I’ve been away from the blog for a bit, mostly because I haven’t had a ton to say, but also because when there are competing demands on my writer time, it’s probably the least productive use of said time.

There’s a lot going on, and I’m probably not supposed to talk about most of it. But that’s never really stopped me before, and it’s not going to stop me now. I think there’s this perception out there in the world that once you’ve had some success in publishing, things just flow steadily, and…well…that’s just not true, and I think it’s important to share that.

So I’m going to tell you the story.

But first, let me do a little self promotion. Because if I don’t do it now, I’ll write this long post about the business and then forget to tell you that I have a book coming out this Thursday. Yes — Thursday, not Tuesday. Kind of a unique situation because the book is only available on Audible. I’m excited to see what happens with that, and, as always, I’ll probably tell you about it at some point. But for now, if you’re an audio fan, I’d love for you to go pre-order/buy THE WEIGHT OF COMMAND, narrated by the outstanding Cassandra Campbell, who really did a great job with it.

This is a stand alone military SF novel where a young officer is forced to take on command of her peacekeeping brigade after tragedy befalls the rest of the leadership. She’s not ready for the job, and some bad actors see that as an opportunity to take advantage.

On to the news and notes. As always, I want to caveat that everything here is from my perspective. I’m going to talk about editors and publishing and what I think they’re thinking, but when I do, it’s speculation on my part. I could be totally wrong. But you know…I’m probably not. Also it’s important to note that I’m not even remotely bitter or upset about any of this. IT’s a business, and it is what it is. I write books, and that’s not going to change. People publish those books when they think they’ll make money from them, which is what publishers do.

To understand this, you need some background. Here’s a short view of the relevant things. In 2017, I signed a modest contract for two books — PLANETSIDE and SPACESIDE with Harper Voyager. Those books significantly outperformed expectations and that deal. Everybody was happy. We’re still happy, as 4 years after the first book published, they continue to sell, and everybody involved is making money. This led pretty quickly to a second two book deal for COLONYSIDE, the third book in the trilogy, and THE MISFIT SOLDIER, a stand alone, in a bigger deal. Book 3 released in December of 2020, and did about as well as expected — maybe a little better — but whatever the expectation, it earned out its advance pretty quickly.

That’s the deep background. Within the last year, there have been two significant things that happened that inform the current situation. First, in November, I signed a contract for one book for GENERATION SHIP, a stand-alone science fiction novel that will be my first foray out of military SF and into more of the mainstream. Both Voyager and I are really excited about this, and you’ll be able to get it wherever you buy books in summer/fall 2023. More of an update on that project later in the post. What’s important here is that we signed my biggest deal to date for that book — a $25,000 advance, which was a fair price given my past success — and we did it in a one book deal.

That’s significant, because it means I don’t currently have anything after that under contract, and as I’m finishing up writing that, I need to know what to write next. At the time we made the deal, making it as a one book deal was more of a creative thing than a business thing. I knew I wanted to write that book — I REALLY wanted to write that book. It’s my dream book, and I had a chance to do it, and there’s no way I wasn’t taking that chance. I had no idea what I wanted to do beyond that, so I didn’t want to commit past that single goal.

Caveat here: I can do this because of my life circumstances. I have a military pension and a reasonably stable financial situation, so I can afford, at least a little bit, to take some chances with my writing career. If that wasn’t the case, I’d probably have had to look at things differently. Other authors don’t have that luxury. I think it’s important to say that. I never question an author’s decisions when it comes to business vs. creative, because it’s extremely hard for even successful authors to make writing work as a career, and you gotta do what you gotta do.

The second major thing that happened was that THE MISFIT SOLDIER released on February 22nd. It has not done as well as hoped on the business side. Creatively, I’m happy with it. I think my fans enjoyed it. The typical review has been ‘this is really fun! 4 stars.’ Which…you can print that on my gravestone and I’ll be happy. He wrote fun 4 star books. It’s what I try to do — or, what I’ve tried to do thus far. Again, more on that later. On the business side, not so much.

For whatever reason, many of the fans of the Planetside series didn’t follow to TMS, and we haven’t sold enough books. What does that mean exactly? Well, I don’t know. I don’t have specific numbers yet on sales. Here’s what I can say for sure: to meet the expectations associated with the contract, we probably needed to sell 10 to 12 thousand copies of the book across all formats – that’s a pretty modest number, right? We haven’t done that. If I had to guess, I’d say we’ve maybe done half of that?

So that leads us to where we are today, looking for a new contract and being sort of in limbo.

I like my editor and my publisher, and I think they like me. Given the right circumstances, we’d certainly not hesitate to do more books together. But with my most recent book underperforming its deal and another book due out next year on a bigger deal, it’s hard for my editor to justify doing another deal to the people he has to justify such things to. Again — this part is speculation. But it doesn’t take a business genius to see it.

Does that mean my career with Harper Voyager is over? Absolutely not. A few things could happen. First, it’s still early on THE MISFIT SOLDIER. Sometimes (admittedly rarely) books take off later, and while it’s unlikely that’s going to happen, it might. On that note, if you’d like to go purchase 3000 copies and drop them on people out of a helicopter, you’d really make my life a lot easier. Just sayin. There are probably better uses for $27,000 though. Also, there may be legal ramifications to dropping books on people out of a helicopter. Who really knows?

As a side note, if you’ve never seen the Turkey Drop episode of an old show called WKRP in Cincinnati, it’s one of the funniest half hour episodes of TV I’ve ever seen (Note, this was late 70s TV…all appropriate warnings that come with that era in general apply)

Back to business: Also, we’ve got my most ambitious project to date coming out in 2023, and if that book does well, which I hope it does — I’m certainly pouring my heart into making it the best thing I can make — then everything that came before that is moot and we go from there.

But there’s the rub. Voyager and I are in incompatible positions. For them, it makes sense to wait and see how that book does. From my perspective, I can’t wait until late 2023 to decide what I am going to do next.

So…what are my options and what do I do?

I had a call with my agent to discuss it. That’s the first step in this kind of thing. I’m not too emotional about the situation — or at least I think I’m not — but she’s definitely not, and that matters. It’s fine for me to talk about what I want to do. It’s her job to tell me the realities, and she did. I gave her some short pitches of my ideas — things that Voyager isn’t interested in right now — and she gave me her opinion on the business prospects of the ideas. It was a long conversation with a lot of nuance, but I’m going to boil it down to the two options that rose to the top.

Option 1. I can write a novel on spec. One of the ideas I pitched — my favorite new idea, as it turns out — my agent thinks has potential appeal for a lot of different publishers. For the uninitiated, writing on spec means writing a full novel — or at least a really good half of a novel — revising it and polishing it to the best thing you can make, without having a contract for it already. Basically, it’s what every author does before their first book deal. There are both benefits and risks to this:

Benefits:

a. We can try to sell it to any publisher that’s interested, which has value on a lot of different levels. First, if it’s really good and we get interest from multiple publishers…well, that’s the dream, right? It can drive up the price. Second, while Voyager is in a wait and see with me right now, this would change that, as they’d be able to see it and decide from there. Like going to the store…you didn’t know you needed that ice cream, but now that you see it, you definitely do.

b. I can write a book I’d really like to write.

Risks:

a. I’d be writing a book — investing six to nine months, based on my personal writing process — with no guarantee that I could sell it.

b. If it does sell, it would probably take time, and after it sold we could be looking at two more years before it released, meaning I’d almost certainly have no book published in 2024.

For me, it’s the second one of those that makes this unappealing. Because with the first one — not selling it — I can mitigate that by self publishing or going with a small press, and we’ll make some money. And we can pursue audio rights, where I’ve been pretty successful. But if a publisher does want it, and I’m stuck for two years with no new books out — that’s not a spot I really want to be in.

Option 2:

I can write Planetside 4. I’ve got an outline for it — it’s called DARKSIDE. This has been on the table for a while, and the only reason we haven’t signed on to do it with Voyager is that I’m adamant about getting the same narrator for the audio book, and without that assurance, I’m not willing to do a deal.

Benefits:

While I don’t how I’ll get this book out into the world, I’m pretty sure that there’s an audience for this book, and that someone is going to publish it. Even if that someone has to be me.

Drawbacks:

It’s a bit of a step backwards, and I’m not pursuing the next thing — the thing that could take me to the next level. But this is mitigated by the fact that GENERATION SHIP is coming out in 2023, and that might already be the thing. If that book takes off, we’ll have new options then. So writing something safe now where I know I can get paid is somewhat appealing.

Creatively, it’s kind of a wash. There are two books above all others that I want to write right now — DARKSIDE, and my untitled space pirate book. The space pirate book would be on spec. I’ve decided to do DARKSIDE first, because I think it gives me the best chance to put a book out in 2024, and also because as I’ve started writing it, it’s just so much fun. I’m happy to be back with Butler and Mac and Ganos.

Where will it end up and how will you get it into your hands/ears? That remains to be seen. Stay tuned.

At this point, I’m done talking about the business and am going to transition into a bit about GENERATION SHIP, my writing process, and where that stands. If you’re someone who reads my blog for the behind the scenes publishing business stuff, you’re probably safe to offramp here.

I finished the draft of GENERATION SHIP — it’s 136K words, which is my longest work to date by a pretty good bit — and I was moderately happy with it, if nervous as I sent it off to readers. This is my normal state on such things. Until someone else reads it, it’s Schrodinger’s book. Either it’s good or it sucks. In this case, I knew it’s definitely missing something, and I hope that my readers can find it. They probably can.

This book was hard for me to write. It’s my first time in third person and my first time writing multiple points of view, and those things took me some time to figure out. Honestly, I’m still figuring them out.

At the same time, I’m changing my process a bit. I used to do two rounds of beta readers, layering in different things in each revision. But I’ve gone to one round, sending it to four really good pros for comment. This came about for a few reasons.

1. I found while writing THE WEIGHT OF COMMAND (Out Thursday!) that I did much more extensive edits from my first round notes than I had in the past, and the second round didn’t add much. I attribute this to good beta reader notes and an improved ability to edit on my part. Basically leveling up, so I don’t need as many times through it.

2. The book is due on September 19th, and I’d like to make that deadline.

3. My editor is David Pomerico, and he’s really good. And no matter what I edit now, he’s going to have more thoughts for me and they’re going to be great and I’m going to do another edit with his notes, regardless of what I do here. Yes, I want to get him the best possible book I can. But given his skills and my ability to take his notes, there’s not a ton of value in pursuing an extra round of edits in between that might make the book 5% better. Because we’ll pick that up between him and I in our next round.

So it’s out to readers right now, and I’m taking a break from it and will jump back in in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading. I don’t have a Kofi or a Patreon or anything like that, so if you’d like to support me, please buy my books. Helicopter drop optional.