Okay, Book. You don’t like me and I don’t like you…

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I just returned from the SFWA business meeting, where I learned All The Secrets. Sure, it was 40 minutes long and I left home at seven am to get there and only arrived at the library to start working at noon (thanks to a missed bus connection) but those secrets were totally worth it. [1]

I probably should have loitered afterwards to socialize, but Saturdays are a big writing day for me and I really really didn’t want to lose any more work time today. Besides, I suck at socializing. I’m the boringest guy ever, so it’s best for everyone if I just walk into a room, sit quietly, then walk out again later.

Actually, here’s a tip: If you hear there’s going to be a SFWA business meeting going on at a convention or whatever, just go ahead and crash it. No one checks IDs or anything; just walk in, help yourself to a coffee and a danish, then sit somberly while the nice folks run through the agenda. If they pass a paper around to record who attended, just write “Harry Connolly” on there or some other unrecognizable nobody, then you’ll be able to kick back for some private time with a bunch of pro writers.[2]

The meeting was at Norwescon, which I attended last year. Considering the public transit times involved, I’ve decided it’s just too far to go. Sure, the crowds will also keep me away, and my weak chat fu, and my general disinterest, but the travel times are another arrow in my quiver.

At least I got to use the nice hotel bathroom rather than the downtown library.[3]

Other news! I created a Facebook Page, and will slowly be changing my FB time to that, and trimming back my “friends” on my regular FB account. Nothing personal, but I need to recapture some of my time. If you find yourself unfriended over there, it’s only because I don’t know you really or I see the content you post elsewhere.[4]

Finally, I have something else I need to mention that keeps coming up. I shouldn’t bury it in a weekend post, but what the hell:

I’m not going to do a Twenty Palaces Kickstarter.

Yes, I’ve been involved in two Kickstarter campaigns. The Spirit of the Century one panned out pretty quickly, and the Tales of the Emerald Serpent shared world anthology is still working its way toward the goal.[5]

But neither campaign has been “mine.” I placed fiction there, but I haven’t set the goals, the pledge benefits, the timelines, none of it. I haven’t made the videos and I don’t post the updates. Those projects are someone else’s babies.

A number of people have asked: why not Kickstart a new Twenty Palaces novel? Here’s the answer: While I’m sure I could set a pledge level that people would be willing to meet, it’s not money that’s stopping me. It’s readership.

Each of the Twenty Palaces books sold fewer and fewer copies than the one before. They diminished.[6] As much as I loved the series (and believe me, I love them like crazy–those books are ten years of my life) continuing to push them would be career suicide.

I have new books I’m working on. Some of you will hate them, some will like them–I’m comfortable with that idea. But I have to be writing books that increase my readership, not shrink it.

The Twenty Palaces setting is a dead horse, and my whipping arm is tired.

Okay. Time to make pages.

[1] I’ll even share one with you: It’s hard to get rich in sf/f publishing. You heard it hear first.

[2] As far as you know.

[3] Confidential to the dude in the next stall: Holy Christ, you have my utmost sympathy.

[4] Stupid timeline.

[5] Check out the $5 and $10 pledge levels. They seem like a great bargain.

[6] Circle of Enemies has sold one-third as many books as Child of Fire, and the numbers have pretty much played out. These books are not going to make a surprise resurgence.

Randomness for 4/6

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1) A webcomic appreciation of Doctor Who. via @sinboy

2) The invasive species diet. I don’t care how much good it does for the planet, I’m not eating nutria.

3) The Dalek Relaxation Tape. Video.

4) Worst Album Covers Ever. Some of these are NSFW.

5) It’s Official: Star Wars Kinect Is the Worst Star Wars Thing Ever. I don’t know. To me, a little silliness if just fine.

6) D&D: The Important Questions

7) Awesome animated gifs. No, seriously for real.

KING KHAN is go!

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The Spirit of the Century Kickstarter hit $25K, so I will definitely be writing KING KHAN after I turn in A BLESSING OF MONSTERS. The Kickstarter isn’t over yet, though! If you pledge ten bucks, you get all the novels as ebooks, and higher tiers give higher benefits. Plus, if they reach $30K, you get KHAN OF MARS from Stephen Blackmoore.

Very cool, you guys. Thank you.

Two Kickstarters at once

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As I write this on 5pm PST on Tuesday, the Kickstarter for the Professor Khan novel (KING KHAN!) I’m planning to write, which needed to reach $25K to be funded, now has fewer than twelve hundred dollars to go.

And it turns out I had the details of the stretch goals wrong in yesterday’s post: Evil Hat has already committed to publishing a stand alone Spirit of the Century novel starring mystic detective Benjamin Hu, written by Brian Clevinger, creator of Atomic Robo comics. I can’t believe I left that out. A $10 pledge would get you an ebook of that novel, too, along with all the others.

Also, BoingBoing did a brief news article on the Mayan-themed anthology I’m in, and now that project has less than fourteen hundred dollars to make its funding goal.

Kickstarter is doing pretty well by me right now.

I’m going to write about a gorilla who teaches at Oxford (I hope!)

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It’s true. I don’t know if you’ve been following Evil Hat’s Dinopacalypse Kickstarter, but they started with a goal of $5K and blew through that in no time. This is one company that’s really making Kickstarter work for them.

Anyway, the “stretch goals” (projects they’ll fund if they reach funding levels past their original ones) have been pretty cool. At $15K, they committed to a whole trilogy of Dinopacalypse books…

Wait, I haven’t described these books yet, have I? They’re set in the Spirit of the Century game universe, an early 20th century pulp adventure role playing game in which player-characters who protect the world from conqueror apes using technology from lost Atlantis, thwart the schemes of Doctor Scrooge to steal from the poor, destroy death rays, and otherwise take out mad scientists, world conquerors, and evil sorcerers.

The Dinopacalypse books are about Gorilla Khan, conqueror ape, taking over the world with the help of psychic dinosaurs. Beyond that, the stretch goal for $20K is an Amelia Stone novel–she’s a hero who battles monster gangsters in 1930’s Paris–written by C.E. Murphy herself.

And then there’s the $25K goal, which will get you a book written by me. Yep, if the Kickstarter hits that mark, I will write a pulp adventure novel about Professor Khan, a hyper-intelligent gorilla turned Oxford professor and disillusioned “son” of Gorilla Khan. It’ll be set primarily in Hollywood(land) of the time period, along with some fun pulpy stuff thrown in.

And if Evil Hat reaches its stretch goal of $30K, Stephen Blackmoore, the author of the zombie noir City of the Lost, is going to write KHAN OF MARS. I know.

You can read more about the supporter levels and what pledges get you what swag right here in Update #6. A $10 dollar pledge gets you ebooks for all the novels, but for physical books you should read through the various tiers. You can also see artwork, get cool wallpapers of dudes with jet packs shooting pteranodons, etc, etc. Did I mention that the Kickstarter is already above $22K as I write this? Fewer than three thousand dollars in pledges will get this sucker going.

Anyway, I still haven’t settled on a title for intelligent ape in Hollywood novel. KING KHAN? PROFESSOR KHAN TAKES HOLLYWOOD? I dunno. Maybe, after I finish A BLESSING OF MONSTERS and start working on this, I’ll hold a contest.

I know I’m not one to be all rah rah about the projects I’m working on, but this one is definitely exciting.

The cover for Don’t Read This Book is here

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DRTBCover

Creepy, isn’t it?

If you guys don’t know, the book is an anthology set in the universe of the DON’T REST YOUR HEAD role-playing game. It’s a game in which people fall into a gothic nightmare world where they have limited abilities to control things (like lucid dreams) but the awful things they face are just way, way out there.

My story is called “Don’t Chew Your Food,” about a Food Network TV chef searching for a truth he doesn’t want to find. It was challenging as hell to write, but I really enjoyed it.

Anyway: Cover art! The book will be coming out in a few months, and I’ll be sure to announce it when it does.