Today is my son’s birthday

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My son was born on Boxing Day, and his mom and I have always made an effort to make this day special for him. Not just a little christmas, where he gets a few more gifts but everything is all colored lights and decorated tree. My wive and I used to strip all the Christmassy stuff off the table and replace it with a bright yellow table cloth, balloons, and birthday pie (never cake).

But he’s turning 13 today, so it’s unlikely we’ll be spending the day together like we used to. He got a new gaming keyboard and mouse yesterday, so I expect he’ll want to spend at least part of the day trying to get used to his new “rig.” (God, I can’t believe he calls it that.)

Still, we planned lunch at a local Japanese place that he likes, and we have gifts to give him: a couple of books and some Tshirts from Threadless.

And I have work to do. Some folks are having problems with the books I published, plus I’m trying to work out some publicity, plus I have end of the year payments and tax stuff to do. Will I be online, doing all that stuff, or will I be press-ganged into a co-op game or something?

Time will tell. In the meantime, if you received bookstore gift cards, you can pick up a copy of The Way Into Chaos. Order a paper copy now and, like the Kickstarter backers, you’ll get the version with the massive but invisible proofing error on the back cover. Seriously, readers send me typos all the time, but no one has caught this. (I certainly didn’t!)

“Superheroes are not a genre.”

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Over at io9, Charlie Jane Anders has a post about lessons learned by the entertainment industry in 2014, and her number one lesson is that subject header above. And I think she’s wrong.

There are two ways to come at the question. First, do we pin the blame of a box office failure on a poorly-used plot structure? Well, you can try, but it’s not very convincing. Eventually, we’ll have something like Raimi’s version of Spider-man which, for all its flaws, made the structure of super-powered-nice-guy-vigilante-with-two-identities-trying-to-stop-crime-in-secret really come together. Audiences went nuts for the first one, and if they’re less enthusiastic now it’s because later iterations have been really, really flawed, and far too familiar.

But are superheroes a genre?

What unifies the books in the horror genre? The emotion they invoke.
What unifies the books in the mystery genre? The central plot question.
What unifies the books in the western genre? The setting.
What unifies the books in the fantasy genre? A plot element.

Some genres are easy to mix. You write a scary story set in the Wild West: Horror western. You write a romantic story with fantasy elements: Fantasy romance.

So the real question becomes: Are superheroes a “plot element” genre or are they a plot structure genre? While it’s true that there’s a standard plot formula that has become associated with superheroes (true with any genre, really), the remainder of the “superheroes are not a genre” argument Ms. Anders makes demonstrates how well they mingle with other genres.

Notice also that those other genres are mainly settings and plot structures: dystopian time-travel, space opera, etc. That’s because the superhero genre is a “plot element” style. You wouldn’t say that Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier isn’t a superhero movie because it has spy thriller plot. It’s both, in the same way that Romancing the Stone is a romance and an adventure.

BTW, did you know that I’ve been pitching my new trilogy as “Epic Fantasy that reads like a Thriller”? It’s epic fantasy because of the setting and the inclusion of magic, and it’s a thriller because of the pace and tone. Genres based on different things are easy to mix. Genres that are very similar can be really difficult.

Looking at numbers, part 2A

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As an addendum to yesterday’s post about not getting responses to my Kickstarter fulfillment emails, it seems that no matter how old I get, I can still be blindsided by the realization that Other People Do Things Differently.

If you offer me something I want, I take it, all other things being neutral. If I’m in a situation where it’s not convenient to take it, I might put it off a while, or maybe not. I did carry a quart bottle of OJ around on a date night with my wife because otherwise no OJ.

I’ve certainly put off dealing with emails that required a response, but to acquire a thing I wanted? It would never even occur to me. It’s the way I was brought up.

That’s why I assumed I could get good open/ignore stats on a Saturday night from an email sent on a Wed/Thu. However, I spent a large portion of yesterday reading tweets, Facebook comments, LiveJournal comments, and emails from folks who will get around to it, who will do it after they finish a book, who have to fight for computer time, who are doing holidays, who are traveling.

You get the picture. What seems, to me, to be a matter of habit and instinct isn’t really.

Sorry for reading so much into things, you guys.

At least I sold a bunch of copies of my short fiction collection.

Looking at numbers, part 2

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Part 1 is here and it talks about the numbers without giving specifics, but this post will.

No, not sales numbers. Clicks. And not clicks for something I’m trying to sell. This is a situation where “click” = “something people already paid for.”

Obviously, I’m talking about Kickstarter backers getting copies of my new book, plus.

Some background:

Because I had to get ebooks to almost 1200 people, I couldn’t send a flood of emails, especially ones with attachments over 5 or 10MB. That would have gotten me blacklisted by a bunch of ISPs (don’t ask me how I know that).

So I set up a newsletter program that would automate the emails, spreading them out over many hours. I also uploaded the ebooks to a folder on my website so I could send download links instead of attachments.

Finally, I did my best to make things as simple as possible. The email subject line was “The Great Way ebooks are here!” to be totally unambiguous. The list of books included cover pics. The download links were alone in their own section with a single line of text for each of the links. This is what it looked like (behind the cut) for people who backed at $25 or above. Backers at $12 had two fewer covers. Continue reading

Randomness for 12/21

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1) Get your rage on with this complete ranking over every Star Trek episode ever.

2) 22 pictures that prove we live in the future.

3) There’s an “atmospheric river” flooding California.

4) What colour is it? The time of day expressed as a hexidecimal color.

5) Pixel art illustrations that tell a personal story.

6) The relationship between coffee and mesmerism, and the importance of morning rituals. Video.

7) Unused audio commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomnsky, recorded summer 2002, for the Fellowship of the Ring (extended edition) DVD.

Looking at numbers, part 1

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Actually, this conversation happened on Twitter Thursday night, but here you go:

Of course I meant “on Reddit” and “big traffic” but by that point I’d had more than two beers.

Last I looked, there was a fifth, complimentary comment on that thread (which I’m not linking to, because I’m not trying to drive readers there).

Re: sales, Amazon has continued to sell about the same, but B&N sales have dropped off sharply since that first day. And this conversation is all about ebooks. Print sales don’t come into it.

Bad Book Marketing Ideas

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Cracked has an article on outrageous stunts people have pulled to get their books out in the world, and it’s way way worse than the endless streams of promo tweets most people adopt.

Weirdest of all are the people who think public stunts will get them a publisher. That shit is just sad.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to crash a motorized hang glider into the Space Needle, then shoot myself.

Buy prints of Chris McGrath’s art for The Way Into Chaos

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Chris McGrath is selling prints of the art he did for The Way Into Chaos, and not only is it gorgeous, the prices are beyond reasonable.

Check it out.

Scariest Dickensian Ghosts for the Holidays

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Annual tradition: Here’s my favorite version of A Christmas Carol

The Way Into Chaos post

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My new book, first in a new trilogy, is on sale now. Let me start with a blurb.

“It’s Epic Fantasy that reads like a Thriller” — Kat Richardson

Here’s the description from the back cover:

The city of Peradain is the heart of an empire built with steel, spears, and a monopoly on magic… until, in a single day, it falls, overthrown by a swarm of supernatural creatures of incredible power and ferocity. Neither soldier nor spell caster can stand against them.

The empire’s armies are crushed, its people scattered, its king and queen killed. Freed for the first time in generations, city-states scramble to seize neighboring territories and capture imperial spell casters. But as the creatures spread across the land, these formerly conquered peoples discover they are not prepared to face the enemy that destroyed an empire.

Can the last Peradaini prince, pursued by the beasts that killed his parents, cross battle-torn lands to retrieve a spell that might—just might—turn the battle against this new enemy?

Several free chapters start here. Go forth and sample.

And here’s the cover itself:

Cover of The Way Into Chaos

Art by Chris McGrath. Design by Brad Foltz

God, I love that cover. (Chris sells prints at very reasonable rates.) Spoiler: the art on the inside is gorgeous, too. If you want to see a larger version of the map, the artist has put it on her site.

Let’s have some backstory. When I announced that poor sales numbers meant I was not going to be writing any more Twenty Palaces novels, I kept telling readers “I hope you like my next series just as much.”

Well, no pressure on me, but the next series is here. Anyone who’s been following this blog knows it was written as part of a homeschool project with my son. I tried to find traditional publication for this book and the two sequels, and when that failed, I turned it into a successful Kickstarter.

Hold on, let me just post this to see if I’m tired of looking at it yet.

Nope. Not yet.

It has a map by Priscilla Spencer, illustrations by Claudia Cangini, and the paperback was designed by a professional (who uses the pseud “thebarbarienne” online).

Anyway, the original working title for this trilogy was Epic Fantasy With No Dull Parts, which everyone thought was funny but few understood was mostly aspirational. Most epic fantasy has a slack, touristy feel to it, and I wanted to try for something different.

But I like to think this is more than just a thriller. It’s also about empire, and how it feels to live in one, and how you come to identify with it even if you hate it.

It’s also about being invaded. In fact, one of the NY publishers who turned the book down explicitly complained about this: a portal fantasy where the enemy is magically transported to a new land? Apparently, that’s Doing It Wrong. Portal fantasies are supposed to be about protagonists invading other places, not being invaded.

Please read the sample chapters. Book 2, The Way Into Magic is out right now. So is The Way Into Darkness, book 3.

If you like the books, please tell your friends.

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