Sat, April 25th, 2015 9:00 AM
Hi there!
First of all, I can’t really believe the response to last week’s first email. A lot of those invitations were to some of you that I haven’t spoken with in almost ten years, so it’s really gratifying to see a response like this.
Last year when TWoP ended, and I promise this is the last time I’ll start a sentence that way, it was big news and there was a lot of immediate contact from the outside world: People checking to see what I was going to do, if I was okay, if I needed work, and all the rest of it. That was, even in my numb state, really encouraging. But I knew when I left Gawker, whenever that day would come, there wouldn’t be a similar wave of interest in my daily routine: It was a one-shot deal. TWoP meant a lot, to a lot of people, and I benefited from that association over the years in a lot of ways. I know where I come from, and I know it doesn’t have quite as much to do with me as I would like, which would of course preferably be: All about me.
So a lot of my trepidation at the end of last year was less about getting vulnerable — you know I’ll show my ass in a second, I have no shame — but about being presumptuous. Weighing out what was me, what was the show, what was the particular way I approached the show and the fanbase, all of that, was a fast-moving concatenation of concerns for which the only compass was about service. When a readership wasn’t responding to an angle, I changed my approach. (Or, and often, quit so somebody else could better serve.) And without that touchstone, without a reason to be talking, it can be easy to start thinking of the show, or the blog topic, or whatever it is, as a crutch. I’m sure to some extent that is exactly what it was. It’s easier to make friends when you have something in common.
So my point is, first, thank you for making me feel like I am not crazy, or alone. That is what you have done.
And secondly, I want to be as honest as possible about what I’m putting on the market. The downside to self-publishing, I am learning, is that it entails talking about yourself. That blurring of “correspondence” and “marketing” that never bothered me much when I was the product starts to get very sketchy when you’re talking about something you’ve created. Have you ever tried to write a bio? That is the single worst feeling in the entire world. Suddenly everything about yourself becomes a lie.
You know it’s bad when the best possible advice is, “Pretend you’re somebody else, talking about you.” Dissociate and fake it ’til you make it. That is terrible advice! For every pursuit except this one. Except for anything that involves pretending to be your best self. Which is, in itself, a worthy goal I guess.
With that in mind, here are this week’s offerings. I have been working on their opening worldstates and introductions for upwards of ten years, in both cases, so I think it’s a pretty solid foundation for what I hope to be long-running serials. I’ve always loved the serial concept, about which many people have written much better than I could, and designed several of these ideas with that in mind. Waiting, in fact, for technology and the industry to catch up with what I wanted to do.
So, before we go into the background on the two stories that debuted this week, I did want to clarify one thing about the road we’re going down: I want to be transparent about the Kindle and Gumroad stuff, because I know it can be confusing and I still haven’t worked out a smart way to indicate it on my always-in-development website.
Amazon offers a single format, Kindle, for a variable royalty that kicks back to me. The serials are about 16,000 words an installment (64 pages, give or take) so I’m offering them at a buck–that nets me 35 cents a sale, at the appropriate royalty rate. On the other hand, it’s easy as hell to market, find, get and start reading, which is the point.
Gumroad links, on the other hand, give you a .zip of several formats (including Kindle) that with a reasonable amount of savvy can get onto your device, whatever it is. It offers variable pricing, so you can pay what you want, of which I make a much bigger amount. On the other hand, it’s scary for the layman, whether you’re paranoid about the technical or financial side, because of the extra steps involved. On the other-other hand, I get a lot more useful info about who’s reading what, which helps with developing new ideas, or gracefully shutting down the ones that aren’t working.
So if you were curious or confused about that, that’s why I almost always provide both. Now, onto the stories.
Wasted Beauty, of which “Pretty Thing” is the first installment, started about ten years ago with a wager: If I hated those sacrilegious fairytale adaptations so much, what would change my mind? Wicked, Doctor Who and Frozen have proven me wrong since then — it’s possible to preserve the numinous power of these stories, and avoid replacing them with irony — and I had plenty of favorites growing up that passed the sniff test. But the idea of doing it myself offended my Puritanical sensibilities on a basic level… So I needed to do it.
Wasted Beauty is an open-ended narrative about Estelle, Instagram hero by day and Fairy Princess by night, who has been promised to a Prince of Hell in a bargain between Fae and Hell that has been going on for millennia. Playing the part of an empty-headed Hollywood nightmare has kept her safely in the public eye for a long time now, but her deadline is fast approaching. A long-lost sister’s reappearance at Court makes her more expendable than ever, while back home in LA, the possible reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe threatens her PR game. It seems the only choices are a war with Hell itself, and some pretty drastic compromises to stay LA-relevant, if she’s going to stay alive. If Estelle loses her game, she’ll end up dead or worse. But if she wins, she just might save us all.
Outriding, of which “Breakaway Soldier” is the first part, is a longtime obsession of mine. While I’ve written at length about the military, both inside and outside SF fandom, very little of it operates on the soft-sf frequencies I love most: Cherryh, of course, and Elizabeth Moon; Alastair Reynolds and Iain M. Banks portray the overlap beautifully, and are beloved futurists as well. (You may be familiar with the TV show Battlestar Galactica, which reinvented the genre.) I’ve found a lot to love. I resolved to investigate videogames, and was delighted to find kindred spirits all over the place: The moving, enthralling Mass Effect for example instantly rendered huge swaths of my complicated invention irrelevant–the best kind of inspiration and encouragement, even if to the outsider you wouldn’t detect any similarities to my brief. I knew I had to start from the ground up, which is as focused and happy as I get.
Outriding is the story of a library clerk in the autonomous nation of AEDC, a military conglomerate that takes its proudest traditions from the American military that our Earth’s galactic citizenship has rendered redundant. Humanity has relinquished local nationality, and defection from one nation-state to another is as simple as transferring your shares between companies. But Theodore Castelline’s company, in particular, is prouder of its traditions than most. In a moment of frustration, Theo commits an act of insubordination that, in the old days, might have resulted in corporal punishment: Now, it’s as simple as exile to Carrier’s Outriding, a very old and very bonkers space station that’s been absorbing data radiation from the universe’s cultures for possibly millions of years.
Far off the Rim, crewed by ex-mercs and misfits, and used as a diplomatic way-station and clearing house for fanatics and assassins alike, Outriding is a confusing and sometimes frightening place. But before Theo can even get settled and begin his work, much less navigate the impenetrable politics of his fellow academics and Station Chiefs, people start dropping dead, turning his Frances Burnett Hodgson fantasy into brutal noir. Even once this first mystery is solved, Outriding will always be at its heart a story of First Contact–with all the heartbreak and triumph that phrase implies.
So there you go. Two very long ideas with big casts of characters, and even bigger ambitions. I hope you enjoy them.
Love,
Jacob