I am officially back from vacation, and not even a full slate of work in the office can shake my Bahamian mellowness. It was a lovely trip and I very much enjoyed spending down-time with the family in a tropical paradise. Plus, the food was crazy-good.
It also served to clear a bit of mental logjam. See, I’ve spent the last two months finalizing edits on MJ-12: Inception, writing a short story for an upcoming anthology, and most importantly, tackling a couple of rather huge day-job work projects. All that pretty much kept me away from my work on MJ-12: Shadows, the tentatively titled sequel to Inception. In fact, it was two months to the day when I had last cracked open those files.
And man, that’s daunting. I write fast, sure — a couple long stints at The Associated Press will do that. But I really hadn’t been able to spare much thought to the next MAJESTIC-12 book, which meant I was faced with several Word files of notes and a huge incomplete mess of an Excel outline.
How do you get back into a story when it’s been back-burnered for so long? (more…)
I loved being a guest at Phoenix Comicon last year. The panels were a huge amount of fun, I met a lot of fans, I had a blast hanging out with my fellow authors and more fans, and if I may be mercenary for a moment, I saw a lot of my books get sold.
So yeah, of course I asked to go back. And the most excellent folks at PHXCC agreed to invite me again. So look out Phoenix…I am coming for your tacos and craft beer once more, from June 2-5 to be exact.
Scheduling? Dunno yet. I’m sure there will be panels. No doubt there will be signings, and I’m hoping that the crew at Mysterious Galaxy will be there selling books again. I’ll certainly talk about the Daedalus trilogy, especially with The Enceladus Crisisout in paperback just weeks before the con.
I’ll also be talking about MAJESTIC-12and MJ-12: Inception. And if all goes well, I’ll have some swag. I’m thinking pin-back buttons, but I’m open to suggestions. Maybe I’ll do a Twitter poll. Oh, and thanks to the good people at Night Shade Books, I’ll have a bunch of advance copies of MJ-12: Inception to give away to those I deem worthy. (I am not, in fact, super-picky on this front. Just be enthusiastic.)
And finally, I do believe the folks at Geeky Giving will be doing something interesting out there. Not sure what, but…I’d keep an eye out.
If you’re anywhere near Phoenix after Memorial Day — or simply enjoy a great road trip — I hope you’ll think about heading to the con. It’s pretty darn awesome. Hope to see you there!
As you can see, I’ve done a bit of work on the site this week. The new cover for MJ-12: Inception provided a pretty nifty new banner up top, for one, and that cover is now to the right of this post as well. Because, darn it, it’s just that pretty.
I’ve also cleaned up the MAJESTIC-12 series page and given MJ-12: Inception its very own page as well. The series page may have a hint or two as to the book I’m writing right now — MJ-12:Inception‘s sequel — and it’s worth noting that the book page itself has links to all of the pre-orders I could find.
(Note: Pre-orders are super-important. The more pre-orders that come in, the more booksellers are likely to stock and promote the book, and those orders count toward first-week sales as well, which also gets booksellers on board. So if you like my work and are of a mind to check out MJ-12: Inception, I would be pleased as punch if you considered pre-ordering from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Indie Bound or your friendly neighborhood bookseller.)
I would also encourage you to keep your eye on MJ-12.net in the coming days and weeks. I imagine you’ll find some pretty nifty stuff crop up there as well.
All that said, what you’re seeing here is temporary. Come August, it’s my fervent hope and dream to completely redesign this here site so that it has a proper landing page and some spiffier graphics and menus. I’ll be four books into my writing career by late summer, so I think it’s time to step up.
I think it really captures that Cold War thriller feel, while still giving a great hint as to the paranormal aspects of the story. The good folks at Night Shade Books really did a fantastic job, and really let me have a lot of input on the design as we went along. Not every author gets to do that, and I’m mighty grateful for it.
I also got to see some pages today that are going to look amazing. Not to give too much away, but in the fine tradition of MAJESTIC-12 conspiracy theorists, we have some “official government documents” (which were totally made up by me, except for one) scattered throughout the book. They look incredibly real, and they’re going to make for fun reading.
My thanks to Joel over at the B&N SF&F Blog for hosting the cover today, and everyone at NSB for all the hard work. This most excellent art will grace the cover of MJ-12: Inception when it launches in hardcover on Sept. 6. And you can pre-order at B&N as well as at Amazon if you so choose!
Now that The Daedalus Incidentis out in mass-market paperback — nearly three years after it first launched in trade paperback and became a Library Journal SF/F debut of the month — I’m going to give the wayback machine a spin and talk about how the book was rejected…several times over.
Rejection is an inevitable consequence of seeking publication. A would-be debut author going the traditional publishing route has to first find a literary agent who gets what the author is trying to do and determines that, yes, said author has the chops to pull it off. Then it’s a question of finding an editor at a publishing house who feels the same way.
So yes, The Daedalus Incident was rejected repeatedly. Now, I only queried six agents, five of whom rejected my query letters, before the incomparable Sara Megibow worked with me to whip it into shape. But once that happened, the book then got rejected by several publishing houses before I ended up getting two offers, one of which was from Night Shade Books, my eventual publisher.
I recently went through all the “passes” Sara forwarded to me (thanks to the magic of Google mail), and I was really struck at how few common threads there were. So I thought I’d share some of the feedback I got.
Please note that I’m not doing this out of spite, nor do I have any sort of revenge mentality going on here. I’ve been really fortunate in my career to date. I’m just hoping that folks going through the process of getting published might find this useful. Others may find it interesting to peek behind the curtain to see how things get done. These are all anonymous, and I’m never going to tell anybody who said what. So don’t ask.
Just to make things easier, I thought I’d throw a bunch of little things into a single post. Here we go!
Operation: DAEDALUS: Robert Junker is the winner of Operation: DAEDALUS! There were over a hundred individuals who left reviews, posted to Facebook, Tweeted and otherwise used social media to get the word out about the paperback release of The Daedalus Incident, and I am hugely grateful to everyone who did so. Robert went all out across multiple platforms, multiple times over, and the law of averages was on his side. Thus, he gets a signed Daedalus paperback and a signed ARC of MJ-12: Inceptionlater this spring. Congratulations, Robert!
More operations ahead: The Enceladus Crisisis coming out May 10, so stay tuned for details about Operation: ENCELADUS. I may try something different there, in terms of the qualifying stuff. Or not. Again, I’ll keep you posted. And yes, there will be an Operation: GAMBIT this summer, too, and even possibly an Operation: INCEPTION. Because you’re all awesome…or just want free books. Either or, I’m good with that.
Lunacon!: As a reminder, if you’re in the greater New York City area and want to geek out with me, I’ll be haunting Lunacon this Saturday. My schedule is here. Come say hello!
MJ-12.net update: Now that The Daedalus Incident paperback is out — with an excerpt of MJ-12: Inception therein — I’ve updated MJ-12.net with a post about Frank Lodge, one of the first people we meet in the excerpt. So head on over to MJ-12 net and dive in to the mythology I’m building around the MAJESTIC-12 series.
Every story has a beginning — or at least, that’s what Hollywood tells us when they launch the umpteenth superhero reboot. Those aren’t really beginnings, though. They’re rethinkings, sometimes without much thought. The actual beginning of a story is that little flash of inspiration, the mini-epiphany that hits you and you say, “Dude, I could totally write a story about that.”
I’ve gotten into the inspiration behind The Daedalus Incidentand it’s sequels more than a few times around the Internet — you can find the story here and here if you’re so inclined. It’s funny, though, because I had basically stuck with that one story idea for almost a decade before it finally got written — and then when it did, I found all these other ideas came to the fore, as if my idea-brain suddenly became unstuck.
Ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. The notion behind MJ-12: Inceptionis perhaps only a couple years old at the moment, and I can honestly say I don’t remember where it came from. I do remember emailing the incomparable Paul Weimer about it a few years ago, before The Enceladus Crisiscame out, asking if there had been other Cold War superpowered spy thrillers out there. (I ask Paul these things because his knowledge of SF/F is truly impressive and comprehensive.) He pointed me to a couple titles, but there was nothing that really mirrored what I wanted to do.
And so here we are; the first MAJESTIC-12 thriller comes out in September.
I have a meeting tomorrow with my agent and my Night Shade Books publicist, and we’re going to be talking about all the things we’ll be doing to launch MJ-12: Inceptionand, in doing so, introduce the MAJESTIC-12 series to the world. Why am I taking the time for this, rather than spending it on either A) the edits to said book; B) the outline of MJ-12 book two, or C) almost anything else?
For one, my involvement in marketing and publicity is a necessary thing. My publicist is great and hard working and all that stuff, but I’m just one title out of many she’ll be working on. And it will indeed fall to me to write the guest posts, respond to the interview questions, do the podcasts, etc. So of course I want a say in what those things are. If I didn’t do those things, they would not be done. Period.
Second, this isn’t my first rodeo. It’s my fourth, in fact, in terms of books. I have a ton of contacts, I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. We authors do occasionally talk business and swap ideas, and I know by now where folks have had success with free books or swag, giveaways, etc. As a corollary to this, my day job is in marketing communications, so there’s experience there too. I know my way around a marketing plan.
And finally, I generally take an active interest in the business side of things. I’m a former Wall Street reporter, after all, so business topics don’t scare me. I’ve learned how book sales and distribution work, why MJ-12: Inception is better off coming out in hardcover rather than paperback, how bookstores determine which books are face-out and which ones are on end-caps and tables (i.e. publishers pay for placement), and who makes what money when.
I am frequently amused by those authors, both would-be and established, who say they don’t pay attention to the business side of writing. It’s usually in the context of not wanting to sully themselves with something gauche (an exaggeration here, mind you), a lack of time to commit to it, or a discomfort with the notion of promoting yourself and your work though business channels.
I am here today to tell you, dear reader, that it is not gauche, that you need to make the time, and that your own best advocate is you. The business side does not equate to the Dark Side, with artistry and self-expression being the de facto Light Side. If you want to be an author, you need to accept the business side as a thing not only that you have to do, but something worth doing well.
The cover quote is from the Tor.com review way back when, and they put the Library Journal snippet on the back. It’s the same cover art — courtesy of Sparth — with a similar but pared back design. There’s also a nice callout to MAJESTIC-12on the back cover, because, spoiler alert… (more…)
That’s right — less than two weeks to go before The Daedalus Incidentreturns to bookstores in a shiny new package.
It’s always nice to have a book come out, even one that’s already been out. I see the mass-market paperback release of The Daedalus Incident on March 15 — and its sequels in May and July, respectively — as a great chance for folks to give the books a try at a lower cost. And it’s also nifty to let folks get a sneak peek atMJ-12: Inceptionbefore it comes out in hardcover in September.
And for the record, each of the Daedalus novels will have a different MJ-12: Inception excerpt — plenty of opportunities to check out the first of the MAJESTIC-12 series of paranormal Cold War spy-fi novels. Because, dammit, I’m all about value.
If you want to get your hands on Daedalus now, you could slide on over to Amazon, where the mass-market paperback is already available for $7.99. And the Kindle edition is now selling for $7.59. I don’t know when or whether other ebook sellers will drop the price, so tell your friends to move fast if they’re Kindle readers.
As for other print retailers, we still expect them to go with the March 15 release. And as always, I would encourage you to head over to your local bookstore and buy it there, or go online and get it from folks like Borderlands Books or Mysterious Galaxy. Independent bookstores rock.
Finally, I would point out that Operation: DAEDALUS remains in full effect, so if you want to win a copy of the mass-market paperback and an advance reader copy of MJ-12: Inception when the latter becomes available, use your social media powers to spread the word about The Daedalus Incident and the new release. Each time you post to Facebook, or Tweet or Pin or whatever, you’re automatically entered to win. Post early, post often. And you get multiple entries if you leave a review of the book on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads, etc. — wherever folks buy or review books.
Don’t worry about pinging me about your entries — I’m watching and searching and will compile the entries myself. The random number generator will do the rest.
As always, my thanks to all the readers who have made the Daedalus trilogy a success, and to those who are actively introducing the books to new readers. You all rock, and I hope MJ-12: Inception will be up your alley as well.
I am officially back from vacation, and not even a full slate of work in the office can shake my Bahamian mellowness. It was a lovely trip and I very much enjoyed spending down-time with the family in a tropical paradise. Plus, the food was crazy-good.
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