It’s been a week since Blackwood Marauders launched. Only a week. It already feels like forever.
The excitement of a launch is hard to beat. Almost everything in this road to authorship thing seems like a game of lottery. Sending out queries, review requests, receiving a review and then anticipating the responses, even making the right connections. You’re hoping that every little thing is it, your golden ticket out of whatever hellhole you’re in; money, fame, validation. It’s happened to others!
Except in the long run, that’s probably not really true, is it? Survivor bias. We only want to look at the successes, not the failures. Fuck the failures. Impress right out of the gate or go home. I’ve been watching the debut culture of the publishing industry, and the SFF community in particular, for the past few years now and it’s insane. Everyone reaching for that shiny new high, and then…most of the time, immediately moving on to the next big thing. Debut authors who don’t make it are discarded like rotten shells. How many fall off the wagon? Is anyone even looking?
Or maybe it seems like that to me. I don’t normally get excited by new releases. I read to fall in love, and when I fall in love with an author’s writing, I tend to stock my shelves with their books. So I’ve also learned to have a pragmatic way of dealing with my own work. I’m not really trying to write the next big novel. I just like exploring my stories, playing with my worlds, journeying with my characters, creating art where I can. If readers want to get swept away with me, they’re more than welcome to. If they don’t want to, I’m not going to try to force it. My books aren’t the best-written, they don’t have the best prose or heart-thumping action or wonderfully intricate systems and worlds or thought-provoking commentary on the human condition…they just are.
It feels more constant; stable. It’s a pattern set forward by authors I love, one I have to remind myself to emulate with every book I release. See, I ran into some trouble with The Ikessar Falcon because I wanted it to be more than its predecessor. And then I realized that such a pursuit is damned. I had to remind myself why I was writing this trilogy–not to impress people, but to see Talyien’s journey come to fruition. Which means making decisions that not everyone will agree with or enjoy, but there it is. And now I have this complete manuscript in my hands and it is exhilarating and intense and it is so, so much–maybe too much. But it was the only way I could write this and be content with it.
Release date is June 14, 2018. You may even notice a pre-order link up at Amazon now. Artist is working on the actual cover, and ARCs are coming. I’m getting some help distributing them, as one of the biggest blockades to this author thing for me is my social anxiety, and review requests–and anticipating responses–have wrecked both my mental and physical health the last year or so. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I checked my blood pressure recently and realized why I’ve been getting those weird headaches and left-sided pains for a while. Or why I tend to black out in the middle of the day. We (and by we, I don’t mean me) will be contacting people shortly to distribute e-ARCs of this troublesome book, and then those reviewers will be entered in a draw for physical copies because I’m not sure I have enough budget left to print something out for everyone.
I’ll be taking a few days’ break before jumping in to writing the rest of the third book. I still feel really exhausted, but it’s rearing to get out of my head, and I want it done.
