For the past few months I’ve used Duotrope to track my fiction submissions to various markets. Previously I was using Google Sheets, with different sections of one large spreadsheet to track stories and submissions, markets, and responses. The sheet worked great for a long time, but once I had over twenty stories, hundreds of responses from publishers, and dozens of markets to track, the spreadsheet solution became unwieldy. I started to miss things, and in one cases submitted a story twice to the same publisher. I also started to submit fewer stories, simply because of the difficulty in using the spreadsheet. Time for a new solution!
Category: Creative Work/Career Page 6 of 23
A 1970’s artist depiction of a ringstation (from https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArt/art.html).
Becoming a published science fiction author was a jubilant moment for me, and I coasted on that high for a long time.
But of course everything that goes up must come down. I’ve found my mood and attitude regarding my nascent writing career to be significantly less jubilant now that I’ve struggled with the problem of how to sell more books.
Yesterday I sent my editor Don D’Auria a very-close-to-final version of the manuscript of The Guardian, sequel to The Sky Woman and Book 2 of the Reclaimed Earth Series. I’ve been working on revisions for the past couple of weeks, and it’s been gratifying to re-immerse myself in the minds and lives of the characters (including Tem, the ten-year-old son of Car-En and Esper, and Umana, aka the Squid Woman, the novel’s archvillain).
Here’s the cover!
You can preorder the book here, or at your local bookstore (most Barnes and Noble locations carry the Flame Tree line). The novel (hopefully) stands on its own merits, regardless if you have read The Sky Woman, so you can jump in wherever.
Please feel free to share the word on social media!
In the year 2737, Earth is mostly depopulated in the wake of a massive supervolcano, but civilization and culture are preserved in vast orbiting ringstations.
Tem, the nine-year-old son of a ringstation anthropologist and a Happdal bow-hunter, wants nothing more than to become a blacksmith like his uncle Trond. But after a rough patch as the only brown-skinned child in the village, his mother Car-En decides that the family should spend some time on the Stanford ringstation.
Tem gets caught up in the battle against Umana, the tentacle-enhanced ‘Squid Woman’, while protecting a secret that could change the course of humanity and civilization.
The Guardian, the sequel to the The Sky Woman, is a story of colliding worlds and the contested repopulation of a wild Earth.
Nobody listened.
Just a few things to mention today:
- My new progressive breaks album MOVE with Mark Musselman keeps slowly creeping up the charts. I don’t know if the album has legs or if it’s climbing the charts because my mom, some friends, and a few of you kind blog readers bought it, but it’s currently #11 on Beatport Breaks releases. If it breaks the Top 10 I promise I’ll shut up about permanently, at least on this blog, but if you’re an electronic music fan and you’re feeling the Momu vibe, I’d greatly appreciate if you could buy the album on Beatport. I think eventually Elon Musk will file a cease a desist, so grab it while you can (or maybe he’ll tweet-blast it because we’re amplifying his warnings about rogue AIs taking over the world).
- A nice surprise on Twitter today — I learned that my story The Fo’dekai Artifact (originally published by Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores in 2017) was recently podcasted. You can listen to the full story on Youtube for free (which is great, as this story was previously behind a paywall). If you enjoy the story please follow Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores on Youtube and maybe subscribe to the zine.
- After a few hiccups I was finally able to claim my author page on Goodreads. If you use Goodreads, please follow me over there (I currently have all of five followers). I turned “Ask the Author” to ON, so if you have any burning questions about my novel The Sky Woman or any of my short stories (including The Fo’dekai Artifact), please ask them on Goodreads and I’d be happy to answer.
OK — that’s everything I have to promote. Thank you for any links you may have clicked on!
Unrelated to the post, but Bumblebee was parked in front of my house yesterday.
I got back from my uncle’s funeral service a few hours ago. It was belated for various reasons — he died over a year ago — but the service was well-attended, in a beautiful location, and I feel as if we did right by him.
Both my father-in-law and my uncle passed away around the same time last year. For a few months my stress levels redlined and I had difficulty sleeping, but after I’d had a chance to grieve and the bulk of the end-of-life logistics were handled for both family members, I settled into a more reflective state. It’s been good to consider my own mortality, and the mortality of my friends and family. It’s easier to prioritize what’s important when I consider the relative imminence and unavoidability of death. I frequently let my family and friends know that I love them, I work on my big ideas, and I do the things I would regret not doing were my life to be cut short.
But I hope that my life continues for a very long time, because I’m enjoying it immensely. In terms of external life metrics such as finances and career, I’m doing fine, but what’s really making me happy are the following: