Copy-What Now?

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Copyright

Seems it’s about time to do one of these again. I don’t think my position has particularly changed, but some of these thoughts are worth restating, at least from my point of view. Look away now if you disagree!

Copyright. When you think about it, it’s kind of an odd idea. It has a pleasing emotional sense, right up until you end up on the wrong end of it, or think a little too hard. According to the simple explanation on the government’s website, copyright

• prevents people from copying your work
• prevents people from distributing your work
• prevents people from renting or lending your work
• prevents people from performing, showing, etc. your work in public
• prevents people from adapting your work
• prevents people from putting your work on the Internet

You get it automatically and don’t need to make any note of this, and it lasts decidedly longer than you’re going to be alive, since the term is “life plus…”. It propagates to other countries by a variety of international agreements, so is in effect around a pretty big chunk of the world.

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The Wrong Story

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Books, Galactic Federation, Sci-Fi, Writing process

I was debating making alterations to Dayna’s story, or at least to which part of it I used as a NaNo candidate, and I decided to talk some of it over with a friend. Talking (or typing, since it was an online conversation) forces me to put my thoughts and feelings into words, which helps me define what I’m really thinking. In this case it crystallised the whole general sense I had that something just wasn’t complete, didn’t go deep enough: that I was thinking of telling the wrong story.

The tale I was planning to tell is complete enough in and of itself, but it starts in the wrong place and is either irrelevant or repetitive in relation to the grand arc of the Federation’s overall plot. It’s a story best told later, as a tie-in that explores some previously offscreen events in greater depth. Writing the first Federation stories to be released to the world means I need to be writing on the Grand Arc.

[[Spoilers Ahoy!]]

A Sort of Report

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Admin, Books, News

The month-long ebook sale has ended, and I sold 37 e-copies of Before the Sun Fades in it! I don’t think that’s bad going at all!

In addition, there’s just one major thing left to go before I can finally return to writing properly! And boy, am I looking forward to it. Right now, Reclamation (in the Path of the Gods series) and AIN are the top two projects in my mind, but that may change. The first few chapters of Reclamation already hit second draft status a while ago, and will probably now benefit from more eyes; any volunteers to read and comment on part of a book sometime in the next couple of months will be greatly appreciated! Meanwhile, the other end of it had to go on hold some time ago while I wrote a large chunk of Ascension — the two books are dependent on one another — and now needs both completing and, in the process, working out where to transition into the third book.

As for AIN, it’s rather more choppy: many of the key turning point scenes exist, and the beginning and the end are there, but it’s all rough first draft and many areas are lightly sketched in or altogether missing. So that will take a whole lot of building.

Holy Catbiscuits!

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Admin, Before the Sun Fades, Books, Fantasy, Publication, Sales

I was going to be good and not constantly post about how BtSF was doing in the sale (where it’s currently free), because that’s really annoying, but it’s now almost at the top of page 5 of the free-in-sale fantasy bestsellers and climbing!!! They default to 20 books per page, which means it stands at sales rank #83! I’ve hit double digits in my category!!!

Thank you! You wonderful crazy people who read random fantasy novels by someone on the internet, thank you all!

The A|B Problem

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Sci-Fi, Thoughts

I have this problem.

There’s this story, which we shall call A. And there’s this other story, which we shall call B. Some time ago, I encountered A, and lo, I did enjoy it and did see that it was good. Some time after that, I was introduced to B, an ‘old story’ which had been undeservingly overlooked. And I did enjoy it and did see that it was good.

And time did pass.

I returned to both A and B periodically, as you do, and I began to notice more and more similarities between the two. They sort of grew on me, over time. A character quirk here, a choice of words there. A little one-off comment in A that looked like a tip of the hat to a famous line from B.

And, since A was much more up-to-date and I knew that B was an ‘old story’, that was pretty cute. You build something on something else and make something different and more awesome and maybe drop in a little wink here and there. That’s kind of how culture evolves.

And time did pass.

B is famous now, and A has largely been forgotten, as far as I can tell. And one day I happened to make some comment or other about the similarities between them, and how it was cute that A had referenced back to B. And the person I was commenting to said ‘but I’m sure A came out first.’

And I was gobsmacked.

It’s Been A While

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News

I pretty much fell off the radar over the past few weeks, and for doing it without an explanation, I apologise. My grandfather died recently, and dealing with that hasn’t left me with much impetus to write books, stories, or blog posts. I am, however, now back, and will be updating on my more usual slightly sporadic schedule from now on!

P.S. Before the Sun Fades is still on sale! ^_~ Go to checkout from the Smashwords page and use the code UL78V to get it for just £1!

How’s Rakariel Doing?

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Admin, Before the Sun Fades, Books, Fantasy, Publication

I’ve been meaning to catch up on my sales statistics for a while now, and since I’m not feeling so great, today seems like the ideal time to do all those minor chores that involve sitting in front of a computer. So, how are we doing?

Well, Before the Sun Fades has shifted 15 physical copies! Not counting the box of author copies I have, which I’ve mostly handed out to libraries and friends/relations. As for its e-sales, I’ve sold 11 e-copies, and handed out a few more. Hopefully, copies of these will be in circulation among a wider circle of people, some of whom will pop by sometime and ‘buy’ a copy to support my work, and some of whom can’t right now – which is a-okay with me.

All this means that I’ve sold 26 books, plus some extra that I’ve handed out in various places, since the 23rd of May last year. That’s only ten months ago, and two and a half books a month doesn’t feel bad at all for a starting out nobody author!

So I’m feeling pretty good about myself and about my writing life right now! And as a celebration, I’m handing out discount codes like candy again! Sadly, I can’t discount the physical book – Amazon controls the special offers there – but I can certainly discount the electronic edition!

To grab a copy of Before the Sun Fades in your favourite e-format for what should be about £1 (Smashwords insist on doing everything in dollars), head on over to its Smashwords page and enter the code UL78V on purchase. It’s valid up until BtSF reaches its first birthday, that is, the 23rd of May! And share the code with your friends – it’s good for an infinite number of uses until time runs out!

Out of Order

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Books, Fantasy, Reasoning, Sci-Fi, The Path of the Gods

My plan for the start of this year was to do up Alt-Shift. And I did do some work on it. But now that I’ve done the hardest part of the thesis submission process, I suddenly feel I have a lot more mental capacity to devote to writing, and a certain other project has been nagging me no end. So all right, Raine, all right. You win. I’ll edit Reclamation over April, hopefully bringing it together more cohesively and comprehensibly. And then maybe I can see better the pros and cons of writing a third (fourth?) book versus trying to fit everything into Reclamation itself.

However, this brings up a related issue. Reclamation and Ascension are two books in the same timeline. Ascension happens first, and leads essentially directly to many of the events of Reclamation. Reclamation, however, sets up a lot of mysteries and questions to be answered… a good half of which would be answered simply by having read Ascension first.

So perhaps I should do them out of chronological order, and have the story move around the timeline, at least in terms of publishing order. Ascension answers half the questions Reclamation poses – what’s really going on and how did we get here? – and adds its own layer of urgency to Reclamation’s other half: what do we do next? Which would then be neatly tied up in the as-yet-unnamed third book. At least as long as it works best having a third (fourth? Ascension is starting to look really long…) book, which I think it will, given the nature of Reclamation.

Tuesdays, Tuesdays

Tags

Admin

Because the last Fused post was so recent, it’s now gone up on the Tuesday Serial for this Tuesday, and the next chapter will be posted next week. I don’t exactly have a backlog of chapters waiting to be posted, so humour me, and I’ll try to build one back up so that your fix of Ship-based adventure returns to regularity again!

In the meantime, it’s back to work for me, although actually I have a friend visiting, so outside of my day job, a lot of what I usually do is slightly suspended. The day job still requires my attention, but I just sorted that out for the next few hours, so it’s all good! Back to work therefore means…

• Thesis corrections
• The Fused
• Editing Alt-Shift
• Working on Ascension and Reclamation
• Working on the Reclamation roleplay system, which is a slowly-growing thing (currently in alpha playtest), and wondering whether to give it a different name
• Gardening – it no longer looks entirely like a bomb site, but it has a long way to go!
• Writing up some posts to go on here, maybe even about something interesting (you should be so lucky)

Tuesday Apologies

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Fused

It’s been a busy week, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to get the Fused chapter finished today either – so I’ll do it tomorrow! It just won’t appear on this week’s Tuesday Serial…

So tune in on Wednesday, instead! When this chapter will finally exist!