…Okay, okay, there was the socially questionable and morally bankrupt comic book I wrote when I was maybe seven, but that didn’t last longer than fifteen minutes, a stern warning, and the ten feet to Mom’s shredder. It doesn’t count.
Nor do the 130K of various fan fiction stories I’ve written over the years.
What does count is that sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll be posting the final cover shot and buy links to a 14,500-word e-book called Singer in Rhunshan, set in the same Lonhra Sequence world as my Cleis Press story ‘Saints and Heroes’. But not a sequel, not exactly. More like a M/M/F fantasy retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice legend, with a tone somewhere between Andre Norton and Patricia McKillip.
Eridan Singer chose music and the love of a half-breed warrior woman over his duties to his nearly-extinct royal family. When the spell holding his wife in human form fails forever, Eridan barters for shapeshifting magic of his own, from a pack of ancient gods. Even if the price is his safety, his soul, and the other half of his heart.
Why am I self-publishing it? Because of length and style, it doesn’t fit into most of the pro-paying SFF short fiction publishers. While it’s part of a longer book called Baneflower, Singer is just on the low edge to be a novella…and it doesn’t have enough graphic sex to be considered by the best erotic romance e-publishers.
Nor am I going to wager a core story of my Lonhra Sequence arc on a lesser publisher I don’t trust, who wants me to do all my own promotions anyway, who has awkward covers, and who might have a meltdown and trap my work in bankruptcy. (Being published badly is far, far worse than not being published at all!)
How am I going to do it? The latest, strongest version has been beta-read by some great readers. I’ll give it another editing pass-through, then set up my cover art and titles, and send everything to a service called Draft2Digital.
They’ll format it (since an e-book formatter I am not!) and upload everything to the various vendors that I want. It’s no risk and no up-front cost to me, and they take minimal commissions off sales. The service is set up by self-publishers for self-publishers, with none of the vanity-press nonsense or propaganda getting in the way. I’ll do my own promo – but I’m fine with that. There’s even an option for paper copies through CreateSpace, in case I want to take print books to a convention. Best of all, I know some high-powered authors who’ve been using D2D to re-release their out of print backlists, with great results.
I’m scared and excited. Thank you, dear readers, for sharing the journey.