I’ll be writing something longer sometime this weekend, topic TBA, but today I’m tossing out a short post to reveal the new cover for Epsilon: Broken Stars. Since I’ll be focusing on putting together the print edition of it after the print of Awakenings: Book One is complete, and seeing as I was starting work on a new draft of Epsilon: Redeemer, it seemed only right to put together a new cover for Broken Stars.

So here is its public internet debut.

It was actually not all that hard to put together, but I chose to publish this smaller piece first so I could get used to the formatting demands and the processes of Createspace as a POD service.  My overall experience with Createspace was actually really good and the finished product is very, very nice.  The cover (which is built on one of their stock templates) turned out awesome and the interior looks great in my opinion.

I’m very pleased with the result, which is available for $4.95 (plus shipping) via the links above.  It’s 122 pages and includes a raw preview of my next print release.

The next book I plan to release in print is Awakenings book one, which comprises the first year of postings on the project.  It’s twelve chapters plus a prologue and an epilogue; since I’m going to print the “deluxe” edition rather than the “basic” edition, there will be extra features such as a FAQ and an essay about working on the project.  These are coming together as I edit the raw text of the web serial into (what I hope is) a very readable book format.  As it stands, the trade paperback will be around 370 pages, though that number will shrink and grow as I edit and format the book to my liking.

The cover of Awakenings will be my first fully designed print cover, which I dearly hope will look awesome, and will be my first title distributed beyond Createspace and Amazon.

Kind of scary and exciting, huh?

I started to e-publish my work back in August, starting with a lightly revised version of my Master’s thesis, Intersection with the Once and Future King.  Since then, I’ve published a few shorter works and two full-length novels, Awakenings Book One and Epsilon: Broken Stars.  Epsilon: Redeemer and When All’s Said and Done are forthcoming, hopefully by the end of the year.  Print versions of some of my work will be available in the coming months, starting with What Angels Fear, which is in the final review process on the print edition.

I’ll be breaking my analysis down by book, but omitting the copies given away of Epsilon: Broken Stars in November 2011.

Intersection with the Once and Future King ($2.99-$4.99)

• Amazon:
• September: 0
• October: 2
• November: 1
• December: 5
• January: 1
• February: 2
• Barnes and Noble:
  • September: 0
  • October: 0
  • November: 1
  • December: 1
  • January: 0
  • February: 1

Falling Stars ($0.99-FREE)
most of these copies were free except for those on Amazon, where the price is still $0.99.

• Amazon: 9
• Barnes and Noble: 781
• Smashwords: 212

What Angels Fear ($0.99)

• Amazon:
• October: 3
• November: 0
• December: 0
• January: 2
• February: 1
• Barnes and Noble:
• October: 0
• November: 1
• December: 1
• January: 0
• February: 0
• Smashwords: 4

Epsilon: Broken Stars ($1.99-$2.99)

• Amazon:
• October: 1
• November: 0
• December: 1
• January: 0
• February: 1
• Barnes and Noble:
• October: 1
• November: 2
• December: 0
• January: 1
• February: 0
• Smashwords: 8

Awakenings: Book One ($2.99-$0.99)

• Amazon:
• January: 2
• February: 5
• Barnes and Noble:
• January: 1
• February: 1
• Smashwords: 3

Amazon recently cut me my first e-check–for $18.97.  Hopefully, it will be the first of many, many more.

Currently on tap:

• Print version of What Angels Fear (including a brief essay on writing the work) – hopefully by the end of March.
• Finishing up Epsilon: Redeemer, Girl from a Brigadoon, and When All’s Said and Done.
• Tentative release time frames (all of these are subject to change and are for the ebook release; trade paper/print versions are a little later than the ebook release):
• April – Girl from a Brigadoon
• May – Epsilon: Redeemer
• June – The Last Colony

I’ve got a couple of projects kicking around that will be released under a psuedonym that (for the moment) shall remain unrevealed.

For anyone following the word count meters, they’ve probably noticed that I’ve been making good progress largely on Girl from a Brigadoon, though this past week I’ve put in some work on When All’s Said and Done and Epsilon: Redeemer.  The latter is probably going to significantly eclipse its word count goal and be longer than Epsilon: Broken Stars.

Speaking of Broken Stars, stay tuned later this week for a post revealing what my sales have looked like the past few months since I started releasing ebooks.  I’m still waiting on some numbers (Kobo, etc.) from some of the Smashwords distribution channels, but I can show off some preliminaries.  They’re not that impressive, but they’re “whole dollars!” as my brother puts it.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

And Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/author/erin-klitzke

She offers two free fiction serials @ http://www.embklitzke.com/e557 and http://awakenings.embklitzke.com.  Stop on by and check it out.

At least, it was supposed to be a a short.  It was also supposed to be freewriting, something to just get the tale out of my system so I could get back to work on Redeemer, When All’s Said and Done, and other various projects.  Instead, it’s become all-consuming.

It all began with this:

            “There are places in the world, Doctor, that we leave off maps because no one can get inside in the first place,” the Canadian G-man shouted over the sound of the wind.  “You try to drive into them and suddenly pop out on the other side.  We don’t understand how it works, we just know it happens.”

            “I’m aware of the phenomenon,” El Stone yelled back over the sound of the rotors.  The former crime scene investigator held on to one of the oh-shit bars as she peered out the helicopter’s window at the trees below.  “But that doesn’t tell me why I’m here.”  Here was the ass-end of Alberta, somewhere up in forests so damned thick that no one would’ve noticed if they’d missed a twenty-mile stretch even if they’d been looking for the gap.  The sort of places they were discussing were rarely that large–mostly, the places omitted from the maps were two to five square mile areas, tops.  In the business, they called them Brigadoons when they reappeared, for the musical.  She knew that because she’d read the files on the flight up to Edmonton from the States.  There had been little else to do on the flight.

            The G-man pointed to a clearing that hosted a small village and a narrow roadway that spiraled out of the forest.  It hadn’t been on the maps she’d seen before they’d left the RCAF base.  Her heart began to beat a little faster.

            “One of them just opened up.”

Now, let’s be honest, I’ve tweaked it a touch since I wrote that first bit, but that’s literally how it began.  The dialogue and the images caught me in the side of the head, much like the idea for What Angels Fear did a couple years ago.  Unlike What Angels Fear, however, I knew fairly quickly who the story was actually about.  It took me until this past weekend to come up with a title, however, and the title is Girl from a Brigadoon.

The story, of course, is about the titular girl–a woman, actually–who’s been missing for fifteen years.  It’s a paranormal yarn, a mix of mystery, fantasy, and suspense.  In other words, it’s something that I’m a bit out of my depth trying to write, since mysteries have never been my bag.  I don’t tend to read them and I’m feeling a bit beyond my ken trying to write one.  But the idea has been persistent and it won’t let me not write it.

I keep having to revise my word count goal upward as the ideas trickle in, because there’s no way it’s going to be anything under 40k words at this point.  I’m already nearing 14k words, and it’s only chapter three.  It’s going to be some hard work, but it feels right.

For people who have known me for a long time–as a writer and as a gamer both–there will be some familiar faces in the text.  Brigid O’Connell figures prominently in the story as one of the investigators and AJ McConaway is playing quirky, perky sidekick every so often, thanks to an (annoying) absence of her twin brother Tim.  Then of course, there’s Rebecca Reid, who the story really belongs to.

She is, after all, the girl from the Brigadoon.

Keep an eye on Twitter and such for ranting, whining, and occasional progress updates.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

And Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/author/erin-klitzke

She offers two free fiction serials @ http://www.embklitzke.com/e557 and http://awakenings.embklitzke.com.  Stop on by and check it out.

Maybe it’s the longtime roleplayer in me that causes that.  I can’t be sure.

I think about these things from time to time, but it wasn’t until a recent review in the @SciYourFi blog that I realized how much I invest in characters over the plots driving them, over everything swirling around them.  The review was of my first full-length ebook, Epsilon: Broken Stars, and the major takeaways for me as a writer were to make sure that all of the little things that struck the reviewer as “odd” pay of in the second book (Redeemer, forthcoming, release date unknown but probably in the spring or summer) and that the reviewer got interested in the personal stories of the cast.  That’s fantastic, because I’ve been in love with their stories for a long time (well, Aaron/Wil and Caren’s, anyhow).

Side note: Of course the review also sent me scrambling to figure out some formatting errors, which I think I fixed but could certainly be wrong on that count.  A full page-through of the Smashwords version is on my to-do list (I have been avoiding it so the story could settle in my brain–so I could get really, really used to the idea of it being “finished”).

Chris George, as I recall, said something similar about Awakenings in his review of it at the Web Fiction Guide–the saga centers less around the end of the world and more about how the young men and women left behind handle that event.  I’m sure eventual reviews of The Last Colony will say the same thing: that the story centers on the people reacting to and causing events in their universe.

My name is Erin, and I write character-based fiction.  It’s what I do.  I’ve got a bunch of worlds, and these worlds are peopled with characters I love (or, in cases such as with Casey Flannery and D’Arcy Morgause, love to hate).

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

And Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/author/erin-klitzke

She offers two free fiction serials @ http://www.embklitzke.com/e557 and http://awakenings.embklitzke.com.  Stop on by and check it out.

Here’s an excerpt from me clawing my way out of that quagmire:

            “Ky,” Ridley murmured, fingers tangling in my sleeve and face pale as death as he looked away from the tinted windows of the minivan.  Matthew had borrowed from the FBI pool to transport Ridley and Julia to a safehouse a few blocks away from Damon’s apartment.  I’d tagged along for moral support at their mutual insistence.
            We’d faked their deaths the day before—more to the point, the FBI had faked their deaths.  It had been on the evening news, though they hadn’t released the names of the dead, pending notification of the families.  I didn’t envy the person who’d have to lie to Julia’s parents about their daughter being dead.  I wondered if the person doing the informing would actually know the truth.
            When I didn’t answer him right away—in truth, I hadn’t heard him—Ridley tugged on my sleeve, his tone turning urgent.  “Ky, look out the window.  Look out there, at the coffee shop across the street.  The red-head on the patio.”
            I looked and my heart started to beat faster.  Is that Allyson?
            “What’s wrong?” Julia and Matthew asked in the same voice.
            “You weren’t in contact with anyone, were you?” I asked him.
            He shook his head quickly.  “No, no one.  Laren was the only one after they released me from the facility, and I haven’t talked to her since the motel.”  He shot a glance at Julia, whose gaze bounced between he and I.
            “What’s going on?” she asked, a hint of urgency to her voice.  “The only person I talked to back in Andover was Paul and I haven’t heard from him since.”
            “Ky.”  Matthew didn’t look back at me, but his tone insisted I answer, and quickly.  I tamped down a mixture of annoyance and fear.
            “Ally’s a mimic.  She can do whatever the hell she wants.”  I gave Ridley a long, hard look.  “Did they try to pair you up after what happened?”
            “Who are we talking about?”  Julia asked, sounding desperate now.
            “The girl at the coffee shop,” I said.  “With the red hair.”
            Julia looked and gave a little gasp.  Matthew growled and instead of slowing down, sped up, driving up the block before he swung the van around a corner and parked it on the side of the street.  He twisted in the driver’s seat and glared at all three of us.
            “All right, what the hell is going on back here that no one decided to the guy with the badge and the gun about?”
            Stupid as it might have been, I held up a hand to forestall further comment from him, staring at Ridley and waiting for him to answer me.  Dammit, Ridley!  If they tried to pair you two up, she’s got a link to you that she can use.  She may not have a lot of power in that direction, but it’d be enough for her to track you.
            He stared at me for a few seconds that felt like hours before he nodded, looking away.  “Yeah,” he whispered.  “It took them two months to figure out it wasn’t going to work.”
            “But long enough for her to learn your tricks,” I muttered.  “Damn.”
            Matthew reached back and grabbed my arm, squeezing so hard it hurt.  “In English, Kyle.”
            I jerked my arm out of his grip, rubbing it and glaring at him.  “We think we saw Allyson.”
            “I gathered that much.  What does it mean?  She works for the Institute, doesn’t she?”
            I glanced at Ridley, who winced and whispered, “Yes.”
            Julia stared at him and shook her head.  “No.  I don’t think so.”
            Matthew stared at all three of us for a few seconds, then started to get out of the van.  “One way to find out.”
            “Wait one goddamned second here!”  I got out after him, leaving Ridley and Julia in the van.  “You have no idea what you’re up against.”
            “A teenager or a twenty-something that both you and he knew on the inside, which means she’s got some kind of ability that I may or may not be able to combat.  Sound right?”  Matthew checked the clip on his sidearm and slid it back into its holster, then adjusted his sport coat.
            “What are you going to do?”
            “Get a cup of coffee and watch,” he said, slamming the van door shut.  Julia and Ridley piled out behind me.
            “We’re coming with you,” Ridley said firmly, positioning himself at my shoulder.
            “Absolutely not,” Matthew said.  “Get back in the van and wait for me to come back.”
            I shook my head.  “Somehow, I don’t think that we’re going to do that.  You don’t know Ally.  Ridley and I do.”  Though what would make Julia think that she’s not working for the Institute is something I’d certainly like to know.  I glanced sidelong at Julia, whose hand was wrapped tightly around Ridley’s.  “You said you don’t think she works for the Institute.”
            She shook her head quickly.  “No, I don’t.  I’ve seen her before.”
            Ridley paled again, turning toward her and taking her by the shoulders.  “When?” he asked hoarsely.  “How?”
            Julia reached up, cupping his face in her hands.  My pounding heart began to ache at the tenderness of her gesture; I had to shove the thoughts of Hadrian that swarmed up back down again so I could concentrate.  Soon, Ky.  Soon.
            “I went to have a look at the installation outside of Andover, remember?  That’s when I saw her,” she said softly.  “She told me to go back to town.”  Her gaze flicked momentarily to Matthew.  “And she left me a note to Google him.”
            I was stunned, and from the look on his face that he couldn’t quite smother, so was Matthew.
            “Why would she tell you to do that?” he asked.
            I stared at my sneakers.  “Because she loved Tim and she knows why he was there.”

This is a huge shift and departure from the original universe (Allyson wasn’t featured in the original draft–but then again, neither was Ridley, and Julia didn’t exist).  It’ll be interesting to see where this goes.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

And Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/author/erin-klitzke

She offers two free fiction serials @ http://www.embklitzke.com/e557 and http://awakenings.embklitzke.com.  Stop on by and check it out.

Of course, the schedule is also getting shuffled around, thanks to a decision I came to regarding The Last Colony.  Instead of straight ebook release, I’m releasing it as a serial, one chapter a week, at www.embklitzke.com/e557 — the first two posts went up on January 1.  It will update Sundays and is the first book of the Legacies of the Lost Earth series.  I’ll probably release the ebook version before the full serial is posted (thanks again to A.M. Harte for that suggestion).

Looking forward to my forthcoming weekend off from the store, which will leave me time and flexibility to write.  I see a trip to Starbucks for a few hours on Thursday in my future.

Awakenings Book 1 was completed on January 1 with the Epilogue post.  Book 2 began today, 2 January 2012.  I’m starting to claw my way back on-schedule with that (which is to say that I’m no longer scrambling to write a post within forty-eight hours of it needing to be posted).  Hopefully I’ll be able to maintain that pace.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

This, of course, means that my writing has suffered a bit of a setback.  I’m probably getting more writing done in the amount of time that I have to do it, but the time I’ve got to do it has been slashed severely.  This may change after the holidays, but I’m going to be perfectly honest and say that there’s no way humanly possible to finish the rewrite of When All’s Said and Done by 1/15/12.  I might be able to get the full draft of Epsilon: Redeemer done by then (the first 50K came in November–but since then, the story’s expanded beyond what I anticipated and the timeline itself for the universe has gotten twisted around a bit) and if I push I might even be able to finish the first draft of The Last Colony (more on that in a second) by the end of the month, but beyond that, it’s not going to happen.

I do have good news, however, and with the changes to the schedule comes an announcement.  Book One of Awakenings, which I’ve been releasing as a fiction serial at awakenings.embklitzke.com, is nearing completion.  After a bit of editing, I’ll be releasing it as an ebook through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords as edited copy with a few bonuses.  I haven’t decided what, exactly, those bonuses will be, but it’s entirely possible that they’ll include the original Marin work, The Vision, which would have run on September 13, 2001 in my university’s newspaper…if the events of September 11 had never happened.

So the schedule, prior to this writing, was thus:

November 2011

• Write Epsilon: Redeemer first draft – 50,000 words (Nanowrimo project) – Deadline November 30
• Freewriting projects – Awakenings side story (Kira et. al.); UNSETIC Files

December 2011

• Redraft When All’s Said and Done (Deadline January 15)
• Freewriting projects – Awakenings side stories; UNSETIC Files
• Finish first draft of The Last Colony
• Finish additions to Epsilon: Redeemer draft (50k deadline made)
• Begin preliminary edits/replot of Princes of the Universe and associated cosm

January 2012

• Finish redraft of When All’s Said and Done (Deadline January 15)
• Begin editing of Epsilon: Redeemer
• Freewriting projects – UNSETIC Files, Epsilon shorts, Lost Angel shorts
• Begin full draft of Beckett (UNSETIC Files) – On hold pending word regarding another project.
• Begin full draft of third Epsilon book (Shattered? Sins of the Father?)

February 2012

• Begin editing of The Last Colony
• Begin redraft of Epsilon: Redeemer

March 2012

• Finish first full draft of Beckett (Deadline March 15) – On hold pending word regarding another project.

Revised schedule:

November 2011

• Write Epsilon: Redeemer first draft – 50,000 words (Nanowrimo project) – Deadline November 30 – Done (at least the first 50k was done)
• Freewriting projects – Awakenings side story (Kira et. al.); UNSETIC Files

December 2011

• Freewriting projects – Awakenings side stories; UNSETIC Files
• Finish first draft of The Last Colony (deadline January 12)
• Continue Epsilon: Redeemer draft (Goaled at 85k words)
• Finish Awakenings Book 1, begin book 2
• Continue draft of When All’s Said and Done (New deadline: February 15)

January 2012

• Finish redraft of When All’s Said and Done (Deadline February 15)
• Begin editing of Epsilon: Redeemer (Week of January 23)
• Freewriting projects – UNSETIC Files, Epsilon shorts, Lost Angel shorts
• Begin full draft of Beckett (UNSETIC Files) – Still on hold pending word regarding another project.
• Begin plotting of third Epsilon book (Ren’s PoV)
• Edit Awakenings Book 1

February 2012

• Finish full redraft of When All’s Said and Done (Feb. 15)
• Begin editing of The Last Colony
• Begin redraft of Epsilon: Redeemer

March 2012

• Finish first full draft of Beckett (Deadline March 15) – On hold pending word regarding another project.
• Finish redraft of Epsilon: Redeemer (March 30)
• Finish editing The Last Colony
• Begin editing When All’s Said and Done (March 1)

Only time will tell whether or not this is a workable schedule (and it’ll be heavily dependant on my schedule at the store as well–but writing doesn’t pay the bills yet, so I have to keep the PTSL job).

If any readers have managed to wander out here, I welcome comments and whines about what you want to see me working on next!  They do light a bit of a fire under me to keep me working hard at what I love to do, and encourage me to spend brainsweat on projects, despite their ups and downs.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

And Amazon @ http://www.amazon.com/author/erin-klitzke

Fiction (noun): (1) the class of literature comprising works of imaginative narration, esp. in prose form. (2) works of this class, as novels or short stories (ie, “detective fiction”)

Web (noun): synonymous with or referring to ”Internet.”

Webfiction isn’t exactly a new phenomena, though it seems to be on the rise and on the wane all at once in this rapidly changing, tech-savvy writing world.  For some writers and readers alike, webfiction bears the same stigma as “fan fiction,” which is loosely defined as fiction set in worlds not of the writer’s creation.  Webfiction, however, is markedly different in that it is original fiction published first on the internet, often for free consumption.(1)  For some authors, it’s a method of alpha/beta testing their work before editing and releasing it in self-published formats.  For others, it is the end-all, be-all of their work, simply another medium they work in.

So why do it at all?

For me, it’s a way of getting my work out there and vetting it before a live audience.  A lot of people write in a vacuum and often their work never sees the light of day–it’s the same for many artists, some of whom turn to writing and drawing webcomics to force themselves to hone and share their craft with others.  For some writers of webfiction, the reason they turn to the internet as a medium for their work is twofold:

1. To force themselves to write to a deadline every day (every week, every month, etc. depending upon update schedules).
2. To expose their work to the world in the most easily accessible way.

A corollary to this last point deals with self-publishing.  Up until very recently, self-publishing books (prose, comic, or otherwise) was incredibly cost-prohibitive.  While the ebook revolution has caused a paradigm shift in the self-publishing universe(2), webfiction remains one medium that is entirely in the hands of an author.  Anyone can set up a blog through Blogger or WordPress and get to writing–and quickly.  That means your work is out there for anyone to find.(3)

The internet is an almost inherently social medium.  It is this social aspect of the web that is attractive to many authors of webfiction.  It enables writers to glean insights and get opinions from readers–on a work that’s still in progress.  Here’s an example from my own webfiction serial, Awakenings.

I had a reader make the following observations in a comment on Chapter 9, entry 7:

As for Thom’s broken ribs, they’re gonna take at least six weeks to heal. Don’t ask me how I know this, OK? Coughing is a challenge and despite the five plus years since I broke a couple of my ribs, I still wince at the memory of sneezing.  Agony hardly begins to describe it.

I’m a gun owner, BTW, and if you need any technical advice about pistols and/or rifles, feel free to email me. I’m also into flint- and caplock rifles, i.e., muzzleloaders, and making black powder and flintlock rifles are well within the means of someone with access to hand tools and abandoned train rails.

This was incredibly helpful advice (and I’m still indebted to the reader who shared it).  It’s this kind of thing that makes readers for webfiction invaluable, especially if you wouldn’t be able to get test readers for an independant project with that kind of knowledge (I know that odds are for me, I wouldn’t have been able to). Through tapping into the social aspect of the web, I got some really interesting information that will help me not only with Awakenings, but with other projects down the road.

Another useful aspect of putting work out on the internet–if you’re planning to either just leave it online or self-publish, that is–is that you’re able to have folks catch little tics in your work that you wouldn’t ordinary catch (Chris George, who writes the webfiction serial Shadow has been good about this for me).  Readers aren’t always shy.  They’ll tell you what they like, what they don’t like, and they’ll tell you all of this before it ends up in a book review.  In essence, it’s crowdsourcing part of your editorial process (in many cases, the developmental stage of your editing process, though occassionally it’ll be the proofreading segement, too).

Of course, there’s a caveat to all of this: if you’re planning on traditionally publishing your  work at some point, you should be leary of putting any piece you’re planning on shopping to agents or publishers on the web.  Heck, based on this post shared on The Passive Voice blog, you’ll need to be careful about putting anything out there.

So why write webfiction?  For me, it was about getting work out there, writing to a deadline, and getting some feedback on a piece that was in a very difficult to define genre.

You can find Erin on GoodReads these days @ http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5211226.Erin_Klitzke
And on Smashwords @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EMBKlitzke

1. Some webfiction authors (such as MCA Hogarth) have experimented with paid models, but I don’t have data to show whether or not the model works well or not.
2. For more information on the self-pub revolution, see J.A. Konrath, Dean Wesley Smith, and Michael A. Stackpole, as well as the ebook Be The Monkey by Barry Eisler and J.A. Konrath.
3.  Of course, this assumes you know some basic SEO or aren’t afraid to market yourself a little bit.  I’ve had pretty good luck with advertising through Project Wonderful for Awakenings.