Friday, August 28, 2015

A Big Project

Published authors, or at least some of us, tend to get squirrelly after our books are out for a while. We're bugged by their covers, especially if they misrepresent characters. Uncorrected errors in the text become as persistently annoying as head lice. We think of things we should've left out of the story or put in story, or whole sections we wished we'd written differently. We repeatedly curse ourselves for our lack of foresight. And, of course, reader interest drops off precipitously within the first year after release -- if there was ever much reader interest to begin with -- and that, too, becomes irksome.

I've wrestled with all those issues and one more: the fact that circumstances have conspired since 2007 to prevent a related group of my stories (novels and novellas) to be issued by the same publisher at, say, two-month intervals, with covers that have a similar look. Yeah, the books probably should've been treated as a series.

Smart writers with tech savvy, or who make enough money to hire people with tech savvy, figured out years ago that the only way to have full control over one's creative output is to self-publish. I'm not sure I'm up to it in terms of patience and know-how, but I'll soon be venturing into this terrifying realm. I'm already having nightmares about it.

 
The details are on my website. Rather than repeat them all, I'll give you this link.


Tuesday, August 11, 2015

La Boucle Parfaite -- Wow!


I didn't make this myself -- honest! Just came upon a link in my Twitter feed. Although I can't yet find this French translation of The Zero Knot on the Dreamspinner site, I assume the ARC is already available. What a thrill!