Kim Neville

Valerie Kemp has a great post on first chapters over at Nathan Bransford’s blog. Lots of good advice in there that I needed to hear. I especially love that the first point on her list of tips for shaping up a first chapter is: “Rewrite it from scratch”. In case I needed more proof that my husband is right.

I also completely agree with Kemp’s assessment of The Hunger Games as a fantastic example of how to open a novel. In fact, I recently re-read its first chapter to figure out how to infuse some of that awesome into my own work. It was just as good the second time. So good it actually prompted me to beg Shane to read the book, because 1) I know he’ll love it, and 2) I want to be able to talk to him about it. Nothing’s worse than reading something great and not being able to talk to your best friend about it because he’s going to read it “someday” and won’t tolerate spoilers. Ask me sometime how long he made me wait before we could finally discuss the last Harry Potter book. It bordered on cruel. As for The Hunger Games, Shane looked at me and said, “Do you see how many unread issues of Wired and Fast Company are piled beside the bed?” The downside of living with a voracious reader of non-fiction. I’m going to have to wait a while.

I have to confess that until WorldCon, I’d never heard of Catherynne M. Valente. I should have. She’s incredibly prolific and insanely talented. Her work has been nominated for several awards and has won both the James Tiptree Jr. Award and the Mythopoeic Award. Most importantly, she writes the kind of stories I love best, playing with myth and folklore to create original fairy tales and gorgeous urban fantasies. I’ve ordered both of The Orphan’s Tales books and Palimpsest and I can’t wait to read them. If you’re curious, Valente’s got an excellent website with a ton of content, including a free online serial novel entitled The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making.

Valente was on a panel called “Writing for a Living”, a subject, as I mentioned in my last post, I’m very interested in. Although the discussion was lively I didn’t learn much that was new to me. The sole exception is an intriguing project that Valente has launched, an experiment in what she calls “cyberfunded art”.

Valente has been a full time writer since 2006 but until recently she had the additional financial support of her programmer partner. Last December he was laid off and Valente became the sole income earner in her household. She had to choose between taking a low-income job (with a degree in Classics, she told the audience she was qualified to work at Starbucks and not much more) and exploring new ways to generate income through writing. Thus was The Omikuji Project born.

Every month Valente writes a new and original short story of not less than 2,000 words. She sends the story to subscribers of the Omikuji Project, either by email in PDF format, or by mail. The mailed stories are printed on archival paper, signed by the author and sealed with a wax stamp. The stories will not appear anywhere else. The only way to read them is to become a subscriber.

It’s not cheap: $5/month for the PDF and $10/month for the mailing, or $50 & $100 for a year. But she’s not aiming for hundreds of subscribers. She estimates 30 to keep the project going. Do the math – it’s a decent income supplement. It’s certainly more money than most writers can expect to earn from a single short story.

Looking at the reviews of Valente’s work and the awards that she’s been nominated for, I think it’s probably good value. During the panel Valente mentioned she’s got five novels coming out in the next two years. Her career is just beginning and I suspect it will be a long and illustrious one. Imagine owning one of only 30 copies of a signed short story by Neil Gaiman? Or <insert favorite author here>?

I think this is a fascinating idea and I wonder if anyone knows of other writers engaging in similar ventures? I would love to hear about it.

While at WorldCon last week I attended an unusual reading by Neil Gaiman. He wasn’t reading his own work but a short story by Cory Doctorow. I went because I’m a fan of both writers and I thought it would be fun. I didn’t expect it to be the most fascinating event of the weekend.

Before the reading began, Doctorow outlined his plans for With a Little Help, a book of short stories he’s self-publishing under the Creative Commons license using the Nine Inch Nails price point model.

What this means, essentially, is the book will be available in several formats at various prices. There’s a video presentation on Doctorow’s blog if you want more detail, although be warned the audio’s a bit rough. I had trouble catching some of it, but between my notes at the reading and the video, here are the various offerings as I understand them:

A free online version, donations welcome;

Print-On-Demand editions with your choice of five different covers designed by various artists, printed through Lulu.com;

A free audio version, stories recorded by voice actors and writer friends (the Neil Gaiman reading was recorded for this);

An audio CD;

A premium edition limited to 250 copies (leather-bound, hand-sewn, with end papers made from the original papers of other SF writers – Doctorow mentioned William Gibson); and

A hyper-premium $10,000 edition. I’m unsure on the details, but I gather that the person who bought this edition got to commission the only original story in the collection (the rest are reprints).

Why am I excited about this experiment?

One thing I learned at WorldCon is how hard it is to make a living as an SF/Fantasy writer. I’m not naive. I never thought it was easy. But I was surprised at how many good writers – writers with several published novels, writers whose names I recognized – still have day jobs.

It’s my dream to write fiction for a living. Given the current structure of the traditional publishing industry, my dream will be extremely difficult to achieve. So, I am very interested in seeing new publishing trends emerge. Obviously self-publishing isn’t new but few writers, especially fiction writers, have had real success going the self-publishing route. The success stories that are out there all seem to end with the author’s book being picked up by a major publishing house. I’m interested to see how well self-publishing works for an established writer like Doctorow.

Shane and I talked at length about the Nine Inch Nails price point model and how it could be applied to book publishing back when Ghosts I-IV was released. Shane’s developed some interesting ideas around this. If he gets around to blogging about them, I will post a link. It’s very cool to see some of his ideas coming to life in this publishing venture.

In the POD version of the book, Doctorow will be adding a monthly appendix with all the financials, including an analysis of what’s working and what’s not, what he thinks will work only for him (as an established writer with a solid fan base) and what he thinks can work for everyone.

As far as I’m concerned, that information alone is worth the purchase price.