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According to the internet, it is (Inter)national Flash Fiction Day, so I’m reposting this in case you’re interested. Why wouldn’t you be interested? You get to print stuff out and cut it up and staple things together!
It’s a fun afternoon activity!
Notes on Being Lost is a very short sci-fi story about a friendship crumbling under the pressures of semi-controllable time travel. Internet favourite Ele Jenkins did the cover illustrations, and they are amazing. I butchered a section of the cover to make that header image. See? Amazing.
In the interests of doing something interesting with it, Notes on Being Lost is designed to fit on a single sheet of A4 paper — with a bit of DIY — and I’ll be leaving copies in silly places, e.g. London. Here’s how to put it together.
If you don’t live in London, you’re in luck! You can download it for free at Ge.tt. And as a bonus, Ele posted some process images for the cover on her sketchblog.
On 16th May 2012 ᔥ jamiedrew ↬ jamiedrew
The Guardian Presents the State of Science Fiction Address 2012
Come talk about this with me and the CSICON crew, and as a bonus, hear about my [mostly fake] magnum opus to be released in the near future!
A little while ago, Josh sent me an ~exclusive copy~ of his first novel, working-titled Tug of Water. Being awake at 4am last night, I started to leaf through it. Now I kind of hate him; the first few chapters – opening with a motorcycle accident and a mystery box – are outstanding.
What I’m saying is, don’t buy Josh’s book when it comes out. The last thing I need is the competition.
"Norris burst out a single, explosive, “Haw!” He looked down at the thing. “May be that things from other worlds don’t have to be evil just because they’re different. But that thing was! Child of Nature, eh? Well, it was a hell of an evil Nature."
from John W. Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” — the source material for The Thing, originally published in Astounding Stories, August 1938. A free ebook text can be found here (or you can read it online here).
If you haven’t seen John Carpenter’s The Thing, watch John Carpenter’s The Thing. It’s a near-perfect sci-fi/horror. You may also find me in line for the prequel in a fortnight’s time.
Relevant: “The Things,” by Peter Watts (Clarkesworld, January 2010).
Notes on Being Lost is a very short sci-fi story about a friendship crumbling under the pressures of semi-controllable time travel. Internet favourite Ele Jenkins did the cover illustrations, and they are amazing. I butchered a section of the cover to make that header image. See? Amazing.
In the interests of doing something interesting with it, Notes on Being Lost is designed to fit on a single sheet of A4 paper — with a bit of DIY — and I’ll be leaving copies in silly places, e.g. London. Here’s how to put it together.
If you don’t live in London, you’re in luck! You can download it for free at Ge.tt. And as a bonus, Ele posted some process images for the cover on her sketchblog.
Peter M. Ball, "On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War-Machines of the Merfolk"
When it starts we’re in a hotel room, the two of us curled up on a double bed. It’s a two-star kind of place: cracks in the walls, curtains covered in faded daisies, the clinging smell of camphor attaching itself after the first few of minutes of your stay. The television stutters as we flick through the channels, colours bleeding together and rendering the devastation a fuzzy blue or green. Still, we see it happen: the great machines of the merfolk coming up over the shore, rampaging through the city with devastating effect.
Five things I learned from my first foray into self-publishing (well, five things and then two more)
Allen asked me to write a post about the ebook I put out a while ago, Sing along if you know the words. ‘I’d really like it if you would,’ he told me, ‘and you coined the term tumblrati, so I should credit you for that, but I can’t find a way to integrate those two things.’
Luckily, some of us are operating on a higher level.
But, listen, I don’t want to talk about the ebook any more. I’ve talked about it a lot. I tweeted about it. I told my mother about it. I — god help me — I set up a Facebook page. If writing is a one-night stand, self-promotion is the long, hung over walk home in the morning. I’ve showered away my sins as much as I can, but this is the business, I suppose, and you can’t wash business away in the shower.
What I’d like to talk about is the things I learned when I put the ebook out.
1. Nobody cares.
By default, nobody cares that you’re offering an ebook. We’ve conditioned ourselves to scroll past this stuff. You have to give your readers a reason to care about your ebook, which is marketing, and advertising, and promotion, and all sorts of other things I know nothing about and am in no position to tell you about. But know this before you read on.
People will happily ignore your tweets, emails, blog posts, whatever, unless you give them a reason not to, which leads nicely into…
2. Be original.
When I put Sing along together, I wrote up a few 100-word stories and posted them in an image which linked to the book’s download page, hoping that a few friends would pass them along as trailers. There’s certainly something to be said for relentlessness here — once all three ‘trailer’ stories were up, I never mentioned them again — but put a little more thought into the promotion than ‘I have a book please buy my book.’
3. Know your audience.
Generally speaking, I pigeonhole myself as a genre writer over a literary one. So it wasn’t so surprising that people using tumblr weren’t interested, given that the #lit crowd are more literary-minded than me. Over on twitter, however, there’s a larger genre-fiction community, and a much more enthusiastic response to the book. Tell the right people about that thing you did: the people who are interested, I mean.
4. Don’t feel dirty.
Your friends and family are probably going to give you a hand (thanks, mum) but ultimately, you’re responsible for the success or the failure of your indie project. Self-promotion is a dirty business, but you’re going to have to yell about it because you, reader, are on the internet, and 90% of the internet is made up of writers. Tweet it loud, tweet it proud, whatever, just tweet it and try not to think about it.
5. There are other currencies.
This point is a personal one. I released Sing along if you know the words in a tough time, financially. I could have uploaded the thing to Lulu or whatever and made more money per copy, but there would be fewer people reading them.
So I put it out for free, hoping that my friends both on- and off-line would help spread the word through reviews and simple good words. It worked. About a hundred people downloaded the book within two weeks, which is pretty good going seeing as nobody cares.
The belief and support of your friends is more rewarding than any pile of money. The belief and support of a friend who also buys you a pint because he enjoyed your dumb robot story is even better (thanks, Adam!).
That’s all well and good, and I hope it’s all helpful to those of you thinking about putting something out. But there’s something that needs saying, more so than any of those things.
6. Pay it forward.
Of the hundred-odd people downloading Sing along, five people sent money through paypal. Those people sent enough money to keep me in meals for a few more weeks. When Allen announced his own book last month, I remembered their kindness and shelled out what I could for a digital copy. He told me it was silly, that he’d have sent a copy in a heartbeat, but I’ve become a believer in supporting the independent arts.
Don’t ask someone to help you out if you wouldn’t do the same for them, is what I’m saying.
Or, to quote a wise man, be excellent to one another.
7. Never pass up an opportunity for a plug.
Sing along if you know the words is a collection of stories set in a magical realist world of modern-day fairytales. There are community-minded werewolves. There is a robot who can’t, technically speaking, fall in love. There’s a deconstructed happily-ever-after tale. You can download it for free in a variety of formats, and I won’t even mention it if you don’t send me any money and we meet at a party in the future.
James Drew
London, June 2011
