Month: July 2011

Shifting Gears

I’m trying to adapt to the changed realities of the publishing business. While I’m certainly not giving up on traditional publishing — I have a novel out to market right now, and am working on another intended for a major publisher — I’m also putting some real effort into getting my backlist out there in e-book form, and in doing some of my own promotion. It’s also entirely possible that I’ll be publishing new stuff through the small press (mostly Wildside Press and FoxAcre Press) and self-publishing (under the name Misenchanted Press).

This means that instead of having a new novel to announce once or twice a year, I have a bunch of small projects working their way through various pipelines that I want people to know about.

I’ve therefore decided to attempt something many authors have been doing pretty much since the introduction of e-mail — a newsletter. So far it has the inspiring, stunningly original name “Lawrence Watt-Evans: The Newsletter,” and I’ve sent out two installments a week apart. I know I don’t like being barraged with promotional material, so I’ve decided that it will go out only when there’s something to report, and no more than once a week unless I need to make a correction to something that was in error or has changed.

If you’d like to receive this newsletter, e-mail me at lwe@sff.net and let me know, and I’ll add you to the list. I also have a second list — people who only want to receive it when there’s news about Ethshar — and you can sign up for that instead, if you want. (It’s the same newsletter either way, it’s just that the Ethshar list won’t get some issues.) If you sign up now, you won’t receive an issue until at least Lammas — i.e., August 2 — so if you don’t hear anything back, don’t worry right away.

If you’re already getting it and have any comments, this would be a good place to make them. I’d be happy to have some feedback, and discuss possible improvements.

Meanwhile, here are some of the projects in the pipeline:

The Final Folly of Captain Dancy and Other Pseudo-Historical Fantasies is a collection of four old stories, published by FoxAcre, available for the Kindle, and with a paper edition now available from Barnes & Noble. (Why Amazon doesn’t have the paper edition and B&N doesn’t have the e-book yet I don’t really know.)

How to Prosper During the Coming Zombie Apocalypse, by Nathan Archer, is a 6,000-word bit of silliness available only as a 99c e-book.

In the Blood collects all my vampire stories to date — twelve of them. Originally I was only planning an e-book, but on a whim I added a paper edition from Lulu.com.

Tales of Ethshar will be a collection of the eleven short pieces of Ethshar fiction I’ve written to date. It’s been accepted at Wildside, but contracts aren’t signed yet.

Split Heirs, the humorous fantasy novel I wrote with Esther Friesner, has been accepted for reprinting and publication in e-book form by Wildside Press. Again, no contracts or other details yet.

The Unwelcome Warlock is scheduled for September publication, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s pushed back a month or two.

And I think that’s all for now.

Dredging Up the Past

Over the past thirty-plus years, I’ve had well over a hundred short stories published in a wide variety of venues. Some, like “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers,” which won a couple of awards, are well-known and pretty easy to find; others, like “Corners in Time,” are utterly obscure.

I’ve decided that the new ease of publishing backlist can be put to use digging out all my old stories and making them available to new readers — for a reasonable price, of course.

I’m planning to try various approaches to see which works best, and one of my first experiments (by way of FoxAcre Press) is now available for the Kindle: The Final Folly of Captain Dancy and Other Pseudo-Historical Fantasies. A paper edition is in the works.

This mini-collection contains four stories. The title piece, my only novella to date, is a seafaring fantasy adventure set in a version of the eighteenth or the nineteenth century that isn’t quite the one our ancestors lived through. Also included: “My Mother and I Go Shopping,” previously published in Adventures in the Twilight Zone; “One Million Lightbulbs,” from Coney Island Wonder Stories; and “Windwagon Smith and the Martians,” first published in Asimov’s and reprinted a few places since.

“My Mother and I Go Shopping” wanders back and forth through time, space, and Faerie. “One Million Lightbulbs” is set in Coney Island’s glory days circa 1905. “Windwagon Smith and the Martians” combines 1854 Missouri with Ray Bradbury’s Mars (used with Mr. Bradbury’s kind permission).

That’s all the pseudo-historical fantasies I could remember writing.

Other small collections I have planned: In the Blood, collecting all my vampire stories; Herding Cats, with all my cat stories; Unicornucopia & Other Stories of Hooves and Horns, which will contain all my unicorn stories and may also get a centaur or two; and Tales of Ethshar, which will collect all the short Ethshar stuff, including the Christmas story and the April Fool’s gag. I expect Tales of Ethshar to be a Wildside Press book.

Beyond those, I don’t know yet. Any suggestions?

I’m also considering publishing individual short stories as e-books — thought I’d start with “Heart of Stone” (previously published in Graven Images). Anything anyone especially wants to see? Any other suggestions?