What Fulfilling the Soulwoven Kickstarter Looked Like

Continuing with these week's theme of spreading the Kickstarter love out to the broader world today. When the print books arrived for Kickstarter backers, I was about a week behind schedule on them. So in order to get them out to people as quickly as possible, I had a signing and packaging marathon. I thought it might make for an interesting time-lapse video, so I shot one.

Enjoy! And then go buy the book. S'il vous plait.

Thoughts on Kickstarter

So let me be perfectly honest here: I'm cheating a little bit with this blog post. Shortly after my Kickstarter finished, I wrote a short essay on some lessons the process taught me about publishing, writing, and life, and how everything came together to make Soulwoven a reality. I shared it with my backers. What follows is adapted from that.

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Several Big Thoughts occurred to me while the Kickstarter was up. I’ll try to get through them all here.

The first, and probably the most powerful, is what it means to say “yes.”

I have made a habit, in life, of going where the doors are open. I did not expect to enter publishing through the doors of a midlist romance publisher. But they said “yes” to me, and there I went. I did not expect to become a freelance writer and editor, but freelance clients said “yes” to me, and there I went.

I did not expect to become an indie author, but readers said “yes” to me, and there I went.

Publishing is organized around saying no. It has to be. As an editor, I get more submissions than I could possibly publish, even if I loved every one of them. As it happens, I don’t love every one of them. So I say no to the ones I don’t love, or I pass them on to others (who will also probably say no to them) if I think they’re very good but I still don’t love them.

This is a terrible thing to do to authors. We ask people to pour their hearts and souls into learning a craft and creating art with it, and then we ask them to come and seek our approval. Then we tell them “no” again and again until they reach the minuscule cross-section of people who would love their book and people in the publishing industry with the power to publish their book.

And then we wonder why some authors are unbearably arrogant or unbearably neurotic.

At any rate, I spent the first decade or so of my writing life being told “no,” over and over and over again. In the face of that, there comes a point where you honestly stop expecting to hear yes.

The first day of my Kickstarter was incredibly emotional for me. I was reasonably certain that, over the course of a month, I could get 25 people to pledge $25 each and get the book funded.

But the number of people who came right out of the gate not just to pledge, but to pledge big, absolutely astonished me. After ten years of being told I wasn’t good enough (or sometimes that I just wasn’t a good fit), I discovered in half a day that people believed in me who I didn’t even know were paying attention to me.

That was an incredible feeling, and it has kept me going for a long, long time.

Second, the Kickstarter taught me that there really is a revolution occurring in the world of arts and music and letters, and that it’s an honor to be a part of it.

I’ve read lots of articles proclaiming that digital publishing is ushering in a new era of something or another. I’ve always taken them with a grain of salt. Every prophet of the new seems to have something to gain from ensuring that it comes to pass. So I never drank the Kool-Aid.

And then, as I started to answer questions about the Soulwoven Kickstarter, I realized something.

The best music I bought in 2013 was all independently produced.

To be sure, I bought some good albums from music labels too. But the best? The most striking? The most inspiring? The most unusual and artistic? Indie. Or at worst, started indie and got picked up by a label after.

I’m not a part of indie music fandom. I know very little about bands, or scenes, or music in general. I have next to no sense of what I should like and what I shouldn’t. I just hear songs (usually on the radio), and then go buy the album if I like them enough.

So if the best songs I was hearing on the radio, which were succeeding against all odds in the land of Clear Channel and label dominance, were indie, that meant something.

I’ve long contended that music is about five years ahead of publishing. Up to now, indie publishing has largely been the breeding ground of the most commercial of commercial fiction. Fifty Shades of Grey, etc. Not authors who claim to be making great art.

But that’s going to change, and I’m excited to watch that wave hit the shore from the inside rather than the outside.

My third and perhaps most contentious Big Thought came about because of who my backers were. I know, personally, 51 of them. And those 51 contributed the lion’s share of the book’s funding.

In my head, I have a voice that tells me my success is therefore invalid. That my book was a pity case. That it was only what personal popularity I possess that motivated anyone to back me. The voice began speaking to me before my Kickstarter even launched.

And you know what? It’s full of it.

On the day the Kickstarter went up, another voice spoke up in my head, and it said, quite clearly: Who did you think your first fans were going to be? The staff of the New York Times Book Review?

That voice knows what it’s talking about. To be an author requires a certain amount of arrogance. You have to believe that you can write something worth reading. If you want to make a living at it, you have to believe that you can do it better than almost everyone else who’s trying the same thing.

That’s enough arrogance. You don’t have to believe you’ll be so good at it that you won’t need the help of your friends and family to succeed.

A lot of success stories start with “Using money borrowed from family and friends.” I didn’t even have to borrow. I’m giving things back, and they’re experiences and objects, for the most part, that no one else will ever get to have.

My fourth, and by far my most important and far-reaching Big Thought, involves the proving of an idea I had two years ago.

In early 2012, I went to the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour, and I realized as I watched people fail and fail and fail trying to put up new climbing routes or face death on 8,000-meter peaks that I was jealous of them. Because they weren’t worrying about marketing or careers or star makers or success. They were doing what they thought was awesome. And success, if it came, came later.

That, to me, is what being indie is all about. More importantly, it’s what leads to good art and a sustainable career no matter how you publish.

So I decided not to worry about how I was going to succeed. I decided to just do things I thought were awesome and to trust that, if other people agreed with me, success would follow.

Now it has, and I am immensely honored to have had the support of so many wonderful people in making it happen.

Hark! A Review!

Soulwoven's first blogosphere review is up! Sachin Dev over at Smorgasbord Fantasia had lots of great things to say about it. Check it out here.

A couple of my favorites: "Opener to an ambitious saga of blood and magic...and we eagerly await the next installment" and " Jeff can spin an alluring tale of magic and dragons. And spin it so well that we’re willing to let the tropes lie by the roadside while we enjoy this old-fashioned tale thoroughly."

So check out the review! And then nab the book. And stay tuned for my thoughts on Kickstarter, coming Wednesday.

Soulwoven is OUT!

Gentlepersons:

The book is OUT!

Soulwoven is live today in several places. On Kobo. On Amazon. On Barnes & Noble. If you're looking for a good read this weekend, I think we all know where you should turn...

Anyway, that aside, this moment is a big one for me. I'll write more in a bit about what the Kickstarter meant and what Wattpad meant and how this all fits into a life that I decided long ago would be dedicated to telling stories, but for now, I want to share some of my favorite reader quotes with you.

"This is the finest piece of literary work I've read in months."

"Very, very like a piece of steak."

"Once it picks up, it's impossible to put down."

and possibly the best one yet: "THIS BOOK IS SOOO DAMN AWESOME A.K.A COOOOOL!"

As time goes on, Soulwoven's going to get more reviews, from professionals and semiprofessionals and other readers. But these ones came from people who took a chance on it on Wattpad and found something well worth their time.

I hope you'll take a chance on it as well.

The Banner Saga

Easing my way back into this blogging thing after a two-month hiatus during which crazy worktimes were had, and I want to start by highlighting an amazing review over at Fantasy-Faction (where, spoiler, I'm reviewing indie fantasy books this year).

It's not even for a book. It's for a video game, one I've been hearing lots about and have been on the fence about buying. In addition to being a great read in and of itself (tough to do in a review), this one has put me over the fence on getting it. Now it's on my Big Fun Stuff To-Do List, right after reading Old Man's War and Lies of Locke Lamora. Oh, and finishing Mass Effect.

But these things will happen, trust me.

Review here.

Also, Soulwoven comes out Friday. Da-yamn. You guys should all pick up copies. Print books will be available on Amazon, e-books on Amazon, BN.com, and Kobo.

I'll link, naturally, once there are links to be had. ;-)

Cover Reveal: Soulwoven

Hello, friends and readers!

There is much news to relate on the Soulwoven front. More on that in a few days, however, because today I want to focus on the book's cover!

Boom! The artist Kendall Roderick and I spent a few weeks hammering out concepts and working through revisions before proposing two variants to my Kickstarter backers. They chose this one overwhelmingly (it was my favorite too).

There are a lot of things I love about it. I think it does a good job of evoking some of the things that Soulwoven is other than an epic fantasy: it's modern in its construction and aesthetics and themes, and it's meant to be read seriously. And, of course, it has a dragon.

I'm a big fan of the ink-splatter effect as well (I pushed for it, and Kendall outdid herself making it happen). I wanted to work the idea into the book that the dragon isn't really of the world. It's not a new concept---I first saw it in Stephen King's IT---but it's one that resonated with me. The thing the characters are seeing as a dragon is just the closest shape their minds can give to something much more primal and unyielding than that.

Hence the grunginess and simultaneous definition and lack of borders to the dragon's shape.

Maybe I'm just digging too deeply, but this is part of the fun of indie publishing. I get to art direct my own cover, and that means I get to make it art. Or at least try to.

The print cover will have a slightly different layout. The dragon's body will wrap around the spine and onto the back cover, where it will circle around the marketing text there.

Enjoy! Share! Swoon! Tell your friends! Soulwoven comes out February 21, 2014. You can add it on Goodreads today!

All Hallows Write Wrap-up

Well, All Hallows Write 2013 is done, and I've had a few hours of sleep and am ready to start processing the experience a bit.

First off, it was really everything I hoped it would be. It was fun to have the pressure of an insane deadline and an ambitious project and to try to pull it off. And it feels immensely satisfying to have conceived this thing and brought it to life. I do think I'll try it again next year, though with some tweaks to make it a bit more palatable to people with jobs and lives and families. I missed out on a pretty fun holiday, and I don't want to do that every year.

The story itself...well, to be honest, I can't really evaluate it right now. I suppose I'll leave that up to you. It's here and will go up on Wattpad tomorrow. It was extremely ambitious to try to write in 13 hours, and I'm pretty amazed that I finished it. I got in two revision passes, which means that I'm pretty happy with the bones of the story (the plot details, the characterizations, etc.), but I'm also fairly certain that the language isn't as polished as I'd like.

Maybe more importantly, it showed me how little I really know about the horror genre. I'm wearing my influences baldly on my sleeves in the story. I'm not really breaking any new ground. I wanted it to be fun in the way that a haunted house can be fun, and I wanted it to make you think in the way that my favorite horror stories always do. I have no idea whether my use of the conventions I played with was trite or cliche, because I don't read enough horror to make that judgment.

It was good for several things, though. One, it scratched my itch to do something difficult that I'd never tried before, and that's not an itch I get to scratch all that much anymore now that I've put my adventuring days behind me in order to write seriously. Two, it stretched my mind. I got a chance to try out a new kind of story, a new kind of narrative, a new kind of suspense and atmosphere and tension, and that will probably seep into my other work in places where it's appropriate. Three, it showed me what I'm capable of when I have the time to work on a project properly.

Writing is a funny career, because in order to succeed at it without starving to death or getting very lucky, you must become so good at it that you can make a living working part-time before you jump into full-time. A lot of people never really do write full-time, because if you can make a living doing it part-time...why not relax and take your time and enjoy life? You (probably) suffered for years to get there.

I can't wait until I can do this full-time. Not a day goes by that I don't wonder whether the next project will be the one that lets me get there.

Anyway, if you enjoyed the story, let me know, and if you didn't, let me know that too. I really have no idea whether it's any good, and I'd appreciate the feedback.

Oh, and you can buy Three Dances here if you want more stories (sometimes every bit as weird, but not nearly so horrific) from me.