First print release! – What Angels Fear

I’d intended to post about this last week and failed.  As of 17 March 2012, my first print book (novella), What Angels Fear went live on Createspace and Amazon.com.

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?

Schedule updates

As much as I really, really hate to do it, I’m going to have to make some significant changes to my writing schedule and my overall goaling.  This is largely due to a major uptick in the hours I’ve been working at the store–which are, in fact, incredibly insane hours as well as being very large in quantity.  I’ve gone from the 10-20 hours I was working two months ago, when I started releasing my work in ebook form, to working nearly 40 hours a week (add in an hour at either end to each 7-9 hour shift for transit time as well) and fighting a constant battle to not completely lose my sanity.

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

Getting back into the groove

Today, I cleaned my room.  Then I checked the status of Falling Stars on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, then checked to see if I’d sold any on Smashwords (I hadn’t) while I slept.

Then, I sat down to write.

It’s been one of those days when it’s been difficult to get something started, despite having ideas percolating in the back of my brain for a couple days.  The characters weren’t feeling chatty, the words didn’t feel like they wanted to flow.  So, after typing some pre-work scribbles from yesterday afternoon and confirming that I did not, in fact, have to show up at the store today, I headed for my local Starbucks for a pumpkin spice latte and a change of scenery.

Lo and behold, the Awakenings chapter 11 opener was written.  Here’s a taste.

            I hope that you decided not to go to the city.  Something’s about to happen, something connected to that damn asteroid, and I just feel like it’s better that you’re with everyone at the university.  Something—not someone—tells me that.  I know you stopped believing her and believing yourself, but please, just believe me in this.  The interview isn’t that important.  If you walk away from her—from all of it—now, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.

However long that’s going to be remains to be seen.

Now, Chapter 10.06 went up today.  Page hits have been down since last weekend for some reason, though I’m not certain why.  Possibly has something to do with folks getting back into the swing of school, possibly the weather, possibly a piss-poor advertising spread the past week–any number of factors could be to blame.  I certainly don’t seem to have the malware problem I was having before, which is amazing (apparently, stripped-down, recustomized versions of the WordPress main themes are helpful in that regard!).  Hopefully, numbers will go back up again soon, but only time will tell.  I know that there’s at least a small following for my little epic post-apocalyptic urban fantasy, and I think I can live with that.

I mentioned at the top of the post that I’d checked various outlets for sales figures on Falling Stars.  For folks not in the know (ie, anyone not privy to my brain or my AIM name), Falling Stars is a novelette set in the same universe as Epsilon: Broken Stars.  The story itself is just shy of 13k words, but the ebook release has the first chapter of Epsilon: Broken Stars attached to it.  I’m actually really excited about all of this, because it’s my first ebook release.

I posted it to Smashwords and Amazon on Friday, then posted it to Barnes and Noble on Saturday (as of this writing, they’re still processing the file for listing in their catalog.  My fingers and toes are crossed that Smashwords will accept Falling Stars for its premium catalog, which is distributed to other e-bookstores such as Kobo, Apple, and a few others.  At 99¢, it’s a fairly affordable little read and I happen to think it’s a decent story to boot.

From the way things have been going the past couple days with Epsilon: Broken Stars, that may well be out in early October.  Fingers and toes crossed–it depends on how much I can plow through in the next week or so and how quickly a couple able volunteers can proof-read the document for me.

I’m building my book portfolio, slowly but surely (and possibly faster than some new indie authors, too)!  Publishing that first ebook was exciting and scary all at once, but I’m fairly pleased at the result so far…even if sales are next to non-existent.  Hopefully, more friends in the facebook crowd will give me a hand with advertising!  A huge shout-out to Erik of Dear God What Have We Wrought?! for his Facebook marketing of my work (I netted one sale out of that so far, thanks!).  For those of you who’d like to give me a hand with that and don’t know how, it’s as easy as heading to the Smashwords or Amazon pages for Falling Stars and hitting the “Share” button for Facebook (in both cases, the button is on the right hand side of the page–on the Amazon page, it’ll be tucked under the “Read on these devices” box, and on Smashwords…well.  Smashwords makes the share button pretty easy to find).

For now, though, it’s time for me to get back to the writing.  Wish me luck!

September slumps (and updates)

So Septembers come in two varieties for me: incredibly productive, or incredibly unproductive.  This September, thus far, has been strangely both.

The first week or so was insanely productive, especially when it comes to Awakenings, and I have to admit that this past week wasn’t so bad, either.  Epsilon: Broken Stars still requires quite a bit of attention before it’s ready for e-publication, so it may not see digital shelves until October, since the magnitude of the additions I decided to make (and the breadth of some of the rewrites I decided to do) were greater than anticipated–we’re talking the addition of several chapters here and a couple of unexpected subplots, which up the complexity level of the story quite a bit.  My schedule at the store last week basically meant I had to decide between sleeping and writing, and I wisely chose sleep when and where I could (I help a lot with the visual merchandising where I work, and my store manager was out of the business for a week–when we were supposed to be totally rearranging the store–so guess who got to do most of the rearranging by herself.  That’s right.).  Schedules are becoming lighter in that regard…just in time for me to prep for the 16th Annual Grand Valley Renaissance Festival in Allendale, MI, which I’ll be attending with Jude’s Chest again this year.  Something’s different about it this year, though, and that’s me bringing someone who’s never been (and therefore, since I’m there with the booth, will be requiring garb for the trip).

There goes more time.

The upshot is that as a result of the sewing break, that helped kicked some writer’s block in the sorry arse.  I’ve managed to finish Chapter 10 of Awakenings much sooner than I anticipated (I wasn’t expecting to be done with that until next week) and I’ll be able to launch into working on Chapter 11 as early as tonight.  I’ve also been getting some words down on a page for an Awakenings side story, one involving some characters that won’t debut in person in the narrative proper for some time.  The story will either serve as a filler after Awakenings: Book One is completed or will be released as an extra with the ebook version of Awakenings: Book One.

Of course, if I’ve got the cover designed, that means it should be coming soon, right?  Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no.  This is the third or fourth version of the cover that I’ve played with, but it’s the one I’m the happiest with.  However, in this case, I can fairly safely say that Awakenings: Book One should be complete on the website within another few chapters–probably by Chapter 12 or Chapter 13, but we’ll see where the story takes me.  Following that, there’ll be a time-skip forward probably a couple months, then a resumption of the (mis)adventures of our hapless heroes.  I have plans, after all.

Those plans, of course, change as I write onward, but that’s what keeps webfiction fun and interesting, isn’t it?

Speaking of…I was a guest on a podcast that’s available streaming here or as a download from iTunes.  It was a lot of fun, and I love the Webfiction World folks.  They put on a good show (even when they’re put on the spot–hell, especially when they’re put on the spot!).  Keeping my fingers and toes crossed that they do a show based on Jim‘s superhero webfiction idea.

Awakenings and Epsilon: Broken Stars update

[progpress title=”Epsilon: Broken Stars” goal=”70000″ current=”47107″]

[progpress title=”Awakenings WebSeWriMo” goal=”35″ current=”10″]

 

As you can see, I’ve posted updated goals for Epsilon: Broken Stars and Awakenings.  I’m goaling Broken Stars at 70k because I think that’s probably a bit more acceptable as a piece of prose than the shorter 60K original goal, and it looks like I’ll be adding at least two to three chapters to the piece (and, by extension, more background).  It also looks like we’ll be going with Cover #2.  Most of the people who’ve had a look at it like the darker text on that version, and I think I do as well.  The only thing that may change is that I may remove “Book 1” from the page and just have the title page read “Epsilon Broken Stars.”

The rationale for this is that I don’t know exactly how many books there will be or what order I will decide people should read them in (release date, as we all know, sometimes doesn’t determine these things).

I’ve been working on a new Chapter 5 for Broken Stars, which expands on Aaron’s first run off-world with Mac and Sam.  Here’s an excerpt:

 

            I left the cockpit and headed for my cabin, confident that Desantis could handle the Scarlet.  He’d done well enough at that when we’d run into a sticky spot at Alanis, where we’d almost gotten crushed between a heavy cruiser and a luxury passenger transport thanks to some damn sloppy traffic control on the part of Alanis System Operations.  We’d come out of that close call mostly intact, though we’d have to make some repairs to our secondary communications system.  We’d sheared off one of the antennas.  I had to grudgingly admit that he certainly wasas good a pilot as Caren, if not better.  Thinking that maybe he was better than her hurt something inside of me—maybe it was my pride.  I wasn’t sure.Inside my cabin, I sank down on the bunk and thought about my mother, something I hadn’t done since Caren and I had been prepping for Carmiline.My mother, Madeline Terrel, been a filmmaker—documentaries, mostly—and had met my father out here in the Borderworlds, on Cantrell.  He’d been working at the university, some sort of post-graduate work there.  She was from Epsilon, out to make a film, and met him, fell in love with him, and when they talked about a life together, it was always back on her homeworld.  She’d been proud to tell me growing up that her family had been on Epsilon for over a hundred years by the time I was born.  That had been a point of pride for her, and it was her deep connection to the Alliance capital that made she and my father go there, for him to start over and her to pick up where life left off.
            She’d loved Daniel Taylor and kept loving him until the day he died, despite everything.  Despite him leaving when I was eight.  Despite him joining the Imperium military, getting assigned to Special Projects with the father he’d always told me he hated, and then continuing to work for the Imperium with Special Projects even after Adonis Taylor was dead.  If it was some kind of fear of his father that had driven him to Special Projects, I could’ve understood that while he was still alive.  But not after he stayed with the division after Adonis was dead.  Something about that scanned wrong to me.
Then again, a lot of things about my father had scanned wrong to me in the years he’d been gone.  That had never mattered to Mom.
            Nothing I’d ever said, no evidence I could ever martial, could shake her faith in or love for the man who’d abandoned and betrayed us both.  I just couldn’t understand it.  She’d accepted that lack of understanding on my part, but I knew it hurt her.  She never stopped reminded me that in her estimation and viewpoint, he’d never stopped loving either of us.  I still couldn’t understand how she could believe that and probably never would.  It’s hard to believe someone shooting at you to kill actually still loves you.
            I rubbed the scar tissue on my left side, dead center between my lowest rib and my hipbone.  Daniel Taylor had been the cause of that a little more than six months ago, before Carmiline and before this assignment.  The medics had told me it was almost a miracle that I’d survived.  The way this year was shaping up, I was trading in lives faster than an accident-prone cat.
            No.  Daniel Taylor didn’t love me.  I was the enemy, and that made me a target.

 Copyright 2011, Erin M. Klitzke.  All rights reserved.

 

As for Awakenings, I’m not doing so hot at WebSeWriMo, but at least Chapter 9’s finished now, with the last post of the chapter set to debut on Labor Day.  I’m also going to be featured on Episode 6(?) of Webfiction World, which is supposed to record (and livecast? I’ve never actually been home at the right time to listen to any livecasts!) on August 28.  Pretty awesome stuff if you ask me!

For better or worse, Awakenings suffered a lack of attention because I made decisions about Epsilon.  At the same time, Epsilon is going to end up suffering a bit due to my need to create an Awakenings buffer.  And the E-557 trilogy, still without an overarching name for the set, suffers from my inattention due to a need to work on both!

There is, of course, the fact that I’m reading again, which doesn’t help matters (beyond helping me decompress and allowing me to be in touch with the craft as a consumer rather than a writer).  I’m eagerly awaiting the release of the latest Black London book by Caitlin Kittredge, Devil’s Business.  T-minus eight days and counting!  I just finished Storm Front by Jim Butcher, the first book of the Dresden Files.  It was not quite long enough to get me through until the release of Devil’s Business.  I may read some non-fiction until it comes out.  No decisions yet.

 

Today, more writing, then work at the store.  Joy.  Oh well…at least it pays the bills.

At least until I start releasing ebooks, it does.

It’s good to have goals…

 

[progpress title=”The Last Colony” goal=”80000″ current=”57678″]
[progpress title=”Epsilon” goal=”90000″ current=”39567″]
[progpress title=”Ashes to Ashes” goal=”80000″ current=”14094″]

 

I’ve already posted it on Facebook and I might as well make it official by posting it here, too. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit the past month or two, and I’ve decided.

Goal-setting is good. Hopefully, I’ll manage to meet this goal (and if I don’t, it’s mostly me that gets hurt, which kind of means it’s the best kind of goal).

A while back, I was posting a lot about The Last Colony and the E-557 universe, which comprised my 2009 and 2010 Nanowrimo projects. The Last Colony is actually fairly close to being done, I just have to finish up another few chapters and polish it up (I probably underestimate how much work I’ve got to do) and then it’s done, I’m going to hand it over to some volunteer editors (probably two, one for spelling proofs and such, the other for continuity errors–I have two people in mind already, it’s mostly a matter of talking them into it). The reason for that is because I’m planning to release it as an ebook at some point in the near future.

Of course, this also means I’ll have to finish the second E-557 book, Ashes to Ashes (tentative title, honestly), and plot the third.

Plus finish at least the first book of the Epsilon saga, since I think that’s going to be more than one book (otherwise, it’d be one really, really long book that I’m not sure anyone would take the time to read), and manage three updates for Awakenings a week.

But it’s a goal, and it’s good to have goals. In reading about the future of publishing, it seems like Smashwords and e-publishing just might be a good direction to go in.

 

Wish me luck.

Strokes of brilliance?

First off, the Awakenings part of this entry–I’ve written the ending.  I know, right?  I’m probably months away in writing and years away in posting from the end of the whole story, which will quite frankly probably span about fifteen years of in-character time (much more compressed in the writing, I promise!  I really have no real intention of having days take up as many chapters as Day Zero did, I swear.), but I’ve already written the ending.

The ending, of course, sets up everything for the eventual sequel (which I may or may not start writing long before Awakenings has ended), Ambrose, which is about Lin, Thom and Marin’s son, and his eventual adventures in the world that his parents witnessed the birth of.

In essence, Awakenings is about not only survival, but witnessing the return of magic and wonder to the world–the reawakening of preternatural things that modern science could not understand and had almost managed to destroy.  It’s about figuring out what kind of power your inborn affinities hold and about how you can affect the world around you through the strength of your will.  It’s about friendship and love and starting over at the end of everything.  It’s about not giving up even though you want to, and the power of love.

I know where the first year will end, too, but the road to getting there is going to be fun (and maybe depressing, sometimes), to say the least.  I’m partway through the writing of Chapter 8, which will be hitting the site throughout July (it may run into August, but we’ll see what happens there).  I’ve got notes on things that happen throughout the storyline at large, but not everything has a set time frame.  Things will happen, I imagine, as the muse instructs.

I hope it keeps talking and doesn’t run off with Katie’s inner child to Tahiti, because that would be bad (though oddly fitting, since it’s conversations with Katie that made me write Awakenings in the first place).

 

Other random bits…

Finished reading Perfect Shadow by Brent Weeks.  If you have not read the Night Angel Trilogy, read it.  Then read this Durzo Blint novella.  It was simply awesome and I read it in…probably about two hours, all told.  Maybe three, but I was distracted by people.

Evil people.

 

And finally….this. (Mostly for you, Bits.  Consider it payback for Iridescent. Which is pretty much Thom’s song for Marin, by the way.)