Rolf Nelson has a new book out

Rolf Nelson, of The Stars Came Back fame, has a new book out:

His blog post about it is here.

In an email he told me:

I just hit “publish” on another book, a YA book aimed primarily at boys / young men ages 10-18. Nominally S/F adventure  fiction. Same universe as my original story.

“Komenagen” is the name for a fictional future planet/nation’s “coming of age” trial/challenge.

Guns and shooting don’t really play a roll, but it definitely favors small government and personal responsibility.

Heretics of St. Possenti

Looks like my newest book, Heretics of St. Possenti, is now live on Amazon. Not the cover I expected, but totally in genre. Let me know what you think. As always, honest and positive reviews are appreciated.

Oh, and I finished the latest short story about Jispin the barbarian, starting here. You can read the whole thing straight through from there.

UPDATE: In the top 20 of the genre. # 2 (and #889 overall Amazon sales rank) as of this writing. Interesting thing, though: look at the covers, and tell me which of these things is not like the other? I suspect that the normal target audience of that genre isn’t middle-aged men. 🙂

Note #2 – the official release date is… November 11th. Veterans day. Very appropriate.

Note #3 – Honest reviews are appreciated.

Story post wrap-up

I know some people don’t like serialized stories; they want to whip through the whole thing at once. I understand. I’m just dropping a quick note for those of that sort who like short stories that the one I linked to is all up so you can read the whole thing at once. As a quick reminder, it’s a sword-type, Conan-esque stand-alone tale, about 15k words. Young guy, getting his start in life on a harsh world, and having an experience that leads him to make a career choice. Starts here, ends here. Comments, corrections, feedback welcome.

New short story / series

Gotta keep writing. There is a long story I won’t bore you with as to the delays in getting sequel/prequel published properly, so in the meantime i thought I’d write a short story. Not in the same universe as “The Stars Came Back,” more Conan-esque. Young barbarian getting a start in life, etc. Not precisely YA, a bit gory, but not too gratuitous. He’s not grown up enough yet to have mighty thews and a crushing sword-stroke (yet).

Working title might be “Career Choice”, Part I. I’ll be posting there daily until it’s done, something around a thousand words per day. Start here.

Home page to see the whole series of posts start here.

Casting

One of the things about making a movie is that you need actors. Once you have the script/story, you have to find people who have the appearance and skills to bring the character to life on the screen. You also need someone that is mentally stable enough to be reliable, which rules out a lot of the normal leftie applicants. Eventually we will need cast and extras, and expect to do most of the filming in the VA area. Anyone here from that area (or do you know anyone from that area) who fits any of these descriptions, or wants to sign up for being an extra when we finally get to filming? Continue reading

Options

Just had the movie rights to my book optioned. So now we start working to get the casting and promotions done so a good funding page (likely on GoFundMe) can be put together and production monies raised. If we hit the minimum goal, then he buys the movie rights and moves forward with starting to produce it. Because he’s a relatively small operation, and the book is long, the basic goal is to make just a portion of it, and make it well enough that it can act as a “prof of concept’ to raise enough money for more of it. That’s just a small part of the big picture (no pun intended), of course. When the promo trailer (a simple but scene to shoot) is ready I’ll let people know.

1+1 sale (expired)

A shameless plug of self-promotion post. Today only. (14 December)

Castalia House is running a 1+1 Christmas sale: buy one physical book (hardbound or paperback) and get one free Castalia House e-book (details at the link). In fact if you want to buy more than one physical book, you can get an equal number of e-books without limit (well, other than the number of titles they have out, of course). Since Back From The Dead (the first half of The Stars Came Back) is now out in print it’s an eligible item. So if you are a reader, or know readers and are looking for a gift, here’s an opportunity.

A religio-political tangent

As much as there ever was a primary thread.

I’m working on another book. Well, three or four of them, nominally in parallel. Because one at a time would be to simple 8-0… Anyway, I’m not much of a biblical scholar, but there are a series of related topics that are not “easy look-up” sorts of subjects on Catholic church teachings, monastic order traditions, and canon that I need to know so I don’t make too many , er, “fundamental” errors on the faith and teachings. If you know something about the Bible, and perhaps are a regular church-goer who would like to see that a SF books gets the basic correct and would like to weigh in a few thoughts, head on over to Not A Biblical Scholar and add your two cents worth.

Free item

The first half of the prose rewrite of “The Stars Came Back” is called ” The Stars Came Back: Back from the Dead “. It is now on Kindle unlimited.  So, for those of you that thought you might like to read the edited PROSE version, you can get it at no cost. Whoo-Hoo! Electronic book only so far. Eventually it’ll hit paper for those who, like me, prefer hardcopy. But those won’t be free 🙁

Sometimes, free is good.

YA beta-readers needed

I’m looking for a few guys in the 12-18 age range to be beta-readers for my new book. It’s basically done, but I can always use more input. If you are (or know) a YA male who is looking for a story about a young man doing adventurous things without a lot of angsty naval-gazing or silly romance garbage, but with more independent / libertarian themes than most current offerings, head on over to The Stars Came Back for details.

 

Prometheus

Cool. Very cool, and very unexpected.

Just got word from Vox Day that The Stars Came Back has been nominated for a Prometheus Award for this year. It’s the award given by the Libertarian Futurist Society.

Past winners include Sarah Hoyt, Harry Turtledove, L. Neil Smith, Vernor Vinge, Terry Pratchett, Ken MacLeod, Poul Anderson, James P. Hogan, J. Neil Schulman, and many more big names. Even if I come in last place, just being nominated to potentially stand amid such a group of names is quite an honor.

A “real” author

I just signed a contract with Castalia House, a recently started Finland-based publisher, to be the official publisher of The Stars Came Back. By some combination of luck, skill, happenstance in a changing marketplace, and doing enough things right to compensate for what I didn’t, I managed to move more than 2700 copies of the book world-wide between 13Jan2014 and 18Mar2014. Not bad for a total noob, and quite above expectations, if not as many as one may absurdly hope. So why would I cut my profits by sticking a middle-man in the mix? Because the book is already selling and done, the change to my bottom line for this book is very minimal, we have a good deal to come out with a conventional prose format version of the story, one where I won’t have to worry about upfront costs for editing and new cover art. (He says my old cover fairly screamed “self published,” and was quite surprised that it was selling as well as it was).

He’ll also handle translation into at least two other languages, possible audible books, and taking it to ink-on-paper (something I’d been only slowly making progress on), meaning I’ll get a fair percentage of markets I’d get zero from otherwise. It also opens the door wide for sequels and offshoots and other projects I’ve been mentally kicking around but didn’t have the resources to go after.

The funny thing is, I didn’t really intend to submit the story in an attempt to get a publisher. I had tried to post a question in a previous thread in which Vox compared indie publishing and working with a publisher, but the blog kept eating my post, so I just emailed the question to him. Basically I was asking “how does all this affect someone like me, a self-published author that is doing OK, but is a total no-name noob at it all?” He asked me to send in a copy for him to take a look at. I did, more thinking I might get some professional feedback, or maybe a plug on a blog read by people that might like the story. Shortly thereafter, it seemed like we were both a little surprised how things worked out. But as he said, “who am I to argue with the market?”

It’s been an interesting ride. Guess I can add “Raconteur” to my biz card.

Countdown deal

For that that are interested, and have not already bought a copy, there is a “countdown deal” going on at Amazon for The Stars Came Back, running through the Ides of March (because it’s a killer deal). Right now it’s $0.99, then up to $1.99, then back to regular price. (Quick edit just in case it’s not clear: it’s an e-book only at the present time, though I’m working on a paper version… and other things)

Best comment on a one-star review, where the person called it “garbage,” and said “it’s in a screenplay format. Who even does that?” someone replied with “Stephen King.”

700 Club

Wow. Just hit the second milestone number for The Stars Came Back, where I’m sure I’ve just recovered my upfront costs of editing, cover art, etc. Still hanging in the charts, bobbling around unsteadily but consistently between the low 20s and the high 30s on the Space Opera and Military Sci Fi charts at Amazon. The charts are recalculated ever hour or so, based on some sort of recent sales formula. So if I never sell another copy, at least I haven’t lost money. [UPDATE: check the whole chart if it’s not there. It wobbled into the #19 spot just now.]

It went live on the 13th of January. It’s now the 2nd of February. Three weeks to hit 700 net copies sold (and a couple dozen borrowed). Guess I must have done something right. *sigh* Time to work on reformatting for getting it in paperback, I suppose.

Another seven million copies and I can retire.

Always learning new things

Doing things in Real Life ™ is educational. Frustrating, tiring, confusing, and risky, but educational. Case in point: after writing a book comes the part you have much less control over, and a learning curve that you can’t postpone. (Or should have researched better, earlier). Continue reading