Adventure Beyond the Stars – Written for Readers Who Want More

Tag: Update

  • Marketing Education

    Marketing Education

    One of the major differences between my effort to publish Artemis Rising and my effort to publish Seven Into Darkness is that I understand how important marketing your book is to its financial success. With more than 300 million people, any competently written novel will have an audience. the difference between financial success and failure as an author is 1) do you get your novel looked over by a good editor and 2) does your target market know your book exist? The second is enabled by good marketing.

    I have been connected to an author and teacher of author marketing by the name of Nick Stephenson. He went from part-time income from his books to $1m a year using the methods he teaches in his ‘Your First 10k Readers‘ program. Unsurprisingly, it is all direct-response marketing. That means I could probably have figured it all out myself, after all, Silver Bullet Marketing is a book about direct-response marketing as well. But instead of taking a year, probably a lot more considering that I’m working on a shoestring right now, to figure things out, I can just learn from the mistakes (and triumphs) of others. Don’t have to spend time making them all myself…

  • Editor Chosen

    Editor Chosen

    I’m pleased to announce that Artemis Rising has an editor. Sandra Herner will begin editing my manuscript on or about February 18. The fact that it is so far out is just an indication of the level of demand for her expertise. I am confident that she will help Artemis Rising become both an excellent story, and everything it needs to be to be a financial success.

  • Victorian Interplanetary

    Victorian Interplanetary

    Telling Stories Again

    I’ve decided not only to start telling stories again, but to do it in my own setting instead of a fan fiction/crossover in someone else’s world. I won’t throw away the notes and ideas for the Harry Potter/Jack Ryan crossover, but I’m too excited by the potential stories in the Victorian Interplanetary setting instead.

    There are several premises I’m using to inform the worldbuilding on this, and I am trying to do enough worldbuilding that I don’t write myself into a corner. I think that is kind of what happened with J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series. She did only enough world building to serve the story line at that time. I perfectly understand why. When she started out, she was scratching out time to write while trying to make a living – not conducive to spending a lot of time worldbuilding, especially if you are new to the idea.

    On the other hand, I’ve done worldbuilding for numerous RPG campaigns in several different genres, and built on the RPG campaign worldbuilding, whether well done or not, for several others. I’ve also played in numerous campaigns that others gamemastered. Some of them had good worldbuilding, some had horrible worldbuilding, some took decent published worldbuilding and built on it, some took decent published worldbuilding and broke it anyway. I’ve even seen gamemasters that took a campaign with decent worldbuilding that they then threw out any pieces that didn’t fit, and made something better.

    All that to say, I’m going to try to put together a setting with good worldbuilding. Worldbuilding that supports the story I’m working on, while minimizing the constraints on other stories that might be told later (sequel, prequel, or taking place at the same time in another part of the solar system). We’ll see where that goes…

    Enough about what I’m trying to do. The next few posts include some of the elements of the worldbuilding in this setting.