Alea iacta est

Well, dear readers, it is official.  For the 10 weeks of summer holiday, minus the week's recovery time for getting my wisdom teeth out, I will be working as a full time writer.  We made the commitment to keep Xander and Kaylee in daycare for the time with the agreement that I would be working on "stuff" between five and six hours a day.



Now "Stuff" is intended to be things that will be publishable, and time invested in all the trappings of finding an agent to represent it.  As much as I may herald the ease of self publishing, I am already tiring of the same things that make me a poor copy-editor.  If it's not the writing, I'm not such a fan.  Being your own publisher means you spend a lot of time figuring out how to promote something, how to get the word out, how to verify that it can be ordered whole sale, asking people to stock it, and so on.  I find myself considering the cost of a table at a convention against the number of books I'm likely to sell while I'm there and the anticipated royalties on each.

In short, it's the not fun part of publishing, the part of publishing that publishers get paid a large portion of the book's price to take care of.

But now the die has been cast and I must begin planning.  By summer's end I need something to show for the investment.  It's possible I will begin a Web-Novel, a project I have seen others do.  In this a chapter is posted Monday morning.  Readers have until Thursday to vote on the story's direction, and then on Monday they are treated to the next chapter, which takes their choice into account.  It creates a dialogue between author and audience in real time.  No longer do you shout at the movie screen, dear reader.  No, now you have a say in which door the heroine opens:   The attic or the basement.  The right or the left.  The good girl answer or the bad girl answer.


I know I want at least the first half of the Space Epic done as well as several short stories.  And I do know I want to be well into making an effort to get it representation.

I've never been so excited nor so scared.