Over is almost here

My next book is almost out. Yay!

This is a science fiction book about an AI using the love of an immortal Over and a rebel Under to incite the world in order to make things... better.

We are in the final stages of editing and preparing the marketing material.

The plan is to have it out within the first quarter of 2016. I suspect it will be in February, but if we hit issues, it may be March.

Cover art was done by Amanda Yoshida. If you are interested in utilizing her services, let me know.

Almost there and damn proud!

After five years of effort (on and off, mostly on), the first printed proof of the book is supposed to arrive in the mail today. I can hardly stand the suspense. I published the Humanism for Parents book, but that was totally different. It was non-fiction, which is monumentally easier to write than fiction (for me) and it was a topic that I could write about off the top of my head. The novel took 1.5 years of research before I could even start and then a little over half-a-year of reviews for me to realize my "craft" wasn't good enough. Then two years of higher education before I felt comfortable rewriting the novel.

In many ways, this book is my single biggest accomplishment in my life to-date. I've done hundreds of projects (technical/software), lived overseas twice, raised four kids, have three advanced degrees and my BS, and this book beats them all.

What is making it feel like such an accomplishment is that writing fiction is just not something I am a natural at. And yet... this book was so important to me that I ignored that, wrote it, and then went and did the work to become better. Now I am at the point that people see the first chapter and there is no doubt in their mind that I am a serious, professional writer. That, to me, is an accomplishment for someone as analytical as me, and I'm finding that I am quite proud of it.

See http://curley.me/propositum or http://fb.me/propositum.novel

Lulu and self-publishing

After completing my first draft of the non-fiction book now titled Humanism for Parents and releasing it for review, I started looking around at how to publish it. Since the intent was to learn about the publishing industry and I didn't want the hassle, or filters, of an agent, editor, and traditional publisher, I decided to self publish.

Self publishers had been around for a while at that point and were just starting to mature. There are different business models and some of them seemed more like a scam than anything realistic. Generally if they wanted me to pay a lot up-front, I avoided them. There are some very respectable services that do require some amount up-front, but then there is a corresponding gain in the lower print rates (so you make more on each book, but have to pay something up-front to even get started). Some of those that charge up-front also include services (e.g. editing, cover design, etc.) that account for that cost.

However, I really wanted to do it myself and I didn't want to pay much, if anything, up-front. So, I selected Lulu.com. They charge nothing up-front and you are allowed to edit the book and make changes as much as you want (up to actually releasing it for the public). They also offered a number of services that I didn't use and some I did. For example, I really liked their publishing packages that include an ISBN number and releasing the book to the major distribution channels like Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Google Books, and others. They also have international distribution options.

All-in-all, it worked out quite well. The one downside of this route is that the book cost is kind of high and there aren't a lot of options for discounts. The Humanism for Parents book ended up just under a hundred pages and cost about $12. I was able to buy books for my own distribution at a significant discount - in bulk it was down at the $4 range.

So, I ended up publishing this one to the public and it continues to sell some each month. I also published a genealogy book and a book of letters to my kids, both of which were private publications. I highly recommend this type of publishing in certain circumstances.

What Now?

After making the decision to write the historical novel, I realized that I knew almost nothing about the publishing industry. For me the best way to learn something is to go do it. So, while I was busy reading scholarly works on Jewish history, Roman history, and the founding of Christianity, I started turning some other work I had done into a non-fiction book...

I had raised three children in a humanistic way, had produced a web site about humanism, and was performing non-religious weddings. I therefore decided to combine all of this into a book on humanism for parents. At one point while raising my four kids, I had looked for a book like this and couldn't find anything other than some short articles on the subject.

Ultimately, I produced a book called Humanism for Parents - Parenting without Religion and then self-published the book through Lulu. I included a standard ISBN and delivery through Amazon and others and a digital (eBook) form. I also did a formal press release and some targeted emails, both through PRWeb.

This resulted in a number of magazine articles about the book, some book reviews, a radio interview and a number of speaking events.

I can't say that I learned how to get a book published the traditional route, but I did learn a fair bit about the industry. My goal for the book, other than industry knowledge, was to break even financially and to (eventually) sell a thousand copies. I've certainly done the prior and am working towards the latter with roughly 650 sold so far.

How it started...

I've worked in the software industry for over 25 years and have had the pleasure of helping to start seven companies. I often thought that it would be cool to write a novel about one, or more, of the experiences. I tried a number of times, but writing dialog is completely different than non-fiction and I found I lacked the confidence. I was never able to make more than half a chapter before putting it aside.

Then, a few years ago, I came across a topic that felt so important to me that I just had to complete the work. I was at a talk by a professor of religious history about whether or not Christ really existed. The crowd was mostly secular and were skeptical about religion. The professor spoke for an hour and a half and never really answered the question, though he presented a lot of data. The first question in the Q&A period was the same as the title of the talk, Whether or not Christ Really Existed. The professor looked at the audience of about 200 people like we were idiots and said, "Well, of course not".

I found it staggering that this professor could say such a thing. My estimation was that at least 90% of the people there thought someone must have existed that represented Jesus Christ; they would have just doubted his divinity. The gulf between what this scholar thought and what the (secular) public thought was truly mind-boggling. I endeavored to find out more and went on a quest of research into the topic. After dozens of books, I came to understand why many scholars today think Jesus Christ either didn't exist at all or our image of him is based on some amalgam.

After that, I decided that the best way to get the information to the public would be in the form of a novel. There were plenty of non-fiction books out there on the topic if people really wanted to read them, but clearly those weren't getting into the public's consciousness. I started out writing a book on how the Book of Q (a theorized book pre-dating the gospels believed to have a collection of sayings that were later used by the gospel writers) came about.

This was exactly the topic I needed; it had so much potential, in my opinion, that I would have to push through any difficulties in writing fiction to get it written and published. And so my adventure began...

Of course this blog is about the writing process and not the particular topic, so ignore the topic (especially if you don't like it) and read on if you are interested in the topic of writing and publishing.