January 28, 2011 · 8:31 pm

My First Royalties Statement!

This afternoon, I received an e-mail from Dreamspinner Press with a pdf attached.  The pdf was my royalties statement for last quarter’s sales of “The Christmas Wager” and “The Meaning of Vengeance.”

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting it to amount to much.  After all, eBooks sell for just a few dollars a piece, so it would take substantial sales for any percentage of that to amount to much.  But I was pleasantly surprised. 

I’m not going to mention specific dollar amounts — that would be crass, even for me — but the number of copies that sold was much more than I’d expected, my first time out the gate.  Wager sold 103 copies, which seems pretty good for a Christmas novella by an author nobody’s heard of that came out just three days before Christmas.  And Vengeance sold 31 copies.  (I’m assuming that figure combines individual sales with the sales of the anthology it was included in.)

This makes me very hopeful for my future as a writer.  Not that I can plan my retirement any time soon, but if I can start to build a name for myself, and get enough stories out there, who knows?  Both of these stories were holiday stories, which means that a) the sales were probably considerably higher than I can expect for non-holiday stories, due to the holiday feeding frenzy; and b) they are unlikely to sell much over the next eleven months.  A few weirdos like me, who get into the Christmas spirit at odd times of the year, might grab a copy here and there, but pretty much the sales are probably over, until next Christmas.

I’m hoping that Dreamspinner accepts Zack and Larry and The Bodyguard (though they both need rewrites).  If not, I’ll try them at other publishers.  But at any rate, those stories may have a longer-lasting appeal, even if the audiences are smaller.

I’m currently working on my YA novel, The Guardians Awaken, doing most of my editing on my iPad now.  The rewriting is going well, as I work my way through from the beginning, tweaking the mythology and adding more detail to the world I’m creating.  But the actual writing of the ending has been slow.  I’m hoping I can force myself to get through another section this weekend.  The accursed thing is so close to being finished….

Then there’s the problem of where to send it — that, and my YA novel about Vikings, Seidhman.  I’m certain that the YA publishing world is considerably different from the world of m/m erotic romance publishing.  I haven’t heard of many eBook publishers for YA, and I think that makes a huge difference.  Book publishers, as opposed to eBook publishers, seem to have a vastly smaller output.  They simply can’t afford to publish more than a few books a year, whereas eBook publishers can put out as many as they have time to edit.  The expense model is completely different.  So the chances of getting a manuscript accepted by a traditional book publisher are much lower.

But in happier news, I learned today of a new review of The Christmas Wager, at Queer Magazine Online.  For some reason, whenever I open the link, the review is all squished into a narrow column in the center of the page, which I don’t think is how it was intended to look.  But it’s a good review, so who am I to complain?

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Filed under Christmas, Romance, Viking, Writing, Young Adult

January 24, 2011 · 7:32 pm

Attempting to write on the iPad

Erich got me an iPad for Christmas, and after an initial struggle getting the damned thing to boot up (neither one of us knew it would be completely non-functional until I registered for an iTunes account), I’ve grown fond of it.  Not fond of it in the I-want-to-have-Steve-Job’s-baby kind of way that seems to grip a lot of people , but…fond of it. 

But after playing a bunch of games and watching “The Two Towers” on it, I’ve begun to ask myself, “Is this all there is?” 

My first attempt at making my iPad useful was copying my stories to the iBooks library, so I could proofread them.  This had a nifty little feature, where I could tap on a word and a little yellow sticky note image would appear, which I could type revisions on.  This was helpful, but of course the revisions weren’t actually being incorporated into the documents.  I needed a way to make revisions directly in the documents, and preferably to do some writing, as well.

My friend, Claire, directed me to DropBox.  DropBox is a cloud-computing program which is supposed to store your documents online, basically through Google Apps.  You upload a document and it becomes available to the iPad, while you’re connected to the Internet.  When you’re not connected to the Internet — which is the situation, when I’m at work, since there’s no wi-fi I can connect to there — it appears to store a copy on the iPad.  Then it synchronizes later, when you’re connected again. 

All well and good, except that DropBox isn’t an editor.  To actually edit my files, I needed to get an editor.  And not just any editor.  It had to interface with DropBox.

Claire’s suggestion was PlainText.  It was, after all, free.  Unfortunately, it couldn’t understand .doc format, which is the document format I use for my writing.  I could change the format I use, but I refuse.  For one thing, I use italics extensively in my current novel, to denote dream sequences and words in the three languages spoken by humans and the gods.  (Which, incidentally, Erich wrote for me.  Did I mention that he’s frigging brilliant?)

So I turned to an Office app for iPad called QuickOffice.  QuickOffice worked okay, except that I couldn’t figure out how to get it to interface with DropBox, setting the cursor in the correct place was difficult and there was no “undo” key.  The latter doesn’t seem like a big deal until you accidentally delete something.  Then it would be nice to just click a button to undo it, rather than re-type it.  But no.  That would be too easy. 

QuickOffice also looked pretty grainy.

So I then bought an app called Office HD (neither Office app was free — they both cost about $10).  This one quickly proceded to wipe out all of my paragraph indents, for no explicable reason.  It did keep my italics, but then, so did QuickOffice.  The look of it was a bit better, and it had more controls, including an “undo” button and the ability to place the cursor precisely, rather than tap around until your finger starts bleeding.  (Tap, then hold your finger down, and a little magnifying glass pops up.  You can then slide your finger around and place the cursor exactly where you want it.)

Getting it to interface with DropBox has been a challenge.  I thought I had it set up correctly, but it kept failing to save.  Or, worse, it would save one time, then fail a few minutes later, even though I hadn’t done anything differently.  Erich fiddled with it yesterday and figured out that it works best if you open Office HD, then open the document from within the shared DropBox folder, and save it that way.  What I’d been doing was opening DropBox, opening the document, then selecting the “Open in Office HD” button.  This opened it, but when I tried to save, it kept insisting it had no idea where the document had come from, or that it was read-only.  Silly me — I expected competent programming.  Alas, it’s only 2011, and nobody can write a decent software program in these Dark Ages.

It’s still flaky.  Last night, I typed for a while in bed, then saved.  Then I typed for a few minutes longer, and attempted to save again.  Once more, I was told that the document was read-only, and somehow, attempting to tell it where it should save to, I managed to close the document.  Except that it didn’t “close” — it vanished.  All of my changes were gone. 

So, I cursed, which woke Erich.  Then, after he’d gone back to sleep, I opened the document from DropBox, made my changes and saved without a problem. 

Do I recommend using the iPad to write on?  Not on your life.   Maybe after I’ve hammered out these kinks — if they’re possible to hammer out.  But come on, people!  What were you thinking?

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Filed under Fantasy, Romance, Writing, Young Adult

January 17, 2011 · 1:41 am

Arisia

I dragged Erich to Arisia this Saturday.  Arisia is a sci-fi/fantasy convention in Boston, which split off from another science fiction convention called Boskone, before I even met Erich.  I gather that Boskone had been getting a bit too “literary” for some people, so they formed Arisia as an alternative.  Unfortunately, although I’ve never been to Boskone, I have to wonder if I might prefer it.  Arisia was very much about people showing off costumes — steampunk, predominantly, though there were certainly many others from film and other media.  But, to put it mildly, it really wasn’t my “scene.”  Which is too bad, because I’ve enjoyed it in the past, and even had my first film show there one year.

To be fair, we were doing a drive-by, blowing in and out quickly, mostly so I could stop by the Dreamspinner table and meet some of my fellow authors.  We didn’t have time for any of the panels, which was too bad.  Our friend, Marlin, was conducting a panel later that evening on gay images in science fiction, which I would have liked to participate in, and there were some panels on writing YA fiction that might have been interesting, as well. 

But we were short on time, and I wasn’t in top form, having had a migraine earlier in the day.  I wouldn’t have bothered to go, except that I wanted to say ‘Hi’ to the Dreamspinner crowd.  That, I did.  I met Ariel Tachna and Nicki Bennett, purchasing a copy of one of their books (Hot Cargo) and making a nuisance of myself by asking them to autograph it.  This wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that the only copy they had there was the display copy.  Since they don’t actually live near each other, getting me a copy that had been signed by both of them would mean mailing the book around a bit. 

This was finally solved by the two of them autographing the display copy and me giving them my address, so they can ship it to me, after the convention.  Ariel tells me that, thanks to leaving the book on display, they sold two more copies, before the end of the convention.

I also met Marguerite Labbe, Jonathan Treadway (who my keen powers of observation deduced was, in fact, a woman — since it’s already revealed in her Dreamspinner bio, I can say that Jonathan Treadway is the pseudonym of Jennifer Tilt), and Felicitas Ivey. 

They were all very friendly and it was wonderful to meet them and chat.  I tried to meet up with them after the table closed, but again I was thwarted by the pub I thought they would be at turning out to be closed for a private party, and a friend needing a ride home.  So my visit was short.  But perhaps we’ll meet up again someday.

I’ve made a small bit of progress on The Guardians Awaken, both in polishing the beginning chapters and in moving ahead with the final scenes.  It’s not going either smoothly or quickly yet, but hopefully it will pick up pace soon.  I tend to go through a period, when I’m doing rewrites, where I have to spend some time re-acquainting myself with the story first. 

In the real world, the anti-gay marriage crowd in the NH legislature have decided they don’t have time to deal with attempting a repeal of the gay marriage law this year.  So, we have a little time.  This also may decrease their chances of success, since the longer gay marriage continues in the state, the more comfortable people will be with it, and the less likely a move to repeal it will be to gain support.

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Filed under Fantasy, Gay Marriage, Romance, Writing, Young Adult

January 12, 2011 · 2:05 pm

Zack and Larry is finished

Zack and Larry Make a Porno was finished a couple days ago, and it came out better than I’d anticipated.  I was afraid it would just be, well…porn.  It certainly does have a lot more sex in it, than anything I’ve written previously.  Not terribly surprising, considering the premise.  But the characters found their own voices, with Zack being protective of Larry and concerned about what “normal” straight men were supposed to do and not do, and Larry being an outsider who manages to offend nearly everyone, but who would do anything for Zack. 

It needs polishing.  The pacing is a bit off, and the characterization can be improved, but there’s something there worth putting out, I think. 

My still-unforunately-named cyberpunk story, The Bodyguard, has been read by a couple friends and both liked it.  The main criticism, so far, has been unhappiness with the open ending.  It’s intended to imply that our heroes are now heading into an even bigger adventure.  But of course, my friends wanted to read that adventure now.  I’m beginning to think I might need to write the sequel, before submitting this one.  I’d rather not change the ending.  But it might be a good idea to have the sequel already written, so I can tell the editor that there is definitely a follow-up story — and here it is.

Of course, that means both stories may be considered together, and if the editor doesn’t like one, or doesn’t feel like publishing two stories, right now, neither will be published. 

I’ve gotten back to work on my YA fantasy novel, The Guardians Awaken, about two young men — one a street urchin; the other, nobility — caught in the middle of a human war and a simultaneous war between the gods.  I love the novel, but I’ve been stuck on the big battle scene at the end since last Fall.  Hopefully, I can get through that and finish it up.  Between that novel and my YA novel about a Viking sorceror, Seidhman, I really hope I can at least start making the rounds of YA publishers this coming year.

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Filed under Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Romance, Viking, Young Adult

December 28, 2010 · 4:18 pm

New story and more reviews coming in

So, I’ve been waffling back and forth between two story ideas, since finishing the first draft of my (still unnamed) cyberpunk story.  One is a Christmas story intended for submission to Dreamspinner for next year’s Advent Calendar anthology.  (Yes, it’s already open for submission.)  The other is just a light-hearted sex romp. 

The Christmas story began as a light comedy, but as I’ve developed the story further, it’s taken on a bittersweet romantic tone.  It has a happy ending, but as things got weirder in the story, I decided I wanted to mull it over a bit more, before writing it.  The sex romp — a story of two college roommates who agree to have sex in a porn video, tentatively called Zack and Larry Make a Porno — caught my interest, sheerly because it promised a bunch of raunchy fun.  So, that’s the one I’m currently working on.

Yes, I know — when Erich heard the title, he didn’t exactly groan, but he gave me an I-don’t-know-about-that-one look and said, “Something tells me, I’ve heard that title before.”  I assured him I’m covered under parody law.  I’m not sure I’ll use it, anyway.  But I probably will use the names Zack and Larry, so anyone familiar with the brilliant Kevin Smith film will get the joke. 

The story brings up another matter that’s been bothering me, though.  I don’t mind writing fluff…I guess.  But I like to think that my stories — even the ones with sex in them — are first and foremost good stories.  If they contain sex, then the sex is just something extra.  But it could be removed without damaging the story.  This, to me, is the distinction between erotic stories and porn.  I don’t mind porn, but I don’t think that’s really what I want to be known for.  I want people to read my stories and be caught up in the plot and the characters, and generally in the romance.  If someone happens to enjoy the sex scenes in the stories, great.  But that’s not my primary goal.

Is Zack and Larry more than just a loose framework for a bunch of porn scenes?  I wish I knew.  I have to admit, I’m enjoying the story because it’s raunchy.  But does it have any other redeeming value?  

I’m reminded of the explicit sex scene in John Cameron Mitchell’s Short Bus, in which Jamie, James and Ceth attempt a threesome.  The scene has to be explicit, because the humor revolves around the awkwardness of the situation, and the fact that our heroes have no idea what to stick where.  The scene is hilarious, and more importantly, it demonstrates how James and Jamie are trying desperately to save their relationship.  That’s what raises an explicit sex scene above the level of pornography: it’s an intrinsic part of the story.   

Hopefully, as I write it, the characters in Zack and Larry will take on a life of their own and there will be something going on between them that makes the story worth reading…as something other than masturbation material.

In other news, more reviews have come in for both The Christmas Wager and The Meaning of Vengeance.  Some good; some not so good.  The two worst reviews were 3 out of 5 stars, and both reviewers seemed to like the stories. 

The comment on The Christmas Wager was that it was “delightful,” but the major plot twists seemed forced.  This is, perhaps, a valid criticism.  I was less concerned with the plot in that story (which is, admittedly, rather formulaic) than I was with the romance developing between Thomas and Andrew.  This is, in fact, the real story.  It’s this story arc which requires action on the part of our heroes, in order to resolve successfully.  The story of the wager itself is resolved fairly easily.

The 3 star review on Vengeance was a little harder to fathom.  Apparently, he had thought the story was about the mafia, based upon its title, and that had intrigued him.  So he thought it was okay, but it wasn’t what he’d hoped it would be.  That’s fine, but it seems odd to me to read a story intended for a particular audience, then mark it down specifically because it was intended for that audience.  I didn’t write Vengeance for people who like stories about the mafia.  I wrote it for people who like Vikings.

On the plus side, The Christmas Wager has received two 5 star reviews from people who don’t generally like historicals, but fell in love with the characters.

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Filed under Christmas, Romance, Victorian, Viking, Writing

December 25, 2010 · 12:23 am

Great reader review for “The Christmas Wager” on Amazon!

A reader posted a terrific review of The Christmas Wager today on Amazon!

With Christmas upon us, I haven’t had much time for writing.  But I’ve at least been plotting a Christmas story for next year.  It’s been gradually morphing from a light comedy into something with a more emotional center to it.  But I need to work out some of the details, before it will make sense.

Merry Christmas and a Happy Yuletide!

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December 23, 2010 · 11:00 pm

Another good review!

The Meaning of Vengeance is doing very well, so far.  I just picked up another wonderful review from Jeff at JeffandWill.com!  My rating at Goodreads has climbed up to 4.25 out of 5 stars!

On the same site, The Christmas Wager has picked up one 5 star rating!  No reviews yet, but it was just released, of course.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that people like it as much as they seem to like Vengeance.

I have a friend currently reading my first draft of my as-yet-unnamed cyberpunk story, and in the meantime, I’m getting back to a Christmas short story idea I have for next years Advent Calendar anthology.  I might as well get most or all of it written while I’m still in the Christmas spirit. 

Of course, I find myself in the Christmas spirit about four times a year, but that’s beside the point.

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Filed under Christmas, Cyberpunk, Romance, Victorian, Viking, Writing

December 22, 2010 · 5:07 pm

Another great review for “The Meaning of Vengeance”!

The review site BriefEncountersReviews has just released a review of The Meaning of Vengeance, giving the story a B+!

That makes the fourth review and/or reader feedback I’ve received, giving the story good marks.  I can’t say enough how delighted I am that this somewhat dark story seems to have to struck a chord with readers.  The Viking Age Iceland setting appears to interest people, at least because it’s unusual.  And the slow, careful development of the romance between the two characters has been commented on several times (in a good way). 

Last night, despite earlier problems with their website, Dreamspinner Press released my novella, The Christmas Wager.  This novella is very different from The Meaning of Vengeance, so I don’t know what kind of reception it will get.  It was really written as a fun exercise, to see if I could pull off a Christmas Regency (well, it ended up being Victorian, due to some elements I wanted to include), but with gay characters. 

It’s not an original idea.  The author, Erastes, had written a gay Regency novel called Standish, which I read and liked a lot, but it was very dark — so dark, in fact, that I had difficulty finishing it.  (Ultimately, I went back to it and I’m glad I did.)  At Dreamspinner, Connie Bailey and J.M. McLaughlin wrote a short story called Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, which I enjoyed.  I’m sure there are others — possibly a large number of others.  But at any rate, it was a fun exercise and I enjoyed writing it.  I was thrilled when it was accepted for publication. 

I’ve received a number of comments (in forums and such) that people are tired of Regencies, so I’m a little concerned about the reception of The Christmas Wager.  The same reviewers who like Vengeance might very well consider Wager to be trite and riddled with cliches.  I’m dreading a review like, “While his first story showed some promise, this latest offering by…whatever his name is…proves that we should never buy anything this author writes in the future.  Ever.  In fact, I think I’ll call the publisher right now and have him boycotted from publishing anything in the future.”

 

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Filed under Gay Marriage, Viking, Writing

December 21, 2010 · 8:01 pm

My novella, The Christmas Wager, is now on sale!

I’m sure there are hundreds — nay, thousands! — of potential readers around the world who have been waiting in anticipation for this moment.  Yet, it was almost not to be.

Dreampsinner Press has been having trouble with their website.  I won’t go into the reasons, but I would consider it to be a completely technical issue that was more or less beyond their control.  And they’ve been working around the clock to fix it.  It’s at least partially back online — the link above should take you to the store, even though the main page seems to still be broken.  It would, of course, happen just as my novella is about to be released. 

I’ve been concerned about the fact that it will only be available for three days, before Christmas day.  It will be available after that, of course, but how many people are still in the mood to read Christmas stories after the 25th?  (Well, me, for one, but I’m a freak.)

I completely understand that Dreamspinner has a lot of novels, novellas and short stories to put out the door this month, so not everthing could become available on December 1st.  So, yeah, I’m whining.  Let me reiterate that I love Dreamspinner and I am very happy to be working with such a wondeful publishing house for my first published stories.  But I also want readers!

So read The Christmas Wager!  Please.

My short story, The Meaning of Vengeance, has been doing well, in terms of reviews.  So far, no bad reviews, and three people have publicly praised it.  One wonderful reader even sent a note to Dreamspinner about it!  I am very grateful, and delighted that people are enjoying the story.  The Christmas Wager is a very different animal, told in what is, for me, rather flowery “Victorian” prose, and concerned with the dire consequences of failing to put on a proper Christmas ball, rather than, say, the paltry matter of falling in love with your brother’s killer. 

But I found it entertaining and funny, and hopefully readers will, as well.

In the meantime, the Raymond Town Clerk finally has all of the proper paperwork to issue us a marriage certificate!  I will be going down there tomorrow morning and hopefully buying three copies — a couple for us to keep, and one to lock up in the Tower of London.  Or maybe the vaults under the Vatican.  (Now, wouldn’t that be a hoot?)

My blog issue has, I hope, been “fixed” by changing to a different theme, which has a white background behind the text.  Erich figured out the problem with the other theme, but it isn’t something we can fix, and the developer doesn’t appear to be reachable.  Too bad.  I liked that theme.

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Filed under Christmas, Romance, Victorian, Writing

December 20, 2010 · 7:46 pm

Why is blogging this ridiculously hard?

So, setting up a wordpress blog seemed easy enough.  The themes are limited, as they were in LiveJournal, but at least you aren’t spammed constantly like the victims of LJ are.  However, linking my RSS feed to Facebook has proven to be a challenge.  I followed some instructions someone posted in a forum I’m in, and it seemed to work.  At least, it imported the last five wordpress blog entries and displayed them on Facebook.  The implication was that new entries would appear on Facebook, as well.

Not so much. 

When the next blog entry failed to make an appearance, I poked at it for a bit and discovered an app called Networked Blogs, which appeared to do what I wanted.  Again, it seemed to work.  We’ll see what happens when I post this on wordpress.

But people have been complaining that, if they click on a blog link, it takes them to my wordpress blog, but the text is illegible.  This turns out to be because the page neglects to load the dark gray gif image that’s supposed to appear behind blog text.  Since the text is white (or light gray), without this dark background, it’s impossible to read on top of the Christmasy blue and white snowflake background I’ve loaded.  The annoying thing is, that dark background loads fine, if you go to the blog directly, by typing the address into a browser.

This makes little sense, and examining the CSS hasn’t illuminated the situation.  So I decided it might work better with a different font color.  But changing the font color, I’ve discovered, after browsing online for a while and reading forum postings, is nigh impossible.  Considering the fact that the two main things all users want to do with things such as a blog, appart from blogging, would be to change the background and the font color, I can only chalk this up to the developers of wordpress being completely and utterly out of touch with their users.  Possibly with the entire fucking planet.  What…the…hell?!

But I’m not bitter.

I could set up (or get Eric to set up) the opensource wordpress code on our home server, and since I have the domain name “jamiefessenden.com” registered (don’t bother checking it out, just yet — it’s empty), this might be a good way to do things in the future.  But for now,  I just want my current blog to work.

I mucked about for a while with different themes, finding nothing I liked.  Then the damned thing wiped out all of my widgets, so I need to put my book references back in place.  That’s hampered by the fact that Dreamspinner is currently working on their website. 

This should not be this hard.

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