Kicking it Old School

I'm an old fashioned guy. I believe in the sanctity of marriage. I vote my conscience. I try to remember to pay my bills on time. Oh, and I prefer traditional publishing.

Here's the thing: I have no problem with self-publishing, but if you're going to do it you have to do it right. i was recently on a lunch date with the lovely EJ Stevens who is, in fact, a very successful self-published author. We were discussing the matter in depth and what she said made perfect sense. She said, And I'm paraphrasing," Self-publishing works for me, because I'm a control freak. I want input on everything and I want the world to fit my schedule."

I respect the hell out of that, I also know that trying to be in control of everything would make me homicidal. Because I know in my heart of hearts that I would fail at least as often as I succeeded.

So for that reason alone I'm a traditionalist. Do you know what the publishing houses have? An ARMY of people working with them to make sure the books un on time. Oh, don;t misunderstand me. I KNOW most of that army is dedicated to other authors. But they re there and they can be employed in some circumstances.

Angry Robot, for instance, the publisher on a good number of my books, employs a small army, God love them, and in a most unusual fit of circumstance and intelligence, they use that small army to spread the word on books coming from all of their authors. That means the PR team in the UK and in the US of A are actually looking at my work and finding the best places to market it. They may not have a zillion dollars for advertising, but what they DO have is people who know how to employ that smaller budget properly (as opposed to spending more than I make in a year on a single ad in Publishes Weekly for an author who is already selling millions of copies, but I'm not pointing fingers here.).

Aside from that, they also have editors, book designers, distribution deals,  the aforementioned marketing department, and EXPERIENCE. I'm not saying that said experience is always monumental and all knowing, all wise, but I'll take my chances with someone who knows all the things that I am too high strung to learn about publishing myself. Too high strung and too busy. Full time job, full time writer. Got a novel due in three weeks. No time to worry about marketing plans and edits. That's what my publisher is for.

Lastly, what you get from a publisher with any smarts is a good vetting. Is my book any good? No clue. I'm too close to it. Maybe. Hey, I know, I'll try sending it through a few publishers and see what they think. No takers? It might need more work. Someone wants to buy it? Wants to PAY me? Sweet! Let's get the agent in there to handle the dirty work. now I can go back to writing. Later, when it's dreadfully inconvenient, they'll send me edits, and I will pause in what I am doing and take care of them. but that is another tale.

Why I Like Being Hybrid

Happy Mother's Day to everyone, whether your mom was good or terrible, still with you or not, and whether anyone's ever acknowledged your own mothering. Special love and gratitude to both my own mother - the blonde in our family photo there - and to my second mother, my aunt sitting next to her. I'm blessed to have you in my life!

Secondly, we have a winner in the WORD WHORES REBRANDING BAKEOFF! Okay, no pastry items were involved (more's the pity), but we sorted through name suggestions from numerous sources and voted on our favorite.

The new name?? THE SFF SEVEN.

I like it a whole bunch! The change will kick in next Sunday, May 15. We'll keep you apprised!

In the meanwhile, we have seven winners! People who kindly brainstormed name ideas are:

Sullivan McPig
Stacy McKitrick
JanetLee
Heather
Kevin Reitz
B.E. Sanderson
Lynne Facer

You get to pick any book from any of the SFF Seven! Comment here to let us know the book and format preferred, along with a way to privately contact you to send it. Thank you, everyone, for playing!

In other news, to celebrate the upcoming release of THE PAGES OF THE MIND (and the concurrent release of THE CROWN OF THE QUEEN), Book One of the entire series, THE MARK OF THE TALA, is on sale for only $2.99. If you've been thinking about getting caught up on the series, now's a great time to get started!

Amusingly (or not, really) I saw a customer review somewhere that said they'd bought the book at the sale price, but then "the author raised the ebook price to $9.99 for the subsequent books." So, yeah, I know that MY PUBLISHER, Kensington, has the standard ebook price set at $9.99, which is a lot for the current market. I can't do anything about that. That's a drawback of traditional publishing - which is having a publisher, like mine in New York City - that was established before newer publishing models, and focuses on print book production, distribution and sales.

It's kind of interesting to me that self-publishing has become so well-established and prevalent these days that readers assume the authors set prices. But I also understand that these things are not transparent to the average reader. 

This week, we'll all be discussing the different forms of publication and which work best for us. We've got a variety of publishing paths in this group, so there should be a nice variety in the discussions. 

For my part, I consider myself to be hybrid at this point - which means I have books both with my traditional publishers and that I self-publish. I'm ever so grateful that I have the option to do both. A lot of authors who've been successful in the traditional publishing model had difficulties with the drawbacks there - price-setting, yes, but also long lead times, corporate politics, books going out of print, never to be resurrected, etc. With self-publishing so much more accessible and acceptable these days - and here I'd like to tip my hat to the intrepid writers who truly blazed this trail and made it so smooth and even for later-adopters like me - being a hybrid writer makes a great deal of sense to me. 

There are a lot of things I do like about traditional publishing, and I'm forever glad I both took that path and had the opportunity to do so. That's something important to remember - many authors who self-publish took that path because the doors to traditional publishing remained firmly closed to them, for a variety of reasons. For them, it wasn't a "choice" so much as the most viable alternative.

Similarly, however, authors who did take the traditional path are not stupid. And I feel I have to say this because I've been told to my face by more than one person that I'm stupid for going with traditional publishing instead of self-publishing, where I could have more control and make more money. I have many good reasons for making the decisions I did. One of them is that money isn't everything. It's not even the most important thing. 

Also, we decisions we do for complex reasons, many of them in the privacy of our hearts and minds. Chuck Wendig once said that, when people criticize him for going with traditional publishing when he could be making more money self-publishing, he feels like they're saying he should have married someone other than his wife.

I asked him if I could quote him here on that because that's a perfect analogy of how it feels. Nobody else can make these choices for us, these powerful decisions that affect the course of our lives. Second-guessing those choice, particularly by someone who hasn't been inside our skulls, hasn't walked in the quiet of our hearts, is simply inappropriate.

So, this week, as you hear each of our seven weigh in on the various publishing paths, keep that in mind. The kind of publishing that will work best for you is the one that works for YOU. Educate yourself. Weigh the options. But choose according to your heart, mind and gut - not someone else's.

After all - you'll be the one married to your decisions. 

What Did I Read As a Kid? Everything!

I was wildly imaginative as a kid - still am. I've been a voracious reader since the first day I figured out Dick and Jane saw Spot. So I read anything and everything I could get my hands on.

I read the Bobbsey Twins, Cherry Ames, Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, the Dana Sisters, Tom Corbett Space Cadet, Tom Swift Jr., Rick Brant....also older series that were passed down from my grandparents, like The Dare Boys and some prime G. A. Henty adventure novels.

Comic books! I had literally thousands and we will NOT discuss what eventually happened to them when I got married and moved out of the house. Some wounds still hurt too much! But Magnus Robot Fighter and The Brothers of the Spear were two of my favorites series.


Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, tales of King Arthur, Last Days of Pompeii, Little Women. The biography of The Swamp Fox.

I read ALL of it and much more before I was twelve and absorbed the elements I personally enjoy most - adventure, high stakes, brave/smart/valiant/honorable heroes and heroines,friendship, family, interesting settings, a happy ending and ROMANCE. That's required. I used to have to search long and hard to find it in the things I read as a kid but I can suss out any hint and add my own 'shipping' and re-imagining as required.

I've talked before about how Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Catseye by Shadow Hawk and Year of the Unicorn were also important to me, in terms of inspiring me to take all the elements boiling and fizzing in my subconscious and start writing stories that satisfied my cravings.

Andre Norton were two specific books that pushed me into eventually developing my own series in the ancient Egypt paranormal and the science fiction romance genres. Norton's

Obviously I kept reading after age twelve, and have many more favorite books and stories that influenced me along the way..but that sums up my early influences.

Where Am I Going and Why Am I in this Handbasket

"And you may ask yourself

Well . .  how did I get here?"

Talking Heads

 

 

 

It should come as no surprise to you that I have a story about how I ended up here. I'm an Air Force brat. Dad was in the military long enough ago that we moved often. Post assignments were generally for two years rather than the four or more they are now. That meant that either you were moving or the kids you'd made friends with were moving. Nothing was permanent. You learned early how to not get attached to place or to people because you were a perpetual tourist, flitting in for a short bit before being blown out on the breeze of Uncle Sam's whim. It had benefits - we saw amazing sights and had one of kind experiences.

 

But a military kids live always leaving or being left.

 

Kids handle that in one of two ways - they either learn to make friends with anyone and everyone very quickly. Most do this by becoming joiners. My sister went this route. On the other path, the military brat learns not to count on other people. She becomes self-contained. Has a tendency to sit on the sidelines, hanging back, both intellectually and emotionally isolated. I went that route. Less disappointment, sure, but lonely. Not that I *wasn't* that kid that no one wanted on their kickball team. Sports were not I and there wasn't a word for 'geek' in those days. Well. The word existed, it just didn't mean what it does today. Yes. I am that old. Shut up.

Books were my friends. They were reliable. They were friendly and I didn't have to be anything more than I was - a sickly kid who nearly got shipped to Germany for major surgery because the base doctors didn't think I'd survive Iceland. Horse books got me through that. Swampfire. A Pony Called Lightning. I still measured my age in single digits and I was on a serious Western kick. Roy Rogers was my hero. And maybe The Lone Ranger. So try to be generous while judging 9 year old me.

 

Books kept me company when my cousins and my sister ditched me alone at my grandparents' house. My Aunt Betty brought me a box of tattered paper backs, every last one of them written by Andre Norton. Ordeal in Otherwhere was the very first of hers I read. I promptly read every last one of the books in that box and went to ask for more and even began collecting Andre Norton books, myself. Aunt Betty and I had a friendly competition going for years over who had more. Got a note from her several years ago after her house burned down. It said, "You have more Andre Norton books than I do, now."

 

The thing I don't know how to convey is that books have been unfailing friends. Through good times, through times I wasn't certain I could survive, a book in my hands saw me through often with renewed determination and with new courage. Isn't that what friends are supposed to do?

 

How did I get here? Stories are still my nearest and dearest friends. I need them to survive. And if anything I write can be someone else's friend, I'll maybe have paid the kindness forward.

Who Are Your Influences?

So, whenever that question pops up, I can't help but think of Jimmy Rabbit, trying vainly to hold auditions for the Hardest Working Soul Band in Dublin.

It's funny, because when I think about the books that influenced me, I'm kind of at a loss.  I mean, nothing that I read in my youth really match what I write.  I cite Zilpha Keatly Snyder and David Eddings as influences, and it's true.  They both opened my idea of what fantasy could be, and more specifically what it didn't have to be.  

That was important, because on some level I was always dissatisfied with the trappings of 'traditional' fantasy.  Even though Eddings fits in that category, it did it in a way that defied my earlier expectations.  Both Green-Sky and The Belgariad showed me that Fantasy didn't have to fit neatly into the genre boxes.  

I'm kind of thrilled that there is such a wealth of fantasy nowadays that doesn't fit neatly into the boxes.  The stuff that's proliferating today is exactly the sort of thing I craved back in the day.  And I'm glad to be a part of that.  Because the stuff I'm writing is, to a large degree, the sort of thing I wanted to read back then.

Hopefully that will influence some writer of tomorrow.

My Path

How did I get here? What breadcrumbs led me to this place where writing is what I do?

An avid reader from an early age, my reading preferences, like many young readers, had much to do with short adventures. Such as Donald J. Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown series. That young lad's mysteries led me to longer stories with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I'd read and re-read from my school library a shortened and illustrated version of Walter Farley's Black Stallion, but when I found the full novel I was in love. I read, no...I devoured all of his Black Stallion books, delighted to see how Alec and his magnificent horse dealt with a new problem. The spin-off Island Stallion series was just as good. Then I needed something else, a new fix.

Enter the genre fantasy.

I read the lot of Weis & Hickman's Dungeons and Dragons books and their Darksword trilogy and Rose of the Prophet trilogy,  Piers Anthony's Blue Adept books, David Eddings' Malloreon series, Steven Brust's Jhereg series, his stand alones To Reign in Hell and Cowboy Fengs Space Bar and Grill. There were many, many others. I read EVERYTHING.

The problem was...the boys got the best adventures. The men bore the brunt of the danger. Sure there were some interesting and strong women in Weis and Hickman's tales, but they weren't the lead.

I didn't see myself represented in these books.

Then I found Jennifer Roberson's Sword Dancer.

 

 

As I understand it, at the time, Ms. Roberson was not able to write the story from the female leads POV and expect to get it sold...so she wrote it from the male lead's POV. Del was smart, strong, able, and determined. She was my hero during very formative years.

 

Though I had always dabbled in writing, this was when I began in earnest, and I wrote for me. To be honest, the Dragonlance art of Larry Elmore and Clyde Caldwell (and others) had as much to do with my imagination spring-boarding into my own stories as the novels I had read.

 

Then this whole Urban Fantasy thing happened, with female leads in abundance...and I was able to join the ranks of my favorite authors and have mass market paperbacks of my own on the bookshelves of book stores and chain stores alike.

Release Day: The Silent Army by James A. Moore

On shelves virtual and actual today THE SILENT ARMY, Book 4 in our very own James A. Moore's gripping Seven Forges Epic Fantasy Series.   ~pops champagne~  ~throws confetti~

The City of Wonders has been saved by nearly miraculous forces and the Silent Army is risen, ready to defend the Fellein Empire and Empress Nachia at any cost.

The power that was hidden in the Mounds is on the move, seeking a final confrontation with the very entities that kept it locked away since the Cataclysm. Andover Lashk has finally come to accept his destiny and prepares to journey back to Fellein. The Sa’ba Taalor continue their domination over each country and people they encounter, but the final conflict is coming: The Great Wave of the Sa’ba Taalor stands to destroy an empire and the Silent Army prepares to stop them in their tracks.

Caught in the middle is the Fellein Empire and the people who have gathered together on the final battlefield. The faithful and the godless, the soldiers and killers alike all stand or fall as old gods and new bring their war to a world-changing end. Some struggles are eternal. Some conflicts never cease. The Gods of War are here and they are determined to win.

BUY IT NOW

Amazon     |     B&N     |   BAM!     | IndieBound