A Not-So-Quick (Yet Still Infrequent) Update…

Greetings minions!  (you know who you are)

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post, and you’re probably wondering why.  (And if you’re not wondering, you should be, darn it!)  Frankly, I have no other excuse than I’m a lazy sot who’d rather sit his fat butt down in front of a TV than write a blog post.  How guys like Hugh Howey write novels AND a biajillion (it’s a number) blog posts a day is beyond me.  But, I figured it was time to give you all a “state of the union” address as to what I’ve been up to, and what’s going on with Earthman Jack and the sequel, Earthman Jack 2: Electric Boogaloo (it’s not really called that).

On the Personal Front:  I had a great holiday with the family on the East Coast, and got out of town right before the big cold snap hit.  Perfect timing, right?  I am now back in Las Vegas where the weather is an exceptionally chilly 60 degrees.  *buuuuurrrrrrrrr*  I’ve taken a bit of a break from updating my Facebook page because I was spending WAY too much time on Facebook, sadly, which was taking away from my ability to… you know… write stuff.  Maybe I’ll get back into it next month, but I had to ween myself away from updating my feed so I could focus on actually getting things done.  Unfortunately, my Facebook addiction quickly got replaced by a Hearthstone addiction.  It’s a computer card game by Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft.  It’s kinda like a cross between Poker and Chess, and I’ve been playing it WAY too much.  As of right now, I need to find a Hearthstone support group to help me break my habit.  lol.

I’ve been noticing some pre-diabetes complications lately, which has spurred me to adopt a low-sugar, alkaline heavy diet, so I’m trying to adjust to that – though taking sugar out of your life makes you (read: me) kinda a grumpy guss.  My dad and both grandparents had diabetes, and I’m also a prime candidate for it, so I want to keep that at bay if I can.  It’s definitely affected my mood, as depression and sloth are apparently side-effects (well, depression anyway).  So that has made it hard for me to get anything accomplished, which includes cleaning my house, personal hygiene, and facilitating world peace.  Beyond that, both me and my dog have dental appointments coming up.  She goes in soon to get her teeth cleaned, and I go in next month to get some cavities treated and a crown put on a tooth (fun, fun!).  The only bright side to that is my new dentist knows how to hire lovely dental assistants for his office.  I’m sure having your teeth drilled by attractive women is a fetish somewhere (most likely in Japan).

I’m also happy to announce that I’m pulling in roughly $700 a month in book sales, which is awesome.  I’m hoping I can pump that up to $1,000 a month soon.  My goal is $2500/month, so I can basically consider that a full-time living.  It’s not much, but hey, I’ve only got a handful of books out right now.  Hopefully I can achieve my goal of $60k a year on book sales so I can officially call myself a full-time author and never have to worry about going into an office and wearing a suit and tie ever again.

On the Writing Front:  So my goal this year is to get at least 5 new novels out.  This may seem low, because there are other authors out there who churn out novels on an insane basis.  However, I don’t work that way.  I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so I like to take my time and make sure my work is the best it can possibly be before I release it, so conservatively, I think I can pump out 5 novels this year that I can be proud of.  Last year, I released 5 – Earthman Jack, and the 4 books in the Cathouse series.  Though, technically I only wrote the 4 Cathouse novels in 2013.  Earthman Jack was written over the course of 2009-2013 (if I remember correctly, though I could be off).  So I’m not really counting it for 2013.

Over the holidays, I wrote about 100 pages of a new mystery novel that sprung into my head.  It’s nowhere near being done, but it’s off to a good start.  I also finished the first issue of a new Modern Dark Fantasy series I’ll be working on called A Memory Of Hours.  However, I’m not sure when I’ll be releasing that, since I feel I might want to wait until I can focus more time on the follow up issues.  Just to give you all an idea, the “first act” of the five-act arc of the series is planned to have between 12-13 issues in it.  Issue 1 was close to 80 manuscript pages, which will probably translate into approximately 120 pages once it’s formatted.  That tale is going to be HUGE, so I don’t want to release just one issue then have a ton of time pass until I get around to the second one.

My muse also poked me on another idea I had for a series called The Infinite Brian Bell.  I wrote down some ideas for that, and the concept has been kicking around in my brain lately.  I don’t know what will become of it, but I’m jotting down notes for the future.  I’ve also got a book about competitive BBQ cooking, a book about video gamers, and a book about an extreme fighter in the works.  All three have a few pages and notes I’ve written for them, and ideally I’d like to get them all written this year in addition to my mystery novel, since they are all one-offs as opposed to a series.  Writing one-offs is way more appealing to me because it allows me to get those ideas out of my head and focus more on my series.

I also have a couple chapters of a Voodoo Action Buddy-Cop Mystery written.  It’s a good candidate for getting finished this year as well.  It could be a one-off, but also has a potential to be a series.  Honestly, I need to only tackle one series at a time, because having too many running just gets maddening (for both me and the readers, I’m sure).

On the Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet Front:  Lots of cool stuff going on there.  We currently have 108 reviews on Amazon, 95% of which are 4-5 stars, which is awesome.  I love reading the reviews of people who enjoyed the book and got what I was going for!  Over the holidays, I donated 30 books to 3 different children’s hospitals, and apparently they were a big hit.  The administrators gave them out to the kids who wanted them, so they were able to go on an imaginary intergalactic adventure while in the hospital.  I think it’s important to give back like that, since I wrote the novel for kids to have their imaginations run wild.  Ideally, I’d like to donate some copies to the troops overseas, but I haven’t found a way to do that just yet.  If any of you know of a way to do this, please email me.

And yes, Earthman Jack vs. the Ghost Planet is in paperback now, so you can get both the ebook and the hard copy if you desire.  I did have a big setback when the artist I hired to illustrate the novel had to back out because his mother got sick, and I haven’t been able to find someone I like, who I can afford, to replace him.  To those who donated money to me on the initial release of Earthman Jack, I haven’t forgotten about you!  I’ll be sending you all autographed copies of the book to make up for the non-illustrated nature of it.  Just give me a bit of time as I plan it out.  So many family friends requested books over the holidays, I got kinda swamped with that.

The most recent big review of the book is from the site “The Review Hutch,” which gave the book a glowing review, and it made me really happy to read it.  But the big-big news is that I was able to get both USA Today and The Washington Post to request review copies.  Does this mean they will actually review the book?  No.  But there is a CHANCE they’ll publish a review of it, and that could be huge.  So here’s keeping our fingers crossed *crosses fingers*.  If any of you out there want to be awesome and email review sites or your local newspaper to check out my book, please do so.  Every review helps, and I’m happy to give away free review copies.

I’m also going to be scheduling some appearances at conventions this year to try to give the book more exposure to the sci-fi/geek community.  At present, I’m trying to schedule tables at Comicon (both in Las Vegas and San Diego), Dragon Con, and the Star Trek Convention, among others.  So if any of you go to those, be sure to stop by my table and say hi.  I’ll be selling copies of the book, as well as autographing them and being an all-around amazing guy.  I haven’t officially booked anything yet, but it’s in the works.  Once I have the official slate down, I’ll post it on here.

Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet also got accepted into Bookbub for a special $0.99 promotion.  The ebook version is currently on sale for $3.99, but will be $0.99 for February 23rd to March 1st.  I hear good things about Bookbub, but apparently their Sci-Fi list isn’t as big as their Mystery or Romance lists, but we’ll see how it goes.  I’m hoping I could get at least 1,000 new downloads from it.

Finally, my big focus this year is going to be to get the book into bookstores.  I was able to get Earthman Jack included in the Ingram Catalog, so bookstores can order it wholesale at a 55% discount.  Ingram is the biggest book wholesaler in the United States, and Barns & Noble, as well as everyone else, uses them.  If you want to help out, go to your local bookstore and ask them if they can order copies.  Otherwise, I’ll be on the phone a lot pitching my book to bookstore managers.

On The Earthman Jack vs. The Secret Army Front:  For those of you interested in the sequel, know that I am working on it.  I’m still in the outline phase, however.  My writing process is kinda weird, because I get inspired with little vignettes and then try to piece them together to form a complete story.  I know the broad-strokes of how the story will play out (how it begins, the middle, how it ends, etc.).  Now I’m filling in the smaller details, and once I get those worked out, I can craft an actual scene-by-scene outline and then get to writing.  I actually have probably 30 pages of the book written at the moment as I write scenes when inspiration strikes, but they’re completely disjointed at the moment.  As usual, I tend to write the ending first, so the actual climax of book 2 is done (albeit in rough form.  It will most likely change when writing starts in earnest, but probably not by much).

One of the things that slows me down with big books like the EJ Saga is that I come up with obstacles or puzzles for the narrative that I then have to figure out good solutions to.  It’s kinda like pondering a really complex riddle.  It can take a long time to figure out.  I actually had a HUGE issue with book 2 that I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around, and then yesterday, the solution just hit me out of nowhere.  Now that I figured out that one little riddle, the outlining process is chugging along again.  I feel I have a good handle on how book 2 is going to play out now, as the over-all outline is starting to come together little by little.

I always find that knowing what you’re going to write before you actually start writing it makes for a better story.  Some authors out there claim that this way of writing stalls creativity in the writing process, but I tend to disagree.  There is no difference in being creative when writing the outline and when writing the actual book.  The only real difference is that it’s easier to change and adjust an outline than it is entire chapters of written material.  I could just start writing EJvSA and see where it takes me, but I feel it will be a better book (and far easier for me, considering the scope of it) if I plan it out beforehand.  I think too many authors overlook the importance of plotting.  They just write stuff, and then, after they’ve finished, they realize they have huge plot holes, undeveloped characters and subplots, and lots of boring action that does nothing to advance the main story.  I see this all the time when I read indy novels.

To me, having an outline is vital to crafting a well-written story, which is why I spend a lot of time doing it.  I write pretty quickly, so if I know what I need to write, it makes it even quicker.  My goal is to have EJ2 ready to go by July/August of this year (but don’t hold me to that).  You can still be creative as you write, because if you get a new idea or get inspired, you can adjust your outline as needed pretty easily, rather than discarding entire chapters you spend hours/days/weeks working on.  I often hear of authors throwing away entire chapters when rewriting, and I just can’t imagine that.  I don’t think I’ve ever deleted entire chapters from my work (probably because I always outline and figure out what chapters are needed before I start writing).

I’m hoping to have a finalized outline by the end of February, and start writing in earnest come March.  I’ve actually been having a ton of fun coming up with crazy ideas and plot twists that will be happening in book 2, and I’m really looking forward to writing it and seeing how all these plot threads I’ve been mulling over develop.  So far, Jack, Anna, and Heckubus are pretty solid, but Grohm, Green, and Scallywag still need to be worked out.  Each character has their own plot thread in this book, which all end up converging in the end, so it’s very important that I figure them all out before I start writing to ensure all six are interesting and fun to read.  Nothing’s worse than having a dull subplot in a book, and I want to try to avoid that if at all possible.

You’ll be seeing a lot more sci-fi stuff in book 2 as well.  In addition to all the plotting, I’m also working hard on worldbuilding elements, so book 2 will introduce the audience to the Regal Empire, a lot of it’s history, its politics, and it’s alien races and cultures – not to mention technology.  This is probably the most time consuming part of writing this series, because it’s so important to all 7 books to have a clearly defined universe.  Book 2 is going to set this up and expand upon what was hinted at in book 1, and each book afterwards then builds upon what is established in book 2.  I’m also fleshing out the outlines for books 3-7 as I go.  In fact, I’ve actually written the end of book 7 already.  I did that now so that as I go about plotting the rest of the series, I have a great idea of what I’m building toward.  I gotta admit, I got teary-eyed as I wrote the epic climax of all 7 books before I even started book 2, lol.  But I think the whole series will be stronger for it in the end.  (And of course, I can always adjust the ending as needed as the other books get written, but I’m pretty darn happy with how it is now.)

So there you have it, friends!  A not-so-quick infrequent update from your (favorite?) author.  As always, I love to hear from you all, so feel free to post your comments here.  If enough people start commenting on my posts, I might blog more often.  lol.

Hugs! xxoo