Fair warning, you are about to get artistic advice from a man with all the visual creative talent of a slug. Indeed, so small are my gifts in this area that several slugs have written in to complain that my statement is demeaning to their artistic ability. It also has to be said you're going to be taking PowerPoint advice from a man who is not particularly adept with PowerPoint, especially its Windows variant. So why am I doing this exactly? Because I can, of course, and because I want to make a point; that even a man with my stunning lack of skill can create an acceptable ebook cover in a few minutes with a minimum of fuss. And if I can, then you can too. I am going to use the cover I create here for the ebook version of my sword and … [Read more...]
High Elves, Dark Elves, All Elves
Central to the struggle in the Tyrion and Teclis trilogy is the conflict between High Elves and Dark Elves. We all know what that means, don't we? High Elves are glittering and noble, proud and good. Dark Elves are decadent and wicked, drugged out and crazy, given to torture and malice. They are as different as two peoples can be, aren't they? Actually, I don't think so. I think they are exactly the same people. They are just the products of two very different societies. I believe that in every High Elf is a potential Dark Elf, and in every Dark Elf there is the seed of a High Elf. Consider this. They were all one people once, before the coming of Chaos, before Aenarion and the Godslayer, before Morathi and Malekith. There once were only … [Read more...]
The Utility of Free: Some Thoughts on Free EBooks
I was planning on posting my guide to creating ebook covers in PowerPoint today but these posts are quite labour intensive and yesterday was Valentine's Day and I decided I would rather go out for a nice dinner with my lovely wife than spend the evening making annotated screenshots. Go figure, huh! So it's next week for the PowerPoint guide unless my monkey brain gets distracted by something else... Over at Terribleminds Chuck Wendig has an excellent and thoughtful post about the costs and uses of going free in ebook publication. Go read it, I will still be here when you get back. A warning for the easily shocked, Chuck is somewhat more profane than I am, just so you know. He has put into words some of my own reservations about making … [Read more...]
Go Read This…
...if you have any interest in self-publishing your own ebook. Dean Wesley Smith has put up an excellent post on the costs of indie publishing. I can confirm that everything Dean says here is 100% accurate. At some point in the next few weeks I'll stick up a post about the actual mechanics of doing your own covers with PowerPoint. I am a man with the artistic talent of a slug (and that is probably insulting slugs) and I can do this. If I can, anyone can. … [Read more...]
Create Your Own Kindle EBook, Step by Step, With Pictures
Today I am starting a series on how to publish your own ebook. I have had a fair amount of interest in my posts on this subject over the past few months and I wanted to give some substance to my claim that self-publishing an ebook is not much harder than pushing Save on your word-processor. Honestly, this is really true, with the proviso that you are producing a novel or a short story and that you do things correctly right from the start. I won't talk about picture books or books with footnotes, citations and references because I have no experience of such things. I have, however, as of this date, published six of my own novels and a few of my own short stories and I have found the process absurdly simple. I recommend reading Mark … [Read more...]
Two Different Paths
I have been experimenting with writing 2000 words of new fiction every working day since the New Year. This is in addition to outlining, planning, revising and producing new ebooks. It's led to some interesting (for me, at least) consequences. Right now I am working on two different projects and my methods are about as different as I can possibly imagine. The first is The Fist of Demetrius, my second Macharius novel for Warhammer 40K. This started off last year as a simple first person narrative and mutated into something else as it progressed. The second project is my sword and sorcery novel The Stealer of Flesh about a monster hunter named Kormak. The Macharius book is part of a series within a greater series. It fits into Games … [Read more...]
Sky Pirates Released
I can remember the exact moment when I got the idea for Sky Pirates. I was reading one of Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian books, The Gods Of Mars. I came across his descriptions of the savage green men and, of course, I thought of orcs. For some reason, from then on the idea of Burroughs Green Men and orcs became conjoined in my mind. My brain was filled with the idea of orcish hordes rampaging across the desiccated landscapes of a dying world not unlike Barsoom. Thuvia, Maid of Mars is one of the very first SF novels I can remember reading as a small kid. I can still picture the cover (by Bruce Pennington I think) in my mind. It had a very scantily clad Thuvia and a Thark on it. It made a lasting impression on me. There's something very … [Read more...]
Order Out of Chaos
So the end of the month is sneaking closer and I am still working away. As I mentioned at the start of the month, I planned on writing 2K of new fiction every working day this year as well as revising work for publication. I also mentioned that I was having trouble settling down into a routine. (New babies and lack of sleep tend to have that effect!) Of late, I have been plagued by the flu and persecuted by the Machine God as well. However, in spite of all this, I have started to get the feeling that my goals for this year are at least possible. I am settling down into a new method of working, which is just as well, because I need to. I begin each day by revising what I wrote the work day before. (Obviously this means that on Monday I … [Read more...]
SOPA Strike
No post today. Like many other people I am protesting against SOPA which I believe is not a good thing. But Bill, I hear you say, this is a post. Fair enough but you know what I mean! … [Read more...]
The Hundredth Post
Back in the 80s my brother sold insurance. He occasionally attended sales conferences and sometimes came back with motivational books. One day, bored, with nothing better to do, I read one. It started a life-long habit of reading books about selling and the life of a salesman. In case you are wondering what possible relevance any of those could have to the life of a writer, let me just point out that writers and salesmen have more in common than you might think. Both writers and salesmen need to be self-starters. There is usually no one else around to motivate you. Both live in worlds where the possibility of rejection arises daily, and both need to be able to keep going in the face of that rejection. Both have jobs where they are entirely … [Read more...]
The E-Book Experiment: 6 Month Report
When I started my e-book experiment I decided I would wait six months before passing any judgements. That would be a long enough period to collect some data and see how the whole thing worked for me. You hear all sorts of contradictory reports about e-publishing but I’ve always liked to collect empirical evidence for myself, rather than listen to who shouts loudest on the internet. I decided I was just going to release the backlist I had and work on projects that interested me in the gaps between my work for Black Library. Well, six months have passed so now I am going to assess how it went with particular reference to my Terrarch series. I am going to discuss actual numbers and amounts of money earned so if you are the sort of person … [Read more...]
Changing Habits
I am a creature of habit. I like to do the same things in the same ways. I don’t think habits are of necessity bad things. They can be either good or bad, depending on the habit and the circumstances. The habit of smoking 60 cigarettes a day I once had was undoubtedly a bad one. The habit of writing 2000 words a day has done my life and my career no harm at all as far as I can tell and it has provided a number of positive benefits. Scientists think we have habits for a reason. They save having to make complex decisions for parts of our life where it is easier to automate things. I am in the habit of going to Mama’s Coffee House in Prague most days to get my daily (now decaff) Americano. For health reasons I had to give up the … [Read more...]
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