due for another update on my new series, so now that the novella’s released and the excitement’s over, next week is going to be a catch-up about what’s been happening with that book’s road to publication.

Gardens Released Today

And it’s finally here!  The newest Alex Verus novella, Gardens, is available on Amazon as of today!

While my last novella, Favours, was a “fill-in-the-gaps” piece that acted as character backstory, Gardens is more of a mini-sequel or extra epilogue to the main storyline.  It’s recommended for anyone who’s curious about how things turned out for some of the main characters in the Alex Verus series.  It’s also quite a bit longer than Favours, coming in at more than one and a half times the word count.

Now, the bad news:  since some people have asked, no, this story isn’t currently available in audio or paper format.  My novellas are all self-published and I have to do all of the admin myself, which limits how many formats I can make it available in.  Admin is also the main reason that I’m only releasing it on Amazon this time – I made Favours available on this site, but my total personal sales were dwarfed by my Amazon ones, so this time I’m releasing it only on Amazon in order to take advantage of their Kindle Unlimited promotions.  I know this does limit the options available to my readers, which I’m sorry about, but I only have so many hours in a day, and setting up and maintaining a full set of distribution channels actually takes a fair amount of time away from my writing.  Publishers can do this sort of thing much more easily, but that’s because they have staff who do it as a full-time job.  So for the moment, I’m publishing these novellas in such a way that it takes as little attention away from my novel-writing as possible.

That said, this might change in the future!   The last novella was fairly successful, so if I keep on writing these and they keep on proving reasonably popular, I might eventually collect them into a book, at which point it’d probably be worth it to do an audio and paper edition.  My Alex Verus novels usually come in at 90,000 to 100,000 words, and Favours and Gardens together come to a bit over 50,000, so probably 2-3 more short stories/novellas would add up to a big enough wordcount to justify calling it a book.  That’s still far off in the future, though, and very speculative.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy Gardens!  I think it’s one of the better-written things I’ve put out so far, and for those of you who are fans of the Alex Verus series, it’ll probably answer some of the lingering questions that you might have had about the state of play at the end of Risen.

Gardens Release In 3 Days

Just as the title says, my new Alex Verus novella, Gardens, releases in 3 days, on Monday 31st October!  You can buy or pre-order it here.

Thanks to everyone who’s pre-ordered the novella so far – it makes a big difference.  I can’t really do much marketing or advertising for my novellas since they’re very much small personal projects, and there’s a definite limit as to how much time I can spend on them before it starts taking too much time and attention away from my novels, which are what actually pay the bills.  So most of the sales/marketing for these novellas come from word of mouth publicity and fans going out of their way to order copies personally.

I have to admit that I’m a little nervous about how this novella’s going to be received.  On the one hand, it’s definitely well-written – I’ve become a better writer over the years and I took the opportunity with this novella to make sure it was as well-crafted as I could make it.  It was also fun to go back to the Alex Verus setting, and I get the feeling that a lot of people are still interested in reading the odd story set in this world.  On the other hand, the subject material for this novella is pretty dark.  Now, this on its own isn’t really anything new – some of the Alex Verus novels such as Taken (#3) and Veiled (#6) had pretty creepy elements – but all the previous Alex Verus entries have been urban fantasy stories.  Gardens still just about fits as “urban fantasy”, but it’s probably more accurate at this point to call it horror, and I’m not sure how people are going to react to that.

But we’ll just have to see!  I didn’t set out attempting to write a horror story, but that was where it ended up, and it was the story I wanted to write, so I’ll just have to make do.  Besides, part of the point of these novellas is to give me the opportunity to experiment a bit and try something new.  After all, if I’d only ever stuck with writing stories in the same genre and aiming at the same sort of audience, I never would have hit upon the Alex Verus series in the first place.

And speaking of something new, I’m currently working on the edits for my first novel in my new series.  I’ve got quite a bit to do, but I’m fairly confident at this point that we’re on track to release next year.  I’ll put up a post with more information in a couple of weeks or so, once Gardens is released and things have quieted down, but the short version is that I’m likely to be busy with this for the rest of the year.

New Alex Verus Novella – Gardens

 

And we’re ready to go!  The new Alex Verus novella, Gardens, is written, edited, copy-edited, and available for pre-order on the Kindle Store.  Release date is about a week and a half from now, on Monday 31st October 2022.

This is my second ever novella;  the first, Favours, was written and released last year.  I mentioned at the time that I was using Favours as a sort of trial balloon to see whether there was enough interest in Alex Verus novellas for it to be worth it for me to keep publishing them.  As it turned out, Favours sold reasonably well, so I’m bringing out another!

While Favours took place between books #6 and #7, Gardens is a sort of extra epilogue to the Alex Verus series, taking place several months after book #12, Risen.  Here’s some more about it:

Gardens is 32,000 words long, or about 1/3rd the length of an average Alex Verus novel.This novella isn’t written from the perspective of any of the main cast of characters, but it is about the main cast of characters . . . one of them, in particular.  I won’t say who since I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but the short version is that I got interested in the question “what would this character be like after the events of Risen?”  This novella is the answer.The Halloween release date is deliberate, since this story is darker than usual.  Consider yourself warned.For Gardens I’m doing an experiment and making it available on Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program, which means that members of the program can read it for free.  In theory this means a wider readership and a bit of money to the author from a special Amazon fund;  the downside is that Amazon demands exclusive publishing rights in exchange, so I can’t publish it anywhere else.  I don’t really know whether this is worth it or not, so I’m giving it a try to find out.This novella’s primarily intended for people who’ve read the Alex Verus series and would like to know a bit more about where some of the main characters end up afterwards.  That said, I do think it’s one of the better things I’ve written, so it’s hopefully fairly accessible to people who haven’t read the entire main sequence.

More information next week!

On Track For Halloween

My new Alex Verus novella has been edited and copy-edited.  We should be on track for a release in two-and-a-bit weeks, on Monday October 31st.

My current plans are to release it on Kindle/Kindle Unlimited.  This’ll be a bit of an experiment since I don’t know how much of a difference that’ll make.  Guess I’ll find out!

Novella is done!

First draft of the new Alex Verus novella is finished!  It ended up being 33,000 words (for comparison, the average Alex Verus novel comes in at between 90,000 and 100,000).

The novella’s currently with my beta readers, which is the first step in my editing process.  Once it’s fully edited, checked, and proof-read, I’ll format it and make it available for sale on the Kindle Store.  At the moment I’m aiming for a release date that’s around the end of the month, i.e. at Halloween (this novella’s a little darker than usual for my stories, so it feels appropriate).  We’ll see if I make it!

Novellas and Spaceships

Busy week today.  My new Alex Verus novella is moving steadily along – current word count is 26,000 and we’re getting close to the end.  I’m hoping to finish the first draft in another week or so.

And unrelatedly, the computer game I did some writing for, Terra Invicta, is finally out in Early Access on Steam.  I haven’t been directly involved in that for quite a while now (I did the writing last year, then dropped out of contact with the developers as I was spending all my time on the new book instead) so I’m kind of curious to see what it’ll look like.

More news next Friday.

New Alex Verus Novella

Well, we’re finally done with the ending commentaries!  Now that that’s over, I think this is a good time for a general update.

My new novel in my new series is (still) with my publishers – it’s been with them for 3 months at this point.  The good news is that contracts are signed and we’ve got a publication date.  The bad news is that the publication date isn’t until Autumn 2023, and my publishers also seem to feel that since the publication date’s so far off in the future, there’s no need for them to rush, so I’ve yet to hear anything back from them.  This is annoying, since I really need for the first book to be finalised before I can write the second, which means that until I at least get the first-round edits back and can agree with my publishers on what the book’s content will be, I can’t properly start work on book 2.  This delays the series as a whole, and unfortunately there isn’t much I can do to speed this up.

On the positive side, this does mean I have a bit of spare time, so I’ve started work on a new Alex Verus novella!  This is the one that I was hoping to do back in the spring but which got pushed back by the rewrite – as it turns out, it’s getting written after all.

While the previous novella, Favours, took place in the middle of the series (between books 6 and 7), this novella will be a sort of “mini-sequel”, more like an extra epilogue, and will take place about 4-5 months after the end of Risen.  It features three existing characters from the main series – Alex, Anne, and Talisid – though one of those three has a much bigger role than the other two.  At first I was expecting the novella to be a similar length to Favours, which came in at about 20,000 words, but this one seems to be turning into something much longer – at the time that I’m writing this post (18 September) it’s up to 21,000 words already and I’m nowhere near the end.  If I had to guess it’s probably going to land in the 30,000 to 35,000 range, so about 1/3rd as long as a full Alex Verus novel.  I’m hoping to finish in a couple of weeks or so.

Once the novella’s done I’ll send it out to my beta readers and give it a proper edit and polish, then I’ll package it and make it available in the same way that I did Favours.  Though looking at the relative number of copies of Favours that I sold on my website versus Amazon, this time I might just use Amazon (they have a special program that gives you some bonuses if you sell a book only on their platform).  But I’ll decide that nearer the time.

Anyway, I think that covers everything for now.  More news on the novella next week, at which point I should have a better idea of likely length.  At the moment I’m aiming to release the finished version sometime around late October.  Publishing is harder work when you have to do everything yourself, but it’s also a lot faster!

Conclusion

(This is part 8 of an 8-part series on the ending of the Alex Verus novels.  The master post with links to all the other parts is here.)

Well, it’s been a long journey, but we’ve finally come to the “true” ending of the series.  

For the two alternate endings I discussed their themes, but for this last entry, I’ll talk more about the tone of Alex Verus’s world.  The way I’ll do so is via the alternate endings, because I think both of the alternate endings send a very specific message about this.  

Total Victory

This ending implies a perfectible world.  Problems come from evil individuals (such as Levistus and Richard) or a flawed system (like the Council and the Concord).  In both cases, the problems can be removed or reformed.  The only reason problems don’t get fixed is because the right people don’t have enough power.  Once Alex gets enough power, he can force everything onto the right track and everyone lives happily ever after (well, apart from the bad guys, but they don’t count).  

Of course, as I pointed out in entry 5, this ending kind of falls apart once you start thinking about it.  But the important thing about this ending is that it implies that the big questions of the world all have fairly straightforward answers.  

Bad Things Happen

This ending implies a much more pessimistic world, maybe even a hopeless one.  Not only is the  world most definitely not perfectible, trying to improve it has a good chance of actively making things worse.  No matter how virtuous you are or how hard you try, everything is still likely to spiral downwards;  most characters end up dead or miserable, and even the “winners” aren’t happy.  

In this sort of world, the world’s problems are not only impossible to solve, they’re actively out to get you.  The most you can do is win short-term victories, which take a hell of a lot of work and are unlikely to last.  Heroism usually earns you nothing but an early grave, and even if you survive, you might wish you hadn’t.

The True Ending

So what’s the tone of the true ending?  I think a good way to look at it is how it differs from the other two.  

The true ending doesn’t imply a perfectible world.  Alex survives, but only after a fashion, and has to give up much of himself to do so.  Anne is saved, but she’s haunted by her past and may never be able to go home.  Several powerful and evil members of the Council and of Drakh’s cabal are killed, but the structures that created them remain, and there’s no guarantee that the new mages who’ll rise up to replace them will be any better.  

On the other hand, the true ending doesn’t imply a hopeless world, either.  Both of the couples in the main cast (Anne/Alex and Luna/Vari) make it through alive, and while they still have problems, they’re largely free to live their lives in peace.  Heroic characters don’t get rewarded, but neither are they punished.  And the very worst villains usually end up dying unglamorous deaths, generally as a consequence of their own actions.   

In short, Alex Verus’s world is a mildly pessimistic one, but not a dystopia.  There are no easy solutions, suffering will happen, but you can prevent total disaster and have a chance of creating a good life for yourself and the people around you.  

As Alex says at the very end:  all in all, it’s not so bad.  

Why I Didn’t Choose The “Bad Things Happen” Ending

(This is part 7 of an 8-part series on the ending of the Alex Verus novels.  The master post with links to all the other parts is here.)

Because it was just too damn depressing.  

Note that I said depressing, not bad.  Actually, in pure story terms, I think this ending works okay (it’s definitely not boring).  But let’s break it down into the same categories as before.  

Consistency

In terms of consistency, this ending is . . . well, actually, it’s pretty good!  The characters all act in accordance with their natures, and everything that happens is a logical consequence of the events that have come before.  

Some people might be a bit shocked at just how far Anne goes off the deep end in this version, but to anyone who’s been paying attention, it’s always been very clear that Anne had the potential to end up like this (it was specifically highlighted in that prophecy of Variam’s).  Just because she’s one of the main cast doesn’t mean that she’s a good person, and just like Alex, the body count that she racks up by the end of Risen should really make you stop and ask some questions.  

So consistency-wise, I’d say this is fine.  

Theme

Here’s where the problems start.  With most of the cast ending up some combination of dead, miserable, or insane, this ending is pretty dark.  Now, I’m not inherently opposed to dark or at least ambivalent endings (as those who’ve read my novellas will know), but I do think that if you’re writing an unhappy ending, you should have a good reason for it.  And in the case of the Alex Verus series, that brings us to the overall message of the series.  With this ending, what does the arc of Alex’s story look like?  

Well, the short answer is that it’s a story of failure.  Alex struggles against the forces opposed against him, and to begin with he has some limited success, but in the final 3-4 books he takes on the task of trying to save Anne, and fails.  Yes, he technically preserves her life, but she ends up leading such a twisted and miserable existence that the end result’s probably worse than if he’d just let her die.  Ultimately, in this version, Alex would have been better off just writing off Anne as a lost cause and withdrawing from the whole battle sometime around book 10 . . . which, to me, feels rather unsatisfying.  It’s one thing to write a story of a heroic defeat, but a story that ends with “guess you should have just given up” doesn’t exactly make for inspiring reading.  

I also didn’t like the idea of the impact it’d have on my readers.  To me, one of the marks of a good story is that it leaves you glad to have read it.  It doesn’t necessarily have to leave you happy, but it does need to leave you satisfied;  if you close the book feeling worse than when you started it, something’s gone wrong.  My readers, by this point, had been following Alex’s story for twelve whole books.  That’s a big investment, and it shows a lot of trust.  I wanted them to come to the end feeling that it had been worth it.  

The final reason I didn’t like this ending is a weird one:  in an odd way, to me, it felt as though it turned the whole series into a prequel.  This sort of story would work fine as a prequel explaining how the next round of jinn wars came about.  (Why did the marid’s ring end up lost and forgotten in this trap-filled shadow realm?  Well, funny you should ask . . .)  But I didn’t want the entire Alex Verus series to become a prequel, particularly not a prequel to a story I didn’t have any intention of writing.  

So I just went with the standard ending.  Looking back, I don’t regret it.  

And that’s it for the alternate endings!  The final post will take a brief look at the ‘true’ ending, and wrap this mini-series up.