2) Your request to play Devil’s Advocate has been denied.
3) A Captain America motorcycle suit. No turned-down pirate boots, though.
4) Honest Slogans.
6) We’re more creative when we’re tired: ten surprising facts about how brains work.
7) Tips For Improving Street Harassment, in comic form. So. Good.
Writers complain. A lot.
And really, they have reason to. Does the guy who drives the truck full of books from the warehouse to the bookstore have to hold down a day job so he can pursue his love of truck driving? That’s a nope, but the people who create the objects he’s transporting often do. Most people in publishing do not make mint, but most of them don’t live as though their job is a hobby.
For writers, most of them have to squeeze writing in between work and family duties. Then, when they’re published, they find that things completely out of their control threaten to (or do) sink their book.
Lousy covers. Delayed royalty payments. People who send nasty reviews because they want the writer to see the reviewer’s contempt. There are a million indignities to be endured and worst of them all is the strong possibility that a writer will outlive their own career.
But there are good things, too. A review by someone who gets the book. An enthusiastic bookseller. Beautiful cover art. Beautiful design. A kind word from another professional. A happy reader.
I think that anyone within a (virtual) mile of me knows that I’m running a Kickstarter. In fact, I’m writing this post on Friday night but scheduling it for Saturday morning, 12 hours before the campaign closes.
Going into this thing, I knew I would have reason to be grateful. Even if it never funded, I would be grateful to everyone who pledged and everyone who helped me put the project together. My wife was endlessly patient with that damn video shoot. My kid was enthusiastic about making art for the stretch goals (and the Tejohn Minecraft skins). And others, too, that I’m not sure I should specifically name, who looked at the preview version and told me what to cut or change.
But the response from readers has really been beyond my expectations. I could type out thank yous until my fingers fall off and it still wouldn’t seem like enough.
And you know what? This is pretty much on par with my experience as a writer. The fact that I can string together words into a narrative means that I have been the recipient of astonishing kindness, from things as simple as a word of praise to as complex as offers to replace my writing computer or attend events at a convention.
If there’s one thing about being a writer that has surprised me, it’s the tremendous amount of gratitude it has brought into my life. So thank you.
Last night my Kickstarter hit 925 backers, unlocking Stretch Goal: Monitor, the second to last stretch goal. This morning we reached 1000 backers, which unlocked Stretch Goal, Mask, the very last one.
So I created something new: Stretch Goal: You. I encouraged backers to create their own stretch goals so they could create anything they wanted and share it with the other backers, if we hit their goal.
Already we have an indie composer who has promised 20P music, and…
Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue have promised that, if we reach 1200 backers, they will expand on the Voidcallers section of the FATE Toolkit to let people role play in a Twenty Palaces-style setting. See here.
I’ve said before that there was no need for me to create a 20P supplement because Voidcallers is already it. But if you want sample stunts, special character creation rules, the whole deal, you probably want to join in on this.
We’ve already gone far, far beyond anything I had a right to expect. Can we manage to hit this goal, too?
I have to run out for a meeting, if you can believe it, but I can’t wait to see how this plays out.
And if you have something you want to share with the other backers, please do.
The Kickstarter topped the $40,000 mark. That’s over 400% of goal with 47 hours left to go. Thank you.
I have generally avoided asking people to help spread the word, but the whole purpose of writing these books was to bring in new readers. At this point in the campaign, I’m going to create this as a resource for people willing to share news in their own social media spaces.
For friends who prefer ebooks:
At the $12 pledge level, they’ll get THE WAY INTO CHAOS, the first book in the trilogy (including the Chris McGrath cover). The basic description of the series is right on the main Kickstarter page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1179145430/the-great-way-an-epic-fantasy-trilogy-by-harry-con
The (pre-edited) sample chapters start right here:
http://www.harryjconnolly.com/index.php/the-way-into-chaos-chapter-1/
They’ll also get A KEY, AN EGG, AN UNFORTUNATE REMARK, the urban fantasy novel with a protagonist in her mid-sixties. The book is sort of like The Dresden Files if Harry Dresden was actually a cross between Auntie Mame and Gandalf. A more complete description can be found here:
They’ll also get the comic fantasy novelette my son wrote as part of the homeschool project, with cover art by Kathleen Kuchera:
http://www.pinterest.com/kathleenkuch/my-art/
Finally Also, they’ll also get a copy of TWENTY PALACES, the prequel to the books in my Del Rey series. More detail here:
http://www.harryjconnolly.com/index.php/twenty-palaces/
And finally, we’ve just this morning unlocked the last book, a short fiction collection that will include the Twenty Palaces short “The Home Made Mask” along with other new and reprinted stories from me.
That’s a short fiction collection and three novels (plus the novelette my son wrote, with cover art) for only $12. For someone who is unfamiliar with my work, that strikes me as a pretty good deal.
At the $25 level, they’ll get all of the above and the other two books in the trilogy. That’s five novels all together, including all three of the Chris McGrath covers, plus the short fiction collection and the novelette.
If they’re gamers, too, then only $5 more will get a game supplement, too, so backers who play FATE Core can run a game in the setting of The Great Way. Also, as I write this, we’re only 30 new backers away from unlocking a FATE Core supplement for KEY/EGG It’s unlocked. There will be two FATE Core supplements for everyone at this level.
For people who prefer paper books,
Well, that’s a heavier lift, because the reward levels for the trade paperbacks are well above the typical market rate for books.
Twitter-friendly sample posts:
If you’re new to Harry Connolly’s fiction, the last hours of his Kickstarter have some good deals. http://kck.st/18DEKAL
or
Four ebooks for $12 and six for $25. Be sure to check out Harry Connolly’s fiction: http://kck.st/18DEKAL
Also! The hardcover omnibus edition offered at the King/Queen level and above is not going to be available after Saturday evening when the Kickstarter closes. If you’re the sort of person who likes rare (if not necessarily valuable) books, this will be the only opportunity to score a copy.
ADDED LATER: The new stretch goal is STRETCH GOAL: YOU, which means that backers can set a goal for them to create something they can share with all the other backers.
One of the option is an expanded writeup of the FATE Core Voidcallers game setting. Now, I’ve had people asking me for a Twenty Palaces rpg for a while and frankly, FATE’s Voidcallers is it. They capture the feel of the setting and the magic far better than I ever could.
So if you would like a Twenty Palaces rpg, help the campaign reach 1200 backers.
Also on offer in Stretch Goal: You: audio fiction, music, and I know someone else is working on a historical 20P game writeup.
I can’t pretend this isn’t exciting. Not just because of the numbers, but seeing other people jump in with their own ideas is a real thrill.
Thank you, everyone, for the support you’ve given me so far.
My Kickstarter campaign ends on Saturday evening and I have the cover to prepare for the new paper POD edition of Twenty Palaces and I have chapters to revise and a kid to feed and an apartment to clean and and and and. But what did I spend most of the day doing?
Wrestling with a malfunctioning computer.
It turns out that my local backups are all futzed. The online backup is fine, presumably, the family photos are safely stored on a hard drive and all my writing is backed up elsewhere. HOWEVER! I can not get Time Machine to work on my desktop, even with the perfectly functional new Time Capsule I just bought.
What’s more, the two laptops work just fine. It’s only the desktop that refuses to back up then tells me that I may need to run Disk Utility on the backup drive.
Running Disk Utility on my desktop finds all sorts of permission errors related to the FRAMEWORKS and a few other things which are currently disabled, like Remote Management.
It looks like I’m going to have to export my emails, bookmarks, and GIMP files to an external HD, partition my iMac, the reinstall the OS.
Which I totally have time for. Obviously.
I hate this shit.
Nick Mamatas is an author and editor known mostly for writing unusual books and being acerbic online. I enjoy his writing (even if it can be a little didactic at times) but haven’t been able to keep up with everything he’s written.
With his latest book, he breaks away from sf/f and moves to mystery (a genre I really love) and the book sounds terrific. Let me do that Amazon link thing:
The protagonist is a teenage punk in 1989 Long Island who has “crafted an outsider’s life combining the philosophies of Communism and Aleister Crowley’s black magic.” When her friend and mentor is found shot to death, she’s convinced that there’s more to it than simple suicide.
Not exactly your typical homicide detective with a dying wife, and it got a helluva review on NPR. You can click the cover image above if you want to buy it.
But I’m not writing this to push a book I haven’t read yet. That’s all just context for this:
Also:
Anyway, this is pretty much a recipe for the destruction of a book.
Yeah, the marketing for his new release is going wonky in interesting (I can call it that since it isn’t happening to me) ways, and it’s instructive to read about. It’s also pretty painful, since the book sounds like it would be unusual and compelling but might fade all too quickly just to become another entry in the author’s backlist waiting for a new book to hit the market in a big way.
Still, it’s not as though the book is doomed. As Nick says in his post, there’s still word of mouth, and there’s no force more powerful in bookselling once a critical mass of enthusiastic readers sharing a book they love. Every author depends on their readers in that way.
Anyway, out of habit I put a request into my library to pick up a copy for me (I should have linked to that NPR review for them) but since I might be coming into a wee bit of money soon, I’ll ask the local bookshop to order one for me.
Added later: A second, completely different story to the same effect.
If you’ve been following the recent research on happiness, you might be surprised by some of what has been discovered. Yes, buying material objects can increase your happiness, but only in the very short term. Buying new clothes or a new hat is nice at first, but we quickly become accustomed to it and the happiness fades.
What makes us most happy–and makes for long-lasting happiness–is experiences, especially experiences that will be happening sometime in the not too distant future. The reason is that it’s not so much the experience (the vacation, the concert, the road trip) itself that brings joy, but the anticipation of it. Read this article in The New Republic for a magazine-length discussion:
What you can learn about the new science of smarter spending: Yes, money can make you happy.
One interesting finding was that people enjoyed TV shows more when they included commercial breaks, because that little teasing delay between acts increased their anticipation.
Why do I mention this? Well, books are both material objects and experiences, and sometimes it can be a long wait for a book to come out. That seems like the best of both worlds.
But I’m not bringing this up because of my Kickstarter, which ends this Saturday and which promises a fun experience some months from now when the trilogy (plus the unlocked bonus books) are finished and released. I mean, sure, you might think this topic would be a good way to promote a Kickstarter, but that’s not why I’m here.
I want to officially announce a paper edition of TWENTY PALACES, the self-published prequel to CHILD OF FIRE and the other Twenty Palaces novels.
No, it’s not available yet. I’m still trying to get the cover to work (that’s today’s task, alongside setting up a new Time Capsule) but telling you now so you know it will be out soon increases happiness, right? If, that is, you’re one of those people who wants to read the prequel but doesn’t do ebooks.
Why has it taken two years to get a paper edition? Two reasons that are really one reason: It’s a lot of work, even with help, and it was too depressing. When the cancellation of the series happened, I was really really down about it, and doing all the work needed for a self-published POD Twenty Palaces would have been too painful. Now, with a little distance, it’s more manageable.
With luck, it will be available by Christmas time.
Thanks!
I did an interview for HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY a Kickstarter anthology I’ve agreed to contribute to.
I’d sworn off short fiction for the next several months to focus on my longer work, but when John Joseph Adams asked me to add a story I had an idea immediately, one I absolutely have to write.
Anyway, in the interview I talk about the success my own Kickstarter has had.
Also today I posted a writeup of A KEY, AN EGG, AN UNFORTUNATE REMARK, which is an urban fantasy with a protagonist in her mid-sixties. Everyone who pledges at $12 or more will already get an ebook copy of this new book (that stretch goal has already been unlocked) but the next stretch goal will unlock a game supplement so folks can roleplay inside this setting.
Finally, the Kickstarter has broken through the $35,000 level (twice now, actually, because this is a time when people will cancel or downgrade their pledges). That’s pretty wild. Thank you for all your support.
Avert your eyes if you can’t bear to read it!
First of all, we broke through the $34,000 mark and made Stretch Goal: Image. That means I can afford Chris McGrath covers for all three books.
I don’t need to tell you how HUGE that is.
I’ve just posted some new stretch goals if you want to check them out: Desktop wallpaper for the Chris McGrath art, another FATE Core supplement, and my upcoming short fiction collection, which will include a new Twenty Palaces short story. Follow the link to find out more.
Finally: Wow.
Just wow.
