Monthly Archives: July 2012

Motivations: His Robot Girlfriend

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It was 2008, and I had just finished writing the first draft of a massive fantasy novel that I was calling The Steel Dragon.  This would eventually become The Voyage of the Minotaur, The Drache Girl, and The Two Dragons.  I printed up 10 copies and handed them out to friends to read and edit over the summer.  Each one was a 4″ thick notebook.  I had also just self-published Princess of Amathar.

While I was waiting for the editing to be completed, I thought I needed something to post to Feedbooks and Manybooks to get my name out there.  I had written some sci-fi flash fiction a few years earlier and thought I could piece them together to make a novel.  This became the first half of His Robot Girlfriend and I wrote the other half over the summer (while teaching summer school).  I published it online and was astounded at the interest.  At one time, it was the third most downloaded book on Feedbooks (It’s since dropped to number 7).

His Robot Girlfriend succeeded in getting my name out there.  It’s been downloaded almost 500,000 times, has been reviewed numerous times, and I get many emails and notes from people that enjoy it.  That being said, I think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.  Someday… soon, I plan to make a serious revision to the book.  There are some errors, but mostly, I think I can write much better than I did.  It has to keep the same plot and same major elements, but I’d like to smooth it out, fix the ending (which is weak), and maybe add a bit to it.  We’ll see.

One comment that detractors frequently make about His Robot Girlfriend (feedback is overwhelmingly positive) is that Patience has no will of her own.  She is a robot, duh!  But this gave me an idea for the new book– His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue.  It will show a bit more from her point of view and we will find out that not everything is as Mike thinks it is.

Motivations: Princess of Amathar

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I began writing Princess of Amathar so long ago, it’s really difficult to remember what I was thinking at the time.  It was about 1980 and I was just about two years out of high school.  I began writing several stories in short chapters, rotating between them.  One was a fantasy story about an alternate world, one was a fantasy story set in a dream world (which I later used as the white opthalium drug-induced world for Senta and the Steel Dragon), but most of them were fan fiction sequels to Edgar Rice Burroughs Books.  Finally there was Amathar.

My idea behind Amathar was to write a book that ERB might write if he was still around at the time.  In that way, Princess of Amathar more than any of my other books, was written as a book I would really want to read.  As the years passed and the story was revised, it became more of a love-letter to the fond memories I had reading John Carter of Mars, Pellucidar, and Carson of Venus as a kid.

I still have the original first chapter draft and the story is quite different than the final version.  Our earth hero arrives mysteriously in Ecos, though he doesn’t have the same name and he doesn’t meet Malagor.  Instead he immediately finds a family of neo-luddite Amatharians whose daughter has been captured by Zoasians.  The book changed again and again over the years.  Alexander got his first name after I wrote a college paper on Alexander the Great, and his last name from a girl I worked with at Kmart.

By 1992, when I started teaching, the book was only half done.  I worked really hard to finish it and did so about 1997.  Many of the characters and alien races were named after kids in school, though in revision they were usually changed.  It went through many revisions after that and it got many rejection letters from publishers, before I finally published it in 2007.  The ebook came out in 2009.

This month, Princess of Amathar should pass the 800 copies sold mark.  That means I’ve made about  $240.00 in royalties.  Considering I suspect I worked on it about 3,269 man-hours, that’s 7.34 cents per hour.  Of course thats assuming all the publishing and promotion as free,  Still, I cannot regret my time spent on this book.  It was a real endeavor of love and I still enjoy reading it.

Motivations

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I thought over the next few weeks I would write a little series about my motivations for each of my books– what I was thinking about and what I was trying to do when I was writing them.

On a side note, somebody I was talking to referred to my writing as “your other job”.  I actually thought that was kind of cool.  It is my other job now.  That doesn’t mean that I love writing any less than I did when it was just my hobby though.

And don’t forget to stop by Smashwords and check out the Summer/Winter sale.  Here is a link.

Smashwords Summer Winter Sale

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It is that time of year again– time for the Smashwords Summer/Winter sale.  All through the month of July, there are great deals on ebooks at Smashwords.  Some of my books are there on sale and some are free, so if your collection isn’t complete, now is the time to stop by.  Here’s what is on special this month.

Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike (Reg. $.99) Free

Princess of Amathar (Reg. $2.99) Free

Voyage of the Minotaur (Reg. $2.99) Free

The Dark and Forbidding Land (Reg. $2.99) $1.50

The Drache Girl (Reg. $2.99) $2.24

And as always His Robot Girlfriend, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess, Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress, and Brechalon are free.

Find links to all these books here.

Floating in the Ether

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It’s funny what you find hidden in the depths of the Internet.  I was trolling around looking for some Nevada history and found this on the Las Vegas Sun website.  The description is as follows:

Students at B. Mahlon Brown Junior High School spend part of their class time Oct. 13 listening to representatives from different political parties. The activity was used to enlighten students about the differences between parties and teach them the importance of politics. They will be holding a school-wide vote prior to the elections to see how their opinions compare to those of the nation.

The guy standing on the stairs (the fat one with the white pants and no tie) is me.  It says Oct. 13, but it doesn’t say what year.  Judging by how much hair I had left at the time, I would say it’s 2008.

82 Eridani: Journey

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Time to reveal the secret project I’m working on: Coming in 2013.

82 Eridani is a seven book science fiction series, the first volume of which is entitled Journey.  The other volumes will be: Arrival, War, Conquest, Siege, Duel, and Destiny.

82 Eridani: Journey

The three mile-long interstellar spacecraft Constellation was designed to explore and colonized the Sirius Star System.  The problem is, that it isn’t going to Sirius.  The $14 Trillion spaceship has been hijacked by its commander and is flying toward the 82 Eridani star system, and none of the 7,000 crew and colonists know why.  Officer Freya Johannson, despite being the commander’s lover, has no more idea than anyone else, but she is determined to find out.  Officer James Moore might be curious, but he has more pressing concerns of his own.  His wife may be having an affair, so he turns to a group of others to find out for sure, including robotics expert Robert Stivers.  Stivers builds robots of all types, include ant-sized surveillance robots which he uses primarily to stalk hard-bodied security officer January Sarbanes.  What the tiny robitic eyes have yet to notice is that a serial killer stalks the corridors of the ship.  None of these crew members, nor any of the others including the commander, are ready for the shock of what they will find when they finally reach 82 Eridani.

Warning: Adult Content