My 1st year as an Author

This will be my last blog post of the year, since next week is Christmas. Dennis and I have some wonderful plans for the season.

Now I wrote and drew indie comics prior, so some might say I was an author before, but this year my first novel, Other Systems, was published by 48Fourteen. Not only was my first novel published, but also my first science fiction story Unintentional Colonists was published by Not only was my first novel published, but also my first science fiction story was published by Perihelion SF.

In some ways, my career changed drastically, however on an everyday level, it hardly changed at all. I still tend to work too much and get stressed out over things that don’t matter. I still have no real idea about balance. And I still don’t care about sales as much as I want to tell a good story.

I learned a lot.

I have felt that each of my titles have gotten better and better. Just by doing the work, I have become a stronger writer and a better artist. However Other Systems was the first book that went through professional editing. I learned that I do not always need to use a semi colon and I also learned so much about story telling between Juanita Samborski and David Kostiuk when working on Other Systems. Sam Bellotto Jr. at Perihelion SF let me now exactly how much description to put in.

Finally, I learned I cannot market Other Systems the same way we were marketing the comics. We have to do more social media for both the comics and my novels. Though often people do like comics and science fiction, the group of people that like both are surprising narrow.

That being said, while promotion is important, if one spends all their time on promotion, I will never get any work done on my next book. I have been working on The Martlet and Other Systems: Earth and that is where my energies need to lie. I can’t allow myself to be poisoned with thoughts of sales. It takes the joy out of writing

My 2013 Releases (That I know of…)

March 1 Faminelands #3: Mareton’s Curse

November 1 Out for Souls&Cookies #4 (The Christmas Special!!!) 

TBA: Other Systems is coming to print!