The Backlist Project is Nigh Complete

Possibly the most anticipated book
I've put out so far. The other half of
the Sam Bowen story. Ta Dah!

I love that word, "nigh." It's so delightfully Biblical to me. But that's not what we're here to talk about. Bowen's Bluff, the second Sam Bowen volume, dropped this weekend in paperback form. I'll have the ebook figured out soon. That leaves only one book: The Third and final Con-Dorks volume, One in a Million.

I've needed to rescue and resuscitate my backlist for years now. I was all set to do it a couple of years ago, but I went and wrote a bunch of comics that, as it turns out, will never see the light of day. Ah, well. Sometimes you back the wrong horse, you know?

 Once One in a Million drops, next month, that'll be it. I had seven books that needed to be reprinted and updated for ebook consumption. There's eight because Fight Card collection, The Adventures of Sailor Tom Sharkey, slipped in there when no one was looking.  Not that I'm complaining. I love the book and I'm happy those stories have found a collected home.

Coming soon: the final chapter
in the Con-Dorks Saga and it's
a doozy, I tell you what.

I never started this project to make money. Well, let's back up: I didn't publish all of these books to get rich. I fully expected to make a little dough off of the endeavor. And so far, that's exactly what's happened; a little dough. Twenties of forties of dollars. A couple hundred and change, truth be told. I did it so they would serve as a backdrop for other, more recent work coming out this year (and hopefully next). I've got NEW books, see, and they will need some love. But in the meantime, let's see what we can do about this stuff, shall we?

Let's do a contest: I've done some review trawling from you before, but now I'm upping the ante with genuine loot from the past. Collectible, interesting stuff, at that. 

I'm a once and forever member of Clockwork Storybook, a writer's collective that was founded by four people: myself, Matt Sturges, Chris Roberson, and Bill Willingham. We started out as a writer's group to work on our prose, and quickly decided we'd get a lot better, a lot quicker, if we learned how to write fiction in front of a live audience. So, we created a fictional city, San Cibola, and made a shared world out of it. The "online magazine" was updated monthly, and sometimes more frequently, as we were prone to pulling a lot of stunts like 30-day Novel challenges and the like. Our goal was to eventually transition into a print medium, and in this regard, we were only about 10 years ahead of the trend.

Yes, that's Bill's art on the cover. He also illustrated his
story, too. It's very cool.

One of our first projects was a series of chapbooks, designed to get our beaks wet for page layout, printing, and all of that complicated stuff. Our first one was called Offline Volume 1: Mythology, and it featured an original prose story from each of us, not available on the website, with illustrations by our friends. This was our calling card as we started making the rounds at Texas conventions. We sold hundreds of these things. Not thousands, but definitely hundreds.

Now they are all but gone. I've got five spare copies of Offline Volume 1: Mythology to give away and I will do just that. All you gotta do is pick one of my books that you have read over this past year and post a review somewhere that you can point me to it. Amazon, Good Reads, wherever there's decent traffic. That's it! I'll pick my five favorites and send you a rare piece of Clockwork Storybook history. I will even sign it, if that's your bag, baby. Once you have the review up, shoot me a Tweet or an IM or however you get ahold of me, and point me to where it is. I will in turn contact you for mailing instructions.  How does that sound?

Just to sink the hook a little deeper, here's the Table of Contents:

Mythology by Bill Willingham

illustrated by the author

Persuasion by Matt Sturges

illustrated by Harold Covey

A Port in a Storm by Chris Roberson 

illustrated by Doug Potter

An Encounter at Leed's Point

by Mark Finn

illustrated by Mack White

Okay, that's all you need from me! Review! Review for your lives!

My Writing Year: The March Numbers

Month three of my little experiment to write a half million words in a year has come in like a lion (see? That’s March!) and now we’re moving into April. Before I start pranking people today, I thought I’d report on the results for March. Here's the stats:

Projects Started: 1
Projects completed: 0
Bonus Projects (meaning, things not on the calendar): 3
Words typed: 46, 027
Target number: 42, 466
Surplus: 3,561

Much better! I had to push and fight and sweat to meet this deadline, mostly because I had huge pressures in my private life finally coming to roost. Thankfully, most of them are off y plate. I don’t know if that’s contributed to the glacial pace of Replacement Gorilla, but I’m essentially twice-over my time budget on this book. It’s sitting at 38 thousand words and I’m on target for 60 thousand or more for a final draft. I’m having a ball writing it, and I am really happy with where it’s at right now. Of course, it’s not about what I think; other people have to like it, as well.

One of the things I jammed on during a productive session was a series of short stories involving Clay Stark that take place in between the ten year periods between each Gorilla novel. One of these stories, “A Whim of Circumstance,” is already done and was published in the collection Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard. Other stories have suggested themselves, based on the weirdness that took place in that story. I’m eager to get to some of these. Scott Cupp suggested one to me that is just too good to pass up.

I am behind in some of my other projects, but I kinda knew that would happen. Right now, I’m content to push other things back to make sure Replacement Gorilla is as good as it can be. I’ve kept my schedule loose after June to take care of overflow, new projects, and the like. Also, I’m on track to publish my backlist.

First up is The Transformation of Lawrence Croft, the first book in the Con-Dorks Saga. By the end of the year, the three Con-Dorks novels will be in print. Also on deck is Road Trip, which is a kind of sequel to one of the major Sam Bowen stories (which will be available later this year) and also a kind of linchpin in the San Cibola universe.  The books that take place in the San Cibola universe will all have a special logo to identify them as such, so anyone wanting to follow along may do so.

Finally, I just got the final edits back for my collection of Sailor Tom Sharkey stories to be published by Fight Card Books. This book will be available as an ebook first, but I’ll have physical copies on hand at Robert E.Howard Days this year, in case anyone would like a signed copy. I love these stories and I’m really glad this book is coming out for other people to read and enjoy.

And don’t worry, those of you who are wondering about my review of Wonderbook. I’ll get back to it. It’s perhaps ironic that I’ll finish that review after I finish Replacement Gorilla. Wouldn’t it be the height of irony if my book sucked because I didn’t heed the great advice found in Wonderbook? I’m going to roll those dice and do it, anyway. We’ll see what happens.

That Old Christmas Spirit: A Heartwarming Yuletide Nightmare

Author's note: This is an old story I wrote back in the days of Clockwork Storybook. We wrote a lot of Christmas stories during our run, of varied quality, but I really like this one, still. It sums up most of my feelings about Christmas nicely. It was literally inspired by a dream I had, and it scared the hell out of me at the time. I tried to make the "off the rails" part of the story just like my dream. You can let me know if I succeeded or not. Hope you enjoy it! 

“Santa Claus, Daddy!” Martin Hartsfield tugged frantically on his father’s arm, to no avail. He leaned into the task of attempting to steer the grown-up away from the Old World Sausage Shoppe and into the North Pole Pavilion of Guildcrest Mall.

“Marty, calm down!” Joseph Hartsfield’s tone was rougher than he’d intended, but Christ, that kid was driving him nuts.

“But Daaaad...” whined Marty, the nasal tone raking down Joseph’s spine.

“Son,” said Joseph, as he leaned down and turned the six-year old around to face him, “do you remember our deal?”

Marty’s expression went from petulant to thoughtful.

“What we talked about on the way here? If you’re good and quiet and help me out tonight, we’ll go see the Christmas lights.”

“Yeahbut, Dad, that’s Santa Claus over there!” Clearly this changed the deal in Marty’s eyes.

Joseph didn’t even glance over his son’s shoulder. “Did you see the line over there? Son, the mall will be closed before you can even get to talk to him.”

“Yeahbut...”

“Marty, I promise, we’ll come back later, when it’s not so crowded.” Say, in June, Joseph thought. “Now, if you want to see the Christmas lights tonight, then you’ll be a big kid and help me out, okay?”

“Aw, but Daaaad...”

“Okay,” said Joseph, standing up, “here are your choices: keep quiet and help me out, then we’ll go see the Christmas lights, or keep whining and go home with nothing. What’s it going to be, son?”

Marty hung his head. “Aw, I guess I’ll be quiet.”

“Good,” Joseph said. They resumed walking. “While you’re being quiet, why don’t you tell me what you’re going to ask Santa for this Christmas?”

Marty’s eyes lit up. The Santa incident now forgotten, he started in on his list, rapid fire. “I want a Gameboy with the Pokemon Gold, and an Action Man with the blow gun thing, and Spyro for the Xbox...”

Joseph let him chatter away while he gnashed his teeth at the whole thing. Christmas was for the kids now, not the adults. He surveyed the mall, bedecked to overflowing with silver and gold tinsel, red and green wreathes. Every single store had some overt way to signify that it was indeed Christmas, and all of your shopping needs could be taken care of in one fell swoop if you would just come inside. Joseph hunched his shoulders and stuck his hands in his pockets, feeling grinchy. It had been like this since early November, for Christ’s sake! As if anyone needed any reminders. 

DAY THREE: The CWSB 30 Day Novel Challenge

I am on pace so far, but I feel I should warn some long time readers of me and San Cibola in general. Well, not warn, so much as explain.

I'm taking the San Cibola out of the Con-Dorks.

When I rework the first two books (with the intention of selling the three novels as a trilogy) I will be shortening the distance between the Con-Dorks and the Sisters by having all of the events take place in San Francisco and the Bay Area. So if some of the geography in this third book seems off, that's why.

But why am I doing this? It's simple, and a little sad, too. Without all of the other authors on hand to prop up San Cibola with their writing, the concept of a magical city with open secrets becomes harder for one book (or even a set of books) to maintain on its own. San Cib was a shared world, not just in that we were sharing the real estate as writers, but that you, as readers, were sharing the information about the place picked up from all of these stories. That's how the shared world operates.

So, for the purposes of, say, introducing the first Con-Dorks book, it's much easier as an author to say (and for you as a reader to buy into) "Okay, magic is real, and it's largely secret. Some folks know about it, and they are special. Most people don't know about it, and they are normal." If I don't have to further explain the world, this brand-new city, and how it all works to a new reader, then they can get involved in the story that much quicker.

So, If you have a copy of Gods New and Used, or if you liked the books when they were serialized on RevolutionSF, I recommend you hang on to them. When next they appear, they will be in a new form. It's almost as if the Blue Cutters got ahold of the books, but not really. I hope.

Oh, and for the rest of you following the contest: Insert obligatory Trash-Talk here.