Tag Archives: The Long Look

Monday After Monday After Morning After

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Is it the End of the World as We Know it? Do we feel fine?

I can’t say I do. This whole year has been a dumpster fire that just will not go out. Most of it preventable, or at least the embers tamped down. Yet the people in charge can’t do anything and the people who could aren’t in charge. Sort of a perfect storm of SNAFU. I don’t feel fine. But I’m enduring, which feels like a win.

 

When the book’s finished I’ll likely put together some kind of price promotion for the first in the series, The Long Look. In the meantime, here’s a snippet of the The Seventh Law of Power, submitted with absolutely no context nor explanation. You’re welcome.

 

“I admit you’ve lost servants in a short order before,” Bonetapper said, once he was back in his raven body. “But you outdid yourself this time.”

“She was never my servant,” Marta said. “Not really. I thought I was acting according to the precepts of the Arrow Path, but I never felt the connection, the bond. Now I think it was no more than our interests coincided for a while.”

What can’t be taken, can be given. The Second Law. So perhaps according to the Laws, but not the Path?

Marta hadn’t thought of it in those terms before, but it was clear to her now that the Laws and the Arrow Path were not the same. The latter was simply a map to the first. If anything, her time with Dessera had proven that.

“Whatever else she intended, Dessera did me a favor. I’m beginning to understand something now that I did not before.”

“So am I, or I never would have realized the nature of my curse. You did me a favor, too.”

Dessera stood before them once more, a ghostly shimmer in the firelight.

Marta smiled a wistful smile. “I never expected to see you again.”

The ghost sighed. “Nor I you. Toban apparently had no questions about his next course. I’m embarrassed to admit I have no idea what should come next for me. I don’t feel imprisoned in this place now or indeed any other, yet I do not know what stage of existence or oblivion awaits me.”

“True of most of us,” Bonetapper offered. “Yet we assume, when the time comes, we’ll know.”

“I cannot help you with that,” Marta said. “I honestly wish I could.”

“I know. But would you mind if I traveled with you a while longer? I can be useful, and perhaps it would help me sort the matter out,” the ghost said.

Marta thought about it. It wouldn’t be the first time someone traveled with her as a companion rather than a servant; she rather missed it. And Dessera wasn’t formally asking for her help as would fall under the Arrow Path strictures, after all. She was simply asking a favor, as one person to another.

What can’t be taken, can be given. I believe this too is covered by the Second Law.

“I have no objection,” Marta said. “What about you, Bonetapper?”

The raven looked startled. “What? I actually have a say in this?”

Marta demurred. “Say rather you are free to express your opinion, as you always do. Just as I am free to ignore it.”

“That’s what I thought you meant. Fine. Just try not to get us killed.”

“Always,” Marta said.

 

The Long Look Redux

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The first thing you may or may not notice about the new US paperback edition of The Long Look is that the cover is slightly different from the original hardcover and ebook editions. That’s because the original design was too close to the “bleed” limits of the pod cover specs. The jacket had to be redesigned from scratch, starting with Steve Gilberts’ original artwork. It took four attempts to get it right, and the final cover was just approved yesterday.

Revising the text was a breeze by comparison. And yes, there were changes. Not major, but changes nonetheless. Mostly a few embarrassing usage and context errors. I’ll be updating the ebook edition with the same changes in a few days, or at least I hope I will. It’s shaping up to be a very busy week.

Regardless, the UK edition is available here. If anyone anywhere else is interested, let me know. For now I had to go with limited distribution to keep the price of the book down, but it will be available in a few more countries.

I’ve been reading and loving Jeffrey Ford’s newest, Ahab’s Return. As the title suggests, it’s about what happens after the events of Moby Dick, when Captain Ahab turns up alive. Once I’ve finished I’ll do a review, if I think I have anything worth saying about it. Don’t wait for me, though. The book is already out there.

UK Okay?

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I’m about halfway through the reformatting of The Long Look for the paperback edition. Fortunately, it reads a lot faster than it takes to work through it in editor mode. One reason for that is I’m being careful, as I only plan to do this once. My original assessment that there would only be minor changes to the text still holds. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any changes at all. A few spelling corrections, one or two small continuity gaffes to fix. Nothing major, but I plan to update the Kindle edition with the revised text when I’m done, so there will be essentially no difference between the ebook and paperback, other than the media.

As I said last time, I’ve always sucked at promotion. Maybe I had some introvert’s dream of just writing good stories and books and letting the rest take care of itself. Which it doesn’t. So I’m learning. I remain terrible at networking and the convention scene, which leaves learning copywriting and using those methods to write better online book descriptions and ad copy, something I believe I can do and am doing. Which has led to several online revisions over the last week or so revising how the books are presented. I haven’t gotten to them all yet, and some will be revised more than once. It’ll take time.

Odd result so far—now the UK editions of my indie books are outselling the US editions by 2 to 1. Too soon to say if the blip is statistically significant, but it is interesting. It’s a journey. I’ll report on it from time to time here, so fair warning.

Paperwork

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Quick update. After finally getting the paper version of Power’s Shadow completed and live, I finally realized that, having done that, the series still wasn’t complete (as in, complete up to the final? physical book, yet to be written).  The Long Look exists only as an ebook, and the only paper copies are a few used and leftover hardcovers from its first incarnation as a Five Star Press edition.

So, to make sure the entire series will be available in paper when I finish the series, I’m putting together a new edition of the book in paperback. It’s tedious and time-consuming, but it needs to be done. I’ve made myself a promise that any future editions of anything approaching novel length will get its paper edition at the same time or darn close. Naturally, that only applies to projects I take on myself. Anything done through a trad publisher will be up to them.

There was a time when it was much easier to put together an ebook than a paper book, but with new tools and a little patience you can basically drive both editions off the same text. There’s really no more excuse for not turning both out at once. The only other exception is for books less than novel length, though I’ll have to consider those case by case.

If only writing was all I had to do, but there’s too much else that goes along with it and you can’t ignore that, either. Lord knows I’ve tried and I’m paying for it now.

Power’s Shadow, Physical Edition

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Now the paperback edition of Power’s Shadow is live. It came together a little quicker than I was expecting, despite the fact that I had to reformat the entire manuscript and cover. Not that I’m complaining. In the process I found a few embarrassing errors that never should have been there to start with and one whopper of a continuity oops. Which goes to prove the old adage, “You haven’t edited your story until you’ve edited it stone cold.” I apologize for any past mistakes, but I do believe they’ve been fixed, in both the digital and paperback editions.

Now I’m thinking of doing the same to The Long Look, first in the series. Otherwise the physical edition is only available from third party sellers, since it’s long out of print. That way when I finally finish the fourth—and final—book in the series I’ll have everything available in both formats. Something to consider, anyway, though I do not want to get bogged down in my backlist when there are more books to write.

On an entirely separate note, I almost had fresh tomatoes this year. I picked up some heritage plants at the Cooperstown Farmer’s Museum and even got them planted in good time. First the deer damaged one plant, which lived but never bloomed. The second was doing great and had tomatoes almost ready, but then they disappeared. Poof. Gone. I don’t think it was deer this time, but I am noticing some very well-fed squirrels loitering about. Oh, well. Try again next year.