Okay folks, I haven't posted here in quite some time because I've been working on other things not to mention working in real life. In the meantime I've managed to get quite a bit of work done on a couple of works in progress, signed up for a Google AdSense and AdWords, it made a couple of decisions regarding a couple of works that have been in progress for far too long.
As my previous post might have indicated, I've basically come to the decision that the current wait of a year or two to write a novel then a year or two to find an agent or publisher then a year or two to see that novel published is simply far too long for me to wait.
Yes, there are those who would say that this is just part of paying one's dues, but the simple fact is that for me a six-year wait to do anything more to get anything accomplished is pretty much intolerable. If I have to wait another six years to get a book published it's not going to happen. I will have moved on to other methods for getting the things I write out in print or some other method of getting them to the public.
Honestly, I think that waiting 12 weeks for a short story to be reviewed and decided upon as far, far too long. That book, once it even enters the publishing pipeline, that is upon acceptance, cannot be expected to be printed for about two years is almost as intolerable.
Now, I know the publishers have a lot of things on their plate and publishing is a time tolerant business. It's also monetarily expensive business and a massively expensive business, and I've got some experience doing editing and wading through slush piles so I don't envy editors at professional houses their jobs whatsoever.
I guess, however, for me, that some of the comments I've received from editors and publishers and agents and some of the things that I've seen regarding a person's chances of being published in the traditional fashion have me saying and thinking to myself that it is a complete waste of my time and effort to go through the traditional route. Now, I've been told that I am still years away from being professionally published (by an editor, naturally), but I don't choose to believe that sonofabitch. If what he said were true, it might be that I should wait those years to be professionally published, but quite frankly I don't have that many years of absolute faith in a system that is obviously badly broken already left in me. I'm 50 years old, an asthmatic, with bad knees and arthritis. I'm also an impatient curmudgeon who has very little patience with inefficiency and ineptitude.
So, I've decided that by the second quarter of this year I will release my first book as a self published e-book. I don't know who I'll be distributing it through yet, but I definitely will be distributing it off of this blog site for starters. some of you out there might begin to see ads for the book Hatchings run by Google AdWords soon. That would be mine.
Hopefully, some of you out there might even buy and enjoy the book which I will be pricing at much less than MacMillan's suggested retail price for an e-book starting at $15 were even Amazon's suggested retail price.
In the meantime, I'll be trying another experiment here on the blog in which I will be releasing chapters of my space opera novel Fire On The Suns, prior to what I hope will be a release for it sometime later on this year.
I've already got a good cover for Hatchings and a pretty damn good cover for Fire On The Suns as well. I don't think these are your typical e-books they've been edited, revised, and edited again and again, not just by me, but by other volunteers as well. While I don't expect these books to make or set a new standard in e-books, I do expect that they'll set a standard that you will come to enjoy in my writing and that you will enjoy. I have been told that they are both very Heinleinian in tone and, to me, that is a high honor. I hope you will find them enjoyable when they finally come out.
Look for Hatchings, as I said, by the second quarter of this year and Fire On The Suns by the fourth.
