Documents of Tabat: Fashions of Tabat

Happy New Year, one and all! I thought I’d start the New Year talking about what I’m working on at the moment, putting individual stories up on Amazon and Smashwords. Between publications and backlog, I’ve got about 200 to play with, so it’s a pretty big task, given that I’d like to have almost all of them up by the end of the month. But if I consider that some are flash, which I’ll put up individually on QuarterReads and release in a compendium, it becomes less daunting.

I’m getting faster at the process as I go, and I’m also refining it, which unfortunately means I need to go back over some of the earlier releases, just to make them all look the same as far as prettiness and completeness goes.

Would it be better to space releasing the stories out over the course of a year? Probably. But I’d like to get this all set up and done so I can move onto other things. I have enough stories that will be added over the course of the year as I write them or their rights become available that there will be plenty of additions as is.

What I’ve done with the stories is split them up into series. This is an easy enough task because I’ve got plenty of clusters of stories where characters or locations repeat, as with Twicefar Station, which is the backdrop for “Amid the Words of War,” “Kallakak’s Cousins,” and “On TwiceFar Station, As the Ships Come and Go.” It’s also the same world as “TimeSnip,” whose main character appears in “On TwiceFar Station, As the Ships Come and Go.”

Why I’m doing this:

1. This allows me to provide readers who like a particular story with a way to find similar ones. If they read “Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart,” for instance, and want to find other steampunk stories by me, they can look at the others in the Altered America series.
2. This lets me play with KDP in a meaningful way. If I make the first book Kindle only for at least the first year, I can use the Kindle Select promotional tools and get readers to sample a story by giving it to them free.

Here’s what I’ve got sorted of the series so far, with a description of each.

Altered America (steampunk)
Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart
Rappacini’s Crow

Closer Than You Think (near future SF)
All the Pretty Little Mermaids
Tortoiseshell Cats Are Not Refundable
Zeppelin Follies
English Muffin, Devotion on the Side
Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars
Therapy Buddha

Farther Than Tomorrow (slipstream & space opera)
Bus Ride to Mars
Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain
Grandmother
Elsewhen, Within, Elsewhen

Superlives (superheroes)
Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut
Acquainted with the Night

Tales of Tabat (secondary world fantasy)
Narrative of a Beast’s Life
How Dogs Came to the New Continent
Events at Fort Plentitude
Sugar
Love, Resurrected
In the Lesser Southern Isles

Twicefar Station (far future SF)
Kallakak’s Cousins
On TwiceFar Station, As the Ships Come and Go
Amid the Words of War
I Come From the Dark Universe

Villa Encantada (urban fantasy/horror)
Eagle-haunted Lake Sammammish
Villa Encantada
Crowned with Antlers Comes the King

Women of Zalanthas (secondary world fantasy)
Aquila’s Ring
Mirabai the Twice-lived
Karaluvian Fale

The World Beside Us (urban fantasy/horror)
Jaco Tours
Magnificent Pigs
Heart in a Box
Can You Hear the Moon?
Of Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane

So far, after approximately a month of getting stuff up there, I’m seeing some small sales, but also a tiny uptick in my collections that could be due to something else entirely. (Self-publishing is such a mysterious process!) So over the course of the year, I’ll be tracking the results.

Both my Writing F&SF Stories and Advanced workshops offer students a chance to critique and be critiqued. To my mind, the latter is actually more useful, because being forced to articulate one’s position on an aspect of writing can be enlightening and instructive. With that in mind, here’s some best practices for such workshops.

Overall:

1. Start with what works. Let the writer know what you see as the story’s strengths and how they might capitalize on them.
2. What keeps you from connecting with the story? What don’t you understand? Sometimes the most useful thing you can give someone is a brief synopsis of what you think is going on in the story, because it may not match their intent.
3. Critique big ticket items, not little nitpicks.
4. It’s more important to point out what’s broken than to make suggestions how to fix it, because that fix will differ radically from writer to writer.
5. How do the beginning and ending work together to create a satisfying story? Is the story that’s provided the one the one promised in the beginning? Is the ending set up in a satisfying way? Is it the result of character actions?
6. What’s missing? What don’t you understand?
7. What seems extraneous, unneeded or distracting?
8. What’s the pacing like? Where does the story drag and where does it skip too quickly through details?
9. Where are the info-dumps and how can that information be spread out?
10. How well does the title work? If not well, what possible better titles can be drawn from the story?

Characters:

1. Are the characters likeable?
2. Are the characters acting or reacting?
3. Does the character have a point of identification with the reader, such as a problem, situation or want that both of them hold?
4. Where can we go deeper into the character’s head? Does the reader know what the character wants? Where don’t we understand what the character is doing?
5. Are there too many characters? Can any be combined?
6. Is the dialogue interesting and informative of character?
7. Is the point of view consistent?

World:

1. Is the world clear? Does the reader know where they are?
2. Does it feel generic? (Is it?) How can it be made more specific and evocative?
3. Does it make sense?
4. How important is the science of it? Are the facts right?
5. Where should we know more?
6. Where can the world come forward more?
7. Where can more sensory detail be worked in?
8. Is the culture interesting and also make sense?

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

Prefer to opt for weekly interaction, advice, opportunities to ask questions, and access to the Chez Rambo Discord community and critique group? Check out Cat’s Patreon. Or sample her writing here.