Street art in Jaco, across from the sushi restaurant.What I worked on:
1007 words on Circus in the Bloodwarm Rain, although I really need to start going back and making some of the early parts make more sense. Right now there’s an awful lot of leaping about between the original short story it’s based on (news of that coming soon) and the final outline for the novel.
1005 words on Prairiedog Town (working title)
Total wordcount: 2012, but there’s still time to get a little more in
Today’s new Spanish words: la abeja (the bee), cienca ficción (science fiction), mamar (to suck, as it mother’s milk), el mamon (a kind of fruit), el lavavavillas (the dishwasher), el rastro (the flea market).
We walked down to the farmer’s market in the morning and bought lovely fruit, including bananas and rambutan. After some work in the afternoon, we took a swim break and tried out the pool here, which was delicious. But holy cow, I’d forgotten how tiring swimming can be, and what it’s like to step out of the water and feel gravity reclaiming what was just light and buoyant.
Later on, we went for an evening walk and were forced by rain into a sushi restaurant where we had terrific sushi (although the spicy tuna was a bit too much for me). We’ve been told that Jaco picks up considerably during the weekends, when everyone from San Jose comes down to spend some time here, and it does seem a good bit livelier this evening.
And a little translating! I’ve started “Panecillo tostado, con devoción para acompaña” and am undoubtedly mangling it considerably, all in the name of practice.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
You may also like...
Near+Far: Big Plans
My life is filled with scraps of paper, all of them written upon.As you may or may not know, I’ve got a short story collection coming out this fall, Near+Far. It’s all SF, and we’re using the Ace Double format for it: one side features all near-future stories; flip it over to find the far future ones.
I’ve been plugging away at a g’normous spreadsheet: compiling reviewers and book bloggers and interviewers and all that sort of stuff. Whew. So what am I doing to ramp up to publicize the book?
Finding reviewers interested in speculative fiction, particularly short stories.
Organizing a six week blog tour leading up to the book launch.
Organizing interviews and guest posts.
Writing a “How you can help” sheet to send to people who might help publicize the book.
Making give-away items using some of the interior art. They will be supercool!
Setting up podcasts for some of the stories.
Planning book-related events for September and October, including readings in Indiana and Maryland.
Working on some electronic stuff that is still Top Sekrit. 🙂
And then there’s getting the book together, too…It’s like a little circus, all contained on a single spreadsheet.
If you’re a blogger or reviewer interested in participating in any of that, please let me know!
Publisher Tod McCoy of Hydra House wearing one of the necklaces made for Near + Far.As you may know from the five bajillion posts and tweets and updates and god know what all else, I just had a book come out. I tried to have a somewhat coherent, or at least well-documented, promotion battle plan. Some stuff worked, some things worked better than others, and some stuff I dropped the ball on.
Things I did included:
Making jewelry: Anyone following the blog has seen the jewelry based on the interior art that Mark W. Tripp and I put together. They turned out beautifully and were a lot of fun to make. I’ve used those pieces as giveaways at the book launch post, as well as various web giveaways, and people seem to like them. I’ve been able to post some pictures of people wearing those, and that’s been fun as well. I made sure the pieces I handed out at WorldCon had chains with them, so people could put them on immediately and many did. I also made special versions for blurbers and other people involved with the book design.
Sending out an email: I sent out an email listing what people could do to promote Near + Far. I sent it to friends, fans, fellow writers, anyone I thought might be interested, and tried not to be too spammy about it, including a way they could remove themselves from my mailing list.
Contacting book bloggers and reviewers: I contacted a number of people, making my list simply by poking around on popular spec fic sites to look at their blogrolls. I’d intended to set up a blog tour, but didn’t get my act together on that, so there was no organized effort along those lines, but I did do a number of interviews.
Getting stories out there in both audio and print form: Figuring that samples of my work were one of the best ways to intrigue people, I sent out a lot of stories, including a number of audio reprints. I made sure that in the bio statements for each of these I mentioned the new book.
Goodreads giveaway: I set up a Goodreads giveaway, following the excellent suggestions Emily Chand laid out in How to Run a Goodreads Giveaway with Maximal Results. The giveaway is currently on its last day, with 752 people requesting it, which seems like a good result, particularly since a third to half of them have added it to their to-read list.
Blog giveaway: I gave away three pieces of jewelry on the blog, and had about a hundred entries all together. In retrospect, I might follow the poilicy mentioned in the Goodreads piece and just distribute one thing at a time, but next week I’ll be doing a sticker giveaway with stickers from the interior art.
So what’s in store for this week? Well, mostly preparing for a trip to the Baltimore Book Festival. I’ll be taking some stickers and jewelry along with me, but my focus is selling books. Beyond that, I’m continuing to send fiction out (got six pieces circulating over the weekend), preparing for another Goodreads giveaway, the aforementioned sticker giveaway, and trying a giveaway on Shelfari as well.
What all have I neglected? I’m still struggling with the mobile app intended to accompany the book, for one. I’d hoped to have more audio available, but still need to work on recording that (along with some other pieces I’ve promised to narrate). Overall, I’d give myself a solid B for my efforts, but I’ve made plenty of notes of things to do better next time.
