Victim Zero and Other Sundries

As many of you might know already, I finished the first draft of Victim Zero the other day. I sent it out to the first crop of beta readers Friday night, and I'm waiting with anticipation and trepidation to hear back from them.

I've also managed enough work on the collaborative project I'm doing with James Cook that he has to catch up with me. That one is going to be very, very cool and something all of you will enjoy.

I'm in kind of a strange place. It's coming up on three months I've been off work and if you'd asked me when I put in my two weeks if I'd have a novel done at this point I would have probably said no. Granted, that was always the plan with VZ and Next (which I resume work on this week) but I figured I'd have to be working another full-time job by now.

Not yet. I'm going to be putting in applications this week, but I have to say I'm completely happy with the decision to leave the nursing home I was working at. I miss the people, but three months without the agonizing back pain, without the unreal stress and overwork, and all the other little joys have been like magic for me. It hasn't been perfect and I'll have to rejoin the workforce soon, but hopefully these stories will be seeds that bear fruit before the end of the year. I think I might be a full-time writer by the start of 2014. Earlir than that if they go beyond expectations.

I'm just blathering, really. This has been a time of immense satisfaction for me on a personal and professional level. Creatively I feel free to write what I want, and that gives my writing more confidence and strength.

The IndieGoGo campaign had a lot to do with that. Though we didn't hit the goal we shot for, the campaign itself was fun and brought me closer to the readers and fans, which is you guys. This is a huge part of why I choose to be independent and self-published; because all I need is a platform and people willing to give me their time, attention, and a small amount of money. In exchange I try to give you as much interaction and entertainment as possible. I've become friends with many of you along the way.

How can I complain about that? I'm building a career thanks to all of you, one where I get to do the thing I love. I've made some strong connections and had a lot of support. I don't know how any entertainer in any genre can ever be anything but thankful and humble in the face of that. Without you guys none of it happens.

I thank you for this a lot, but repetition makes it no less true. You're the best. That's all.

Status (updated)

[The AMA on Reddit is planned to start at 7:00 PM, EST. I will be posting a link here as well as on Facebook]

[The AMA link can be found right here.]

Rather than try to update everyone piecemeal about what's happening with me and my work right now, I decided to write a quick post here to share the news.

So, in no particular order:

Tomorrow I will be hosting an AMA (ask me anything) on Reddit. I will update this post when the AMA is happening, as well as posting it on my author page on Facebook. It will be in the evening unless some dire emergency comes up, and if that happens I'll update as needed.

I've been hard at work (and annoying my friends on Facebook with updates and word counts) on Victim Zero. Remember that we still have just under a month on the Victim Zero campaign at IndieGogo, so check it out and back the project if you can, or share the links if you can't. Victim Zero is now over 40,000 words, all of that done in 12 days of manic writing, and I think it's some of my best work. I've never felt so strongly about a project, and I hope you guys like it too.

This weekend I will be taking some time off from Victim Zero to work on my other WIP, Next. That's my superhuman story, and I enjoy writing it almost as much as Victim Zero. Next may or may not come out first; that was the original plan, at any rate, but since I'm now only working part-time I'm getting more done than I planned for. We'll play that by ear.

The other big news I have to share is that James Cook and I are going to be working on a collaboration set in his Surviving the Dead universe. Actually we've already done some work on it, but both of us are mid-novel at the moment. Jim is working on the third Surviving the Dead book, and I've got all of the above PLUS Living With the Dead happening.

So we're going to let it simmer for a few weeks while he finishes up his book, then really get into it. I'm not going to tell you anything else about it for now, because it's awesome and cool, but it definitely is zombie fiction and it's a labor of love. You'll really like it, I swear.

For now that's all I have, but keep your eyes peeled for news in the near future as projects go forward and books come out.

Saying Goodbye

This morning at 6:33, I clocked out of the nursing home for the last time. My notice is up and while my technical last day ends tomorrow, it's my day off. Maybe that's not poetic, but it has the advantage of being accurate. Functionally I'm without a job.

I'm happy.

I have orientation at a new job on Friday, so I'm not going to go without work. I'm not dumb. I have some money saved up because the new job pays less and is part time. I'm doing this for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is so I can have at least a few months of working somewhere that doesn't leave me so exhausted I keel over in the mornings so I can write more.

I'm going to be using the reduced hours and workload to get things done. I'm working mostly on Next at the moment, but I have some work done on Victim Zero and I'm planning to get deep into it in the coming weeks. (If you don't know, I'm running an IndieGoGo campaign for Victim Zero right here.)

Between working part-time (maybe even full-time hours depending on demand) and having an easier job, and having my savings, I should be able to swing this for at least three months. During that time I expect my productivity to shoot way up. I've been excited about it for a while now, and impatient for my notice to be up.

The reality of leaving work for the last time this morning was far different than I expected. My coworkers gave me little going-away gifts, thoughtful ones, and brought in food. I choked up when I did the rounds giving them hugs as I left. I felt a bittersweet joy in going, sadness that I wouldn't be laughing with them and telling jokes any longer. They're a damn fine group of friends to have, and even though I saw them just a few hours ago I already miss them.

Working in a nursing home is hard. Mentally, physically, and spiritually. You're responsible for the well-being of a large group of people, and the folks you work with are some of the few who understand. I'm leaving behind a solid group of people I care about, and that's just the ones that work there. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going to miss the ones I took care of. The nursing home was like a family--sometimes dysfunctional, but at the end of the day full of love and good times.

I should feel trepidation about the near future. I'm in uncharted waters, with no guarantees. The only sure thing I have is my writing, and probably the best and most heartwarming thing my friends at work told me was that I should go for it. They know how much being an author means to me. They've encouraged me to succeed and wished me all the best. In return I told them that if I manage to get Stephen King rich, I'll share the wealth.

I'm onto the next step in my career, or at least that's the plan. The likely outcome is that I'll use this time to finish several works in addition to the books mentioned above, and that I'll see some increase in my writing income, which is currently at a very low point. Chances are high I'll have to get another full-time job at some point this year, but I have hope I'll finally strike gold with one of the things I'm working on or am about to start. I finally feel free to explore those ideas, even knowing I'll be working in home health. Going from taking care of twenty people a shift to a maximum of two means I will have energy to work on my books and the blog before and after my job. It's an awesome thing to know.

I feel confident and happy. I feel excited about the future for the first time in ages. I'm up. 

It's a fantastic feeling.

Victim Zero Milestone

As many of you know, I'm currently running an IndieGoGo campaign for Victim Zero, which is an actual novel set in the Living With the Dead universe, rather than a book collecting the blog.

The campaign hit a milestone yesterday: 10% of total funds reached. That may not seem like a lot to some people, but it is for me. I promised to write a blog post giving some background on the book when we hit that $500 mark, and this is me keeping that promise.

So, you want to know who stars in this, the first LWtD novel? Sorry. Can't tell you.

If you read the blog, you've met this character. He isn't a main character, but once you read Victim Zero you'll know exactly how vital he is to the story. The idea with this book is to show how the actual organism that started the zombie plague got started. Most zombie fiction skims over that fact, but the (albeit extemely dubious) science behind zombification fascinates me. So, like any good writer I came up with an idea, looked into the biology of it, and fudged the facts one hell of a lot to suit my purpose.

This is the first in a planned series. The number of the book is right there in the title: zero. The events I'm currently writing about in the story begin well before the first post of the LWtD blog. Unlike many books, this one will cover a fairly long stretch of time as the main character deals with the onset of the plague as well as the immediate fallout from society collapsing.

It's entirely possible you'll see some familiar faces in there, too.

Important to remember is that Victim Zero is a standalone novel. You don't have to read LWtD to know what's going on or to feel like the story has been told. Likewise you don't have to read this book if you already read LWtD. Each will, if I do my job right, exist as intertwined stories that can be consumed separately with no loss of coherence or quality.

It's hard to give any hints about the book without mentioning who the main character is and what he does. That's central to the entire thing. However, I did promise to share something of the book with you, and I keep my word. Since I can't give away much at this point, allow me to post the prologue to Victim Zero for all of you to read. You helped raise that $500--now almost $600--and you've earned a peek.

It's short and sweet, but hopefully sets the tone:

 The end of the world started on a fishing boat.

That was not the primary mission of the boat; it was a science vessel. Though the men and women who worked its decks pulled fisherman's hours and suffered the same weather, their purpose was fundamentally different. One group sails to eat, the other sails to know.

The boat should have been at its current location a day before, but harsh seas and high winds kept her anchored longer than anticipated. The marine biologists aboard and their many student researchers discovered the delay to in fact be a lucky break—the algae bloom was spectacular following the churning of the sea in storm.

For hours they hauled small pots of water, a cycle repeated until the tanks were full of iridescent blue-green algae. Then the plastic containers finished their last trip into the sea, were cleaned and stowed, and the vessel turned toward home. A day late but richer for the potential in their discovery, the crew celebrated with cold beer and fresh-caught fish grilled on the main deck.

It would be years before they learned of their part in the end of the world, innocent and small as it may have been. Lost among the understandably more vital news of the day, no one connected the suicides of one tenured professor and two of his former students. By the time anyone could have connected their research to that day on the boat and the haul they brought in, it was far too late. At that point the world had fallen too far for anyone to care.

But that was later. After it all happened.

This is the story of how it began.

Because I can't share much at this point, I'm happy to answer questions about the book in the comments. I may have to give you a RAFO (read and find out) but what I can answer I will. So get asking if you're curious!

My Affair With John Scalzi

I'm not one to pick up new writers easily. I'll be honest as hell and say that since I've started writing my own stories I've become much worse about that. Reading a new book by a new author is for me what shopping for cars is like for most people. I get nervous and twitchy and I want to know I spent my money and time on something good.

I've heard John Scalzi's name for years now. I've seen his books on bookshelves and noted that the covers of his SciFi books are similar to many, many others: ships in space painted with that dreamy haze. I like that aesthetic, honestly, but it doesn't jump out at me.

Then I read this post on his blog back in October. The post and the resulting comments are a brutal send-up of some extremely conservative politicians and their view on rape victims. It's not easy to read.

That post got me curious. I started to take a deeper look at Scalzi. Then I read a sample of Redshirts and immediately knew I had to read it. A comedic novel that parodies Star Trek? Yes, please.

I read the book and adored it. I laughed out loud reading it. Scalzi captured me with his ability to make the ridiculous believable and to effortlessly (or with a seeming lack of effort; I'm a writer. I know it's difficult) blend in tender moments. I cried at one point. It was pretty good.

I did not, however, continue my affair. I was working on my (now indefinitely) shelved novel Monster at the time and didn't feel right spending my time reading when I should have been writing. So I wrote and occasionally reread old favorites. My relationship with Sanderson, Rothfuss, Butcher, Brent, Weeks, Friedman, and other favorites was once again sort of monogamous.

Fast forward to last week. I finished reading the final Wheel of Time book and found myself in a mood to keep reading. I wanted something new, something very good. And I remembered that I had enjoyed Redshirts and loved it. Surely Scalzi's other books were somewhere close to that quality, right?

Well, no. They weren't. Redshirts was really good, but the others? Fucking AMAZING.

I started with Old Man's War, which is the first book in a series by the same name. I read it in six hours. Then I bought the sequel, The Ghost Brigades, which I read in five hours. Then I bought The Last Colony and took my time, spreading the reading over two days and a total of about eight hours. Then it was on to The Android's Dream. And that's where I'm at right now. Four books consumed in less than a week and I hurt for more. Scalzi is releasing a new novel in the Old Man's War series (which I meant to review here instead of just writing a huge fangasm to Scalzi, but hey--I've been awake since last night. I'm tired.) in serial format, thirteen parts released one a week.

Starting today.

I will wait until all thirteen are out, then buy them all at once. I couldn't stand the anxiety of waiting a week to read the next installment.

So we're clear: John Scalzi is ludicrously talented. No, his books aren't perfect because nothing is perfect, but I judge science fiction by very high standards. Old Man's War as a series stands beside the best SciFi in the world. It may lack the gravitas of Aasimov, the earthy wisdom of Heinlein, or the sheer technical brilliance of Clarke or Herbert, but that does not make Scalzi's work less than theirs. Culturally, Old Man's War is as relevant to where we are as people today as anything Heinlein wrote in his time. I don't denigrate his work in saying he isn't those men (I think he would agree). I just want to be clear; his work carries the best parts of each of them.

In short, John Scalzi has his own voice. It may have a tone more wry and irreverent than others (the first chapter of The Android's Dream, the title itself a reference to Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep AKA Blade Runner, is one long fart joke) but that's just fine with me. Because Scalzi manages to capture you with his words, keep you there with his characters, and make you laugh your ass off and ponder philosophy at the same time. That's a hell of a thing.

Looks like my harem has a new member. And yes, I realize it's creepy and weird to keep referring to my favorite authors that way. It's because I love them, all of them, and Scalzi is just too good not to love.

The one where Winnie the Pooh is outed as a murderer

Jess and I had a conversation on the way home from the store yesterday. Here's how it went.

Jess: Did Winnie the Pooh only eat honey?

Me: I mean, he's a bear, right? I'm pretty sure that between heartwarming adventures he hunts.

Jess: Seems reasonable.

Me: Well, the hundred acre wood isn't rife with woodland creatures. Probably because Pooh kills and eats them.

Jess: I think that's what happened to Piglet's parents. Piglet has Stockholm Syndrome. Pooh is his friend because Piglet's mind can't deal with the horror of remembering the bloody murder of his parents.

Me: Christopher Robin is just getting fattened up for a finale that will ruin the childhoods of millions.

Jess: God, I hope so.

There was more to the conversation but I was so tired that I fell asleep and forgot the details. But this is the gist of the thing, and it gives you some small insight into the twisted discussions I have every day. It made me laugh to do Pooh's voice, telling Piglet that his time has finally come. I guess the other possibility is that Pooh and Piglet have some kind of Lenny/puppy relationship. I don't know. It just made me giggle.

Back to work for me.

2012

2012 has been a strange year for me. Through the end of 2011 and most of the way through this year I was in a deep depression with only occasional moments of normality. During this year my writing income doubled from the previous year, yet in the last month I've seen what I think is a serious long-term decline in my sales. I hope I'm wrong.

I finished Monster yet after I was done I realized the book wasn't at all what I wanted it to be. It needs a lot of work to be a true sequel to Beautiful and I want to do that work and get the book out. The problem is that I wrote almost all of it during that depression, and reading over it puts me back in the mindset I worked so hard to get out of. I don't know if your own emotional problems can create PTSD, but it feels that way. Monster is shelved indefinitely as I work on other things.

I'm at a strange crossroads as a writer. I have a huge amount of material I want to crank out, good ideas that need barely any work to be fully-fleshed out as stories. I've spent long nights working at the nursing home thinking about them on my rounds. Most of them only need the one thing I've had in short supply: time.

Time is the worst part. Yeah, I have it when I get home in the morning, but that's when I'm exhausted in every way. I've written that way before, and in fact I write Living With the Dead that way almost every day. LWtD takes up most of my mental energies any given morning. More writing on top of that is counter-productive.

I started Write The Future in an effort to spend all next year just working on my writing. The campaign is over at midnight tonight and the total contributions stand at just over $1,000. That's no mean feat for a guy sitting on his couch writing about zombies, but it's only about five percent of my goal. That's okay; I honestly didn't think I'd get that far. The project looks like it'll fail in about twelve hours, all the backers will get their money back in the next few weeks.

I'll keep on working and tucking away money here and there. I'll try to save my writing income as much as possible so that someday I'll have a nest egg that will allow me to risk not working. All I need is time to write those books and a bit of luck, and I'll live my dream. Eventually I'll be writing full-time and the stress of this year will be something I can look back on as a learning experience.

Complaining seems pretty dickish at this point. I've had more success than I expected by any measure. Over this year I've reached more readers than I thought possible. I've made new friends and learned a tremendous amount about the art of writing, and it continues. Work is hard and it sucks, but that's how it is all around, right? I've got a roof over my head, the best wife and family anyone could hope for, fuzzy companions at home who are always happy to see me (yes, Jess and I keep Hobbits in the house) and the future has yet to be written.

My readers are the best. You are the best. You've been the most supportive group of people, and I know that while it may take a while, I'll get there eventually. Because of you! That's the truth. I could be sitting here writing the next great classic (I'm totally not) but it wouldn't mean a thing without you guys. I'm thrilled every time I get messages from you, or words of support, or anything really. You all keep me motivated and in total honesty interacting with you on a daily basis has helped calm the emotions that wrecked my productivity so much of this year.

Thank you for all of that. Whether you're a close family member or someone I met on the internet (and there are more of you than I can easily count now, many of you now dear friends), you mean the world to me. Even if I had to give up writing (tragic wheat thresher accident? Choose your own adventure) tomorrow I would still treasure each moment, past and future.

I'm not giving up. I will write and write until my fingers bleed, and I will achieve my dream. I don't make resolutions, but 2013 is going to be my year one way or another. I promise that.