Glynn Stewart

Science Fiction & Fantasy Author

Writing

What to even say about 2020

A round-up post, huh.

Gods. What to even say about 2020. I have heart issues. My partner has asthma. So along comes a pandemic that we are both specifically vulnerable to.

I jokingly say a lot that we haven’t left our house since February. It’s an exaggeration, but not much of one.  Thankfully, with the way we’ve structured Faolan’s Pen and what we do, that’s entirely doable for us – entirely thanks to the readers who keep buying my books.

Despite all of 2020, we were lucky enough to escape most of it unscathed. We all remote-work from home normally, so we were spared the worst of the adjustments that hit people who hadn’t done it before. A number of projects were suspended or cancelled until things calm down – and it looks like we might be able to get some of those going again this coming year! More news on that as it becomes available.

For obvious reasons, we didn’t manage to attend many conventions this year. We did make it out to ConFusion in Detroit in January, which I really enjoyed.

2020 was a “stay alive” year, but apparently my response to stress is to write more. That meant we actually had twelve releases in 2020 – ten novels and two novellas:

  • Conviction (January 2020) – book 1 of the Scattered Stars: Conviction series (also the first book in the Scattered Stars Universe, where I plan to write at least one more series and a few stand-alones)
  • A Question of Faith (February 2020) – a Castle Federation prequel novella that had been rattling around my head for a while about the start of the first war
  • Mountain of Mars (March 2020) – Starship’s Mage Book 8 and the last Damien Montgomery-focused mainline SM novel.
  • Relics of Eternity (April 2020) – Duchy of Terra Book 7
  • Wardtown (May 2020) – The first of a series of Fantasy Westerns I’m writing as I have time because I really enjoy both the concept and the shorter length (Western novels traditionally run 40-50K, and tying a story up in that length is an interesting challenge)
  • The Peacekeeper Initiative (June 2020) – Peacekeepers of Sol Book 2
  • Deception (July 2020) – Scattered Stars: Conviction Book 2
  • The Service of Mars (August 2020) – Starship’s Mage Book 9 and the first Roslyn Chambers-focused mainline SM novel
  • Pulsar Race (September 2020) – the first stand-alone Starship’s Mage novella
  • Shadows of the Fall (October 2020) – Duchy of Terra Book 8
  • Raven’s Course (November 2020) – Peacekeepers of Sol Book 3
  • Blood Ward (December 2020) – Teer and Kard book 2

 

Damn, just writing all of that out and linking it does help drive home how busy a year I’ve had!  No travel, no cons. I can’t say no distractions because, well, 2020, but it was a good year.

880,000 words, give or take.

Looking forward, I just finished my March release (A Darker Magic, the tenth mainline Starship’s Mage novel, which is a weird thought to me) and I’m taking a bit of time off from writing. Not quite a vacation, I have a few other things to handle (like this blog post), but it’ll be a quieter week to end the year.

I hope everyone is staying safe and having a wonderful set of holidays, whatever you celebrate.

Happy reading!

Glynn Stewart

Looking Forward – 2016

As I mentioned previously in my post Looking Backwards, 2015 was a mind-boggling year for me. I released four novels (City in the Sky, Space Carrier Avalon, Hand of Mars and Stellar Fox), made a deal with Tantor Media to release audiobooks of my main-line books (Space Carrier Avalon, Starship’s Mage, and Hand of Mars have all been released as of this blog post), and in general have watched my mostly forsaken dream of being an author explode into reality.

So what’s coming in 2016?

My target is 50,000 words a month, totaling 600,000 words for 2016. Those words include outlines and worldbuilding documents, so you won’t see all of those words. We have some plans that may see some world-building content cleaned up and released as bonus content to the mailing list, but that will be late 2016 if it manifests.

In terms of release schedule, the following are all-but set in stone (though titles are subject to change)

March 2016: Voice of Mars  (Starship’s Mage 3)
June 2016: Battle Group Avalon (Castle Federation 3)
September 2016: Alien Arcana (SM4)
December 2016: Still untitled CF Novel 4

 

Current working title of CF4 is To the Touch, but I don’t like that a lot more than I liked Deep Strike or Shadow Raid (both earlier working titles)

Those four books in my two main series will be written, though names and plots may change as time progresses.  Including attached outlines and world-building, though, those books will probably total 400,000 words.

The other 200,000 words I intend to ‘play’ with – and by ‘play’ I mean ‘throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.’ While my two series are both Space Opera, they’re different enough to require different ideas and mind-sets to write, which helps keep my brain fresh. Nonetheless, I’d like to branch out into other genres.

I haven’t completely made up my mind on just what I’m doing yet. I have two Urban Fantasy settings I’d worked on when I was trying to get traditionally published. Either of those could be polished up, have a sequel added, and get me two novels for the price of one… but UF is a hard genre to work in. While the type of UF I like and write is hard to find, the genre itself is over-saturated (mostly with books I can’t tell apart from paranormal romance), so breaking out is hard.

I also have ideas wandering around the back of my mind, with outlines already written, for a western gunslinger style fantasy and a steampunk-esque dark fantasy (the final days of an empire built on golems and magical armor). My brain is also known to regularly ambush me with ideas for urban fantasy stories… and also for further Space Opera stories.

The most I can say at this exact moment is that I will release at least one non-mainline-series book in 2016. Right now, it’s planned to be the The Last Iron Legion (that steampunk dark fantasy) but may end up being urban fantasy or even a stand-alone Space Opera novel.  Given that it will probably be June or so before I’ll touch anything that isn’t Starship’s Mage or Castle Federation, I could easily change my mind XD

But there will be two Starship’s Mage and two Castle Federation books in 2016, and I will be releasing a novel in one of those series every three months.

Speaking of which, Stellar Fox came out ten days ago and the Hand of Mars audiobook came out Tuesday. Do you have your copies yet?

Happy reading!

Two Years On

This blog post was published on and may be out of date. Visit starshipsmage.com for current information on the Starship’s Mage universe.

Two years ago today, I launched Starship’s Mage: Episode 1 on Amazon.

I had high hopes for its success – I quite liked the novella and was very pleased with it. Over the course of it’s first three months, however, it sold less than 100 copies. The general fate, so far as I can tell, of any stand-alone e-novella from a new author.

I was disappointed but my wife, who’d talked me into this endeavor at the beginning, encouraged me to at least finish the serial. I can be stubborn at times, so that was always my plan. We advanced. Episode 2 was more successful, doubling my total sales in its first weeks.

Things continued on that upward trajectory from there, culminating in the release of Episode 5 and the Starship’s Mage Omnibus.

In early 2015, royalties from Starship’s Mage and Children of Prophecy paid the downpayment on my house. That was a shock to the system. The project I’d almost given up on at the start had just enabled us to achieve home ownership a full year ahead of our schedule.

My enthusiasm was curbed, however, by the launch of City in the Sky.  It didn’t do poorly, but it wasn’t as successful as Starship’s Mage.  I lost a little bit of optimism, and slashed my expectations for Space Carrier Avalon dramatically.

Avalon then proceeded to shattered even my original, optimistic expectations. Hand of Mars followed along, almost exactly in line with my expectations. 2015 has been mind-blowing.

And so, the project I almost gave up on at the start became my primary source of income.  Two years on, I am astoundingly, unimaginably, grateful that my wife talked me into having faith in my work and putting it out there. None of this would have happened without her pushing, pulling, and encouraging.

None of this would have happened without you, dear reader. I am astoundingly, unimaginably, grateful for the way you have latched onto Damien’s and Kyle’s stories and worlds.

So thank you.

And watch this space. Castle Federation Book Two should be here soon 😉

Happy Reading,

Glynn Stewart

Looking backwards

So, due to the wonders of Amazon’s payment scheme (what I earned in October is paid at the end of December), I now know what I made in 2015 from writing income.

Most notably, October was my best month ever. This continues the trend of the month after the release of each of my Space Opera novels being my best month ever XD

While 2015 is not over, this seems as good a place to look back on where things have gone and where they are yet to go.

This year, I’ve put out three novels, and still intend to get a fourth out.  Two of these novels have done fabulously, and one did pretty okay.  All told, they did well enough to be life-changing.  I started 2015 with two novels out as a hobby. I will be ending 2015 with six novels out and with this now being my largest source of income.

Life-changing is almost too mild for what has happened.

I have always loved to tell stories and loved to write. I gave up on this as a potential career in my late teens and settled on accounting as a better career choice – thankfully, because I enjoyed it, not just for the money. To be able to now fulfill that childhood dream is epic.

I am looking back at 2015 and all I can see is up. Looking forwards to 2016, all I can see is more up!

I’ll keep writing. I hope you all keep reading. I’ll post some more about what my 2016 plans are as we come closer to the beginning of the year, but suffice to say: I don’t plan on publishing less books next year XD

Happy reading,

Glynn Stewart

The 25,000 word death zone

I have been writing for most of my life – all of my adult life and some before that.

As I’ve said earlier, I’ve finished five novels.  I have two I regard as active works in progress.  But a quick and dirty survey of my folders found me nine major projects, six of which were over 10,000 words.

Average length of my unfinished non active projects was 15,000 words, but only one is over 25,000 words.

This is about what I was expecting.  25,000 words seems to be a mental ‘switchover’ point.  Up to there, there’s not enough work in a story for it to to be ‘I must finish this or I’m wasting months of work.’

Once a story breaks about 25 to 30 thousand words, it will tend to get finished – its built up enough inertia that the story should stick around in my head until its done.  I’m currently focusing on trying to get Shadows of the Grey Tower past that point as I try to get myself writing again after my move and the inherent break in writing that came with it.

I suspect every writer has an ‘inertia point,’ the point at which a novel is too far along to be abandoned.  Based off my survey, mine is about 25000 words.  Obviously, inertia points are irrelevant to a published author – if you’ve contracted for the book, you have to finish it.  But even then, a writer will have side projects (or, so far as I can imagine, start to hate writing).  Anything can be abandoned – most amateur authors I know have just as bad of a ‘graveyard’ as I do – but when its past a point, it seems such a waste.

And 25,000 words kinda makes sense.  For me, that’s a month or two of writing.  It’s about a quarter of my 100,000 word goal for most books.  Knowing that this exist, of course, means that its always an idea to force myself past it.

(Which may move the inertia point *grin*  The mind and creativity are a fickle thing like that!)

Back – and forth. Publishing and why we write.

Well, the last few weeks have been different.  Finished up with the convention I was at, finished moving, and then some personal issues cropped up.  Suffice to say, I haven’t been writing much, but I promised a weekly post and I’ve been slacking!

So, this week we’re talking about getting published.  Let’s be clear:  I have not yet been.  I have a good agent, so it is probably reasonable to assume that at some point in the distant future, I will be.  However, this is not a fast or easy process.  I sent in my first submission to a major house back when Baen Books first started taking electronic submissions.  I don’t even remember when that was, though I was still in high school so that makes it almost a decade ago.

Now, I’ve had a few false steps and some distinct bad luck.  (At one point, I was in semi-direct contact with an editor who lost a manuscript directly sent to him twice before managing to read and ultimately reject it).  Nonetheless, I am hardly unusual.  I saw a survey recently, which unfortunately I have lost the URL for, which said that the time from attempting to get published to being published varied from six months (I kinda want to punch this guy) to thirty years.

There was a point where I kept thinking ‘in six months, I’ll be published.’  I did this a lot.  Even then, however, I realized that relying on that idea for anything was… not bright.  These days, I mostly write for my own enjoyment and to tell the stories that come into my mind.   I do have other outlets for storytelling, but there are few things that match the written word for showing someone else whats in your mind.

But this does lead into some advice for those of you who want advice or ideas:  don’t write because you want to make money.  Don’t think your piece is the next masterpiece (mine has no deep meaning, though I won’t deny certain themes).  Write to tell the story that’s in your mind.  Write to make the parable or point that you want to make.  Write because you WANT to write, and enjoy it, and want to share your work with others.

Then if you’ve told your story, or written your parable and enjoyed writing or learned something, you’ve won.  You’ve succeeded right there.  Anything else is icing on the cake – getting published is just the cream cheese fondant icing: the best you can get.

Write for yourself and the story.  Once you’ve GOT a story, then you can begin the heartache of trying to sell it, but never, EVER write it solely to sell.

Till next week,

Glynn Stewart