Tag Archives: His Robot Wife

My Favorite Bits: Robot Stories

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The other day, somebody asked me, “Wes, you are exactly like Mike in your robot books.  Is your wife anything like Patience?”  My answer was “My wife is pretty damned patient, but she’s no Daffodil.”

Mike is a lot like me, but I would say not 100%– 75 to 80% tops.  Still, many of the little stories and events in the books are taken from life.  In His Robot Wife, Harriet (Mike’s daughter) mentions the time that her father scared the crap out of a kid trying to bully her at the risk of getting fired.  Yup, that’s right from my life.

There’s a tidbit in the book where Jack (Harriet’s husband) is cleaning the puke out of his car because a neighbor he was trying to help vomited and caused a chain reaction.  This story comes from real life– thankfully not mine.  My brother-in-law experienced this.  His wife, like mine (they’re sisters) is always getting him to do something for people he hardly knows, and unlike me, he’s too nice to say no.  He ended up having to clean vomit from three or four other people out of his car.

In the new book, so far, there are fewer little tidbits from my own life, although I am channeling a few cruise vacations as Mike and Patience go on theirs.

My Favorite Bits: More Robot Stuff

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Here are a few more details about the world of His Robot Wife and His Robot Girlfriend.

One of the main background events in His Robot Wife is the presidential election.  I used random names for the presidential candidates, but one of the vice-presidential candidates was named for a teacher I work with.  That was four years ago, and despite huge turnovers in our school district, we still work together.

One of the details that I was really proud of was the payNETime acount.  I needed something that was a cross between Paypal and the broader banking world.  PayNETime is pronounced “pay any time” and it spells NET in the middle.  I was really proud of myself on this one.

Mike and Patience live at 11 North Willow.  During my high school years, I lived at 11 Cottonwood.

The two main robot manufacturers are Gizmo and Daffodil.  Gizmo is another word for mechanism, of course.  Daffodil is the flower and is meant to evoke the idea of Apple.  There are numerous little parallels between Gizmo/Daffodil and IBM/Apple.  Add to that Daffodil is in Cupertino.

His Robot Wife: Now in Paperback

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His Robot Girlfriend is now available for the first time from Lulu.  You can find it by following this link.  It’s just $4.50.  As mentioned before, most of my readers are ebook aficionados.  However if anyone knows of someone who would enjoy this book, please buy a copy and pass it on.

In the past, I’ve created several print editions with ISBN numbers that can be ordered from any bookstore.  I did this mostly for extra exposure, as with the exception of about 80 copies of Princess of Amathar, nothing much has been sold.  I’m going to leave those volumes out there, since they already are, but in the future, all paper books are going to be in the least expensive formats possible.  The downside is that they will pretty much only be available here or direct from Lulu.  That’s fine, since they aren’t selling anywhere else anyway.  If you are interested, check out the books tab from the top of the page.

Thanks everyone.

Newest Version of His Robot Wife Now Available.

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As I write this, the newest updated version of His Robot Wife is now up at Smashwords and Amazon.  By the time you read this, it should be available for download at all ebook retailers.  On the information page, it says Revision 8-8-12.

On a related note, I am cruising right through the draft of Patience is a Virtue, but I’ve been adding a lot to the original outline– so much that I had to go back and create a new outline.  The result is that this book will probably be much longer than either of the two previous books.  His Robot Girlfriend was 39,000 words, His Robot Wife was 28,000.  Originally I planned the new book to be close to His Robot Girlfriend, but now the outline calls for 64,000 words.  Of course, as I mentioned, usually my drafts get shortened during revision.  But now you know part of what is taking so long.

My Favorite Bits: The texTee and other Technologies

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When I wrote His Robot Girlfriend in 2008, there was no iPad yet.  There was a Sony Reader and an Amazon Kindle, and I imagined them replacing books, so I gave Mike a texTee.  I don’t know how I came up with the name.  Then the iPad came out and made me look kind of lame.  So when I wrote His Robot Wife, I updated the texTee and made it more advanced than an iPad, with a voice activated interface.  Along comes Siri, and I’m outdated again!

One thing they don’t have in my robot stories is a computer.  One of my ideas was that computers just don’t exist anymore as standalone items.  They have computers in everything.  People use texTees (Tablets), wriTees (word processor and more), and vueTees (televisions).  The vueTees have (according to the story): interactivity, inscope (don’t know what that would be), Infinet connections, and threed (probably something like 3D).  They also use t-pods (advanced ipods maybe) and something called an andTee.

I just added the andTee so there would be something that nobody knows about today that they have in the future.  I remember reading the cross-time novels by Harry Turtledove.  In those books, the people of the future have video games and music and something called a fasarta which is never explained.  Maybe the andTee and the fasarta are the same thing.

As I write this, I’m finishing up chapter four of Patience is a Virtue.  I’ve really got a groove going now, but what I’ve written is a lot more than is in my draft.  My books usually get shorter in revision, but this might well be the longest of the three books so far (not too surprising since the others are so short).  Keep an eye out here on your computer or your texTee for more updates.  Thanks.

Book Royalties Down Slightly

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I just received my book royalties for this quarter.  They are down slightly from last quarter and down quite a bit from the quarter a year ago.  On the plus side, just enough there to get myself a new iPad.

The real story is that I need to get the next His Robot Wife book completed.  I remember reading something by a fantasy writer, I think it might have been Piers Anthony, to the effect that he came up with many great ideas but didn’t write them until they were sold to a publisher.  I can’t follow his example for several reasons, but it seems stupid not to be working whole-heartedly on the one book I know will sell well.  So I’ve been working on it this week.  It may even hop the line ahead of books that I had planned to finish first.

Misc.

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I just got back from three days of fun in California.  My wife and both kids and I rarely get together all that often, but we spent two days at the beach and one at Knott’s Berry Farm and had a great time.

Just before I left, my beloved iPhone went all wonky on me.  I’m getting it replaced as we speak, since it’s still in warrenty.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

I’m just about to get my quarterly royalty check and am looking forward to replacing my iPad 1 with an iPad 3 (aka The New iPad).  This will be especially pleasing, since my last two quarterly checks went entirely to Uncle Sam, as he was of the opinion that I owed him more taxes.

His Robot Wife just sold its 8,000th copy.  It might not be a really major milestone, but it’s pretty cool to me.  I can’t wait till it hits 10,000.  Sales have slowed, but its still my best-seller– averaging about 400 per month for the past year.

Motivations: His Robot Wife

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His Robot Wife was written for entirely different reasons than any other book I’ve written.  All the other books (with maybe the exception of His Robot Girlfriend) were written because I thought I had a great story to tell and I wanted to tell it.  You could say that I wrote His Robot Wife for money, though that’s not entirely accurate.  I priced it an 99 cents even though I could have made more by pricing it higher.  I wrote it because I knew it would sell.

I publish His Robot Girlfriend in 2008, and it has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.  Many people wrote and asked for a sequel.  This was a big deal for me.  But I didn’t have a story.  As far as I was concerned, the story of Mike and Patience was over.  Still, people kept asking.  It took me three years to come up with a story for them, and I think it’s probably my weakest plot (but HRG wasn’t popular for its plot, but rather its characters anyway).  So in 2011 I wrote His Robot Wife.  It is short, at 28,000 words, but it went easily enough, and as it turned out, it has sold more copies than all my other books put together.

People still wanted another book in the series, but I really struggled to come up with an idea.  Then one night, it just popped into my head.  If I took the point of view away from Mike and gave it to Patience, a whole series of story ideas presented themselves.  I sat down and plotted out five books.

I spent some time writing the new book last night.  It’s not as easy to write as some other books in my workshop, but I’m having a bit of fun.  Now for those of you who bothered to read to the end… here is a little hint about something in the next book.

Patience acts as a mentor to another Daffodil, teaching her how to seem more human.  Talk about the blind leading the blind.