Some Thoughts on Reviews from Neil Clarke

FIRST! Because I almost forgot and This Is Important: Three Dances will be free to download from Amazon.com starting tomorrow and running through Sunday. If you enjoyed Soulwoven, drop on by and give it a read. It's short and interesting.

SECOND! The meat of this blog post:

Neil Clarke runs an award-winning online science fiction and fantasy magazine called Clarkesworld. The magazine itself is one of my favorites, and as I was thumbing through it last weekend (I get a print copy every month in return for backing them as a patron), I came across a note from him that had to do, in part, with leaving reviews.

You can read it here.

It felt highly relevant to me and to Soulwoven, and since he explains not only the usefulness of leaving a review for your favorite anything (books, yes, but also magazines, restaurants, blenders, dish soaps, and cat leashes), but his own hangups about leaving reviews and how he's going to make an effort to review things anyway, I wanted to share.

It also got me thinking, because I live in a world of publishing where everybody knows that customer reviews are massively important, so much so that we don't even talk about why, and I'm sometimes surprised when I talk to the overwhelming majority of the world that doesn't work in publishing and they don't share my assumptions.

So I'll put it like this:

In the world of Internet commerce, customer reviews are the currency of credibility.

You can thank me for the alliteration later. I took poetry classes in college for that (well, not really for that, but I do love alliteration).

When books come in paper and we go to stores to buy them, we as readers tend to rely on several things to establish their credibility (i.e. whether we think they'll be any good) before we even open them, above and beyond the obvious like whether we've read the author's books before:

1.) Placement in the store. If a store put a book out front, somebody at the store thought it was good enough to highlight.

2.) Who published it. When I pick up a book from a publishing imprint whose name and logo I recognize, I have faith that it will meet a certain editorial standard and contain content of a certain kind.

3.) Physical cues. How's the cover look? Is the paper nice? Does it have a good heft? Does it smell like a book is supposed to smell?

4.) Laudatory quotes from booksellers, review sources, etc.

Internet retailers have done their best to replicate some of those things, but by and large, customer reviews have taken the place of most of them. If 400 people have taken the time to review a book, and the average rating they gave it was 4 stars, we feel reasonably certain that, even if it doesn't end up being right for us, it's at least a decent book in general. If 40 people have done so, we think it's got a niche audience and hopefully it's all right. If four people have reviewed it, it's a bit risky. How do we know it's any good? Who were those four people? Also, who wants to read a book that they can only talk about with four other people? That's boring. I want a book I can talk about with 4,000 of my friends, like this one over here that has prominent placement in the online storefront.

And then the author of the four-review book, who's probably new, who may or may not have the backing of a publishing house (I've seen traditionally published books launch with only a handful of reviews as well), and who might have written something brilliant, never gets read, and everybody loses.

So if you like a book, leave a review for it online, even if that just means clicking the stars. Amazon is the best place to do so, but other retailer sites and Goodreads are great too. That way other people will read it too, and someday you'll have more than just those four other star-givers to talk to about it.

Besides, reviewing is fun. It makes you feel important, which is good, because you ARE important.

Cheers, and happy weekend,
Jeff

News for the Week of 10.21.13: Soulwoven Comes Together, and All Hallows Write is Soon

Hello, friends and readers!

I was up until 1:00 a.m. last night reading the second book of Soulwoven to my fiancee, so I’m exhausted as I write this today. But it was worth it. The book’s coming together very well. It’s darker and deeper and harder than the first one was, but I think readers liked those things about the first one, and if you did, you’ll like the second even more. I hope to start posting chapters of it on Wattpad around the same time the first book launches commercially (February 2014).

Speaking! Of! Which! The commercial edition of Soulwoven is starting to look really exciting. The new cover is approaching a finished state, and it’s going to blow the doors off the one I’ve got now (especially in print). I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to handle page design and layout, and I’m really excited about the way the whole package is coming together. I’ve always thought of books as pieces of art, of which the text is just the heart. And I think that Soulwoven is turning into a piece of art, and it’s incredibly satisfying to watch.

More news! On Oct. 31, I’ll be staying up all night with a couple other authors for a scary story writing marathon we’re calling All Hallows Write (more info at allhallowswrite.com). That means I should have a new short story up here for you guys on Nov. 1. It’ll be a bit of a departure from my usual style, but I think it’ll still be recognizable as mine, and it’ll still be good. Hopefully. I’ve never tried anything like this before, and that’s half the fun.

Finally: Nadya. Nadya’s mired in the muck of the traditional publishing process, searching for the needle in the haystack that will be the agent who loves her. I’ll know in a month or two whether that’s going to happen. I’ve gotten lots of nibbles so far, but no bites. Everyone has been in concurrence that it’s a good book. It’s just a matter of finding the right home for it.

So there’s more coming from me to you shortly, in one form or another.

Stay tuned, thanks for reading, and if you want to give me a wonderful birthday present, head on over to Amazon and pick up a copy of Three Dances. :-)

Yours dearly,

Jeff

For New Readers

Note: I wrote this post originally to reach out to several thousand new followers of mine on Wattpad. But once it was written, I realized it might be worth sharing with a wider audience as well. So here goes!

TL;DR Thanks for taking a chance on me. I mostly write fantasy for young people. You can find a lot of my work on Wattpad. I appreciate your support and love talking to readers.

Hello friends and readers!

This post is mostly aimed at my new followers. Those of you who’ve been around for a while can feel free to carry on with your Wattpadding uninterrupted. :-)

But to the rest of you: a special hello! Many of you are completely new to Wattpad, and I want to thank you guys for choosing me as one of the first authors you’ve followed. I know a lot of you haven’t had the chance to read any of my work yet. That’s cool with me. I want to earn your support and readership, and I figure I’ll start by extending a welcoming hand and giving you a brief introduction to what I’ve posted here.

NADYA SKYLUNG AND THE CLOUD PIRATES is a fantasy steampunkish adventure written with middle-grade readers (11-14 or so) in mind. Judging by early reactions to it, it is by far the best thing I’ve ever written. There are only three chapters of it up on Wattpad, because I’m waiting to introduce it to the world with a bang, but it’s a good place to start and get an idea of what I write. 

SOULWOVEN is the reason most of you are here. Wattpad spotted it when I started posting it last year and asked to feature it. It’s an epic fantasy about brotherhood, friendship, young love, saving the world, losing your identity, and what we have left when everything is taken from us. It’s ambitious, and it’s a little dense, and it’s aimed at lovers of fantasy and literature ages 15 and up. 

Finally, THREE DANCES is a short story collection I published earlier this year. It’s five literary fiction stories done in a magical realist style that deal with tricks of language and myth, gender and sexuality, and growing up. It’s aimed pretty squarely at adults, but it’s a good read if you like its niche. 

I hope you find a book you love on my list. And if you do, I hope you take the time to let me know by voting and commenting (ed: or by buying Three Dances or backing the Soulwoven Kickstarter!). Those things are what make the world go round for us authors. And if you just want to say hi, drop me a line for that too. I’d love to talk to you. :-) 

Cheers, Jeff

News for the Week of 5.16.13: Kickstarter Survey, Homebuying, Soulwoven: Exile, and Nadya Revisions

Dear Friends and Readers,

It’s survey time! I’m building the skeleton of the Kickstarter for Soulwoven, and I want your help! I’ll talk more about it below, but for now, link here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XR6QC6G

Here’s the deal with the survey. Kickstarter lets people like me fund projects they don’t have the scratch to pay for themselves, like buying professional services for long books. It also lets people like you support the creation of art by pledging money to a project. In return, you get special, one-of-a-kind rewards. The survey is going to help me figure out what to offer as those rewards. I’m choosing to publish Soulwoven this way because I want to make you guys as big a part of the process as possible. And I want to make sure that there are backer rewards in the Kickstarter that you’ll get excited about.

So please drop in and share your opinions. It’s a four-question survey, and well worth your time if you want to help this thing get off the ground and get some awesome stuff in return.

In. Other. News!

My fiancee and I bought a house. The process of that has been taking up a great of deal of time that would have otherwise been spent writing. You have my apologies for that.

But!

I’ve finished a full draft of Soulwoven: Exile, the sequel to Soulwoven. It’s now waiting for me to finish some work revising Nadya so I can get Nadya back to an agent who showed some interest in it. Once I’ve done that, I’m going to take one last look at Exile and start sharing it with my trusty team of early readers. Hopefully it will be on its way to you guys by the end of the summer.

I’m extremely excited about the stories I have coming up for you guys. If you haven’t yet, check out Three Dances and buy a copy via the links on Wattpad or my website. The more books I sell, the more time I get to spend writing.

Cheers and springtime love,

Jeff

Three Dances Launch Party Speechifying, Part 3: The Reading

As promised: the reading! I read the first few pages of "The Jazz Festival" at the launch party. You can hear them below.


There's a lot more in the book---the rest of the story, for one thing. Plus illustrations and the story behind the story, which can be just as interesting.

You can buy it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

News for the Week of 4.18.13: Fall-Down Tiredness, Three Dances' Warm Reception, and Potential Kickstarting

Hello, Dear Friends and Readers!

I write to you today completely and utterly exhausted. It’s been a heck of a week. The Three Dances launch party went off well last weekend; I’ve been posting snippets from my speech there up on my blog all week, if you’re interested. Tomorrow I’ll post a reading from “The Jazz Festival” as well.

Three Dances itself is getting a much warmer reception than I expected. I thought of it as quite a weird book, but people are saying wonderful things about it on Goodreads, and Amazon, and Wattpad, and also in private messages to me. And that makes me wonderfully happy.

Meanwhile it’s off to the next book! I’m finishing up revisions on Soulwoven: Exile---just ten chapters left, and I’m getting into the real meaty, pulse-racy, everything-changes-forever sort of material. I feel sort of like I’m dancing drunk, because by the time I get to the book every night I’m so tired I feel like falling over, and then I have to try to put words on the page in a way that makes sense and tells a story, and that’s hard.

But I learned in college that sometimes I dance pretty well when I’m drunk.

Anyway, the wonderful reception that Three Dances has gotten has me thinking more about Soulwoven and how to best launch it this summer. I’m thinking about a Kickstarter, because the book is long enough and serious enough that I’d love to buy some professional help for it (copy editing, developmental editing, and line editing, in that order), but I have nowhere near the funds I need in order to do so. And I like the idea of letting fans fund the book in return for little treats like signed copies and marked up manuscript pages and doodles in the margins and critiques or edits or phone calls or visits from me. I want to reach out and make you guys a bigger part of my writing and my life, and that seems like a great way to do it.

Oh, and as I’m finishing up on Exile, I’m noodling final revisions for Nadya. I think it’s going to be good. I was a little rushed getting it out to agents last month, and I think giving it another pass or two will do good things for it.

So that’s me, so tired that I forget to feel excited some days.

Hope all’s well with you, too.

-Jeff

Three Dances Launch Party Speechifying, Part Two: Thank You

Just another short clip from the Three Dances launch party speech. A lot of the speech was taken up with thanking people who helped specifically on the book, but I spent a minute or so talking about the ways in which people have helped me generally, sometimes without even realizing it.

And I wanted to share that bit with people who weren't there, because I think sometimes we have a tendency to tell ourselves that people don't want or need our encouragement. And a lot of times that's simply not true.

Enjoy!

Expanding on My Three Dances Speech: Traditional Publishers and Hybrid Authoring

Yesterday I posted a link to the first few minutes of the speech I gave at the launch party for Three Dances. In it, I talk about some of the ways in which traditional publishing and self-publishing aren't really that different.

It has occurred to me that this could be misconstrued as me saying that traditional publishing doesn't bring anything to the table. Being as I work in the industry, I want to be clear that I don't think that's the case. Three Dances was a great fit for self-publishing, because it was a project that was niche enough that it would hold little attraction to a traditional publisher no matter how good it was, and it was short and small enough that I could feasibly do all the work on my own. That's not going to be the case for all books or all authors (I have spent years of my life learning the editorial skills I put to work here).

And on top of the advance you might get through a traditional publisher, you get a pretty sweet basket of services thrown in as part of the deal. Top-notch editing, design, and production services for a novel-sized book can pretty quickly run into the thousands of dollars on the freelance market. Marketing and pr, even skimpy as it can be, adds to the cost of a book as well. I used to think thousands of dollars was too much to pay for that kind of work. Now that I make my living as a freelancer, I've realized that if you want skilled labor, you have to pay for it (indie authors may recognize this argument as one they've been making to publishers for years). As much as I owe my authors, I owe my family more.

I do think that indie writers, if they've written a good book, will make their money back over time. But not everybody has that kind of scratch to invest. I sure don't. More importantly, not everybody is a good judge of which projects to make that kind of investment on. I could have spent that money on Three Dances, but it would have taken years to make it back, even if I wildly exceeded my expectations for the sales of the book.

There are several reasons I'm pursuing a traditional deal for Nadya. One of the biggest is that the middle grade market is still very much dependent on bookstore, book club, and library placement, and those are very hard markets for an indie to break into. But the other big one is that I'm willing to sacrifice long-tail money on that book for the services I can get from a traditional publisher, and for the things I could learn from working with one.

I see more and more hybrid authors doing the same thing in my submissions pile at Carina, and I'm always happy to see them, both for their sake and for mine.

--
You can buy Three Dances as a print or e-book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Three Dances Launch Party, Speechifying Part One: How Books Start Their Lives

Hello gentle readers!

The Three Dances launch party farfnoogled its way into history this weekend, to my very great enjoyment, to my stomach's very very great enjoyment, and to my waistline's subtle detriment.

I wish I could offer you a sliver of all the food and conversation, but that is somewhat beyond me.

Instead, I'm going to offer you a snippet of my speechifying. I'll be putting up three clips from it this week, one of which is a reading from the first story in the collection, "The Jazz Festival."

But today's clip touches on something different: how books start their lives, and how in some ways self-publishing and traditional publishing are very much the same.

I'll expound at greater length on some things that didn't fit into the speech tomorrow, but for today, here you go:


As a reminder, you can buy Three Dances in print or e-book on Amazon or B&N.

Countdown to Three Dances: Do It Now

I don't cry often.

It's not so much because I think I must be manly (although I sometimes do) as because I think I must be calm. I don't like letting my emotions get the better of me. When things get hard, I try to get rational and quiet and thoughtful.

But I cried last weekend.

Those of you who have been following the Three Dances posts will remember that I talked about a subject that made my stomach churn and my eyes tear up. This is it. And I am now three paragraphs into talking about it without having talked about it at all. That's how hard it is to write about for me.

One of my grandmothers did the art for Three Dances. She is an amazing, wonderful woman; donated her time and art to the book; and has been a mentor and a guiding light to me in ways I don't think she fully understands, because she is also a humble person.

But she's not the grandmother who has been most supportive of my writing over the course of my life.

Since I was a teenager, my other grandmother has encouraged me to be a writer. When she visited, she asked how my writing was going. When I was in college, she was thrilled to hear that I was studying writing, even though everyone knew it was never likely to be particularly remunerative. When we talked, she always, at some point, said, "Now, you're still writing, aren't you?" She was never pushy, but I always knew that she thought it was amazing that I was writing, and that she would be proud as a peach when my first book came out.

After my grandfather died, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, or something so much like it that nobody other than a doctor is likely to care about the difference.

But still, she knew I was a writer. During the times when the disease was just taking hold and she would only forget my name and not my face, she knew I was a writer. When we spoke, she still wanted to make sure that I was writing. It was very important to her. That's one of the funny things about that disease; you get to see what's important to people, because they talk about the same things over and over again.

In the last year, her disease has gotten much worse. I don't think she really knows who I am anymore. When we see each other, she gives me a huge smile and a hug and a kiss and says, "Oh, what a good-looking young man!" because, even as her brain wanders away from her, she is still just that kind of a person.

Last weekend I brought the proof copy of Three Dances to my parents' house so that I could share it with them and my grandmothers. And as I sat a table and waited for her to arrive, I realized that the grandmother who for years had encouraged me to write books would never really know that I had finished one, and that it was being published.

So I cried. And I'm crying again now, as I write this.

Because I could have done better. I could have done sooner. I could have published Three Dances, or Soulwoven, or something very much like them, while she was still capable of recognizing me and truly, deeply knowing that I had done something she had always wanted me to do.

So my advice to you is this: whatever thing you want to do with your life, do it now. Don't wait. There are people to whom your dreams are more important than you yet realize. And if you wait too long to make things happen, you may lose the chance to share wonderful moments with them.

I will never know what my grandmother's reaction to my first book would have been if it had come out five years ago. When I was younger, she was a very deep and thoughtful person. I wish I could know what she would have said and done.

Last weekend, her reaction was "That's wonderful! You wrote this? Where can I buy this? [pause, during which conversation moves on a little] I will give you two dollars for this!"

I told her her copy was on its way, and I laughed, because that reaction was so much better than what it could have been.

But still. Do it now. Whatever it is. Don't wait. We all only get so much time.

-Jeff

You can buy Three Dances here, here, or here.

News for the Week of 4.10.13: Three Dances is Live, and I Am Still Writing Soulwoven: Exile

Greetings Friends and Readers.

Three Dances. Is. LIVE! You can go buy a copy at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or CreateSpace or my website right now. The commercial editions come with illustrations and extras, and the knowledge that you’re supporting the creation of more stories like the ones you enjoy. For the next couple of weeks, I’m probably going to get a little proselytize-y about this book, so fair warning. But I’m very proud of it, and I want to get it into people’s hands.

So buy a copy, please. Or buy one for someone else. The print version is only $5.99 and the e-book version is available on my website for whatever you think is a fair price (as long as it’s at least $1; that’s as low as the fulfillment people will let me go).

Thanks.

In other news: Soulwoven! And Nadya!

Something rotten seems to be afoot with the read counting machines on Wattpad, but you guys have been amazing in your support for the book lately anyway. There are squillions of new votes, lots of people are tuning in and following, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. Work on the sequel is going well. I’m also buying a house and launching Three Dances and planning a move and a wedding, all on top of my day job as a freelance writer and editor, so things have felt a little hectic.

But every day I’m taking an hour or two, whether I have the time or not, to keep telling stories for you. I’m a little over halfway through this draft of the book, which broadens and shifts focus a bit. You’ll learn a lot more about Tsu’min in it, for instance, and Leramis takes center stage for longer than he has before. Some terrible things that lead to wonderful (or maybe even more terrible) things happen to Ryse.

I think you’re going to enjoy it.

Once this draft is done it goes off to my trusty inner circle of early readers and critics, and then I’ll start final review and posting chapters of it. In the meantime, I’m going to cram in one final revision of Nadya before she goes back out into the world of traditional publishing submissions.

Thanks again for following, all.

And please, check out Three Dances. :-)

Yours in ink and sleepless nights,

Jeff

Countdown to Three Dances: Images

Various versions of Three Dances are under final review at Amazon and B&N. The print version, actually, is live here: you can buy one (or ten, or a hundred) if you want, and I will get paid for it.

For some reason, this is terrifying to me.

So in order to stay clear of being afraid, I'm going to put up a blog post I wrote months ago with the plan of posting it in the runup to the Three Dances launch, mostly because I thought it was interesting and also because I thought it might drive some attention. Warning: It's long and gets a bit technical in places.

Anyway, here goes:

--

Today I want to talk about the art for the collection, and the interesting challenges it has presented for me-as-publisher.

I decided to include art in the collection because I wanted something to help it stand out from the crowd. There's so much being self-published right now, and it's so easy to just chuck something up on Amazon as an e-book, that I wanted to provide my readers with immediate proof that I had not just chucked the book up on the Internet. That, in fact, it had been planned and plotted and slaved and sweated over, and was going to be worth their few dollars of money and few hours of time to experience.

Including custom art seemed to be a good way to do that.

Originally, I was going to have a friend of mine who does amazing things with spraypaint and stencils and letters make the art, but his schedule got too crazy, and he had to back out. I then approached my grandmother, who has been making art for the better part of a century, about helping out.

Luckily for me, she was excited about the project, too.

Working with her has been a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime experience worthy of its own blog post, but one of the upshots of it has been that I'm left doing the digitization of her artwork completely on my own. Computers are not her thing.

I'm using a free program called GIMP, which was introduced to me by the folks at Wattpad, to do it. Process breakdown below:

First, I receive the finished art from my grandmother. It's not exactly in ready-to-display shape, but we're on deadline here, and she's working for free, and I'm happy just to have it at all.

Next, I wait for good, natural light in my apartment, take a digital photo of the artwork, and shovel it onto my computer. It looks something like this:

Next, I crop and rotate the photo in GIMP.

At this point, it's still far from ready for production. The whites aren't white, and there are a lot of extraneous lines left to be cleaned up. My first thought was to attempt to go through and clean everything by hand, but that very quickly proved to be an untenable amount of work.

Luckily, GIMP has a tool called "Color Select" that selects everything in an image that's the same or a similar color. The tool has been a godsend for me. So next I create a new image with the same dimensions as the original, select everything that's black in the source image, and copy it over onto the new image. It gives me something like this:

Pretty big improvement, right? But we're not done yet. It looks a little washed out, like it's been copied poorly on a machine. So next I go after the gray tones.

It takes several steps, but eventually, I get this:

Still not perfect, but it's getting closer, and we're now at the point where manual touch-up becomes feasible. So I go in with my GIMP paintbrush/pencil tool (they work kind of the same) and eraser, and I blacken in lines that I think are meant to be blacked and get rid of lines that I think were not meant to appear in the final product. It takes some fiddling and a little artistic interpretation on my part, but eventually, I end up with an image that looks more like this:

Finally, I print off a test page, which includes the image and the text roughly as I think they'll appear in the finished version. I then put it under a good light and circle areas of the image that I think need further retouching, like so:

Then, after I go back through and do some more image correction, I come out with what's approaching a final version:

Now I still have to get it laid out for real and wait for proofs, and there's a chance that the image will need some tweaking at that stage, but for now, it's done! And in much less time than one might think, as well. This one probably only took me three or four hours of work, and I was figuring everything out as I went. Future images should take even less time than that.

--

The image I used as an example here is one of the black-and-white ones that appears in the print and basic digital (for black-and-white ereaders like the basic Kindle and Nook) editions of the book. Creating the Digital Deluxe Edition's colorized images was a bit more fun. I'll pop back on the blog to talk about that sometime next week.

I also have a Three Dances-related blog post in the back of my head that churns my stomach and brings tears to my eyes to think of. I will write it when I think I have the mental space to do it justice, and I will share it with you before the book's official launch on the 13th.

I promise.

News for the Week of 4.2.13: Icy Roads, Encouraging Things, and SOULWOVEN Coming Out Soon!

Greetings Friends and Readers!

Apologies for the late newsletter. I spent the weekend dodging semis on icy roads in the mountains and have only just recovered from the shock (and the Easter meal that followed).

So, to the news:

Work is picking up on Soulwoven: Exile, the sequel to Soulwoven. I’m about a third of the way through it now, and while I’ve hit a few sticky points, and I’m also really starting to get into my groove. It still has to go through a few more rounds of reads and revisions before it will be ready for mass consumption, but I hope to have it finished soon.

Nadya has been getting a decent response from the agents I’ve submitted it to. So far it’s still all “no”s, but they’re the “loved this, didn’t love this,” or “thought it was strong but just didn’t connect with it” kind of “no”s. As an editor who writes letters like this, I know how close this means I am, and I take a great deal of comfort in it. I plan to sneak in another round of revision on it based on some agent feedback after I’ve finished this draft of Exile and then send it out to a broader swath of agents this summer.

And speaking of summer, I’ve decided to self-publish Soulwoven in the summer as well! I’m shooting for a June release date, which is a bit ambitious, but hopefully will be manageable. What that means for you is that you’ll be able to get a print copy, or a prettied-up digital copy, or a bundle of both, within the next few months.

Finally, Three Dances has hit the home stretch! I’m waiting on the final proof copy of the printed version, and as long as I don’t find any problems in it, it’ll go live either this week or next.

The fourth story in the collection, Birdcage, is up on Wattpad now. It’s about an ordinary human being who encounters something he can’t explain, and a supernatural being caught in a cycle of death, rebirth, and predation she doesn’t particularly enjoy.

It is also, despite what one early reader said to me, decidedly NOT erotica.

Happy spring, friends! It snowed AND rained here today, so surely the world is yawning and stretching and waking up for another round of rabid growth.

Jeff

News for the Week of 3.25.13: Proof! A New Challenge! Soulwoven to Be Pubbed This Summer!

Dear Friends and Readers,

Apologies for posting late! I have been busy with things that are Not Writing of late, but they’re wrapping up shortly and I’m very much looking forward to spending a lot more time creating things in the near future.

There is, nevertheless, some news:

My proof copy of Three Dances arrived today! I was less enthused than I’d hoped to be by the quality of the printing. It’s exciting to have a book in print, but there’s definitely a homespunness to CreateSpace that I wasn’t expecting. It suits Three Dances well, actually, but I was a little underwhelmed all-in-all. The electronic editions are definitely better.

I also discovered a need to tweak the cover in a couple of places and a couple of interior problems, so there will be a new proof coming my way soon. Perhaps it will be made of sterner stuff than the first one was.

I shall post the third story in the collection, The Glacier, on Wattpad as soon as I’m done with this letter. It’s longer than the rest and forms the backbone of the collection. It’s about a man who falls into a glacier. It’s also about his friend, and about the glacier itself, and the mountains, and a dance in the time of myth that shaped the world.

In Soulwoven-related news, the book has almost hit 250,000 reads! I can’t tell you how excited I am about that. I’ve decided to publish the book this summer (probably in June or July), and as I cook up ways to promote it, I’ve run across one that sticks out. Wattpad has a (hidden) rank for its books called “All-Time.” Right now, Soulwoven is somewhere around 275 on that list. If it breaks into the top 100, I should be able to write some pretty compelling copy for it.

All it needs to do that is your votes.

Seriously, if all 178 of you vote for every chapter in the book, it’ll get there in the blink of an eye. So if I’ve moved or entertained you, do me a solid and throw some votes my way. To those of you who already have, thank you. :-)

Nadya is still waiting for agents to respond. Soulwoven: Exile has my (nearly) full attention this month; I hope to have the first chapter ready for you soon.

Thanks as always for being the wind in my sails,

Jeff

News for the week of 3.16.13: Three Dances in Print, PWYW, and Soulwoven Keeps on Rollin'

Hello Dear Friends and Readers!

It’s been another exciting week! Soulwoven has continued its resurgence on Wattpad. On Monday, it shattered its old most-reads-in-a-day record, and a lot of new readers have been voting for it as well! Thanks a million to those who’ve done so. The votes mean a lot to me, and to the success of the story.

And there’s GOING TO BE A PRINT VERSION OF THREE DANCES! I finally cracked some last, lingering problems in InDesign, and I’m reviewing a galley proof of the book this weekend. It’ll go out to CreateSpace on Monday, and if all proceeds according to plan, it should be ready for the book launch on 4/13!

Speaking of which, I’m throwing a party for that. I wish I could invite you all, but since I can’t, I’ll do my best to get some video of it up the next day.

Three Dances has really dominated my week. There’s going to be a pay-what-you-want option available on my website, as well as a bundle that includes both ebook versions (there’ll be one for black and white Kindles and one for every other kind of ereader), a .PDF, and a signed copy of the printed book for you superfans out there. Keep an eye out for more info on that as the launch date gets closer.

In the meantime, I’ve posted “Shoes,” the second story in the collection, on Wattpad. It’s about a girl with something of a wandering sexuality who wakes up hung over in the bed of a goddess.

I told you these stories would be a bit more adult than Soulwoven, right? ;-)

In the background, I’m hammering away at Soulwoven: Exile for you. I think it’s coming together nicely so far.

Best St. Patty’s Day wishes to you, my dear friends. Thanks so much for coming on this ride with me. It’s all been amazing so far, and I feel like the rocket’s still just launching.

Yours in words,

Jeff

News for the Week of 3.7.13: Big F-ING Week

Dear Friends and Readers,

This has been, in the parlance of our times, a BIG F-ING WEEK. I hit three major milestones, one of which was on schedule, one of which came as an early surprise, and one which I had to crank through a major weekend of work to hit a month ahead of schedule, because opportunity knocked.

Without further ado, here they are:

Milestone #1: Three Dances exists as an e-book.

I finally finished design and production work on my upcoming short story collection. It now exists as a .PDF, an ePub (the file type every e-reader but the Kindle family uses), and a MOBI (the Kindle file type). I cannot tell you how exciting this is for me. All that’s left now is proofreading on as many reading devices as I can possibly squeeze it onto, distribution to prepub reviewers, press releases, a launch party to plan...y’know, the usual.

And I’m going to go ahead and announce a release date: Saturday, April 13^th! I’ll start putting stories up on Wattpad this weekend. In the meantime, if anyone wants to help me out by proofreading an advance copy, e-mail me at jeff at jeff-seymour.com. (I need your help. I only have access to a Samsung Galaxy S3, an old Kindle, and an iPad, meaning I can’t verify that the file will work properly on a Nook, a Kindle Fire, an iPhone, or any other devices without you).

Milestone #2: Nadya is out on submission.

I was planning to spend March line editing Nadya and send the book out to agents in April. But last weekend I got a newsletter from an agent I’ve done editorial work for, and she mentioned that she has editors knocking her door down for mid-grade fantasy with sweet romance. Or, as I like to think of it, for Nadya. So I marathoned through the line edits in two days (it’s my job, remember?) and sent the manuscript off to her on Sunday night. I’ve since sent it to a couple other agents as well. I queried most of them for Soulwoven last year. And I can’t thank you all enough for your support on that book, because I was able to tell them that since they last saw Soulwoven, it’s gotten massive support on Wattpad.

Which brings me to Milestone #3: Soulwoven has hit 200,000 READS!

I can’t explain the sudden upswing in support for the book this month, but it’s been huge---50,000 reads in 28 days. Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything you’ve done for this book. This is how books get big. This is how careers launch. This is how stories spread their tentacles out and grab hold of lives and shake them, or hold them, or innervate them.

Stick with me, and tell your friends, because we’re just getting started.

Happily yours,

Jeff

News for the Week of 2.28.13: Pushing on Publishing, Wing Stretching, Page Design, and SocMedPromo

Hello, Friends and Readers!

Welcome to the last day of February! Or, for some of you, the first day of March *wave to Pakistan*. Beware the Ides.

Anyway, things are clicking along quite well. I’ve been stretching my wings a bit this week---I sent a short story to a contest, applied to a writing workshop in Seattle, and entered a pitch contest with Nadya. We’ll see what comes of it, but it feels good to be spending more energy pushing on the publishing world.

Interest in Soulwoven has picked up again on Wattpad, and I’m pleased as peaches. At this rate, it’ll hit 200,000 soon and get the coveted bold, shiny red text for its read numbers. I’m very excited about that. Wattpad and I are also working on some social media promotion for it, which should be cool as well. And most importantly, when going back through it to pull quotes for that, I realized I still totally love it.

That matters a lot. It doesn’t always work that way once you call a book finished and move on to the next one.

Speaking! Of! Which!

I’m starting line edits on Nadya. The feedback on it has been overwhelmingly positive and has helped me make a few last tweaks, and I think it’s almost ready to fly. I hope to start sending it around to agents in the next few weeks.

And once that’s done, I’ll get back to work on Soulwoven: Exile, I promise. I have all my ducks lined up for it now, and it’s just a matter of grinding through and doing the revisions, so hopefully that will be ready for mass consumption sooner rather than later.

AND I’ve started doing page design on Three Dances. I have a few technical hiccups to overcome, but I expect the Digital Deluxe Version, with enhanced artwork, to be ready very soon. Which is SUPER EXCITING, because then I can set a launch date and start doing promo work and generally kick things off.

I have another free Saturday this week, so I’ll be doing first-page critiques at 1:00 PM on Wattpad again. As always, the first two slots go to followers, so message me if you’re interested. Or if you have a friend who might be interested, tell them to do the same.

Thanks, thanks, thanks for all your support. This writing thing is going to fly sooner rather than later.

I can feel it.

-Jeff

News for the Week of 2.22.13: Soulwoven's Rebirth, More Crit Sessions, and Lots of General Excitement

Hello, Friends and Readers!

It’s been an exciting week for me. In my day job, I’m deliriously happy about a couple of projects with amazing authors that are coming my way, one of whom is already a star in his own right and one of whom I expect will be soon.

More importantly, things have been clipping along with my books! My first-page critique session last Saturday was a smashing success, and interest in Soulwoven has positively skyrocketed since I did it. I can’t tell you how gratifying that is to me. Almost 2,500 people have read the book in its entirety on Wattpad. That’s solid, midlist-level success, and it’s only the beginning!

Also, I’ve finally cracked the egg on Soulwoven: Exile, the second book in the series. I’ve been experimenting with outlining the story, which is something I didn’t try for the first book, and it’s really helping me wrap my head around things. The beginning still needs work, which is why it isn’t up yet, but the middle is in solid shape and I have a good feeling about the end. I’ve reworked the first chapter into a shape I’m happy with, and I’ll aim to put it up in the next few weeks.

And Nadya is almost ready for line editing! It’s seen additional attention on Wattpad this week as well, so I’m going to put up the second chapter. I’m extremely excited to finish up work on it and get it out into the hands of agents. I think it’s going to sell, which is a feeling I never really had about Soulwoven.

I’m still waiting for copy edits on Three Dances (I was promised them a week ago) and have decided that if they don’t come in by tomorrow, I’m just going to forego them and do my best to copy edit the book on my own. It’s hard to copy edit your own work, but I’ve done it professionally, and I’ve reached the point where I just want to get this monkey in the air.

So lots of exciting things! I’ll be doing first-page critiques tomorrow (Saturday 2/23) at 1 p.m. EST. As usual, I’ll reserve the first two spots for followers, so if you’re interested, send me a private message linking me to the story you’d like critiqued.

Happy winter, dear friends. There’s snow on the ground, and it makes me feel that all is right with the world.

-Jeff

News for the Week of 2.14.13: Valentine's Day is Cruel, Upcoming Critique Session, and Wispy Hints of Secret Projects

Hello, Dear Friends and Readers!

Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope this February 14^th finds you well. It’s always a strange time of year to me, when a segment of the population that’s happy and in love celebrates, and everyone else either fakes it or, well…doesn’t. Next year I think I’ll try to write something for it, because it sucks when a day seems designed just to point out a thing you don’t have, and stories are good at riposting those types of days.

For me, anyway.

Anyhoo, another week has flown by! The interminable wait for copy edits on Three Dances lingers on, but in other news, I’ve finally hiked up my skirts and thrown on my galoshes and waded into revisions on book two of Soulwoven. The first chapter was a doozy. The second chapter was much easier. And I think I’m getting back into the swing of that world again, which makes me happy and causes me to feel more like a writer and less like an impostor, all of which are good things.

Soulwoven itself is in a bit of a doldrums, reading wise. I am of two minds about whether to try to stir up more interest in it on Wattpad or just to keep writing and trust that its readers will find their way to it over time, one way or another. There is one more Wattpad project I’d like to do in conjunction with it, but I’m not sure it quite has the audience to support it yet.

Also! I’m going to do another first-page critique session on Wattpad this Saturday morning, at 1:00 p.m. EST. It will run for about an hour or so. I’ll give the first two spots to my followers this time around, so if you’re interested, follow me on Wattpad, send a message to my inbox and let me know.

In the meantime, I’ve written an outline for Nadya and continue to make tweaks to it. It’s very close to going into line edits, which means it’s very close to going out on submission, which is very exciting.

Anyway, a fine day to all of you. I am thinking of you and wishing you warm happy moments. I trust that they will come to you sometime, no matter who or where you are.

-Jeff

Two Newsletters for the Price of One, Because I Am Forgetful

Weeeell, I forgot to put last week's newsletter up on the blog at all. Oops! News for the weeks of 1.24 and 1.30.13 to follow.

Please forgive. :-)

News for the Week of 1.24.13: Nadya, Three Dances, Webhouse, and Twitter

Greetings friends and readers!

So many exciting things to talk about I wonder if I can possibly keep this short. But here goes!

First off: Nadya is about to head off to my early readers! I’ve also got a hand-drawn cover mockup ready for Wattpad, so as soon as I get enough positive feedback to be reasonably certain I’m not going to change the first chapter drastically, it’ll be up for you to read. I’m all abuzz, because I think you’re going to love it.

Second: Three Dances is moving along splendidly! I’ve got all the artwork finished, and I’ve been working on page design for the e-book version. It’s. Going. To. Be. AWESOME! I can’t believe how well some of my experiments are turning out. It’s nothing like Soulwoven or Nadya---it’s a weirder, harder book for an older audience---but I’m incredibly proud of it, and I can’t wait for it to go out into the world. I’ve targeted March 1 for a release date (admittedly, it’s an aggressive target, and one I may miss), which means I may start putting stories from it up on Wattpad as soon as next week!

Thirdly: I’m having great fun as an editor these days. Last week I did a Twitter chat with some of the people I work with at Carina Press, and it was an absolute blast. We’re doing another one at the end of the month (1/31) from 2pm to 3pm EST using the hashtag #carinachat. If you’re on Twitter, come by and ask us questions! It’s a great way to get answers about publishing straight from the horses’ mouths.

Fourthly: My website is ready! After months of cobbling and tinkering with it in my spare time, I’m finally confident that it’s not going to spring a leak and sink into the Internet’s harbor, so it’s time to launch it. You can check it out at www.jeff-seymour.com.

And oh yeah! Soulwoven continues to roll along and pick up new reads, votes, and fans. We’re up to nearly 140,000 reads already. I promise the Aleani language primer soon. And when it hits 200,000, I’ll post one for the Sh’ma.

Thanks for reading, loving, and believing.

-Jeff

New for the Week of 1.30.13: Quiescence, Nadya is Scary, and More Twitter

Greetings Friends and Readers!

It’s been a fairly quiet week. Mostly I’ve been fielding feedback on Nadya as it comes in (so far it’s 4/4 on being reported unputdownable), tweaking things on it, and fiddling with some short stories. I’d like to put the first chapter up for you soon.

In fact, I think I’ll do it tonight, as soon as I’m done writing this newsletter. The only reason I haven’t quite yet is that, frankly, I’ve heard such good things about it so far that I’ve become afraid of it. And that’s not a good reason to do or not to do anything, really.

Soulwoven is still quietly doing its thing. Interestingly, it’s been picking up fewer reads this week but more votes and comments than usual. I’m not sure what to make of that. A few weeks back there was a giant one-day spike in reads that I’m more inclined to attribute to some sort of reckoning in Wattpad’s system than anything else. So I’m wondering if it Wattpad might be on the blink again somehow. Bonus content still on the way. Sequel still on my to-revise list.

I whiffed on my call with my copy editor and now have to try to get ahold of her again before I can move forward on Three Dances, so that’s on hold for the moment as well, to my great frustration.

All in all a quiet week, I suppose. I’m not sure how it’s gotten to be Wednesday night already.

One final thing: tomorrow I’ll be doing an editor chat with the Carina Press on Twitter again. The topic is submissions, and we’ll be taking questions on the hashtag #CarinaChat from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. EST. The last one we did was a lot of fun, so if you’re a Twitterer and you have any questions about the submitting to a publisher, come on over and ask away!

Thanks as always for all your support. I hope you enjoy Nadya, and I look forward very much to hearing what you think of her. :-)

-Jeff