I Made a Top Five List! and other things

I managed to rate a mention over at the Fantasy Review Barn with their 5 Self-Published Gems of 2013 list. Yay for the Wandering Tale!

There should be more of the Wandering Tale published next year as well - I'm hoping to finish at least two additional novellas, and one of those will be continuing the saga of the malevolent blade, Peace.

On the immediate writing plate I have a story I'm writing for a contest submission (alternate history) as well as the ongoing effort to gather enough SciFi shorts for the anthology I mentioned in the last post. Following that, I intend to make it a priority to get the first Wandering Tale collection and Twixt Heaven and Hell out in paperback. I've been dragging my feet on those for too long.

Speaking of the Science Fiction anthology, if you happen to know of any good scifi artists, please put me in contact with them! Browsing DeviantArt is fun, but a lot of those guys are hard to get a hold of...

Kind Words for the Wandering Tale

Pauline M. Ross of Fantasy Review Barn (and who had also reviewed Twixt Heaven and Hell last year) has posted a review of all four Wandering Tale novellas.

I especially like the part where she refers to the recently released The Crown Unconquered as "absolutely perfect." I don't know. Something about the way she phrased it... just rolls off the tongue. ;)

Pauline also mentions the lack of a map, and to both her and you I promise that a map will be coming soon. It will be included in the first Wandering Tale collection along with a few other extras - but the map, at least, will also be posted to this blog in a larger format than it can appear in an eBook.

Keep the Shoulder to the Wheel

Well, with the onset of fall and the various things that go along with it, my schedule has tightened up dramatically. I'm trying not to let this harm my writing time, but blogging time falls by the wayside. I'm sure my readers (both of you) are suitably heartbroken.

In other news, I was given a review by an indie book blogger today. Find it here. Pauline has plenty of things to say, and much of it is both valuable to potential readers and to myself as the author. Give it a look!

Her review has impressed upon me, once again, the importance of trusting yourself. Pauline enjoyed the world-building in TWIXT, whereas another of my readers (who reviewed via Amazon) thought it was lack luster. On the flip side, this other reader liked my supporting characters and Pauline seemed to think they were clunky. I have my own opinions on it all, of course, but it illustrates that ten people read one book in ten ways.

Thanks to Pauline for reading and enjoying, and thanks to all others who leave reviews for indie authors! Say what you want about the supposed unreliability of internet reviews - if nothing else, they draw attention. Attention is the currency us indie authors live by.

Well... uh, besides actual currency, which is still, all in all, more important.

Short Fiction

I've never been especially good at writing short fiction, because my ideas tend towards expansive. The smaller ideas, which might take less time to articulate, usually end up getting folded into one of my larger ideas in order to enhance it.

I recently finished a short story that was originally intended for that very fate. It sprung into my mind, then I reworked the idea to be a scene in a novel, and now I've taken it back to stand-alone short status. First draft ended up pretty well, and now it goes into its metaphorical drawer for a few weeks before I edit it.

I'm already wondering what else I could include, or what bits might be expanded on. It is very short, about a thousand words. However it is also tight, and probably doesn't need anything beyond the scope of the story itself expanded on. Better to let readers wonder. Still, my urge is to tell more, write more, give more. Another reason I'm not so good at short fiction. I don't necessarily like leaving so many mysteries, or details, unresolved.

On the other hand, it is always fun to finish a story, and shorts give a little "shot" of that feeling. A friend of mine also raised the fact that yesterday's short story can become tomorrow's novel.

On a somewhat related note, my (free) released short story "Le Morte d'Arthur" has seen some additional success, cracking the top 25 Ghost stories on the Kindle boards. It seems the rapid increase in downloads coincided with the story garnering its first review. Correlation != causation, but I can't help but suspect the former influenced the latter.

What does support mean?

I'm trying to throw myself into supporting the eBook community. I have an eReader now, I'm plugging into the blogs and news, etc. But now I'm up against an important question:

Can I do honest reviews of eBooks as an author?

I want to read some of the new entries in our community and give my opinion, but quite frankly the first couple of books I've tried were - well, crap. As in, if I want to stick to the 'if you can't say something good, don't say anything at all' maxim, I should just keep my mouth shut. However, that is not being honest as a reviewer. If I really want to offer reviews, I need to be truthful about the good and the bad.

However, if a lot of my reviews bash other authors it just looks like I'm being petty. Maybe I should hold off on the whole reviewing idea altogether? Can an author be a reviewer and still be taken at his word?