So this happened

On October 26, 2019 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Writing5 Comments

…for the first time ever, I have found my books on a shelf in a bookstore. Now, granted, it was the new Half Price Books that just opened on Grape Road, and the book was signed already to someone named “David,” but still– every time I walk into a bookstore I look in the S section just in case somehow magically one of my books is there, and never once has that happened until today. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again for the sake of completeness: not everyone keeps every book forever like I do, so it’s not a hit to my ego or something that David sold my book off; he may not have liked it or he may have moved or maybe he just generally doesn’t keep books for long; one way or another it’s no skin off my back. But I had a strong enough reaction to seeing my book on the shelf that I had to explain myself to the dude who was standing next to me. He seemed to genuinely appreciate how happy I was about it, too, and gave the book a courtesy flip-through before putting it back on the shelf.

(Which was also kinda weird; I thought about pointing out the obvious, which was that I wasn’t going to worry about it if he put it back, but that might have made it even weirder than it already was. Either way, no buzz-harshing on my end.)

The place is planning on doing author signings in the future, and I got a copy of the manager’s card, so chances are I’ll be doing an event there sooner or later. I will, of course, keep everyone apprised once that comes to pass. Until then, I’m just going to have to go there three times a week until someone buys that book. 🙂

Okay who did this

On September 17, 2019 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, Writing1 Comment

The answer is “the rights to mine will be a lot cheaper”

In which I need to snap out of it (again)

On February 14, 2019 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing

It is not, strictly speaking, especially necessary to take this post terribly seriously. This is one of those “get it out of my head and onto the page” things, and it’s not like I have the sense to make anything private, so y’all get to see it regardless.

I’ve been on a prolonged dry spell, fiction-wise, lately, and it has rolled through my head a few times in the last couple of weeks that it would literally take less than half an hour to utterly eliminate every trace of Luther Siler– remember, it’s a pseudonym– from the internet. It’s basically just a matter of deleting a bunch of social media accounts. I don’t think I’d be able to completely eliminate the books from Amazon since it would continue allowing used sales, but I could stop new sales.

And if I did that, I wouldn’t have to keep worrying about the goddamn sequel to Skylights, now, would I? Or feeling crap about the fact that I haven’t put anything useful on Patreon in weeks and those folks are sending me money.

Again, don’t take this seriously. The punch line is this shit isn’t even true– I wrote Skylights before I’d ever even imagined Luther Siler, and I’d been thinking about the fucking sequel for years before this blog even got started. So this goddamn thing is going to be hovering over my head until I write it or die, whichever comes first. I could 86 my Luther Siler identity tonight and I’d still be kvetching about this damn book in a month.

I dunno. This is how I work; I have prolonged periods of Nothing and then a switch in my brain will flip and I’ll write two books in three months. I was hoping that the pressure of the Patreon would get me better at reliably producing short fiction but apparently ha ha ha I’ll just take your money is winning instead. I mean, there’s a whole book on there, so it’s not like it’s a worthless investment, but I want regular new shit, and right now I’m not producing regular new shit.

Baaah. Need to kick this and get back on the horse. Just gotta figure out how.

Some book musings

On January 4, 2019 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing

I’m basically done with the “break” part of my break; I have the weekend and then I’m back to work on Monday. Usually by this point at the break I’m climbing the walls and chewing on my extremities; for the most part, other than yesterday’s post, I’ve managed to avoid going slowly crazy. I’ve gotten a fair amount of stuff done over the break. What I haven’t done is any of Luther’s stuff. It’s all been Clark Kent nonsense over here for the last couple of weeks.

My first priority in 2019 has to be to decide what to do with Skylights. I have so many half-written drafts of the sequel, under more than one title, that it’s frankly kind of ridiculous. That may or may not be the cover. It may or may not be the title. And once I have the sequel written I have to decide if I’m doing a second edition of the first book. A second edition wouldn’t be too different, but the first book already mentions things that didn’t happen in 2018 (because 2018 was, comfortably, The Future when I wrote it) and the events of the book are at this point far too close to Now for comfort. If nothing else, I need to remove specific dates, and probably rewrite the prologue to give the story some breathing room. I don’t think I can tie the events of the story so close to something that happened in 1984, for example; it just makes Gabe too old.

(20-minute break while I research the FAFSA and explain how taxes work for a former student; I avoid using the phrase “this would be easier if I adopted you.”)

Anyway, point is I gotta figure this shit out. And I probably should have reformatted some of my books to get them away from CreateSpace and over to Ingram over the break. And maybe done a new banner, since the one vertical banner I have is Skylights-focused. I should probably have one for at least one more of my books.

Point is, I didn’t spend as much time being Luther over the last couple of weeks as maybe I should have. And now I need to figure some stuff out over the next couple of days. This week shouldn’t be too hard (he said,) so I should have some brainspace left to get things done when I get home from work. And who knows? The next couple of days might be hugely productive.

Just, like I said, I’ve got some decisions to make, and a weight to get off my back.

What have you been putting off lately?

I give up

On July 10, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy

giphy-1 Last night, I completely cracked the plot of the Skylights sequel wide open, for about the fourteenth time since finishing the original book– only this time it involves going back to the original draft of Sunlight that I got like 40,000 words into and then had to bail on, because I finally figured out how to make it work.

At this point the sequel to that book is going to be a foreword, 300 blank pages, and then the words “And then they all died” on page 301, because I am having that much trouble getting the plot to cohere.

In other news, despite the fact that I’ve put in notice at my job, there’s still a corporate visit next week and for some reason apparently I’m still expected to, like, do stuff around the store– I guess they don’t just pay me to sit on my ass and look at my phone for five weeks, or something nuts like that? So I’ve been insanely busy at work for the last couple of days and tomorrow does not look like it’s going to be better. I literally dusted every end table and coffee table in the entire store this evening. Tomorrow I have to do the TV stands. I am crabby and sleepy and I have not had much brain left for bloggery when I get home. I will, I hope, break myself of this habit tomorrow.

Seriously. Email me some problems so I can do an advice column. Otherwise I’m just gonna fictionalize the whole thing and that’s gonna lead to issues.

Want to read an excerpt from SUNLIGHT?

On May 31, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing

There’s a new post up over at Patreon with something no one has ever seen before! Isn’t that exciting? Join the ranks of the elect for just $1 a month!

On Patreon

On February 16, 2018February 16, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing5 Comments

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BEFORE WE GET STARTED: I’m taking a shot at Audible and audiobooks again at the moment; Skylights is currently open for auditions over there. Are you an audiobook narrator? Do you want to share revenue 50/50 with me on audio? Go audition!

I got asked in comments a few days ago if I’d ever considered launching a Patreon. And the answer is yeah, I have, and until really recently all such considerations were brief and unsystematic at best. I’ve been thinking about the idea a little harder lately and …

… well, I’m probably still not doing a Patreon, but I’m thinking about it a little bit harder.

Here’s the thing, right? My books sell for crap. It is true that there are a lot of other books out there that sell even worse than mine, but they sell for crap. Balremesh and other stories and Tales: The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 3 have been out for months and probably haven’t sold fifty copies yet between the two of them. A month with a half-dozen digital sales is a good month. I do okay when I’m selling physical copies to people who are right in front of me, but the fact is the books aren’t moving online.

Well, okay, you say, but there are people who have bought all of those books and don’t have any more to buy right now. Maybe they might like to have a way to support you in the meantime?

Well, okay. First, being completely honest (none of this is to elicit sympathy,) I’m not convinced there are all that many of those people, and a lot of them are relatives, and a good chunk of those who aren’t are not, shall we say, Patreon’s typical demographic.

The other problem, of course, is what I can do for my Patrons, were I to actually acquire any. To wit: in case it’s not clear, I write fiction sporadically at best, and I write slow. I’m working on a short story right now for an open submissions window that is going to close for good in two weeks. I have been working on that five thousand word story, a story that essentially sprung into my head fully written from the moment I had the idea, for something like six weeks. I might get another 400-500 words of it written today. I might not. And I know which way I’d bet, were I betting. It’s an open question as to whether I’ll get it done in time. I have two more weeks for three thousand words more.

Most authors I’m aware of don’t use a monthly auto-pay model, they use a send me money when I create something and then you can have it sort of model. But I sell entire books online for a damn dollar; are there people who will send me a dollar every time I send them a 5000 word short story? Okay, what if it was a 500 word microfiction? What if it was shorter than that? How many of those might I be able to crank out in a month?

So, yeah, let’s try an experiment: Would you be willing to support me, at whatever minimal level you want, were I to create a Patreon? What sorts of reward tiers might be interesting?

I mean, if I don’t get any comments here, before I’ve even created the thing, it sort of answers my question, right?

Oh god damn it not again

On November 26, 2017November 26, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading

So I wrote this science fiction book called Skylights. You may have heard of it, I’ve mentioned it around here once or twice. Skylights was written in 2013 or so but didn’t come out until September of 2014. It’s about Mars. You may remember another book about Mars that came out in February of 2014, a book by a guy named Andy Weir that I liked one enormous hell of a lot named The Martian. Other than being set on Mars, there’s not actually a whole damn lot that the books have in common, but a lot of times people assume one inspired the other– and, well, nobody is assuming that the book that came out second was inspired by the way more well-known book that came out first– and that’s not the case. I actually used “Like The Martian, only not quite as good” as a tongue-in-cheek advertising line for a little while.

Part of the reason there was such a long dry spell in between the releases of Searching for Malumba and Balremesh and other stories is that I tried to write the sequel to Skylights, got halfway through or so, and realized I was telling the wrong story. It was garbage and I had to throw it all out. As it turned out, the important story was Book One, which I’d already written, and Book Three, tentatively titled Moonlight. Book Two was treading water in between. It was unnecessary.

You may see where this is going. Book Three, now Book Two, of what I’ve been mentally calling the Johannes Cycle was going to be Moonlight. One guess where most of the action was going to take place. I’ve even got the cover done! It’s gorgeous and I love it! And let me be clear that I’ve had this book at least tentatively planned for like five fucking years.

And I just started reading Andy Weir’s second book. This fucking thing here:

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