After a long wait, the results for Round 2 of the nycMidnight Flash Fiction Contest are in. The authors of the top three (3) stories in each group move on to the third and final round. My story placed…fourth. First Honorable Mention. Alas.
Sometime in the next week or two, I’ll put my thoughts together regarding the whole NYCM experience. I want to see the critique and let my mind settle before I attempt that. Check back if that’s something that interests you.
Avast, matey!
In other news that I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about, I sold a story to an anthology! Very soon, Raconteur Press will be releasing their pirate anthology, Planks & Plunder. They’ve asked that we wait for all versions (ebook and print) are available before pushing out links, but I’ll have them soon.
My story is called “The True Stone and the Faux Blade”. It’s a classic Caribbean-pirate tale (not space pirates, though I have an old one of those you could read/listen to on Escape Pod. Click here to check out “Leech Run”) with plenty of fantasy elements. Driven by vengeance, a girl joins a pirate crew captained by a collector of magical artifacts. But is she part of the crew of part of the collection?
This is the first story sale I’ve made in a long time. A looong time. Long enough that I can’t bring myself to type it. If you look in my bibliography, I guess you can do the math yourself. Some of that I can chalk up to decreased output, but that doesn’t make the hiatus any less frustrating. So it was a huge relief when I saw the congratulatory email. I’m using that boost to fuel a surge in my submissions so I can maybe get another one picked up somewhere.
I’ve seen the cover art. It’s nice. But no…I’m going to hold off until I can link you to it. That should be sometime in the next week. Watch for it soon.
With Godfather Death and the Amazing Diagnostic Machine coming out June 30th, I’ve decided to try to get the word out. That’s harder than it sounds. My social network footprint is tiny. (You finding your way here is a blessing. Glad to have you!) My skill for talking myself up is…questionable at best. So How do I let the world know the greatest steampunk fairytale retelling ever is about to drop from yours truly? (See…that felt weird to say.)
The answer: TikTok
Allegedly.
Not just TikTok, but that has been my primary medium. I’ve poked at a YouTube short and will likely do at least one more before release date. But mostly I’ve been following the advice of Katie Wismer (a.k.a. Katesbookdate) as presented in this video. I’ll give the rundown of my interpretation, but let me start by explaining why I took Katie’s advice over others. (I’ve never spoken to Katie directly, so if she is alerted to my existence via Google Alerts or something: Hi Katie!)
Why This Advice
First off, I have scoured the internet (mostly YouTube) for advice on advertising a new book. And yes, there are a lot of voices out there, many saying similar things: establish a presence on social media, interact with the communities that overlap with potential readers, let people know you have a book coming out, and let people know a bit more about you. That’s four items that sound like A LOT of work. Where do I start? This is going to take how long? You mean I have to talk about myself?
Katie’s advice was titled “The one book marketing strategy you NEED to be doing”. Yeah, a very clickable title for me. She goes on to lay out a strategy that felt manageable. I can do that! She also wasn’t pushing a course to take or anything like that, just an advertising tool that has been successful for her. I’m not putting all my eggs into this basket, but it’s the basket I’m filling the fullest.
What am I doing?
If you didn’t watch Katie’s video already (heck, I linked it twice), I’ll give you my version of her advice. I’m sure I’ve misinterpreted parts and overlooked important nuances, but you can get the full breakdown from her.
Make carousels (slide shows) on TikTok. These are images with text.
The last slide is a direct quote (passage) from the book
She seemed to suggest you hint at the excitement without giving too much away
Use a trending sound that fits the theme of the book/passage/hook
Make sure your profile page does a good job of promoting you and the book. (This is my weak spot; I’ll get to why.)
Oh, and make sure you use good hashtags!
This felt like a process I could handle. No fancy equipment to buy or awkward performances required, just post some images with text. So I made some.
Okay, I didn’t follow the recipe perfectly. My carousels have a one-slide hook, the next slide starts a quoited passage, the last slide has the book’s cover.
The first carousel I made had the whole passage on one slide. Depending on the size of your phone and the mightiness of your eyes, that could have been tough to absorb. My next few had the quote spread out over 2-4 slides, their text posted either over faded images or carefully curated around the images.
About half the hooks are the same or very similar with very similar images: a cloaked figure with a metal skull for a head with something along the lines of “When a man who was more metal than flesh entered her father’s shop, her life changed forever.” Others get more thematic to the excerpt/images. One scene takes place at a wedding, so the hook is “What better place for an ambush than a wedding?” You get the idea…
Music choices have been a battle between my preferences and TikTok’s preferences (mostly represented by my 18-year-old offspring). My first choice was George Michael’s “Father Figure” which has been hot on TikTok, though that song seems to accompany a fairly specific trend that has nothing to do with books. (My kid also thinks it might suggest the book is spicier than it is.) I made a couple with songs that had been used in a few thousand posts each. I made sure to swing big with a couple of the songs (uses in the millions and the tag “popular”). I have a mind to make a video or two with sounds that aren’t songs, but I haven’t made that leap yet. Are they helpful? It may still be too early to tell.
Alas, the profile page is the weakest link. Speaking of links…TikTok won’t let you have links to external sites (a.k.a. a link tree) until you have one thousand followers. So I’m only 998 followers away from that goal! Yeah, I’ve had a TikTok account, but I was only consuming until this past week. So right now, potential readers will have to find Godfather Death and the Amazing Diagnostic Machine by searching Amazon or even the whole internet for it. Suddenly, that wordy title is starting to seem like a better idea. (I also think it sounds steampunk-y.) This is why I feel like it was important to end with my cover image.
I don’t know if anyone has chased the book down yet. It doesn’t launch for another 5 days. It’s available for presale on Kindle, but that’s it. Either it’s impossible find out how many preorders there are or I don’t know how to figure it out. I guess the third option is that there have been none, but that would be knowing how many (zero is a perfectly good number, just not preferable in the wallet).
What am I definitely doing wrong?
I may be making several mistakes that I don’t realize, but there’s one I’ve definitely fumbled. Katie say to get a few “burner accounts” to post from as well as your main account. I haven’t done this, mostly because I don’t quite understand what the nature of the account should be. If the profile page is important, then what’s on the profile page of my burner? Some fictional reader that is allegedly posting fan-art for the book? Are they all supposed to be new vids or should these burner accounts be reposting the originals? I couldn’t wrap my head around that, so I haven’t made that leap. I’m 48; this is already a little overwhelming for me.
Am I reaching people?
Not as many as I’d hoped, but maybe more than I legitimately expected.
My first carousel (the one with the whole excerpt on one slide) has the most views and the most likes (261 and 7, respectively). Most of those were in the first couple hours. None of the others have topped 200 views.
The least-viewed is the wedding one, which has a female cover of “In the Air Tonight” that has been used over 100k times. I had expected the most interest in that one. My intention is to make some adjustments to that one and try posting it again (may change the song, but I like the fit). My research has suggested that there are a lot of variables at play for how many people see any given post, so reposting duds is a fair strategy.
These numbers don’t sound like a lot. They are well below the ones Katie cited in her video. I think established accounts have better reach. That’s why I’m not going to throw in the towel just yet. I’m hoping the needle will move by the end of July.
What else have I tried?
I mentioned that I dipped a toe into YouTube. What I really did was post my one outreach video as a Short.
Yes, I did make a video for TikTok that wasn’t a slideshow and wasn’t an ad for the book. This was a “What is Steampunk?” video. Please hold for my great shame: I made the video with PowerPoint.
Hey, I’m a teacher and I am very good with PowerPoint. Use what you know. I promise, my kid has thoroughly skewered me for it.
Anyway, this video analyzes steampunk as both an aesthetic and a literary genre. It’s about a minute. (I had to speed my voice up a little; noticeable but not terrible.) I do need to improve my audio recording skills; there’s a slight echo. The video ends with the book’s title and release date. There is a link to the Kindle preorder in the video description.
So was this little video popular? Not on TikTok. It’s neck-and-neck with my wedding carousel. On YouTube however? Just over 2000 views, 18 likes. (That’s almost 1% like-age…not sure if that’s good…doesn’t sound awesome.)
What’s next?
For now, I’m going to keep working the system. I’ll either pull some more passages from the book or repackage the ones I’ve used with altered hooks, songs, and/or images. Every time one gets 100 views, that’s more eyes (some new, some repeating) that see the book. The repeat views are possibly the most important since I heard somewhere recently (might have been Katie?) that it takes 8 exposures to a stimulus before someone takes action.
I’m also going to experiment with turning some of the carousels into videos (still the slides but they cycle for you). TikTok is a largely passive platform, so maybe it will hit differently. Remember the one video I did post didn’t get many views, but it also didn’t have a viral sound attached. This way I can also hit YouTube with them.
I’ll put some of this on Facebook too. I’m not an Instagrammer, so I’ll avoid that.
Is it worth it?
The labor end of things has been fairly mild (picture hunts were consuming but also fun). Honestly, I’m hoping that being in a niche subgenre like steampunk will help this book along. And If someone is looking through steampunk books and sees a cover they recognize, that could be the difference between them buying my book or someone else’s. Maybe something like this will help get enough of a bump to make a dent on the Amazon top sellers list for steampunk. Or maybe this whole exercise will just help me grow my TikTok footprint enough that the next publication’s ads (and there will be more) will have a little more reach.
Oh, don’t take my word for all this. Make sure you check out Katie Wismer’s video. And please, if anyone here has experience with this kind of advertising that could help me or others, please share it in the comments!
Remember the Vella experiment? The story I had serialized there is coming to Amazon at the end of June as a print book and e-book!
Godfather Death and the Amazing Diagnostic Machine is a steampunk novella think a half-length novella. Let’s unpack that sentence from the end. A novella is longer than a short story but shorter than the average novel. In this case, that’s about 50 pages; a nice, short read but long enough to get the full story in. Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction and/or fantasy developing on Civil War era technologies; you see a lot of steam engines, gears, airships, etc. GDatADM definitely gets into the steam aesthetic but doesn’t forget the punk aspects of bucking societal norms.
Let’s go ahead and address the title. Yes, it’s long. It’s a mash of the Grimm fairy tale its based on (“Godfather Death”) and the steampunky invention central to the plot (the diagnostic machine). Splicing them together gives the story a quirky, antique feel appropriate to the genre. At least that’s the intention.
So what’s it about?
Katrine lives with her eleven siblings in her father’s prosthetic limb shop. When a client arrives who is more metal than flesh, Katrine and her siblings ascribe him the moniker Death. When he offers Katrine training and opportunity as a physician, he insists she call him Godfather. However, Katrine uses these gifts — including the diagnostic machine — in ways her godfather did not intend, shifting her perception of him from benefactor to nemesis. Can Katrine and her loved ones escape Godfather Death’s intentions for them? Find out in this steampunk retelling of the Grimm fairytale “Godfather Death” and never look at blue flames the same way again.
How do I get it?
I’m so glad you asked! You can preorder it on Kindle right now! It will also be on Kindle Unlimited for you voracious readers that subscribe to that. That will be available June 30th, as will the print version. (If it’s not June 2025 when you read this, then it’s available right now!) As with my short story collection, Baker’s Dozen, I’ll keep a link to the Amazon page in the sidebar of this site. Or you could just click a link now…
Once you’ve read it, pretty please, leave a review! It’s the nicest thing you can do for me. (Second nicest is buy Baker’s Dozen as a follow-up.) Reviews increase the visibility of the book which increases my visibility as a writer. Thanks in advance!
There are a lot of factors that led me to being a writer of speculative fiction. The foremost is probably being a reader of speculative fiction. I look at my daugter and wonder what I can do to foster that same love of genre in her that I have in me. So I’m tracing my footsteps through life to figure out how to get my little girl to be a geek like me.
I’ve loved reading as long as I can remember. The first SF author I probably read was Dr. Seuss: Wocket in my Pocket and The Grich and the conservationally mined Lorax. I read some of that to my girl now. Of course all the reading I can do with her will help turn her into a reader. Seeing Daddy read can’t hurt either.
When I started reading chapter books, my favorite was Encyclopedia Brown, really more collected short stories than chapters. The thinking was great for me, I suspect. I always loved the ones where he helped his dad with real crimes. I also read my share of Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume. These days, Harry Potter would just about fit that level, maybe a step above.
The local library had a summer reading program that we took part in annually, attempts to get our paperdoll hot air balloon higher than other people’s. I always took pride in reading books at or above my level while other kids would read the kiddy stuff and take credit for it…but I digress. It kept me reading through summers and my mother placed priority on that. I hope to do something similar when my girl gets old enough (a year or two).
Next came the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Remember those? Theyprobably did a lot to guide me into writerdom. Start at page one, then if you go to the spooky hotel you turn to page 47, if you stay with your weird Aunt Velma and her snoring cats you turn to page 111. They were good to read over and over without being the same and really turned out to be more short story than they were novel, based on the pages you read. I had a ton of them and checked out a ton more from the library. Space opera, high fantasy, straight mystery, you name the genre, I read a CYOA from it. It helped me find my taste. I bet I could still find a bunch on ebay…
I think the book that made me a fantasy fan was either The Riddle and the Rune by Grace Chetwin or Castle Roogna, the third Xanth novel by Piers Anthony. The latter was a gift from my grandmother who heard that was what kids my age were reading. I still own the first 12 Xanth novels and several scattered others. I visit Piers Anthony’s website often though I haven’t read any of his books in a few years. He was my favorite author for many years, funny and a little out there. There is no doubt he inspired me. I wrote to him when my first novel was “accepted” by Publish America. Thankfully he warned me away from them as a scam vanity publisher…but I’ve gotten off topic.
As for Chetwin’s book, I’m not sure where I got it. It was a great read for a kid, very Harry Potter but more in the linear quest format. There were three other books in the series (one before, two after) which weren’t quite as good, but good enough. She also responded to a query I sent her about publishing, since she now publishes her fantasy novels and a few other books by herself. But again…focus, Oso.
As for science fiction, I recall the Tripod Trilogy being a milestone in my reading. I may go back and reread those since I’m trying to write a YA sci-fi novel… Still, I think I ran with fantasy for a long time before discovering Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, of course. I may have been in college by then. In fact, I think I was out of college! Late bloomer.
There were other things. I subscribed to Analog for several years, but many of those stories were over my head in high school. Television and movies kept my sci-fi spark alive while I wasn’t reading it. I read Fahrenheit 451 in for a high school book report, and Piers Anthony’s novelization of Total Recall for another. I read Narnia books out of order, which made them a little complex to swallow but I still read them. Of course Lord of the Rings.
But it was when I read the Harry Potter books that I started to think “I can do this.” I was in college at the time and my mom gave the first three books to me for Christmas. My girlfriend (now wife) worked in a bookstore (okay, a store that sold a few books) and told me they were kids’ books. I eventually poked my nose in the first one and was sucked into the world. By the time Harry was at Hogwarts, I was hooked. By the time he was in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, I was a writer.
I keep a lot of these books around so my daughter can experience them herself. Will there be others that get her there instead? Probably. Thankfully the Twilight craze should be gone by the time she’s old enough to get into it. Maybe I’ll be publishing the next craze. (Wishful thinking.) I just wanted to share books from my journey in case other people need some guidance on their own (or their children’s) journey to speculative fiction geekdom. You have to start young.
Oh wait! I can’t conclude a post about speculative literature for kids/young adults without mentioning the magazine Beyond Centauri, specifically because their new issue has my story “Brother Goo” inside. That’s right folks, Beyond Centauri issue 27. Go buy a dozen copies. Or one’s fine, too.
This post is Jordan Lapp’s fault, him and Locus agazine. The idea has been swimming through my head for years. Locus ran an “article” about the fictitious Clarion reality show, Jordan mentioned it on his blog, now I’m posting my old article with a little poll. Enjoy.
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I am a Clarion Dreamer.Are you?
How many are out there like me?Hundreds?Thousands?Tens of thousands?How many people out there want to write?How many out there believe themselves to be writers?How many are waiting for that one break that will make him (or her) the next great genre writer?For me, that elusive break takes the form of a writer’s workshop – Clarion.
Or Odyssey.Or Clarion West or South.Pick your poison, they’re all the same…the same in the fact that I did not attend.Same in the fact that I’m certain that if I attended, my career would take off the very next day.
I understand that I’m wrong.I realize that these workshops can provide their attendees with tools and techniques that guide the creative process.I fully appreciate that the best an attendee can expect is to replace years worth of rejection slips with a few weeks of tough criticism and sleepless nights.None of this blocks me from my delusion, this mirage of miraculous success that is the Milford-model writing workshop.
Again I pose the question: how many out there are like me?How many writers know they’re better than the bums that go to these workshops?How many are convinced they can spot the flaws in another author’s story despite a depressing inability to correct their own?How many wish they could be at least a fly on the wall at such a workshop?
Writing is an art form, no different from singing or dancing or backstabbing in a jungle or racing around the world.Have I lost you?I’m talking about television.Reality television.Ironically I’m talking about the shows that require no writers (or only concept writers) because a million-dollar prize is a lot cheaper than paying a dozen actors and writers and shooting take after take.People tune in to listen to the recording artists of tomorrow.Or to see if Reuben wins immunity.Or if that obnoxious team can make it to China before the sweet old couple.Or if the guy from Saved by the Bell can dance.
Would people tune in for a chance to see what a Milford-style workshop is really like?Would they log on to read excerpts from that funny guy’s story?Or that hippie chick’s story?Or that arrogant fat guy’s story?Would they vote for the story they liked best?
I confess that what I propose violates one of the cardinal rules of the Milford-model: no spectators.All due respect to the late Damon Knight (Milford’s founder), but maybe the time for privacy has gone.A writer who wants to sell needs name-recognition, promotion.What better way than to throw that writer on the television for seven to fifteen weeks?
Like any show it would need a title.“Who Wants To Be The Next Asimov?”or more succinctly “Sci-Fi Writer”.The latter would work especially well if the show found its most obvious home on the Sci-Fi Channel.
The conference model need not be disturbed.One professional writer would guest-lecture each week, taking part in the critique process as well as providing insight into the profession in general.One would obviously hope to attract big names to this highly public event – names that would bring an audience to the show – but any author with a career substantial enough to warrant a two-minute bio could find a niche.(After all, how many American Idol fans really remembered Peter Noone?)
Could a show this narrowly focused really bring in an audience?Could it really be entertaining enough to tune in more than once or twice?Why not?Are speculative writers any more rare than clothing designers?Chefs?Singers and dancers?Washed up celebrities?If they all get their own reality shows, we deserve one too.In fact I contend that we, the speculative writers, outnumber most of these pigeon-holed reality contestants.How many science fiction readers are there?How many fantasy readers?Horror?How many of them write (or try to write or want to write)?That’s right, most of them.Try it: meet a stranger in the sci-fi section of a bookstore and ask her if she has ever tried to write this kind of thing.Don’t be creepy about it, just strike up a polite conversation.You may want to map out the exits first just in case she insists on telling you all about Druzida, the elf-vampire and her fifteen-thousand-page battle against the evil dragon, Thhrp.Or about the Glxx-ian invasion of Kalamazoo.Bottom line, the people watching reruns of Buffy, Star Trek, Firefly, Xena, or The Twilight Zone are more than likely writers,.
But how entertaining is a Milford workshop?I guess it depends on who goes.I understand that watergun fights and superballs were staples of the Clarion experience for years.So were sleepless nights, stories eviscerated by peers and pros, rivalries, coups against instructors, and priceless tidbits of knowledge.Sounds like good television to me.
So why am I writing this article instead of pitching this show to the big-wigs and becoming the next Mark Burnett?Well, that’s not what I do.I dream big ideas share them with people who might think they’re entertaining.I write, not pitch or produce.Besides, before I could pitch a show I’d have to support the claims I’ve made: 1) people would watch this show, 2) sci-fi fans are almost all writers, and 3) a bunch of geeky writers can be entertaining.That’s where you come in.Yes, you.If you’re reading this then you are likely part of my target audience, so I want to know what you think.Would you watch this show (at least a few times) if someone made it?Would your friends?Would my friends?If you think I’ve missed the mark, I want to know.Got an idea that might make this work better?I’m all ears.
Oh, and if you work for a network that wants to start filming this tomorrow, we really need to chat.
You know you’ve read some. It may have been a big shot who sells millions or some guy that got into a magazine because the editor was experimenting with herbology, but bad sf/f/h is out there making big bucks. I haven’t decided what I think about that.
On the one hand, I am very unhappy that some jerk out there cashed a check with mutiple zeros when I know I have stories — novels even — that are much better. Why him (or her or it) and not me? The reasons are there: 1) luck, 2) perseverence, 3) previous success, 4) connections, 5) maybe I just don’t get it.
Then there’s the flip side. If this putz can gsell, I can, too. It’s a reminder that success is 98% perspiration (and that stinks). So reading some schlock can give me a boost of hope even as it knocks down my self esteem.
What made me think of this? Christopher Paolini. Nice enough guy as far as I can tell, one of my students is obsessed with him, but he needs a good editor with sharp scissors. At least he needed it in Eldest, his second novel. I enjoyed Eragon enough to buy Eldest. I even enjoyed the story enough to buy Brisingr (gesundheit). I did not enjoy it enough to get past page 2 of…that third book I can’t pronounce.
I think Paolini summarized my concern himself in Eldest when — on about page 300 — a character observes how lucky they are to have traveled from wherever to wherever and nothing happened.
**By the way, [SPOILER ALERT!!!]**
I further had issues with the protagonist’s efforts to become a worthy dragon rider by learning combat from an elf despite a serious injury that limits him physically and causes constant pain. This training occurs intermittently while subtle relationships in the story are hinted at but never truly developed. Of course the training helps him to improve, but he can just barely go through the motions.
Then it happens, some fancy dragon festival where ghostly dragons emanate and heal the protagonist of his wounds. Yes, all of them. Because he struggled so hard? No. Because he was innately worthy. Wasn’t he innately worthy before a bunch of pages and my personal hours were wasted on combat training? I suspect he was. The character succeeds through the entire book despite never having any breakthroughs of his own.
Not what I want in a story. I’ve been rejected for less. But I didn’t self-publish a book that was successful enough to be picked up by a major publisher. Will I one day? Maybe. Then some other wannabe can complain about my schlock on his blog.
Can it be true? Realms of Fantasy, recently announced as deceased, has apparently been purchased by another company, Tir Na Nog Press, this according to SFScope.com and this announcement. According to the article, editors should be kept in place and rates for stories should also remain consistent.
Rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated.
Whenever I see news this good miraculously appear online, I fear it is a hoax. This seems legit. The deal apparently went down today and the news is already everywhere. This means we will NOT be losing one of the classic professional speculative magazines. Hoorah.
Now a confession. I have never read a copy of Realms of Fantasy. I had a subscription to F&SF and before that, Analog, but I don’t think I have so much as been in the same room with an issue of Realms. A single consumer can only do so much. I will look for this new May issue (expected next issue, missing only one) in bookstores near me so I can show my support. I have also never submitted there as their guidelines always made it clear that they weren’t looking for new writers.
So is the resurrection of Realms a coup for the genre? Absolutely. Will it affect me personally? Sure. There will be more markets buying stories, increasing my chances (infinitessimally) of professional publication. I don’t have to print in Realms to reap this benefit. Every time Realms buys a great story, it’s one I don’t have to compete against in another mag. A selfish view? Absolutely. Nevertheless, I’m glad it’s back.
**By the way, [SPOILER ALERT!!!]**
Scott W. Baker .net 