Last Blog of 2013

Like some novels I’ve read, 2013 started out pretty good, sagged seriously in the middle, then picked up toward the end. Not the greatest year but still better in almost all ways than the years 2010 through 2012, each of which saw major family losses and serious illnesses strike. I’m glad at least the trend for health issues was up.

School was school. No great victories. No great tragedies. I’m glad for that. I do like things on an even keel. Personally, Lana and I continue to be very happy together, although Lana did have some serious back issues for several months that caused us great concern. The worst of that seems to have passed.

In writing, I mentioned before that I wrote about 80,000 professional words, which I’m confident was up from the years 2010-2012. The best thing was the completion of the fourth book in the Talera series, which should be out in 2014. I did not have any books published through Borgo/ Wildside in 2013 and much of that was because I’d decided to focus on some long term projects and some personal self-publishing concepts I had.

In early 2013 I put up the three volumes of the FictionTechniques series, “Creating Suspense,” “Characters Wanted,” and “The Twist Ending.” These actually sold pretty well, although I have not gotten many reviews on them. They also helped earn me a couple of speaking engagements, which is nice.

In the spring I put up MicroWeird: Tiny Tales of the Strange. Despite garnering 4 five star reviews, it did not sell well and ultimately has been my slowest seller of any self-published title. In the fall, though, I put up The Machineries of Mars, which also gained 4 five star reviews but which has far outsold “Micro Weird.” It’s been my best seller since Harvest of War.

The only other publishing related thing I did was putting the Louisiana Inklings anthology into print. I was glad to learn how to do this and may start doing print editions of some of my other self-published work in the days to come.

All in all, a pretty good year that reversed the trends I’d been experiencing in the three years previously. Let’s hope I can keep the momentum going into 2014. And let’s hope that all of us here in the blogosphere have a great 2014 with lots of success. 

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Coming Soon from Razored Zen Press

I’ve just published one new item through Razored Zen Press, and in the next few weeks will be releasing two more. The first item is a print version of the Louisiana Inklings anthology, which appeared in ebook a year or so ago. This is a collection of writings from members of my writing group, which I organized and edited. A few of my own pieces are included, although all are more literary than genre fiction. I used CreateSpace, Amazon’s printing arm, to produce it, and the proof copy came out perfect. I’ve now ordered the first actual copies. If all works out well with this, I’ll probably start producing some print versions of other ebooks I’ve published, such as Killing Trail and Days of Beer.  I might produce some “super” collections, of several different individual ebook publications lumped together.  I expect Louisiana Inklings to be primarily of interest to local folks around the Abita Springs and southern Louisiana area, but if you want to check it out, it’s here: 

One of the soon-to-be-released items is a longish short story/novella called The Machineries of Mars. This is a Sword and Planet fantasy tale, which was originally earmarked for an anthology that never came to fruition. The editor released the stories back to us a month or so ago and I’ve been setting it up for publication. I really like the cover I’ve come up with for it, although I had to have help from Lana to bring it to fruition. I’ll talk much more about it when I upload it.

The second soon-to-be-released piece will be the first ever non-Charles Gramlich story to be published from Razored Zen Press. It’s a political satire from a friend of mine and will be published anonymously because it contains graphic depictions of sexual activity. I still have to do the cover for this but it’ll probably be done within a week or so.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I make progress on getting projects finished and published. It’s always nice to see them appear.

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