Decisions, Decisions

“Holy crap, you’ve written a lot of books! Where should I start?”

I get asked something like this a lot, but I never have a good answer. I mentioned a week or two back I’d put a post out like this to help people – but I’m not sure how much help it will provide! Hopefully you’ll want to grab them all. 🙂

Anyhow, to answer the question: It depends on a lot of things. For example, do you like sci-fi or fantasy more? Do your tastes range towards action and adventure or crime and mystery? Fast paced or slower, more thoughtful?

Let me throw out a few first and let you decide…

Voidhawk – my first published novel way back in 2009. It also just became an audiobook, but I digress. Voidhawk is fantasy, but it’s fantasy with a twist. It’s kind of like dungeons and dragons in space. Complete with wooden ships sailing through the void (space). So it’s part high fantasy, part space opera, and part wtf. I consider it a niche market and I never expected it to take off. Yet quite a few times over the past few years my Voidhawk series (6 books in it so far) has done quite well. I regularly get people asking for more, which is going to happen someday soon.

Wanted – This is my second published novel. It’s near future science fiction that I dreamt up during the threat of a world-wide recession back in 2007 – 2009. The book takes place in a mildly scorched earth environment. Global terrorism has torn America up and left the southwestern US to fend for itself. Enter the main characters – a former Spec Ops guy who wants to be left alone, a porn star turned actress whose career was peeking after all the real Hollywood stars died when dirty bombs took out LA, and a couple of rich kids who had the misfortune of being on a plane that crashed in the Sonoran desert. There’s 4 books here and this has arguably has been the most successful series I’ve written.

Blades of Leander / Order of the Dragon – More high fantasy here. A new world with new troubles and a peasant farmer boy who’s thrust into being the man of the farm. Then somehow things get twisted up with young love and the chance to make a difference and be a hero. It escalates from Child of Fate (book 1) into a trilogy (Blades of Leander) and then a follow-up saga (Order of the Dragon, 4 more books).

Vitalis – Futuristic science fiction centered around humanity’s discovery of life on another planet. Real, advanced life – in the form of dinosaur-like critters and a downright nasty ecosystem that is very xenophobic. It’s risqué at times, earning at least an R rating and not just for harsh language. Book 2, Resurrection, even starts out with a couple of characters that make some readers uncomfortable – although I never get very descriptive and tragedy interrupts the moment before it can get started. Vitalis is six books at present and one I’m anxious to continue very soon. The first book is called the Vitalis Omnibus because it contains 7 novellettes I put together and tried to sell individually.

Dark Earth – Urban fantasy here. It involves the discovery of a parallel world to Earth that followed a different evolution. We have technology, they have magic. Sort of. They also have a lot of very mean and nasty people in charge. It’s a harsh world where bigots and chauvinists seem to be rewarded. Until the portals start opening and they begin to find out just how dangerous a pissed off woman can be! Dark Earth sets the stage for a 3 book series, which then has two additional books set in the same setting. Another series also uses the Dark Earth setting, but it’s 40 years in the future…

The Lost Girls – This is the series I just mentioned. These books came about when a character popped into my head and demanded attention. She called me dirty names and abused me every possible way until I wrote her story. Then she demanded I write another one, which is rare (usually I break away between books in a series but for her I did back to back). Eventually she demanded a third and later a fourth book. At that point I’d had enough. She’d mellowed out a little over the years and I couldn’t bring myself to do anymore to her. Until another idea hit me. This time it was an idea about a bad guy. We had a long talk (yes, me and the fictional heroine of the series), and she agreed she’d do one more for me. So that series hit five books. There may be more down the road, but she won’t be the starring character anymore. These books are urban fantasy / paranormal / science fiction (yes, I really did wrap all that together) AND they are detective / crime novels to boot. I will not be shoe-horned into a genre, damn it!

If you’re a proper red-blooded American, and by red-blooded I mean you understand the Internet may have been built for the exchange of technology and data but it wouldn’t exist without the need for hot and steamy content, then maybe my Homeland series is up your alley. Only two books in it so far (Forbidden Love and Broken Slipper), but they involve undercover homeland security agents and the lengths, depths, girths, and other extremes they will go to for their country.

I’ve got a few stand-alone books too, or books that are related to a series but aren’t officially a part of it. Those don’t get much traction even though everyone that reads them that tells me about it says they enjoy them.

Oh! Silly me, I almost forgot my latest. I released one a few months ago called Transcendent. Future sci-fi with humanity controlling all of our solar system (but not doing anything beyond it). It’s my attempt at capturing the dystopian young adult interest so popular with Divergent and The Hunger Games. Except I went a little more high tech by introducing biomechs (basically humanoid tanks of the future with a human pilot plugged in the cockpit and organic muscle systems stretched over their metal frames).

And, on the not-so-sly, I’ve been working with my wife to capture a spot in the paranormal romance genre by releasing a serial novel called Claimed by the Beast. We’re using her name, Dawn Michelle, for that series. I refer to it as furry porn, but only tongue in cheek. There’s no actual, um, porn going on. (although there are a few very steamy scenes in upcoming releases).

Phew – I think that about covers it. Don’t ask me which one is m favorite – I love them all. I’ve been very disappointed by the lack of response a few have gotten (Homeland and Transcendent, for example). I’ve been surprised by others because I didn’t think people would be as twisted as I am. I’ll vouch for any and all of them, but they’re my children so I kind of have to. 🙂

To learn more about Jason Halstead visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

What I Can Do For Me

As my children learned to crawl, walk, and talk I considered the first major milestone to be when they could wipe their own butts. To me that was an epic moment. Maybe not on the list of top 5 moments in my life, but it was up there. I do not, however, recall the moment when I hit the same goal.

I’ve been reaching out to my writing peers lately. I reconnected with them on the Kindleboards’ Writer’s Café message board. I ran across a link that mentioned it and wanted to check out something from a few big names that post on there. I was shocked to remember my username and password that I’d set up on it years ago, so I figured I should jump in. So I did.

What I found out surprised me. I’ve long considered myself a little fish in a big sea. It seems I’m not quite as little as I once thought. I might even be in the vaunted top 5% of writers as far as income is concerned. That sounds awesome – right? Well the bottom 95% appear to being making three, four, and low to mid five digit incomes.

So that made me feel proud of the hard work I’ve done over the past several years, but it only served as fuel to build a bigger fire under my chair. I want to write more and to reach more people. I may never be a Dean Koontz, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try like hell to be a Hugh Howey, Michael Mathias, or Joe Konrath.

So close on this realization I received an email from a publishing company that has been on a string of acquisitions lately. A real New York based publishing company, although they are focused on the ebook market. They wanted me to consider them for future sci-fi books that I write.

Now I’ve never snubbed my nose at the more traditional publishing industry. I started out seeking acceptance from them and received a fair share of rejections. A mark of passage and, to be fair, I deserved to be laughed at for those horrible early submissions.

Receiving that email felt a little bit like a pat on the back. But then I got to thinking about it. What’s the big deal? They focus on ebooks and that’s what I’ve been doing for years now – longer than them, in fact. So I responded and said something to the effect of, “Tell me what you can do for my that I’m not already doing for myself.”

Yep. I said that. Fired it back and got a timely response – they want to do a conference call with me and the president of the company. Sounds impressive, I admit, but I’m doing well enough with my books that I’m not in any rush.

Okay, so why consider them in the first place? Traditionally established New York publishing companies offer reduced royalties over what I can get on my own. Bragging rights? Is that worth going from 70% royalties to 25% (or lower)?

Well that depends – can they step up to the plate and offer me increased visibility that would allow for additional sales? Right now I’m considering one of my books a success if it sells over 100 copies a month. Sadly, I’m only forecasting six of them this month (although one should be over 500 copies). If they could offer exposure that increases my visibility and allows sales to go from 50 to 500 or 100 to 1000, then that’s a win. Not only does it offset the lost royalty percentage, it also increases my potential audience. And the more readers I can get who find my books and like it, the more of my existing books they’ll find and grab.

So maybe, just maybe, that’s worth offering up a new book or a trilogy. It can’t do me any harm – worst case I explore some new characters in a new book that broaden my mind and give me the chance to learn more about writing.

In the meantime, I’m days away from releasing Vitalis: Chrysalis and probably halfway through book five in The Lost Girls: Guardian. Check for more info as I share it or sign up for my newsletter below so you can get the updates when they happen.

 

To learn more about Jason Halstead visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

Writing the Catholic Style

Nothing religious about this post – rather it’s all about the lack of birth control endorsement and encouragement to reproduce. So, too, should a writer be prolific. The more material a writer has out, the better the chance of income. More work means more exposure, which means more people interested, which means more sales. Of course it goes without saying that it should be quality work, but unless you’re Will Smith or Warren Buffet, the odds of predicting what’s going to be successful and writing something that matches the timing is a long shot, at best.

Don’t take my word for it though! I don’t have anything to back this up, other than a slowly increasing volume of books sold. There’s plenty of other sources that support this, from other writers suggesting the most important thing a writer can do is write to rough stats that show the more lines you have in the water the better your chances of catching a fish.

Something I stumbled across last night on the topic gave me quite a kick in the pants. The suggestion was relating to back lists, or pieces written that never left the hard drive / were retired from public consumption. Why are they were they are? In the age of ebooks there is no shelf-life, just a steady stream of new people looking for things to read. Is it because you, the writer, feel that it’s poorly written? Are you ashamed of it? Or perhaps it’s something you wouldn’t want your mother knowing you wrote. That’s not much different from having a money tree grow in the back yard but insisting on not plucking the fruit from it because you’re afraid it would hurt the tree. The answer? A pen name!

Branding is a key part of being a writer, and a lot of work goes into establishing and perpetuating that brand. We blog, we tweet, we read / review, and we write. We do other things too, hopefully most of them keeping us out of jail. But if you write something you feel may not be good for the brand you’ve been establishing, then put it out there under a pen name instead. Don’t focus so much on creating that brand, just let it do its thing on its own. Sure, maybe it’s slower, but our focus should be on writing and on doing what we enjoy the most, otherwise writing isn’t about living the dream, it’s just another job. And trust me, there are plenty of jobs that pay a decent salary out there that are a hell of a lot easier than being a writer.

So go forth and multiply! Or at least let your writing do the multiplying. Write like bunnies that got into a bottle of Viagra.