Just a quick note to let you know I have been interviewed by the lovely A.M. Harte on her quillsandzebras blog. Anyone who has read my book, TimeSplash, may wonder what is the only thing that my uber-villain, Sniper, and I have in common.  Well, the answer is…  just a click away at quillsandzebras.

Look out! It's BP!

G’day mates. It’s a bright and sunny winter’s morning as I write, Independence Day in the US, and just another gorgeous 5th July here in Australia. Since I’ve been neglecting my readers lately, I thought I’d throw in a simple update on my writing life just to keep things moving along.

My head has been buried in my netbook for the past few weeks as I tackle my latest novel, Loner’s Deep. It’s part 1 of a three-part spce opera (and a sequel to another three-part space opera of mine). I’m just about at the half-way mark on my first draft and it is rolling along quite nicely, thank you. The structure of the story is one I haven’t really used before – several groups of characters whose story arcs are leading them inexorably to one point in space and time, where they will all meet and resolve everything. It’s fun but very much complicated by the scale of the piece. It is set in a far-future time when we have colonised stars out to about 50 light years around the Earth, but we don’t have faster-than-light travel. Yet the story visits many different planets and the characters travel huge distances. This makes the timings and the interactions rather complicated. One of the main characters, for example, has a journey of 55 light years, during which she ages about seven years. Another character, whom she will meet, travels just 8 LY and ages about one year. Yet both their stories unfold side-by-side in the book. I’m not sure I can make it clear to the reader that events in their stories are not simultaneous until the very end. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, I’ve been doing some plumbing around the house – the perfect antidote to time dilation calculations – and trying to find an agent for ‘The Credulity Nexus’ – also rather mind-numbing.

Over on Smashwords, they’re having their Summer/Winter sale. I put a children’s story there a few months ago (the picture of the dog on the left is the cover) so if you want to pick up a copy for free, July is the time to do it. Smashwords is a company I have a lot of admiration for. They seem to be doing everything right and I wish them huge success in the future.

So, a happy Nice Winter’s Day to everyone, and, for those still celebrating Independence Day, maybe you should have kicked the Brits out of the Gulf of Mexico while you were at it.

Today, May 4th, is the second anniversary of the commencement of this blog. I started it on my return from a writer’s retreat which I credit for kick-starting my career as a published author. So this anniversary is my day for taking stock of how all that is going.

Here is what I wrote in the initial post, and here is what I wrote last year on this day.

In the past year:

• I have had my debut novel, TimeSplash, accepted, edited and published. I only have complete data from the first two weeks of sales at the moment, so I can’t even tell you yet if it is selling well.
• I have been promoting TimeSplash as much as I can online. I built TimeSplash its own website and it even has its own blog. For the past two months I have been running a blog tour which has had eighteen stops on it, Before that, I did a 24-hour, non-stop, round-the-world Twitter tour.
• I have had seven short stories published – two in anthologies
• I’ve won prizes in two short story contests – one being the Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest 2009.
• I have continued to earn a trickle of money from short story publishing – but my production of short stories has dropped considerably. I wrote only six last year.
• I finished writing and editing my novel The Credulity Nexus and have begun querying agents for it. (I’ve written to two, so far, the second only about three days ago.)
• I have begun writing a new book, Loner’s Deep, which is a space opera set in the far future (and a sequel to my not-yet-complete Emissaries trilogy. (If fame ever comes knocking, I’ll have two great space opera trilogies ready to hand it.)
• I went to a writer’s festival.
• I have been increasing my presence in the various online social networks. My blogs (this one and the TimeSplash blog have over 1,000 unique visitors a month, and my Twitter following has gone from 0 to 987 in the past year. I’ve become a little more active on Facebook and quite active on Goodreads.
• In an attempt to raise my profile (and my writerly credentials ) I’ve joined the New York Journal of Books as a reviewer. I’ve done them 5 reviews on science and science fiction books so far. Early days. If this is successful, it will also one day become a writing income stream.
• I wrote a children’s story, Hangin’ With the Monkeys. I don’t want my career to go that way, so, rather than just throw it away, I’ve self-published it, and I’m giving it away free on Smashwords.

It all adds up to a very busy year – and a successful one. I’ve finally achieved my goal of having a novel published. I’ve made some great online friends. I’ve done loads of interesting things I didn’t expect I’d be doing. I’ve learned so much about writing and about the industry.

There are two things I didn’t manage to achieve this year – and that makes them my goals between now and next May. The first is to get an agent. It is patently obvious to me, even at this early stage, that TimeSplash would have done so much better if it had been agented. The second – and it may be related – is to start making some real money from my writing, not the dribble that has been coming in so far. And that is probably more a wish than an actual goal, but it’s what I have my sights on, so let’s see what can be done.

May the Fourth be with you too.

The TimeSplash Non-Stop 24-hour Round-the-World Twitter Tour starts soon. The process is complicated but all you need to know is that I’ll be in your timezone between 7pm and 8pm during the next 24 hours. To shout out to me as I go by, send me a tweet on Twitter.

This is my Twitter ID:  @graywave  ( http://twitter.com/graywave )

I’ll be using the hashtag  #timesplash if you’d like to follow the whole thing (and have lots of stamina and a very high tolerance for me saying “Hello New York”, “Hola Argentina” “Gruetzi Switzerland” and such for the next 24 hours.)

Don’t forget to shout. And if you know people in odd places, tell them to shout out too. I’ve a feeling some parts of this are going to be very lonely :-}

A survey of book promotion tactics was conducted by The Savvy Book Marketer in December, 2009, and is reported today. It asked a number of authors what their book promotion strategy would involve in 2010. You can check the method and the outcome there. I just want to look at the list of tactics they came up with and try to get a feel for how appropriate they might be for marketing an ebook. The list, most popular at the top, is this:

1. Social networking and social media
2. Blogging
3. Seeking book reviews
4. Seeking testimonials and endorsements
5. Press releases
6. E-zines or email marketing
7. Radio and television talk shows
8. Speaking or teleseminars
9. Article marketing
10. Book signings

There are some obvious things to say about this, so let’s say them first. The people surveyed clearly included a lot of non-fiction authors. So I can eliminate items 8 and 9 as not really relevant for a novel. I can also eliminate 10. With an ebook, there is nothing to sign, and, for that matter, no reason why a bookshop (the traditional venue for such things) would let you in the door. So that leaves:

1. Social networking and social media
2. Blogging
3. Seeking book reviews
4. Seeking testimonials and endorsements
5. Press releases
6. E-zines or email marketing
7. Radio and television talk shows

1 and 2 are no-brainers. Anybody with a book to promote in any format and little or no money to spend, will be all over the social networks and blogsphere.

Seeking book reviews (3) might also seem obvious but it isn’t an avenue that is open to ebook writers in most genres. Where ebooks have been popular for years – in erotica and romance – there are dozens of popular and authoritative review sites on the Web. In all other genres, book reviewers will almost never review an ebook. Only rare exceptions exist among the popular review websites and online magazines. I am unaware of any exceptions among the major offline reviewers. So we can scratch that one. Over the next decade, as it becomes normal to release ebook-only novels (and as more reviewers buy ebook readers!) this will change. But in 2010, ebooks just don’t get reviewed.

4 is an interesting one. I have read a number of advice blogs saying you should do it and telling you how to go about it, but it is an amazingly difficult thing to bring oneself to do. You have to approach famous writers you admire and respect in your own genre – complete strangers, of course unless your damned lucky – and ask them to read your book and say something quotably nice about it. Given that many such writers have already come out and said, on their own blogs, that they hate being pestered this way, and some have said flat out that they won’t do it, I just can’t bring myself to ask it. I screwed up my courage in one single instance and asked a very well-known writer I’d had some slight dealings with, if he would look at my book. I then waited, cringing in embarrassment, for a reply that never did come.

5 is also interesting. I could put out press releases but who, really, would be interested? Not the national press, certainly not the international press. Which leaves the local press. Since I live out in the boondocks, my local press is full of reports on farming and country shows, and letters to the editor complaining about the global conspiracy to fool us into thinking there’s such a thing as climate change, or explaining, with Bible quotes, why God dislikes liberal politicians. I’m pretty sure I could get into a local paper but who in my area has even heard of ebooks? Who, in a town where they play country and western music in the supermarket, is interested in sci-fi?

Many e-marketers advise you to convert your social networking successes into cash by creating mailing lists. You get everyone to sign up for your regular magazine or newsletter and then, cunningly, blast them all with spam emails when the book is released. This is the strategy I assume is meant in 6. Well, I think such practices are evil. Sadly for me, I think most marketing practices are evil. Like a lot of writers, I just don’t have the personality type it takes to sell things.

And as for radio and television talk shows (7), the idea seems to suffer the same drawbacks as sending out press releases.

So, for an author with an ebook to promote, who is squeamish about marketing, and doesn’t live in a major metropolis, 1 and 2, and to a very limited extent 3, seem to be the only options available. Of course, ‘social networking’, ‘blogging’ and ‘reviews’ can mean a lot more than is obvious. Blog tours, viral promo videos, Twitter parties, online competitions, and so on, are all in the potential mix. The online activity around a new book can be quite vibrant and exciting. And, as for reviews, even if the big-name sci-fi magazines won’t review ebooks, ten kindly bloggers with readerships of a thousand or so, might easily reach more actual readers than a major print review magazine could ever hope for.

The Queensland Writers Centre is touring blogs again. This time the tour has a theme: Writers’ Desks. For some reason writers’ desks are fascinating and pictures of same are hugely popular. So QWC is probably onto a winner here. However, when they asked me to put up a picture of my own desk as part of the tour, I was painfully aware that I’ve only recently done that.

Fascinating as my desk is, I can’t keep posting pictures of it. It’s not as if it has seasonal changes or anything. So I’ve taken the opportunity to correct a glaring omission from my last picture and show you my computer ‘desktop’. This should be just as interesting as the wooden one since, for me at least, the computer is where 95% of the work gets done.

The desktop that really matters

For those without broadband (or using Telstra NextG, which is almost as bad) I apologise for the size of this picture. Even so, it isn’t big enough for you to recognise all the icons. That’s why the animation provides labels for the following groups.

• Group A: Various mobile device managers (phone, camera, MP3 player and so on.)
• Group B: Internet stuff (browser, email, Skype, Twitter, and FTP client)
• Group C: Office software (mostly Open Office but also PowerPoint)
• Group D: Music score editing software. (Yes, I write music. It’s a little hobby of mine.)
• Group E: Image editing software (Paint Shop Pro, IrfanView and IconEasel)
• Group F: Media players (Windows Media Player and WinAmp)
• Group G: HTML editors (HTML Kit and Komodo Edit)
• Group H: Sundry utilities (antivirus, encryption, DVD writers, backup, 3G wireless client, and Celestia, which lets me view the universe from various perspectives)
• Group I: Various ebook readers and ebook creators.
• Group J: Stuff to do with my current writing project (the Open Office file itself, my multifunction tracking sheet, and a program called StoryBook that I’ve been trying out as a way of organising the background info – I’m not getting along well with it.)
• Group K: Games (basically, the only computer game I ever play is Freecell – a patience-style card game.)

I should also mention the background picture. I change my background quite often and it is usually an astronomical theme. This one is a long-exposure shot of the space shuttle taking off in Florida last year. I love pictures of astronauts on EVAs, Hubble deep field shots, and the ISS. Images like these help keep me inspired.

This post is part of the Queensland Writers Centre blog tour, happening February to April 2010. To follow the tour, visit Queensland Writers Centre’s blog.

Writers are pretty nice people on the whole. The amazing response from writers in support of Haiti has been very gratifying to see. Australian SF writer Marianne de Pierres today recommended Medecins Sand Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) as an effective group to support if you want to help people over there. John Scalzi also recommends them. It’s one of the charities my wife and I support all year round and we were more than happy to help them out over Haiti too. Their international donations page is here: http://www.msf.org/msfinternational/donations/ If it doesn’t load, keep trying as it is very busy just now.

If you’d rather donate through UNICEF (another of my favourite charities) there is a link to a Google-operated donations page in the right-hand column.

And just to prove how nice writers are, I was absolutely astonished to find a plug for my new novel, TimeSplash, on Marianne’s blog too. People can just be so kind sometimes! If you don’t know Marianne de Pierre’s writing, I’d say the best place to start is with the Parrish Plessis novels. ‘Nylon Angel’ is the first in the series. There’s an ad for it in the left hand column of this page. Click through and see for yourself.

POST SCRIPT: As soon as I’d published this post, I went off to read a few more blogs and found this amazing piece of outrageous flattery from fellow writer Terry Hornby. I’m beginning to feel overwhelmed with kindness. I’ve mentioned Terry before as being a funny and clever blogger whom everyone should read. (Yes, that was ‘blogger’ not a typo.) Now I can only conclude that he’s about to touch me up for a very big loan…

This will be the last post on this blog before Christmas. I can’t promise you that it’s the last post of the year, but for now I’m signing out. My daughter’s arriving the day after tomorrow and there’s lots to do before then.

I want to leave you with a little Christmas present though. My short story ‘Last Christmas’ is available for you to download as a PDF or in Mobipocket/Kindle format or you can read it online in your browser. Readers who were with me last year may have seen this before (if there are any of you, thanks for sticking around!) Who knows, maybe you’ll see it again next year too! New readers, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

A Happy Holiday to everyone!

Just to let you know that the cover art for my upcoming novel, TimeSplash, has arrived. I’ve blogged about it on the TimeSplash blog (see it there). I’ve also updated the TimeSplash website to include it.

Comments on the cover and on the website are welcome.

The e-Fiction Book Club has very kindly let me guest-blog with them. Jump across to that wonderful site and see what I had to say about opting for electronic publishing for my iupcoming novel TimeSplash.

While you’re there, why not browse the site? In a world where mainstream reviewers still won’t review anything but paper, e-Fiction Book Club is providing a great service to people who want to see reviews of e-books.