Category: fiction

Deadstick updated

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment


To celebrate a year since my first re-engagement with Smashwords and ebook publishing, I’ve updated my dieselpunk story “Deadstick”. It’s got a new cover, and is combined with my steam/diesel-punk story “How Do You Like These Heights”. Combined with that, it’s also available as a print book. And a new blurb to go with that. I’ve been working on upgrading my blurbs to be a little more punchy. How’s this?

Hank’s scorching across the California sky in a race to save his son. The afterburners are overheating and Sally Jean is tearing apart around him. At 55,000 feet.
A dieselpunk story by Sean Monaghan, author of Pan Am 617 Heavy. Includes bonus story “How Do You Like These Heights”.

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ebook $3.49

Smashwords
Kindle
Apple
Nook (looks like the old version today – hopefully they’ll update soon.
Kobo (also an old version – what’s going on?)

Print $4.99

Amazon
Createspace

Back from Vermont – reading, ebook and in print

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My literary story “Back from Vermont”, originally published in Takahe, then reprinted in Midnight Train has now been published, with two bonus stories, through Triple V Publishing as both an ebook and in print.

Back from Vermont is one of my personal favourites – quirky and heartfelt and fun. It was fun to write and it’s nice to get it out there so many ways.

For those who happen to be in Palmerston North on Saturday October 13th, I’ll be reading the story (aloud) at the Palmerston North Book Fair at 11am. I will have copies of the book for sale ($11-), as well as some of my other books, and will do signings.

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Larry’s building a grand scale railway on the sidewalk right out in front of the house. And all along the street. Lisa’s furious, but the neighbors all want to ride. Includes bonus stories “Norwegians” (previously published in Literary Foray and “Steam Furnace” (first publication).

Front cover image by Giladm – Dreamstime

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ebook
($4.49)
Smashwords
filtering through to Nook, Kobo, Sony ereader and Apple soon
Kindle

Print (94 page paperback) – $6.49
Amazon

After all those noes, a yes.

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment


It’s worth sticking with it. I’ve lost count of the rejection slips I’ve received this year. Give me a second, I’ll go check…

… back now, thanks for waiting. It’s fifty-four. 54 rejections so far in 2012. That’s from around 25 stories out and circulating. I’ve had a few acceptances, but mostly for non-pay* or token pay anthologies/magazines. Most days when I get a rejection, the story goes out to another publisher the same day. I love these days of email submissions: so much easier than back in the dark ages of envelope, stamp, return envelope and postage, printed cover letter, fresh print of the ms because the last publisher crumpled their copy.

Why send it out again ever? Well, publishers have different opinions, different needs and different expectations. On occasion some particularly generous (ie who has the time?) editors give some feedback… and the feedback can be wildly different: the aspects of the story they found didn’t work will be entirely different. I also keep trying to remember that last of Heinlein’s rules – keep it on the market until it is sold.

The new acceptance is from a New Zealand literary magazine – Takahe – who’ve published stories of mine before. It will be nice to be in print again.

*Why take no money for a story? That’s kind of contradictory to good business sense, no? Well I guess part of it is my ego is still tangled up in there. Another part of it is that when I come to self-publish the story through Triple V as an ebook (and possibly print), then the rights revert to me immediately.

Lucy Snyder – on sales versus publications

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I’ve had Lucy A. Snyder’s slim collection Installing Linux on a Dead Badger on my shelf for a couple of years, always meaning to get on to reading it. From the title you can tell it’s pretty tongue in cheek, and it is. From sly snickers to laugh-out-loud moments I really did enjoy the collection. Some of the stories are told in fairly standard narrative, while others are written as news reports. There’s a thread running through the book – the whole Linux as a way to work with the undead, and similar ideas – which makes it a strong unifying whole.

This prompted me to check out her website, and Lucy’s been busy since (and before) publishing the badger book – several books from Del Ray, which I’ll be checking out.

That all leads me to the point of my post – Lucy’s cool post “On sales versus publications” about why she lists her story sales, rather than her publications. Go read the post. Okay, it’s a few years old now, but the concept still stands. It’s been argued elsewhere – along the lines of treating writing like any job, a writer deserves to be paid – but Lucy gives a great and concise argument.

You’ll see in my bibliography I list publications. Just a handful of those are genuine sales, and many of those for token amounts.

First try at publishing a double-header

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As my self-publishing empire lags and stutters along, I’ll keep trying new things. What a learning curve. Following ideas from Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch with their publishing arm WMG Publishing I’ve published two stories – Pipe Dive and Skinny Joe together, as one package, but as two separate units one with each story as the lead title. The content of each is the same, just in reversed order. They are linked stories – both set on the same world, with the same group of researchers (though in these two stories there’s no character crossover, there are, and will be, in other stories).

As you can see, I’m also working with covers – one is self-designed, the other is a commercial/professional illustration. I’ve bumped up the font size and word layout while trying to retain the general Triple V Publishing look. I noticed on some covers (like Xuento), the author name almost vanishes. Spreading “Monaghan” across the width, then tucking “Sean” in above, nestled between the “M” and the “h” risers makes the name visible at even thumnail size. I’ve simplified the covers too – no tagline, not even the Tripe V logo (perhaps that’s a mistake, we’ll see).

I’ve worked on my blurbs too – trying to be active and succinct. I think next year I’ll look at taking Dean Wesley Smith’s course on writing pitches and blurbs. This is how they look at the moment:

Skinny Joe
A Daron story. Skinny Joe’s on a deadline. And he can’t wait to get home to see Paula. But when he triggers something in the depths of the structure, it looks like he’ll be lucky to get out alive. A short story by Sean Monaghan, author of The Tunnel and Rotations. Includes bonus story “Pipe Dive”.

Pipe Dive
A Daron story. Pieter thought divorcing Mel would have been the end of it. Now he’s trapped in an artificial cavern deep in the structure. With Mel. And there’s no way to get back. A short story by Sean Monaghan, author of The Tunnel and Rotations. Includes bonus story “Skinny Joe”.

Buy them here: Skinny Joe and Pipe Dive. Soon on Kindle, B&N and so on.

Skinny Joe was originally published in Infinite Windows, and this is the first publication of Pipe Dive. That’s a new experiment – most of the Sean Monaghan fiction I’ve self-published has been of previously published works.

Moving the goalposts

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

So I crossed the finish line. 300,000 words so far this year. Publishable? I hope. Some have been published already – some self, some with small presses, some have been accepted for upcoming publication and others are out with editors. As I wrote during my evening block of writing time I knew I would cross the line – I had 586 words to go. (This is how I’ve kept track of that – click to see the whole thing – a bunch of numbers I fill in each day and let Excel calculate to get totals and percentages. The bottom right corner gives me the total):

but I kind of lost track as I became more engaged with the current story. I ended up writing over 1100 words for the session – a reasonable day. In some ways I was pleased to see that I continued on without even realising… for a few days I’d been wondering if I would kick back and just congratulate myself and fall into the habit of watching bad TV. As I wrote a few days ago, I’ve reset the goal, and I think that will help keep me on track and motivated.

The spreadsheet above might seem a little OCD (I don’t scrub my hands, though I see elements of needing to know numbers in me), but it’s helped me have my eyes on the target. That percentage figure in the bottom corner ticking over has helped me focus. I’m keeping that – it’s at 100.20% now, and I’ll let it go on up to 150%, but I’ve added in another little ticker beside it for the August to December goal in the bottom corner:

That’s going to challenge me. I’ll have to stay at around an average of 1000 words a day. While December is clear, there are four tutoring deadlines between now and the end of November and two of those will be full-on: six weeks of pretty intense reading and feedback. I don’t expect to get through a lot of writing during those weeks. Still, I might play catch-up through December. The plan is to write The Deluge, the second part of The Hidden Dome trilogy, between the last day of tutoring and the last day of the year. That’ll be more like 2000 words a day.

One finish line in sight, another beckons

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

My writing goal for the year is 300,000 words. Accounting for other activities (mostly the time commitment of tutoring), that seemed like a reasonable goal. Right now I’ve completed just over 290,000. Whoops. It looks like I’m about hit my year end goal around the last day in July. Now I need some new goals, or milestones.

Part of the idea of the goal came from Jeff Ambrose. Jeff redraws his approach as he goes too – pretty inspiring.

Here’s how this year’s writing comes out so far:

Two novels written. One (The Tunnel) edited and published as a POD book, and as an ebook, and the other (working title Steel Wagon), currently being proofed. That one’s a literary novel, so I’m sending to a New Zealand agent to see what kind of response it gets. If it doesn’t filter through that system, I’ll similarly self-publish it as a POD and ebook.

Sixteen stories written. These range in length from flash (two) to novellas (two), with most sitting between 6000 and 12,000 words. Five of these have been published, along with another three stories from last year. Four of the stories have been published by magazines/ezines (MicroHorror, Flashes in the Dark and The Colored Lens), the rest have been self-published through Smashwords, mostly under pen names. I’ve also re-published numerous short stories through Smashwords, but as reprints they don’t count towards first publication goals (I’m aiming for publishing 300,000 words as well, in addition to any reprints – sitting at 120,000 so far). I have one story in updating (ie, it’s been edited and proofed and just needs those corrections made), one in proofing, and one in progress. I am still proofing the second novel, but have the first 5000 words about ready to go to an agent.

New goal: 300,000 words by the end of July. Steel Wagon 5000 word sample and synopsis with an agent by August 11th. New literary story completed by 15th August (specifically for the Sunday Star contest). And set a new word-count target for the rest of the year.

I already know that I’ll be writing the second book in The Hidden Dome trilogy (working title – The Deluge) later this year (probably after tutoring finishes in late November), so that’s 60,000 words, more or less. But what to do for August through November?

Well, there is tutoring, so that cuts into time a little. During the last main block my daily writing, usually over 1000 words, slipped down like an eel in a pipe. 132 words on my lowest day. Still, four months is around 120 days, so perhaps 100,000 words is realistic. Combined with the novel, that will put me over 450,000 words for the year. Sounds about right.

Free fiction – new horror flash at Flashes in the Dark

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

My story “Antigen” has just been published at the fabulous Flashes in the Dark website. That’s pretty cool because it’s been a while since I’ve had a story there. Lately, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve been focusing on longer stories. Flash fiction is still fun. And “Antigen” does have a lot in common with many of my longer stories – multiple viewpoints, separated scenes, and I hope a dash of humour in with the action.

Here’s how it opens.
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Bill McKinnis slammed the door shut and leaned against it, breathing hard. The key was in the desk but Hank was right behind him.

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Thanks to editor Lori Titus for taking the story. Check out Lori’s writing, both at the site and at Amazon – as well as editing, she’s a stunning writer.

Receive rejection, resubmit, recycle

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Wednesday was a tough day.

Not only did I learn I hadn’t placed in Writers of the Future, I got three other rejection slips in the mail. All form rejections. Still that means that those stories can all go out to other editors who might like them. So that’s what I did. Sent them out. Within an hour or so I had my list back up to twenty live submissions.

Then, as I sent off that last one, some good news. An acceptance. Yay. It is in a no-payment, no-copy anthology so it stokes just my ego, but by then it was in need of a little stoking.

And it got a little better too – with some new music accepted for release on Zenapolae. More on that in another post. Right now I’m getting back to writing the next story.

Bridesmaid once again

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

With good cheer I can say that I missed the cut for a top three placing in the Writers of the Future. While I would love to have won, it still feels like I’m on the way and writing at a level that I’ve been striving for over many years. And there will be other competitions. I have an entry in for the third quarter and am in the process of writing the next one for the fourth quarter (WotF is a quarterly contest).

Congratulations to the winners and other participants. I hope to be on the podium, so to speak, one day.

Nice to see another New Zealander there in the list. Well done Stacey. I’ve never met her (NZ isn’t that tiny), but she’s a pretty good writer – check out some of her stories: Waiting for the Apocalypse at Eschatology and; Back in My Day at Daily Science Fiction. (There are other New Zealanders on the list from time to time – John Harper a couple of times, Samuel Mae and, I’m guessing, others. Yay for us).

As for that story of mine that didn’t place? I’ve submitted it to a magazine. It can take its chances in the big wide world.