I had a pre-order in place to give me some breathing room.
And now I’ve breathed in.
I’ve taken a really deep breath. One of the deepest I think I’ve ever taken.
And dived off.
“Five Stories: One Track” is now available for sale on most platforms. (You can find the details here.)
I really hope that you enjoy my writing and the stories I tell. What I can say is that if you like Five Stories, you’ll love the novel.
Enjoy!
Nick.
One of the issues with an eBook is that there’s nothing to hand over at a book launch. People like physical things, even if they are big fans of the digital format. As you know, I’m a printmaker, and I decided that I could create something fun that would be a proxy for the book.
QR codes are those two dimensional black and white blocky things you see all over posters, bus-stops, and movie advertisements. (The QR stands for Quick Response, if you’re curious.) You can take information and put it into the QR code, then someone can scan it with a phone that understands the codes and see your message.
QR codes can also store URLs, the addresses that we use to locate things on the web. Of course, my eBooks will have URLs, one for the Apple store and one for Smashwords. This got me thinking; I could create a QR code that would take people to my book and I could print it out in a way that would allow me to sign and distribute them, just as you would for a first edition at a book launch.
Here’s my test run. I made up a goo.gl shortening link and I turned it into a QR code (there are many sites that will do this for you), leaving a big hole in the middle for me to be able to sign or personalise any of the prints that I see. QR codes can be set up to allow them to be very tolerant of missing parts of the puzzle and I wanted a big empty space in the middle to give me the freedom to make a simple print more interesting.
I decided to use a 29×29 grid and worked on lino, working in pencil to create the reversed image (relief printing is going to flip it!) and then cutting it out. Finally, I decided to print it at home using only hand pressure, Japanese paper and Gamblin black relief ink (one of my favourite inks). As a test, if the image can be scanned with the innate variability of my hand printing technique, then it will work really well when it goes into a lino press.
Here’s an animation of the process, a collection of photos that take you through the process to the end.
It takes about eight hours from start to finish to do this. I like to work slowly and take breaks to avoid over-cutting and I spend a lot of time at the start to make sure that what I have sketched is actually the correct image and is correctly flipped.
Here’s the final print, in all of its shaky glory. But it does scan and that means that, when I finally get the real URLs for my book, they should scan as well. And now I know that people at my book launch will have something that they can take away, if they want to buy something physical as well as digital.
Now I have my Australian Business Number, this whole project has moved from “cautious progress” to “go go go”. I want to test the production systems, without making a total mess of the novel, and I will be releasing a set of five short stories in the lead-up to the novel release.
For those of you who haven’t read any of my writing, this is a set of stories that touch on fantasy, science-fiction and, above all, the people (and others) in those situations.
Here’s the working cover art for the first version of “Five Stories”, revealing my ongoing minor obsession with London Underground. It will retail for 0.99 US and I hope that it will be available in the next couple of weeks. (Actual art may vary but this is the overall look and feel.)
Fingers crossed for a successful test of all of the production systems! If you read it, I hope that you enjoy it.
My amazing editor has given me some really useful things to think about. I’m happy to say that she did what I’d hoped for by identifying the places that I knew were weak but thought I’d got away with, and giving me some more things to think about. But it’s not major and the overall feedback is very positive.
I’m rewriting a little bit, then we go back into deep copy edit. But we are still on track for the launch!
The tax office have also provided me with the ability to run this as a business, in that my ABN has come through. I’ve never been so happy to see an 11 digit number…
Onwards!
I’ve had some questions that nibble around the edges of the “who is publishing you” biscuit. I thought I’d take a moment to address this specifically.
I’m self-publishing this novel for a range of reasons but, yes, it’s self-published. However, let me be the first to say that this means that you now know less about the process that the book has gone through. For a trad publishing gig, the book has had to make it past several layers of readers and, once accepted, it has been edited, re-read many times, adjusted and tweaked at the structural and syntactic level. As someone who has read self-pub (and trad…) that has obviously not gone through that process, I understand some concerns here. I recognise the importance of objective criticism, other views, and good editing. I wanted to make sure that this work went through a production process that would lead to a really good final book.
What has happened to this book? Let me tell you
The original idea was developed in early 2015 and the work was researched, planned and written over a period of about nine months. I then revised it, fixed some of the more obvious problems, and sent this second draft to readers. I’m lucky that I can write a reasonable first draft and I’m usually happy for D2 to go out as a reflection of what I was thinking.
Those readers gave me early feedback, based on their own broad reading experience and knowledge as writers. I made some modifications and then gave the next draft to two people who were readers in this genre to see what they thought, from a more commercial perspective.
When I received feedback that one of them had spent three hours on a plane reading it on the tiny screen of an iPhone because he was enjoying it, I took that as a positive.
Overall, reader reception across five different readers was overwhelmingly positive, with valuable critical feedback. This was my (self-created) quality gate to move to the next stage.
We then moved to a detailed editing and restructuring mode. The opening chapter changed. The ending changed. Three times. Entire sections of text disappeared. New characters appeared. Swathes of names shifted for effect. Individual words were tweaked to change the rhythms of a critical sentence.
Darlings were killed.
I decided it was good enough to publish but that, to be fair to readers, I should use a professional editor to carry out the structural skim and deep copy edit to make sure that we’d done a good job in the early stages. I also hired a professional designer and artist to design and construct the cover. Both of these people are part of my local art and writing community and the money I pay them goes straight back into making my own city a more literate and beautiful place.
This is still my vision. This will be my book. But it has gone through multiple readings, a lot of editing, and, by the time it reaches you, it will have been scrutinised by professional eyes to make sure that the $2.99 you spent was worth it.
That’s my process. The book is an exciting action adventure where my characters fight bravely against the forces of darkness. I’ve been told it’s a page-turner and that makes me very happy. The structure of the book will be good enough to support that, because that’s how I built the process.
I can only hope, as release date starts to creep closer, that all of the love and care shows.
Just because I’m selling a book for bus fare doesn’t mean that I can give you a bad ride.
Things are moving along! I’ve had to spend some time setting up the business side of this enterprise. The Australian Tax Office and I now know each other a little better.
My constant readers are going through the manuscript again and I have a meeting with a professional editor this week to discuss making a final pass over it to make sure that all of the processes I’ve put in place have resulted in something that’s fit for sale. There’s a lot of good work out there that is marred by accidental or unnecessary issues with editing. I want to keep those problems to a minimum and I want to learn how to improve my own processes. One of my key interests has always been “how can I become a better writer?” Good editing is an essential part of that and it has been one of my weaker areas in the past.
In between applying for various important numbers and talking to people, I’m making (mostly small) changes to the work itself. I hope I’m only a week away from announcing the launch date.
Oh, and the launch date for a collection of my short stories to whet your appetite for the main book. Did I not mention that before?
Keep following for more news on releases!
Nick Falkner, Personal Projects 