Month: June 2012

My LibertyCon Schedule

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

It’s about a month to LibertyCon (July 20-22).  Last time I checked the schedule, I didn’t have any panels scheduled.  I was a late-added guest so it wasn’t a big surprise.  When guests drop out, someone has to fill their spots.

I checked the schedule today and found the issue resolved.  I’m sure that things are still subject to change, but right now my schedule includes:

  • Messiest Ways to Kill a Zombie
  • Historical & Science Fiction Research
  • Self Promotion: Increasing Discoverability Through Marketing and Technology
  • Reading – Scott Baker

Yup, I have a reading.  On Sunday morning.  I’m certain it will be well attended.  :-/  I’ve never done a reading before other than reading flash fic to my classes when they beg.  It’ll be good practice.  So I guess I should start picking a piece to read.

Having no novels out or forthcoming, I guess I’ll be reading short fiction.  The obvious thing to do is read something from Baker’s Dozen.  Plenty of good candidates in there.  Not “Leech Run” or “Chasers” since both are Escape Pod stories and have/will have audio presentations that trump whatever I can muster, but I could read “Poison Inside the Walls” if I want something pro-published.  Right now I’m leaning more toward “Call Me Z”, my zombie culture piece; it’s fun but poignant.  Also in the running are “Glow Baby” (urban fantasy; think of Tribbles) and “Secondhand Rush” (dystopian, slight cyberpunk overtones).  Then there’s the option of reading something unpublished, particularly if I finish it between now and then, but I don’t really see the marketing value in that approach.  It may boil down to whichever story I feel like reading to an empty room.

As for the panels, that first one is made of awesome.  To top it off, John Ringo is on that panel with me.  That one may get a touch out of control…I hope.  The research panel is a bit out of my league since I’m not a research nut.  Plus I seem to be on the panel with sciencey-types.   But I research and I’ll have a pearl or three to share, I suppose.  As for the self-promotion panel, I’ve been doing some of that with Baker’s Dozen but not as much as perhaps I should.  I’ll be listening as much as talking there.

All in all, I’ve really come to enjoy Chattanooga cons and I don’t expect this one to be too different.  Still a month away, though.

I hate waiting.

 

Baker’s Dozen is now available!

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Not all things in the world flow as smoothly as one might hope, and the road to this e-publication had a couple potholes, but nothing too damaging.  And now Baker’s Dozen is available through Smashwords!  As in right now, this minute.  Why are you still reading?  Go get it!  It’s only $2.99, for goodness sake!

Oh, what about Amazon, you ask?  It’s still a go there, too.  I’m waiting for the file to get through some approval hoops before it’s available.  It that’s where you want to get it, you might try looking around noon (central time) on Friday.  (If it’s already after noon on Friday, there should be a newer post on my blog with an update.)

 

Vastly Improved Cover

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

A lot of people saw the old cover image here on my blog or on facebook.  It said what it needed to and had a touch of flair in the title font, but that’s pretty much all it had going for it.  Now, with the help of my amazingly talented photographer/wife, I have a new cover.  A simple enough image, but a lot more eye-catching.  And only two days until you can get your own on Kindle!

Friday, Friday, Friday!

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I’ve decided to release my first collection of short stories, Baker’s Dozen, will hit the Kindle store on Friday (June 15th) with an anticipated price of only $2.99.  It’s the best three bucks you’ll spend all year.

Twenty-three cents per story.  More than four stories per dollar.

I’ll link to it on the blog as soon as it’s available.

* * * * *

In other news, I am a new uncle.  Well, I was an uncle already, but now I’m uncl-ier.  My sister-in-law gave birth to a beautiful baby girl yesterday.  Just thought I’d share my pride.  Congratz to my brother and his family.

Baker’s Dozen – coming soon to Kindle

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

On the advice of…well, at least 13 people, I have compiled 13 of my stories into a self-published ebook and have formatted it for the Kindle.

Why 13?  Well, that makes a Baker’s Dozen.  It was a title suggested by my friend Greg and I couldn’t resist the pun.  Guilty as charged.

Why self-pub?  I can’t see shopping this thing around for forever just to wind up self-pubbing it anyway. I am a long way away from giving up on traditional publishing (novels and magazines), but I’m convinced this is the way to go for a single-author collection.

Why just Kindle?  Okay, it’s not just Kindle.  By the time I release the thing, it may well be ready for Smashwords and Nook, too.  But I’m new at this and there’s a learning curve.

What’s in it?  Oh, I’m so glad you asked!  There’s quite a variety, but stories mostly fit into one of four categories:

  • Space opera like my Writers of the Future winner “Poison Inside the Walls” and my fan favorite “Leech Run”
  • Urban fantasy including my middle grades story “Faerie Belches” and the full version of the Uncle John’s Flush Fiction story “Excuse Me”
  • Near future science fiction like my flash piece “How Quickly We Forget” and the unpublished dystopian tale “Secondhand Rush”
  • Zombie fun like the sports riff “ZFL” and my play on the Pied Piper, “Not Rats”
  • and five others!  (I sound like a Time Life Music infomercial.)

Includes 9 of my greatest hits as well as 4 never before published stories; well over 40,000 words of fiction.  Tiny little flash stories to the top end of the short story scale; dark and gritty to farcically hilarious; hard science to impractical frivolity.  There is something in this collection for absolutely every reader of short speculative fiction, all for the low price of…

Okay, I confess, I’m still waffling on the price point.  When I see individual short stories from writers at similar places in their career selling on Kindle for 99 cents, a fairly high number isn’t hard to envision.  But then I consider the role that low price point plays in getting a reader to try a new writer and something bargain basement makes more sense.  I’m considering splitting the difference (high basement?) and also maybe releasing some of the longer stories for $.99 as single stories plus a teaser for another story in the book.  That’s my best impression of a marketing strategy, folks.

Anyway, I don’t quite have the release date set.  I’ll post it as soon as I do.  I’ll also Tweet it, Facebook it, and do whatever else I can think of to get the word out.

I’m pretty excited about this, excited enough to pull four very solid and promising stories out of my submission cycle to make sure my readers get value for their money.  It sure isn’t everything I’ve ever written or even sold, but this is a sample of my best.  If you’ve ever wondered how good I actually am at this writing stuff, here comes your chance to find out.

Check back soon for the latest.

Emerging from the void

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Well, it’s been two months since I posted.  Personal stuff, we won’t go into it.  But summer is here — always good news for a teacher — so maybe I can be  writer again for a few months.  And we’ll start by writing a blog post.

For starters, I have a story out in a new themed anthology from the Sparkito imprint of Dark Quest books.  The anthology is called Galactic Creatures.  The theme?  Animal satellites.  Yeah, I’ll let that sink in a moment…animal satellites.  When I heard it, I wasn’t sure whether to work with satellites that looked like animals, behaved like animals, contained animals, animals that behaved like satellites…heck, there are probably a dozen ways to interpret the theme.  I suspect that will lend to the variety of the stories within.  No, I haven’t read it yet because I was out of town when my copy arrived.  But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

My story is called “The Scrapper and the Saint Bernard”.  My interpretation fell somewhere between a satellite that looks like and acts like a Saint Bernard dog.  It uses an almost epistolary style, a first for me.  I think it all worked pretty well (he said without prejudice).  Pick up a copy and see for yourself.

In other news, I just got back from my third trip to ConCarolinas in Charlotte.  No, I wasn’t a guest or a panelist; I’m not big enough yet.  (Soon, though.  Soon…  But I digress.)  Con time was split with some time bonding with high school buds, so it wasn’t the immersive con experience I have had other times, but it was definitely a fun trip, as were the last two years there.

The best part was probably spending time with the Magical Words crew again.  Good people, good writers.  They are a big part of why I go every year.  Faith Hunter, A. J. Hartley, David B. Coe/D. B. Jackson, Misty Massey, Carrie Ryan, Kalayna Price, Edmund Schubert, Stuart Jaffe…not all of them are involved with MW anymore, and some are part-timers there, but I have enjoyed their fellowship and wisdom.

I also enjoyed other aspects of CC: the Dr. Horrible sing-along (always a favorite), sci-fi Whose Line Is It Anyway, the costumes, browsing the wares in the dealer room, yadda yadda yadda.  It’s a mid-size con.  It’s fun.  I only hope I’ll get there next year now that my buddy in Charlotte (whose apartment was a few minutes from the con hotel) is moving to Florida.  Note to self: look up cons in Tampa.

That’s it until next time (which won’t be quite so long).