Obviously this is a big deal for me. 5,000 copies of His Robot Wife have been sold as of sometime in February. Sales have slowed a bit, but it still selling better than my other books. Hopefully when I have His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue done, sales will hop a bit more. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who purchased my book.
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.
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.
A reminder– not only is there an Author Wesley Allison page on facebook, which you should visit and “like,” there is a page for each of my books. I have been reposting old blog entries that are appropriate to each book, so if you missed any you can now read them. I’m also posting new blog entries to the appropriate pages, so if you “Like” the book pages, you can read the my blog on Facebook rather than blogspot. Below are the URL addresses for each of the Facebook pages.
Author Wesley Allison
His Robot Wife
His Robot Girlfriend
Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess
Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress
Brechalon
The Voyage of the Minotaur
The Dark and Forbidding Land
The Drache Girl
Tesla’s Stepdaughters
Women of Power
Princess of Amathar
My books have been available at Kobo Books for a long time, with one exception. His Robot Wife was one of a group of books that got caught in limbo between Smashwords and Kobo as the latter struggled to import newly published books. Finally, it is there! Just like the other locations where you can find the book, His Robot Wife sells at Kobo for 99 cents. You can get it by following the link below.
Follow the Link to Kobo Books.
His Robot Wife continues to sell well and I want to thank all the Kindle users out there who purchased it. It is available at many fine ebook stores, including Amazon.com, for 99 cents. As of this date, it has sold over 2500 copies and I couldn’t be more please. I guess technically I could, say, if it sold 5000. 🙂
I can only tell where I am selling the most ebooks, and that is definitely the Apple iBooks Store. I think it is because of the way they are presented. It’s easier to find Indy books among the listings at iBooks. Once a book starts selling well, it shows up on Kindle lists, but otherwise it can just sit there. Here are the sales to date for His Robot Wife.
| Smashwords 60
Amazon |
| 832
Kobo |
| 0*
B&N Nook |
| 102
Apple iBooks |
| 1146
Sony |
| 7
Diesel Books |
| 1 |
* Kobo seems to be having a problem importing new books from Smashwords. Both say they are working to fix this. Note also Amazon includes both Amazon.com and Amazon.UK.
City of Amathar 