Nautically inclined indie author, Hugh Howey, is taking to the seas to live the life of a pirate or something. Sadly, the catamaran Hugh is having built doesn’t have space for all the books he collected during his rise to super-stardom so, a few months ago, he held The Most Spectacular Pot Luck Book Signing in the History of the Universe to clear out his storage. For a flat fee per item, fans could request items from his collection – anything from simple signed copies of his books to a Boba Fett action figure. The catch being that there was no guarantee they’d get exactly what they ordered – hence the Pot Luck in The Most Spectacular Pot Luck Book Signing in the History of the Universe. I ordered three “items” but was deliberately vague about what I wanted. I enjoyed Hugh’s Wool novels but Sand is actually my favourite of his and his “dark” story – I, Zombie is just too tempting to ignore. So, I asked for something related to those two books. The parcel arrived a few days ago and I wasn’t disappointed. First up, I got these: That’s a complete set of the individual Sand novellas, all signed. Next, there was a manuscript page from one of his Molly Fyde books. And … Read More
Dust
The third book in Hugh Howey’s Silo Series, Dust, was released today. The first book in the series, Wool, began life as a fantastic short story that Hugh self-published at the end of July 2011. Encouraged by the fan reaction and sales the book was getting, Hugh published four more parts to the story and an omnibus edition all of which dominated the Amazon bestseller charts until Hugh was making enough money to quit his day job. Wool started getting mainstream publicity and rose up the overall Amazon charts. That attracted the attention of the big publishers who backed up the money truck and offered Hugh a publishing deal. And this is where it starts to get interesting, particularly if you’re thinking of self-publishing your work. Rather than signing a book deal, jumping in a limo and riding off into the sunset waving his bottle of champagne at the poor slobs toiling away on their little ebooks, Hugh invited the publishers in, had a cup of tea with them, then thanked them nicely and sent them back to New York with a slice of cake [1. Okay, it may not have happened exactly like that but he seems like a nice guy … Read More
Forward Progress
When we left our hero (that’s me), he was knocking on the door of the 70,000 word mark of his novel, The Ghost Smuggler. Yesterday, after some back and forth as I deleted and rewrote chunks of the book, I reached 70,310 words. The scene I wrote was a big showdown between Kaei and one of the protagonists and I think it turned out pretty well. There’ll be more work to do during the revision stage but I’m happy with it as a first draft. I’ve been targeting 80,000 words for this draft which is about 30,000 words less than my original first draft and a nice length for a first novel. Based on where I am now it’s going to come in pretty close to that number. Kaei has dealt with one of the main protagonists and is just about to deal with the other, then there’ll be a brief closing scene and I’ll reach The End. The first draft won’t quite be finished at that point. I still need to go back and replace a couple of chapters to tighten up the story and fill in some plot holes. I think that’s going to get me pretty close to … Read More