Category: Modern Evil Press

Things moving forward, the standard rollercoaster

Things are moving forward.  Both of my new books, the novel Forget What You Can’t Remember and its companion book of short stories, More Lost Memories are well on their way to being broadly available. The audio version of Forget What You Can’t Remember has begun appearing online, in the Modern Evil Podcast and at Podiobooks.com, just after the first of the year.  Recording has been going forward reasonably well, considering my still-lingering headcold, and I’m much less stressed out about keeping up than I was with Lost and Not Found. I’ve been doing a bit of painting again (here’s a bit of a preview) and I had a good sales night at the Art Walk this month (and paid for a space through all of 2009), selling out of my mini paintings.  Have to make some more, soon.

I can’t nail down specific dates (which is part of why I don’t bother trying to do things like build buzz or drum up pre-orders), but the two new books were sent to Lightning Source (who does my printing and distribution) on 12/26/08, approved and made available for printing on 1/5/09, and will probably be available to order through booksellers everywhere in the next week or two (incl. everything from Amazon.com and bn.com to your local Borders & your local independent bookseller).   I’ve got to fiddle about with converting FWYCR to an eBook – I haven’t done it in over half a year, and it was basically a one-time ordeal that lasted weeks…  I may ask for help around the internets this time.  If I remember correctly, the kindle version -ie: the only one that pays- is the hardest to get anywhere close to right. I’m aiming to have the eBook version up by the end of January, so I’m to stressing about it.

In more personal news (yes, yes, I know, if I were a proper blogger I’d make multiple posts…) my emotional instability is moving forward as well, along the infinite rollercoaster track that’s normal for me.  I noticed a week or so ago for the first time some evidence that I’ve already been experiencing what experts call “major depression” for not less than a month prior to Christmas.  Up, down, up, down, luckily on a much longer wavelength than “real” bipolars, going through the down part for months at a stretch, then usually a slow ramp up through “okay” and a couple of days (up to weeks, occasionally) of hard-burning “manic” that crash out just as hard.  Funny thing, right now I can’t remember (for sure) when my last ‘up’ was.  I remember NaNoWriMo being … less than easy, so probably not then.  I know the writing of Forget What You Can’t Remember taking 6 months or more, so I certainly wasn’t on a burn for it.  I ground that thing out by working hard on it, day after day, week after week, month after month.

Anyway, I’m not doing great.  Personal hygene isn’t being kept up.  Household chores being neglected.  Productivity is fairly low, along with inspiration.  Appetite is way off.  Sleep schedule is wacky.  I’ve gotten sick several times in the last couple of months, and it’s been lingering these last weeks – my immune system is weak, I guess.  Headaches.  Mood swings.  Feeling bad in new and different and old and familar ways, sometimes in series, sometimes overlapping.  bleh.

But I know it’s part of what’s normal for me.  What I’ve chosen.  It occurred to me today I ought to start another poetry journal, see if any of this wants to be put down.  Probably ought to have started it a couple of months ago.  meh.  I’ll get through.  It’s part of moving forward.  There’ll be another peak, another plateau.  There’ll be another drop, too.  Keep moving forward.  Being down, right now, is part of that.

Apparently available in India

Google Alerts just let me know that Indian retailer Infibeam has my books available. The website says they have “free shipping to all cities in India.” Doing a quick currency conversion, it looks like their “discounted” prices are actually in line with retail prices in the US for my books, so between having them shipped to India & then anywhere in India for that price, it’s a good deal. I love the internet. Not sure anyone in India wants my books, but if they do, this looks like a good option. That and the free eBook versions available at modernevil.com.

Doing everything by myself

I remarked earlier, on Twitter, something about how I can’t get myself to stop working. Yesterday -and I say yesterday, not because it was different from other days, but because I noticed it and did the math- I worked an 18 hour day. I got up, ate breakfast, sat in front of my computer, and without doing it intentionally and without realizing it until I was over 16 hours in, I worked almost continuously, only stopping for food & bathroom breaks and the occasional human interruption. I had actually intended to relax that day. To take some time to play games or just watch TV and/or movies. Something. Alas, I’m in the midst of getting two books ready to send to my printer, and I’m completely occupied. I can’t seem to stop working.

One of the pitfalls of doing what you love full time is, apparently, not being able to get yourself to stop doing it. This entire week, while difficult and frustrating at times and almost always leaving me feeling unsure as to whether the product I’m producing will be marketable, has been enjoyable. I’ve been having a good time. A few hours ago, after I’d added the two new books (Forget What You Can’t Remember and More Lost Memories) to modernevil.com, after tweaking things around so everything displayed okay across 6 different browsers, when I spent over an hour simply rearranging the book cover thumbnails on the main page, I was having a good time. It was fun to play around with laying them out, spacing them out, and otherwise shifting the tiny images around in dozens of different configurations.

So, that’s good.

But then again, there are factors like: It’s already December 21st, I haven’t submitted either book to my printer yet -actually, I’m still waiting to hear back from a couple of people who said they’d copyedit for me, though probably not for much longer- and I haven’t finished composing the music for the podcast version of the novel and with Christmas and New Year’s Day I can’t expect particularly rapid turn-arounds on the book production and the podcast launches January 1st on the Modern Evil Podcast (and January 2nd on Podiobooks.com) and it sure would be nice to have the physical book available when the podcast goes live, but I don’t see things coming together that quickly, at this point. Wait, did that sentence make any sense?

I wanted to have the books to LSI (who prints & distributes them) ASAP, preferably in time to have them on hand before the podcast goes live (and before the Art Walk, Jan. 2nd). I wanted to have them done and ready to go a week ago. Monday of this week at the latest. But I have to do everything by myself. I’m a one-man operation. I write the books. I edit the books. I copy-edit the books. I do the layout. I design the covers. I take the photographs (or, in the case of More Lost Memories, paint the paintings) for the covers. I write the copy. I design and build the web sites. I do the accounting. I handle the “e-commerce”. I do the marketing. Everything. I do everything myself. So, it takes a little longer than I’d like. So, I probably won’t have the books on hand Jan. 2nd. Perhaps not even the proof copies back to be sure everything was set up okay.

Which, if I were trying to do things traditionally, wouldn’t be as much of a problem. A traditional publisher takes 9 months to two years to get a book on store shelves. I finished FWYCR at the end of October and I wrote More Lost Memories in November and I’m trying to have them in print and ready to sell by the end of December. Well, by “January, 2009” right now. If I’d given myself until January 2010 it would have been no problem to get all this done. Heck, I could already have the audiobook in the can. Waiting for people to find the time to actually read the book and give me feedback wouldn’t be an issue. All that. But I’m not trying to copy what’s out there. I’m trying to run the publishing company I want to be. I want to go from first draft to book for sale in as short a time as I am capable of producing a professional product. I want to have several new books every year. This year, 2008, Modern Evil Press didn’t put a single new book in print. Next year, I’m starting with two in January and I have another short story collection about 2/3 finished, and unless the course of my life changes significantly, I should be able to get another novel (or two) written before the end of the year. I want to be the one-man operation that doesn’t hold itself back because of its limitations.

My only limitation is time. There’s only one of me. And I have to do everything. But it’s coming along. And it feels good. Hopefully I’ll be able to send these two books to the printer before Christmas. Then, with any luck, I can get some painting done in the midst of trying to launch yet another podcast novel. Alright, gotta go slice my fresh-baked cranberry bread now, then get ready for church. Thanks for reading.

Possible back-cover copy for FWYCR

I’ve been working all day on the cover design for my new novel, Forget What You Can’t Remember, most of that time spent on writing the copy for the back cover. This is what I have after about 8 hours of trying to write two or three paragraphs to sum up and sell a 292-page book:

Zombies! Doomsday! And someone who actually finished writing a novel in a month!

Mary, Lance, Brady, Lorraine, and the Sergeant are a handful of the survivors from a zombie outbreak that decimates a city. Each of them responds a little differently in the aftermath of the tragedy and to the inexplicable and possibly unrelated memory loss some of them seem to be suffering. Paul is obsessed with a worldwide cataclysmic event he’s been predicting for years, and while everyone else seems able to go on with their lives in its wake, he just can’t let it go. Add a utopian city in the sky and a mathematician who can fly, then watch all these elements intersect and converge in a place where some see a moral void and others can’t escape deep questions of right and wrong.

Forget What You Can’t Remember explores everything from economics and ethics to politics, post-traumatic recovery and the lonliness of heroism. If it doesn’t leave you guessing, it’ll at least get you thinking.

And then, in another part of the cover, alongside a small version of More Lost Memories‘ cover (which I haven’t even started on yet… Ugh.), the following:

More Lost Memories is a companion book to Forget What You Can’t Remember, a collection of short stories each of which delves deeper into a character, event, or situation from this book. Find out how the zombie trainers died, about Lance’s restaurant, what was really going on in chapter 21, and more. Available now from Modern Evil Press.

That’s assuming, of course, I can fit all those words on the cover in a readably-sized typeface.

Please, please, please give me your feedback, either here in the comments or via email or via Twitter reply, or via Plurk ASAP. As soon as I can get these cover designs done, I can send the books to the printer. The sooner that happens, the sooner I’ll have them for sale. I’d really, really, like to have them for sale close to the time the podcast of the book starts (1/2/09, on Podiobooks.com). Thank you!

A lot of podcasting

You’ve been reading a lot about it here because it’s been dominating my time and my thoughts a lot lately. In case you somehow aren’t aware, I’ve been podcasting my fiction and poetry via the Modern Evil Podcast, and simultaneously releasing my podcast novels over at Podiobooks.com in sync with my personal feed. My feed (the Modern Evil Podcast) has also included (in addition to the weekly, half-hour episodes roughly identical to the Podiobooks release) poetry and short fiction in mid-week episodes.

<complain>
What this means, for my time, is that I have effectively been running three weekly podcasts: The podiobooks feed, with just the novel, the Modern Evil Podcast Friday episodes, with the novel and alternate introduction and closing, and the Modern Evil Podcast mid-week episodes, with my poetry and short fiction. ~2.2x the recording and editing, 3x the mixing, converting, and uploading vs. doing one weekly podcast. It’s been a lot of work, and time and thought consuming.
</complain>

So, along with the upcoming release of my new book, Forget What You Can’t Remember (now targeting a January release), I’m going to be starting podcasting it. In fact, I’m planning to overlap the two novels’ releases, so that people who listen to the final episode of Lost and Not Found on Podiobooks can immediately go subscribe to Forget What You Can’t Remember and so that people who subscribe to the Modern Evil Podcast will -instead of going for a while without episodes- get an extra episode or two during the overlap. Now, here’s the lazy part:

I’m going to continue releasing on the MEPodcast at the same time as Podiobooks, but Forget What You Can’t Remember is already broken into chapters of roughly even length, each of which should be around 15 minutes long. I’m going to release one chapter at a time, twice a week, into each feed. No poetry or short stories in the MEPodcast during the run, just chapter after chapter of the novel. Also: because of the structure of Forget What You Can’t Remember, the majority of chapters have no “breaks” in them, and thus will have a somewhat reduced editing time and effort – a savings then multiplied by the double feeds.

The Forget What You Can’t Remember podcast should wrap up around mid-April, 2009, according to this release schedule. Hopefully by then I’ll have another book or two written.