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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.
His Robot Girlfriend has now been rated by 1500 people on iBooks (actually 1522 as of today) with an average rating of 3 1/2 stars. In case you were wondering, there were 458 five star reviews, 442 four stars, 335 three stars, 162 two stars, and 125 one star reviews. Can’t please everybody, right?
As many times as His Robot Girlfriend is criticized as an adolescent male fantasy or for being sexist, a surprising number of women give it high ratings. I sometimes get comments about the political leanings of the book as well (of which I didn’t know it had any). I think a lot of both of those are down to what people bring with them into the story. That’s not to say there isn’t a fair bit of male fantasy in there. ‘Cause there is.
You can pick up His Robot Girlfriend free on iBooks. And thanks to everyone who took the time to rate it.
Here it is– the title and cover for the next Robot Wife novella. His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue.
I get a great many emails requesting another Patience book, and considering His Robot Wife has sold more copies than all of my other books put together, it just seems stupid not to get another one done as soon as possible.
I sat down and tried to think of a new approach that would give me more story opportunities and still be true to the characters. When it came to me, I immediately had ideas for about five more books. So you can expect Mike & Patience to make frequent appearances over the next few years. I definitely plan to have this book done sometime in 2012. Watch this space for more information.
The other day I posted my total book sales. Moe the Cat, friend of this blog, wondered how many free books had been distributed, so I thought I would look that up and post it. Here we go:
His Robot Girlfriend 377,035 downloads
Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess 93,959 downloads
Eaglethorpe Buston and the Sorceress 78,799 downloads
There have been a handful of paperbacks sold of each of these books, and there have been a few giveaways of other books, but that is pretty much it. Sometimes I really wish I had 30 cents for each copy of His Robot Girlfriend, but I know it wouldn’t have been downloaded so many times if I charged for it, and it has done its job of bringing me new readers. I have plans for a couple of other free books, one of which should be available this year.
People accuse me of having all kinds of hidden agendas in the robot books, both political and otherwise. Some have suggested that I’m a radical environmentalist because of the prominance of the Green Party in the story. I do care about the environment, but the reason that the Green Party plays a part is that I thought it would be more fun to have three parties vying for the presidency than two.
Others have said the story is a thinly veiled treatis on same-sex marriage. There is a reference to the fact that same-sex marriage is more common in the future of the story. That is not an endorsement by me. I don’t have really strong feelings about it one way or the other. I do think the institution of marriage is being damaged less by same sex couples than by people (either gay or straight) who practice serial monogamy– getting married and divorced over and over again. I’ve been married to the same woman for 26 years.
One area that few people get is the parallel of Apple Computers. I tried to parody and reference Apple in a number of ways. I find Apple and Apple fandom both interesting and humorous. On the other hand, though I wasn’t part of it when I wrote the books, I wouldn’t give up either my iPad or my iPhone 4S for anything now.
Harriet Smith is a character in His Robot Girlfriend and His Robot Wife. She is the daughter of the main character– Mike Smith. Harriet is very loosely based on my own daughter, but as my daughter has happily pointed out, she would never put up with such a jerk of a husband as Harriet has, and quite honestly, unlike Mike, if my daughter did, I’d put him in the ground myself.
There are a few little inside stories that are taken from my own life with my daughter, such as her ability to talk a subject to death until my eyes glaze over, and the remembrance that they have of the time that Mike threatened to kill a kid who was bullying Harriet and almost lost his job because of it.
On the other hand, Harriet is a dental hygienist, and is fascinated with teeth, something my daughter has never shown any interest in.
Lucas Smith is a character in His Robot Girlfriend. He is the son of Mike Smith and his deceased wife. While I was writing His Robot Girlfriend, my son was participating in Jr. ROTC at his high school. Because of this, I made Lucas a soldier. Other than that, he bares no real resemblance to my son at all. In fact, Lucas has a relatively small part to play in the story, so his character isn’t really all that fleshed out. He doesn’t appear in His Robot Wife at all.
Patience is the Robot in “His Robot Girlfriend”. Just as you might expect, she’s perfect. What I find interesting is that so many people tell me they love Patience– both male and femal readers. I guess she’s so pleasant that she’s just hard not to like.
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Though her hair was covered with a clear plastic cap, he could see it was jet black. It matched two dark, carefully arched eyebrows and a set of long eyelashes. She had no other body hair. Her face could best be described as cute, with large blue eyes, a button nose, and thick voluptuous lips. She had the kind of slender and yet curvy body that was just not possible on a real woman. Breasts the size of apples just kind of floated there above a perfectly flat stomach. Mike tilted his head down. She looked anatomically complete.
Of all my characters, none went through as much of a change between first draft and published work as did Patience Smith in His Robot Girlfriend. Originally she was a rather Amazonian figure, physically very imposing, but much more submissive. Some might argue that Patience is still submissive, but I think we find out in His Robot Wife that she really isn’t. When I rewrote a series of short pieces into a long story, she needed to have much more force of personality so that she could advance the storyline of forcing Mike to change. A college professor once told me the main character is the one in the story who changes the most– and that would be Mike.
When I started rewriting, I just wasn’t happy with her physical description, so I started completely from scratch, using some of the actresses that fit that body type: Christina Ricci, Natalie Portman, Alyson Hannigan, as well as a young woman I knew as a model– so yes, there really is a Patience out there. I observed her as carefully as possible (without seeming too creepy) so that I could describe her movements and gestures– like when Patience bounces on her tip-toes or incorporates dance moves into everyday movement. Since then, I’ve tried to find a human being to at least think about when I write most of my characters.
Her personality couldn’t be base on a real person or even a person that I though up. She’s a robot. Her personality couldn’t be readily apparent. It had to be very subdued. It had to sneak up on the reader as it sneaks up on Mike. For that reason I think, quite a few readers find her a dull automoton– Image finding a robot as such. I think this is a failure for me as a writer. Still of all the fan letters I’ve ever gotten, I would say that easily 40% (written about any book) tell me how much they love Patience.
I mentioned before that the robot books are not my favorite Wesley Allison books. That being said, they are my most popular, so I may well write another. Oddly, I have the hardest time thinking up plots for Mike and Patience, when plots just seem to pop up for my other books. If a new one ever does pop up though, I will write it. I have two titles in mind that I think are appropriate, but I’m not giving them up just yet.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve talked about the characters in Blood Trade, Women of Power, and finally Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike. Now it’s time to move on to His Robot Girlfriend and His Robot Wife.
The story that became His Robot Girlfriend consisted originally of some short flash fiction and the characters were not very well developed. When I decided to turn it into a book, I completely rewrote it, adding an ending. I had to turn some cardboard people into real characters. In the case of Mike Smith, I just decided to make him– me. He was a school teacher, about five years older than me, when I started, and instead of being happily married with two kids, he was a widower with two surviving children. Personality-wise, language-wise, and description-wise, he’s about as close to me as I could get. As I neared the end, I started feeling a little uncomfortable that he was so much like me, and I began working in little things that made him at least somewhat different. In the end, physically at least, Mike changes quite a bit. Patience really gets him into shape. I just started at the gym two months ago (though I don’t have a Daffodil pushing me along), so this might be a case of life imitating art.
By His Robot Wife, Mike has become a fairly sharp-dressed, in shape retired fellow. This was a natural progression from the end of the first book. He’s still pretty snarky.
These two books have been reviewed hundreds of times by readers posting to the net, running the gammut from over the top praise to well… the opposite of that. I get regular fan mail about them and they are by far the most read of my books. I have to say though, that as a reader, these are my two least favorite of my books. The don’t have as much of ME in them as say, Voyage of the Minotaur or Tesla’s Stepdaughters. That being said, I am certainly very proud when someone else tells me they love them. In the coming days, I’ll talk about the other characters. Next up: Patience.
City of Amathar 