Keith J. Hackerson's DUNE BLOG / tehKJA's Blahg(kjablog.com)

[Kojiro]

"Sorry, but KJA and Intelligence are two different departments."

[Omphalos]

"Sorry, but KJA and Intelligence are two different departments."

[Hunchback Jack]

A classic KJA post. (And your dissection of the campfire scene was masterful, SR).

The whole thing reads not just like KJA is pissed that his books aren't selling, it's that his whole career strategy of trying to piggyback his books on the latest media craze of the moment is being screwed up by bookseller staff who just don't get it.

"Don't you guys understand? I wrote this Superman novel because a new Superman *movie* just came out a few months back! If you don't put them together, my book will be judged on its own merits as a *book*."

HBJ

[Ampoliros]

We have Blag-sign!

A little gem about the outlines, which were discussed somewhere...else.

I spent the days fleshing out the chapter outline for Hellhole Awakening. (It turned out to be 84 double-spaced pages—almost a first draft—but when collaborating, we need a detailed blueprint to make sure we’re both in the same place.)

Okay so the detailed chapter outline is 84 pages and almost a first draft.

The whole "—but when collaborating..." part sounds like CYA.

“No matter how far you sail, the horizon is always in front of you.”

Yeah. And the Langoliers are RIGHT BEHIND YOU OMG KEVIN DICTAHIKE! DICTAHIKE LIKE THE WIND OR THE LANGOLIERS WILL GET YOU!

And the horizon will always be in front of you only if you never actually get anywhere.

And Brian and I are wrapping up a new Dune short story, tentatively titled “Wedding Silk,” that takes place with young Paul Atreides in the pre-Dune timeframe. After I finish this edit, I will send it to Brian for his final polish. We intend to release it as an eBook as part of a collection with other Dune short stories.

I guess this confirms the collaboration on the new e-publishing venture. Now just what would they have young Paul Atreides doing with wedding silk...

While we were in Hollywood, I had other business as well, meeting two different movie producers who are working with me on film projects, as well as a computer game developer (who is looking very closely at Hellhole as a property). There was much talk in Hollywood about film deals for Hellhole and Terra Incognita; I will post news as soon as anything’s confirmed.

Good, the sooner KJA can make the transition from 'writer' to Michael Bay groupie/clone the better off we'll all be. Okay those of us that don't care about summer lacklusters...er blockbusters.

And maybe when they are designing levels or rendering CGI for Hellhole, they might actually notice how little the setting has to do with the action. I hope the vineyards make an appearance.

And of course, the first ever fantasy casting for HELLHOLE!

DMD: Milla Jovovich (no make up either, but they keep telling us she's really old.)
Tiber Adolphus: William Shatner (first announced, then leaves the project and rumors abound if he quit or was fired) Replaced by
Sophie:Goldie Hawn
Devon: Justin Beiber
Antonia: Kristin Stewart
Fernando: Carrot Top
Vincent:Casper van Dian
Princess Keana: Keanu Reeves
Louis: Keanu Reeves

[JustSomeGuy]

He spent days "fleshing out" an 84 page chapter outline. How long does it take this guy to write a book?

I think "Wedding Silk" is a great title for a Dune story.

[Sev]

He spent days How long does it take this guy to write a book?

Six weeks seems to be about the norm

[JustSomeGuy]

I bet he could do it in one week, if he really pushed himself. One book, minus the editing. Maybe one day. I bet he could.

[SandChigger]

“No matter how far you sail, the horizon is always in front of you.”

Yeah. And the Langoliers are RIGHT BEHIND YOU OMG KEVIN DICTAHIKE! DICTAHIKE LIKE THE WIND OR THE LANGOLIERS WILL GET YOU!

Now just what would they have young Paul Atreides doing with wedding silk...

Well, he's already been to the circus with his BFF and lived with a bunch of sexually ambiguous types (Jadacha hermaphrodites, remember!), so I figure we're about to witness KJA introducing furtive cross-dressing or frantic masturbation to the McDune mix.

Where's that meteor?

[JustSomeGuy]

[Freakzilla]

Does Chanilover know about this? Where is he?

[Robspierre]

Robert Silverberg has him beat. Between 1959-1964 he wrote 150 novels, that's thirty novels a year. That was just the soft core porn out put of his. He still wrote science fiction and historical non-fiction.

My Life as a Pornographer
http://efanzines.com/EK/eI14/index.htm#porn

Rob

[Freakzilla]

Yeah, but was it QUALITY porn?

[Freakzilla]

"Thunderous"

[SandChigger]

Simultaneous!

[Sev]

Keith's latest rant is a classic for not seeing the truth of the matter. He wrote a 'terrible incontinence' short story a year ago and wanted it published to coincide with the third book in the trilogy out next month. First fantasy publication he submitted it to turned it down, the second decided that going out of business was preferable to publishing it. The third submission, to a web-based publication this time, turned it down. The fourth lost the submission (yeah, that old excuse!), and then didn't get back to him when he re-submitted.

So now he's published it via his website, and bragged that he and Jabs did it all in a fortnight - therefore e-publishing is much quicker and cost effective than the old tried and trusted methods.

What you've failed to comprehend, Keith, is that...NO ONE WANTED YOUR FUCKING SHORT STORY BECAUSE IT FUCKING SUCKED, JUST AS EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER SHAT OUT HAS UTTERLY STUNK.

[SandChigger]

I'm all for KJA moving to e-publishing.

[SandRider]

I think he thinks this little blob of words shows how difficult the "Business of Writing" can be:
"(Yes, newbies, even successful authors still garner rejection slips, especially in today’s
extremely tight short story market.)" ... I think the lesson he thinks he is imparting is to not
give up, but continue flailing away until the story ("product") finds a profitable niche, no matter
how small the profit, and regardless of the depths you have to sink to find that niche ...

I don't think he understands that to just about anyone, I would suspect, he comes off sounding
like a greedy little cocksucker; that this blahg-entry is a classic How-To-for-Hacks: spit-up a story
in minimum time, contrive to attach it to another hack-project, do not be deterred by rejection from
reputable publishers ....

Faster than the Speed of Publishing: eBooks
Kevin J. Anderson
Saturday, 10:29 PM

Last July while on a solo camping trip in the wilderness, I found myself in between novel projects. Because I dictate most of my writing while hiking, I hated to let all that good creative time go to waste—so I wrote two short stories that had been on my back-burner, a science fiction piece called “A Delicate Balance” and an original fantasy story, a spinoff of my Terra Incognita trilogy, titled “Mythical Creatures.”

I had a secondary purpose for writing “Mythical Creatures” (okay, call it an ulterior motive). My third Terra Incognita novel, The Key to Creation, was scheduled for publication in July 2011 (a year after my camping trip). Not only did I think “Mythical Creatures” was a good story, I also hoped that it would generate interest in the finale of the Terra Incognita trilogy, maybe attracting new readers who would decide to check out the three novels.
But that would work only if the story came out before the release of Key to Creation—in other words, June 2011 or sooner. Even with the ticking clock, however, I felt no real sense of urgency. I had almost a year, after all, which is enough time even for traditional publishing to get a story out the door, provided they didn’t delay too long.

After returning from the camping trip, I sent the audio files to my typist, who transcribed both stories and sent my draft files back. I polished the two stories, finishing them by mid-August. “A Delicate Balance” and “Mythical Creatures” were ready to submit to magazines, and I sent them to top science fiction and fantasy publications.

By the end of September, “Mythical Creatures” came back from the first fantasy editor. “We don’t generally publish traditional fantasy stories.” (Yes, newbies, even successful authors still garner rejection slips, especially in today’s extremely tight short story market.) So I sent it to Fantasy market #2. We still had nine months.

Two months later (November) Fantasy market #2 went out of business, and the story came back unread.

Hmmm. By now, only seven months remained before the story needed to come out. Time was starting to get a little tight. Print fiction magazines usually can’t turn work around that quickly, so I chose to send the story to a web-based Fantasy market, assuming they had more flexibility and swifter turnaround. “Mythical Creatures” came back from them in late December. “We don’t like stories with religious overtones.” (The Terra Incognita trilogy is deeply rooted in a fantasy version of the Crusades, a bloody religious war that crosses continents.)

Meanwhile, I still hadn’t heard anything from Science Fiction market #1 about “A Delicate Balance,” even though it had been four months. That’s not an unheard-of response time, but when I sent in a query, the editor responded with some embarrassment: the submission must have been lost somewhere; could I please resend it? They would read it immediately. So I resubmitted the story.

Now, with only six months left before June and the impending publication of The Key to Creation, I thought I might have to bite the bullet and release “Mythical Creatures” online myself, strictly for the promotional value. Nevertheless, keeping my fingers crossed, I submitted the story to one more market, a major web-based SF and fantasy venue. In my cover letter, I explained the situation, that this story was tied to the July release of a novel and that—if the editor liked the story—could it possibly be released by June? If that schedule was unrealistic, I asked for the story back right away, and we’d make it an eStory.

Meanwhile, a month after my query, I still hadn’t heard back on “A Delicate Balance,” so I queried again. By February (more than six months after the submission), the story came back; the editor didn’t like the ending. So I sent it to Analog magazine, which has published many of my SF stories.

March: still no response from the web magazine on “Mythical Creatures.” Now only three months remained before my June deadline. This didn’t look good. I wrote a somewhat anxious letter, again emphasizing the ticking clock and saying “if you can’t publish this by June, please let me know and I’ll release it myself.” By now that seemed the only viable alternative, but the editor responded promptly: The submission had gone astray somewhere. Could I please resend it? I was promised an answer within a week, so I did re-send the story—and again included the reminder from the outset that if June was not a possible target release, then I would withdraw the story and publish “Mythical Creatures” myself.

In April, Stan Schmidt, the editor of Analog, wrote to say he liked “A Delicate Balance” and asked for a few minor clarifications to the text. I made the edits, gave the story another close read (it had been nine months since I’d last read it, after all), and sent it back. A week later he accepted the story for Analog. I received and signed the contracts in early May.

Alas, still no answer on “Mythical Creatures,” and so by May 1, I sent a polite letter to the webzine editor withdrawing the story. I’d written “Mythical Creatures” ten months earlier, which should have been plenty of time for its release in conjunction with the related novel. Now, however, the only possible way to do it in time would be to publish the story ourselves.

At WordFire Press, Rebecca and I have been releasing many of our own eBooks, putting my out-of-print novels and short stories back in print in all the same venues that major publishers do. We’re familiar with how to do it—so we got to work.

Lee Gibbons, the excellent cover artist for the Terra Incognita novels, had already sold us the rights to his paintings for use on our Terra Incognita rock CD covers, including part of his Key to Creation artwork for our third CD (currently in progress); I asked Lee if I could also use the ornate dagger handle as a graphic element for the eStory cover. I reread the story and gave it a final polish; Rebecca, who worked for many years as a professional copy-editor, proofed “Mythical Creatures,” then designed the cover using Lee’s artwork.

In order to sweeten the deal, to make the story more tempting to the Terra Incognita fans, we added bonus material: the full text, story, and all the lyrics from both Terra Incognita rock CDs (none of which has ever been available online). We priced the whole package at $1.99.

Working together, we got the story up for sale within two weeks.

If I had done that in the first place, the story could have been available (and generating sales) since last August.

Read “Mythical Creatures” in Kindle, Nook, and other eReader formats.

This changes the whole publishing and release dymamic. I had spent the better part of a year going through the traditional submission process with traditional publications—as I’ve done all my career. I sold “A Delicate Balance” on its second submission to one of the most-respected science fiction magazines…but even that took nine months, the contract was signed in the tenth month, and I don’t know yet when the story will hit the newsstands (probably another six months or so). That isn’t an unusual amount of time by any means, and Analog has been very, very good to me over the years. It’s just the way magazines work.

My concern about the timely release of “Mythical Creatures” didn’t much matter to the other editors involved. It was my deadline, not theirs. But even without a self-imposed deadline, do authors—and readers—need, or want, to wait more than a year between the writing and the publication of a new work? (And that’s if an editor accepts it early on…some highly successful novels were rejected half a dozen times, causing a delay of five years or more!)

Ebooks offer an express lane for authors interested in getting their books and stories into print as soon as possible—much faster than the speed of traditional publishing.

The clock is ticking.

[Freakzilla]

Faster than the Speed of Publishing: eBooks
Kevin J. Anderson
Saturday, 10:29 PM

In April, Stan Schmidt, the editor of Analog, wrote to say he liked “A Delicate Balance” and asked for a few minor clarifications to the text. I made the edits, gave the story another close read (it had been nine months since I’d last read it, after all)...

His writing is so forgettable, even the author himself can't remember it.

[Ampoliros]

This goes in the "Sales have reached Terminal Velocity" folder of KJA's records.

IIRC when you get an advance for a book, and it doesn't meet that amount aren't you contractually obligated to return the amount the publisher didn't recoup from sales after a certain period of time? Isn't it called an "Advance" because its basically a paid advance on an expected number of sales? And the advance for Hellhole was a "good six-figure" number? I'm just thinking that might be why KJA is so suddenly jumping full force into self-publishing online and all his bitching about "casting wider nets".

[D Pope]

I think you're on to something there, Amp.

[Robspierre]

Amp, as I recall, the advance doesn't get paid back, the author just does not see any money until after the amount of advance has been recouped, which usually means when it goes to MMPB.

Rob

[Ampoliros]

It might also be different for first time authors and published ones. Of course, first time authors won't get much advance to begin with anyway.

[Robspierre]

None of the legitimate publishers require payback of the advance, the only possibility i've seen of this being mentioned involves not writing a book. The only time an advance can be a losing situation for a publisher is if they give a 6 figure advance to an unproven unknown. The publishers usually get a better deal on the various rights with a new writer than a seasoned pro. Believe me, the publishers have the system gamed in their favor.

Rob

[Ampoliros]

If it's gamed in their favor, why publish KJA?

sigh...because fanboys will rabidly purchase and even defend anything with their brand on it.

[SandChigger]

anything with their brand on it

The Mark of Zero?