New Year New Stuff

Last year, as regular followers will have noticed (if such exist), was filled with Bridgetown Tales and podcasts. They kind of took over after a while as I was trying to build up enough of a "buffer" with Bridgetown to have November free to Nano (a plan that worked). As a result though everything else got sidetracked.

This year I'm looking to learn the lesson of last year, that is don't promise to write circa 180,000 words of extraneous 'other stuff' on a whim, because, in the end, that will be all you write.

Not that I'm complaining the 180,000 words of Bridgetown and the 50,000 of a new SF novel for Nano were jolly good and I even managed to clock in 10,000 more of Taliesin in the end which puts my word count for the year at about 250,000.

But this year I'm looking to make a move into more controlled projects. Nothing weekly. I loved doing the serial though so I've already decided to switch venue for that to Wattpad. Basically things are in the pipeline.

I am, however, in the process of moving house so... we shall have to see how that interferes.

Oh, yes, and I'm planning more regular blogging time in 2014 as well. I think I shall try to maintain that as a priority, it's sad to see so much stuff issue forth on a weekly basis but with no time to actually talk about it or comment upon it. It makes it look, digitally, as if I'm a crazy word-slinging recluse who does nothing but churn out fantasy and sci-fi. Maybe I am, but commentary is good too.

Self Publishing - State of Play

Let's start 2013 with a list of five thoughts I have running round my head regarding the general market environment for indie authors in the upcoming year:

1. I am finding the zeitgeist in my "Self Publishing" news stream has avoided the redundant "the bubble has burst" phase. This is probably because there was no real bubble in self publishing to speak of. The zeitgeist has now turned to "don't bother self publishing unless you're a masochist because it's a waste of time and nobody cares". Also "marketing is hard".

2. Marketing is hard.

3. The populace of the Western world really has too much expectation of their ambitions toward authorship. More than was even suspected prior to the advent of the electronic book.

4. The average quality of work bounced out of slush piles must be higher than slush pile readers report OR far more good writers were discouraged by the existence of the slush pile and hoopla surrounding them than was ever suspected.

5. You need far fewer avid fans to get by than you used to (due to higher royalty returns) BUT finding your fans is a hellish business.

BONUS THOUGHT: The Kilimanjaro-like peak of "building a platform" for the nascent indie author seems daunting. Tackling the long climb to "niche market base camp" appears a foolhardy endeavour. In fact, I believe, digital media just makes this forbidding, awe-inspiring mountain visible, and it is - de facto - more challenging to climb an invisible mountain than a visible one.

Take heart everyone and have a cracking 2013 won't you. (Now where are my crampons?)

2010 - Time To Regenerate

After a fine New Year's gathering which saw me singing in the new year along with Monty Python's "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" NYD itself was all about Doctor Who. For me and 10m other viewers the regeneration of Tennant Who into Smith Who was essential viewing.

Number crunching ain't good for much but let's just take a look at this here and now. Total number of people who took active roles in Rage vs Robojoe 1 million. People watching Doctor Who, 10 million. Now admittedly they weren't charging any money we hadn't already paid for us to watch Doctor Who but still.

If you had told me in 2000 that in a decade I'd be joining 10m others to watch the new and much beloved Doctor Who morph into his youngest form yet. And then you had gone on to say that Doctor Who would  become a bigger UK cultural touchstone than it had ever been and I would have told you you were crazy. If you'd have topped it off by saying that the head writer would be a cultural leader for the equal treatment of the gay lifestyle, that he would work these themes into a spin off set in Cardiff and that people would regularly discuss both series round the water cooler and well...

You have to admit, it sounds jolly unlikely.

I'd hate to be in a position where one of my characters had had such a patchy history. It's a matter of personal pride. I have a fairly harsh inner critic and if I finally hit the sweet spot after so long (not, obviously, that RTD et al were responsible for the whole of Doctor Who but you get the point) I would be tempted to reboot.

I don't mind any reboot that's been along so far. BSG was fine and ended so disappointingly that it could even do with another reboot to fix the disappointing end of this version. Star Trek as envisioned by Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman was wonderful. I can't, off the top of my head, think of a reboot that's done any harm.

Of course technically, if you're sticking strictly to canon, apparently, the Doctor only has one more regeneration left (because of burning one up but not actually regenerating during the 10th Doctor's tenure). Rather than cheating and giving him new regenerations wouldn't it be better to reset the whole thing and start again from scratch.

It's something that writing types do all the time, the old etch-a-sketch end of the world routine. I think a reader can accept a reboot more readily than, perhaps, a remake. Maybe I'm wrong.

Anyhoo, that's all from me for the time being. Here's to a 2010 full of hope for the future. After all it might seem to many of us that the only way is up after the last few years!