My First Novel - How it came about

Someone posted a link to this Living Color song yesterday:
Type - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HbF3EAt3ck

Actually, two people did. It was in response to someone's post, I think it was on FaceBook, but it might have been on one of the writer's blogs that I follow. I tried to find where it was this morning, but couldn't.

I had to go watch it of course, I haven't seen that video in a very long time, and except for on my own stereo, that song hasn't been played on a radio in an even longer time. For some reason the song 'Cult of Personality', which is not as good, or as deep IMHO, eclipsed 'Type' which was the early hit from the album.

Now this song means a lot to me, for numerous reasons, you see, it was the inspiration for my first novel: Children of Steel. In fact, after hearing the song only a couple of times, I sat down and wrote Children of Steel​, or rather started it. The first draft took me close to a year, and it was re-written several times over the years, and a few things added. If you listen to the song, really listen, you might understand some of the underlying themes and ideas of the book (and that 'universe'), which even the folks on 'my' page at TV Tropes, completely missed. The song really does have a lot to do with the novel, even the music video (which I only saw once back then) had some impact on the story.

That also gives you an idea of how old that novel really is (First draft - 1990). I couldn't sell it, and I tried, so I just gave up on selling on it, and sat on it, for twenty-one years, until I published it as an ebook in 2011 on Amazon. I was both happy and surprised that it sold, as well as by the reviews I got being mostly positive.  So while it may have taken me twenty years, that song is a big part of what launched my writing career. I wrote quite a few short stories and a few other novels before I got published in 2011. I discovered 'furry fandom' in the 90s, something I had no idea even existed, and started writing for one of the bigger fanzines in it, under both my real name, and a pen name.

I would like to take a moment to give my thanks to Gerald Perkins, one of the editors at Yarf! who helped me when I was getting started. I have received almost zero help in my writing career, my sister is probably the only person who has read everything I've written, prior to it being published, and my former gf Lisanne also gave me some pointers on one of the short stories I wrote (odds are if you've read my anthro stories, you've read all of her novels, she's way more famous than me). But Gerald is really the only person that ever made a serious contribution to my actual writing abilities, he taught me a lot, and did it quickly and painlessly. I wish he was still around, because I would love to thank him once again for his help. He helped me a lot with the actual mechanics of writing a story, things like 'sayisms' which are a lot more important than you might realize, as well as the actual mechanics of short stories.

The next biggest influence was probably Orson Scott Card, for his book 'How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy' (I loaned my copy out to someone who never returned it, no idea where it is now). Most of it was worth reading, but the section on the 'MICE' bit is what really helped me straighten out what my problem with writing novels was. I read that book in 1990, and I think I had my 'aha' moment around the same time the song Type captured my imagination, and off I went writing a huge five hundred plus page novel with no prior experience.

So, everything does come from somewhere, and now you know where Children of Steel came from.
Danger Money came from the album by the same name by the band U.K. If you liked that book, listen to that album sometime and you'll get some insights as to what's going on in the background as well.

Book review, for 'Off Leash'

So, I was talking with another author the other day about some sales stuff on a forum, and they put up the link to their book:

Off Leash (Freelance Familiars Book 1)

 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011J9L5JA

And I went and read the intro, and liked it, so I bought it. I then spent the next two days reading it in my spare time, and didn't put it down until just about an hour ago. I really liked the story, and not just because the protagonist finds himself turned in to cougar. The writing is very well done, and I found the story compelling. We have someone here who has really been having a very bad time of it for months now, and suddenly everything gets worse. On top of that familiars (of which he is now one) are pretty much treated like slaves, captured and then bought and sold. Something which he really wants no part of at all.

Add to this the circumstances of why he's now a familiar, his extreme stubbornness in the face of his new reality, and his finally growing a bit of a spine, the book and the story are captivating as you wonder if he'll hold to his morals, or not, and if he'll get what he wants (his freedom) or not. And of course, just what he's going to do in either case as he starts to learn more and more about the hidden world of magic that he's now a part of.

This is a really great book, and a great story. I loved it, I think you should all take a look at it as well.

-John

Well that has to be the fastest turnaround ever...

Amazon turned around the processing on Book Five in less than an hour! I'm impressed!

So here is the link to Book Five, the current price is $3.99 (US), I may raise it to 4.99 in two weeks, due to it's size (it's big) so buy it now!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013HAIIM6

Book Five of Portals of Infinity has been submitted to Amazon

Book Five: Demigods and Deities is currently in processing on Amazon.
So, sometime early tomorrow I should have a link for you, when it goes live.

Until then, here's the cover:

KU readers should have access not long afterwards, I just can't put it into KU until after it's published. Don't know why they don't give me that option at publishing time.

Book 5 is done

So, I just finished the rewrite on book 5, and sent it off to my beta readers. It's 91K words long, which makes it half again as long as the previous books in the series. I'm honestly thinking of charging 4.99 instead of 3.99 for this one. If I do, I'll have it on sale at 3.99 for like the first ten days or so.
There's a lot that goes on in this book, I just hope I got it captured right.

Not sure on the pub date yet. I still need to send it to the editor.

I think I'm gonna play wolfenstein for the rest of the day.

Some page redesigns

Changed this some, and my homepage: www.vanstry.net
Hope people like it!

POI Book 5 almost done

So, I passed 80K words today, I think this one is going to come in at 90K, which means it's going to be almost a third longer than the longest one in this series so far. I've got about three more chapters to write, then the first draft is done. I think it will take about a week to edit, so I don't know if it will be out before the end of this month (sadly) but barring any incidents, it should be out in the first week of August, at the latest.

I hope you all like it.

No More Furry Fiction

(Note: This does not apply to my POI series, nor the other series I have in the works.)

Sorry to have to announce this, but the piracy of my anthro works has become so bad in the 'furry fandom' that it's destroyed my sales of those works, and now I'm losing money on them. So I won't be writing them anymore, unless paid up front.
I have bills to pay, I have to eat. So I'm only going to write those things I actually make money on. Sales of the Anthro stuff have never equaled my other stuff, because it is a SMALL market. But I enjoy writing that stuff, because it's where my roots as a writer are. So I was willing to deal with the smaller profit. But when I find my stuff being spread throughout the fandom and my sales of it crash the same week that the pirated files hit a fan site:

Well, I'm done.

I do not understand the reasoning of people who think that stealing the work of people who are producing the stuff they like will encourage them to make more. No, it encourages us to stop.

I apologize to all of you who like my work, and wanted to see more in the COS arc, and the COS universe. I'm sorry that there will not be a sequel to Interregnum, as a project it has been shelved.

On Ear Worms and other such things

This is the song stuck in my head this morning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0CYB5V9e64

Songs like this do have an effect on my writing at times, because they make you think. I actually happened to like several of the songs from this album. You can really hear the pain.

So, these are the things that run through your authors mind while writing.
Well at least this one maybe.

On my Patreon account

I started this account about two months ago, to see if there would be much interest, and yes, to help pay the bills. While it has attracted several very nice people, I'm starting to think that the folks who buy my books either are not in the Patreon demographic, they don't know about it, or it's just not the sort of thing they want to engage in (which is fine, I have no problem with that).

So, I'm going to give it a few months longer, and see if it perhaps improves, but if it doesn't, I'll either scrap it completely, or just leave it as a place people can throw money at me if they want, but without any rewards. The reasons for doing this are simple, I'm making maybe $5 an hour for what I do there. While writing does pay less than minimum wage fairly often (take that burger flippers!), it does pay more than that. (I work 60+ hours a week, and I have to pay special extra taxes because I'm self employed - yes I love what I do, but the pay sucks).

I think I'll just add a paypal donate button to my sites, and see if that helps. And who knows? Maybe the people who pirate me (and love to tell me how much they're 'helping' me) will toss me a few bucks!

Book Five, The Problem Child

Okay, no that's not the title, but I almost think it should be.

Book five in some ways has been very hard to write and full of troubles. Not just the book itself, mind you. But events and circumstances that have surrounded my writing it. And no, this is not a 'the book is going to be way late' posts, I actually passed 60K words last night. It's just that at this time, I have no idea right now how long it -will- be.

Let's back up a bit, just to put things in context. Book Four was really supposed to be Book Five, that is, some of the overarching story arcs (and there are a couple) were supposed to be 'progressed' in Book Four. But I had to alter a few things, and change a couple of things plot wise when I got to the finer details, and suddenly what was supposed to be a short segment had to become a much longer one and some things couldn't be addressed and hence they got pushed back to Book Five.

As some of you may remember, when Book Four was being wrapped up and prepared for final edit and review, my Father died unexpectedly. As I live on the far side of the country, AND I wasn't even home at the time, but was a twelve-hour drive from home, it had a huge effect on the schedule, as well as my life. If any of you have ever had to deal with an unexpected death in the family, you know that there are family issues, as well as legal issues, that continue for months afterwards. I've had to travel back east a second time since then to help deal with those issues, and all of that has Book Five about a month behind schedule. Which is why I'm now working twelve to fourteen hour days to try and get it to everyone when I said I would.

I'd also determined early on, that I wanted Book Five to be a bit longer, about twenty pages longer. In part because I want to keep my readers happy, and in part because there was a lot I wanted to put into this story, there was a lot of ground and plot points I want to cover.

So last night I'm sitting there, and I'm in the middle of a major act in the book, and I'm starting to estimate how many words will it take me to finish the act, figuring out what I need to cover and about how much space that will take. And then I start thinking about the next (and final) act in this installment. And I realized that I'm gonna go long. I'm not sure how long, I could easily go a lot longer than I really want to, hell I could go forty thousand more words long if I'm not careful!

So I started wondering if maybe I should make Book Five a two-part episode thing? But then, not only would that be messing with the initial concept and even the title of this book, but it means I'd have to immediately start on the next one, or the complaints about leaving everybody hanging could turn into people (figuratively) knocking on my door and yelling at me.

And none of us want that, right? Right?

So yeah, I wanted to have the first draft done in two more days, and I'm starting to think that it's probably going to be more like a week, and I'll be spending another weekend working. I won't know just how long it will be, or will take, until I'm about halfway through the next act. But I should know by Friday.

So, all in all, this book in the series has been a problem child, with much conspiring against it. I will be incredibly happy when it's finally finished, edited, and published.

-John

Been editing all weekend

And this song has been stuck in my mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbpS2LfoTKU