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Writing

Ever Wonder what Fury Looked Like?

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Space Rogues 7 Cover Concept

I’m working with the awesome Greg Bahlman on the cover for Space Rogues 7: A Guy Walks Into a Bar and he sent over a quick sketch to show the blocking he’s thinking about.

I toyed with a landed Ghost for the cover of Space Rogues 5: So This is Earth? but it was a bit cartoony (Because I did myself with stock assets) and when I polled readers, they weren’t feelin’ it.

But for Book 7 it made sense for the cover to show the Ghost in one of her most frequent haunts, a spaceport on the planet Fury; dingy dirtball that it is. Book 7 actually gives us a glimpse of life on Fury beyond the spaceport, market and the space Friday’s the crew hangs out in.

I’m pretty stoked, to watch this cover come alive.

If you haven’t yet, you can pre-order book 7 now, it releases October 6th.

WIP Thur–Friday 4/3 High Stakes

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The crew of the Ghost often finds themselves on the bad side of someone, whether it’s pirates, mega-corporations or powerful politicians. Sometimes it goes better than others.

The Ghost is standing where they left her. The two hover vans that brought the work crew are still parked near the starboard engine nacelle.
Wil is out of breath by the time they get close enough to the ship to see the first body. A quilant man is sprawled at the foot of the cargo ramp.
“Oh dren.” Cynthia swears as she kneels to check the being. She looks at her friend and shakes her head once. The three of them draw their sidearms and walk up the ramp slowly. Zephyr is in the lead. At the top of the ramp are two more of the work crew, a Quilant and a Trollack.
They find another body in the crew lounge, this one still alive, barely. The work crew team lead, the Trenbal woman. Orange blood is pooling around her. Her dinosaur-like face is twisted in pain.
Wil rushes over, dropping to his knees, “Don’t move, we’ll get help.” He looks up at Zephyr, “Check medbay!”
The Palorian woman darts past Wil and opens the hatch to the small medical compartment. She turns, “Empty.”
Wil scoops the wounded woman up and rushes her two the medbay. A bloody hand reaches up and grabs Wil’s shoulder, “It was… Crimson Sun.. Took your people.”

I’m sure things will work out though, right? I mean maybe they’ll just give Bennie back.

WIP Thursday 3/26 The importance of Physical Fitness

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We all know the importance of physical fitness (I’m typing this on a day I chose to sleep in vs. work out), President Reagan used to make us do sit ups in school for crying out loud.

It’s fun to have Wil be the punching bag sometimes. He’s cocky so it’s a little comeuppance.

Wil has changed out of his normal shipboard jumpsuit and into a tank top and shorts. Maxim is similarly dressed. The big Palorian looks at his Captain, a head shorter than him, “I’ll go easy on ya.”
“It hasn’t been that long.” Wil says defensively.
Maxim tilts his head, “Do you even remember the last time you trained?”
“Well no, I mean I don’t mark it in my calendar or anything.”
“Almost eight months.” Maxim points to Wil’s midsection, “You’ve also gotten fat.”
From the side of the training mat Bennie cackles until Cynthia smacks him on the back of the head.
Wil swings his bo staff in a wide arc attempting to get in a shot at Maxim before he expects it. The big Palorian dodges to the side, Wil’s staff missing him by inches. In the same move he brings his own bo staff around catching Wil in the ribs.
Wil takes a step back readying his staff just in time to deflect an overhead swing. He twists at his hip bringing his staff down, dragging Maxim’s with it. He opens his mouth to comment but clamps it shut just in time to twist further narrowly avoiding a blow to his head.
Maxim spins quickly bringing his staff low to take Wil’s feet out from under him. Wil jumps just in time, bringing his staff up to catch Maxim in the chin. The two of them separate a few paces.
Maxim tilts his head side to side cracking his neck, “It’s on.”
Wil swallows, “Oh shit.”
Bennie rubs his hands together.

I enjoy giving the crew time to train. I like the slice of life moments it provides (same with team meals). There’s no stress, they’re together being family.

Selling when things are shit

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I won’t lie, two weeks ago, we wrapped up Ignite Denver a few days before social distancing was the order the day (we were about two days before the venue decided to close up). I thought, “You know this sucks, but things will continue like normal, more or less. It’ll just be inconvenient for a while.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong. We’re now in week two of social isolation and self-quarantine. Everything is closed except grocery stores, pharmacies and (here in CO) dispensaries. 180,000 people in CO filed for unemployment last week. Things are shit.

People (rightfully so, I mean tomorrow is scary, four months might as well be four years from now) aren’t thinking about conferences. They’re not buying tickets, not signing up to speak. Sponsors are waiting to see what events are happening before they write checks. All perfectly understandable because things are shit, but not helpful.

And I can’t file for unemployment. Well, I could if I fired myself, which would be closing down 360|Conferences. So I’d prefer to not do that!

I sent an email to one community earlier this week, another went out today. Essentially begging folks to buy tickets. I hate sending emails like that. I hate asking my communities for charity. I’d rather support them than ask them to support me. I’d rather be the one to bring them together. Help them grow, meet new people, do awesome things. Not beg for their time. I did it because things are shit.

No ticket sales, no sponsorships means no payroll for me.

Mr. Brightside

Writing is a bright point right now. I’m hard at work on Space Rogues 7. Space Rogues 6 comes out next month. Pre-orders have surpassed book 5 numbers, so that’s awesome. I’ll have book 7 ready for pre-order when 6 launches, so that will be awesome.

The downside is that…

  1. Sales are slow. Makes sense, a lot of folks suddenly have far less disposable income. I certainly do, I’m not buying much of anything. I get it, things are shit.
  2. Next month, when book 6 launches and those pre-order process, I’ll get paid in June for that. Such is publishing.
  3. Amazon is giving away 2 months free Kindle Unlimited, which has blown the bottom out of the market. Why buy a book, when you can read thousands for “free”? Even if only for the next two months.

 

What can you do?

Well, if you’re so inclined, you can directly support me. Buy books (or merch) directly from my shop page. I get paid immediately for those purchases. If you’ve read all five books, tell people you know that might like them. Gift them copies, send them the URL with “Buy this book” all of it helps, because right now, writing income, will be supplementing conference income.

WIP Thursday 3/19 – Deep Thoughts

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I have been, well lax would be generous, on WIP Thursday posts. Partly because it can be tough to pick a scene that doesn’t give anything away.

BUT

I wrote one last weekend that I liked and made me chuckle, so here we are.

Cynthia steps out of the small refresher compartment in the quarters she and Wil share. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed. She adjusts her towel and sits next to him placing an arm around his shoulders, “You ok?” She looks at his grime covered body and removes her arm, “Touching after showers.” She mumbles examining the fine hairs on her arm to see if she needs another shower.
Wil grins, “Just thinking.”
When he doesn’t immediately continue Cynthia pushes, “About what?”
Wil shrugs, “Well, Rey was palatines granddaughter. We know she had parents, but who was her grandmother? Or mom and dad for that matter? Palpatine had a son, what was he out there doing while his dad was emporering?”
Cynthia stands punching him in the arm, “You’re an idiot. Shower, now.” She moves to the dresser they share and removes a clean jumpsuit. “Emporering isn’t a thing.”
Wil stands and walks into the small compartment, “I mean, it’d have to have been a powerful Jedi, right? A female Sith? Did Palpatine have a harem? Was Rey’s mom force sensitive?” He ducks inside the refresher as a boot strikes the wall where his head had been.
After dressing Cynthia opens the hatch and shouts toward the refresher, “He almost certainly had a harem, evil drennogs always do.” She closes the hatch before he can answer.
In the hallway Maxim is exiting the quarters he and Zephyr share. He nods, “Who has a harem? We don’t have space for anyone to set up a harem on the Ghost.”
Cynthia starts to answer, then just waves a hand, “Nothing, Wil being Wil.”

Space Rogues 7 is coming along nicely. This scene is halfway(ish) in. I’m currently planning on it releasing around Christmas time.

In this time of forced work from home and social isolation, I hope you’re at least reading good things that make you happy.

Tell me what you’re reading.

A Year and Decade in Review

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Welp, we’ve passed the Winter Solstice, and in just a few hours we’ll be saying goodbye not just to 2019, but to the 2010’s. I’ve never been a resolution maker but I do like to look back on what I’ve done, what I wanted to do etc.

So where are we (the royal we)?

The 2010’s saw the birth of my professional writing career. Technically I’ve been paid for my writing for years, as a copy and tech writer, a resume writer, etc. But fiction, that’s new. Plus I stopped selling my non-fiction writing services years ago. If you’d asked me ten years ago if I thought I’d be a writer that makes money I’d have laughed. If you’d asked if I thought I could ever make a living as a writer, I’d have laughed harder. But here we are.

On top of my writing the 2010’s were a pivotal and volatile decade for 360|Conferences.

On a personal level, Nicole and I moved from our downtown townhouse in the “Hottest ‘hood in Denver” (Blech) to just outside downtown to a neighborhood that doesn’t suffer year ’round construction, unannounced music festivals, and other nonsense. I haven’t had to step around vomit once, and it’s frankly glorious. Suck it RiNo.

We love our home and the neighborhood, we actually get out more to the nearby arts district than we did in RiNo where drinks came with a loan application and snobbery.

Nicole and I also visited some amazing places.

The Netherlands. We got to visit our dearest friends Mike and Judy in their awesome adopted home of Amsterdam. We’re overdue for another visit as they’re now homeowners!

Germany. We did Oktoberfest! The real one! It was amazing. We had a big group which was tons of fun, drank and ate lots, saw a ton of things. Did NOT snort menthol (which we thought was cocaine and that Australians gave zero fucks). We’re planning to go back in 2023.

Egypt. To close out the decade (sorta) in 2018 we spent 10 days in Egypt, visiting all the things, drifting down the Nile river. I wrote a large portion of Space Rogues 4 on the deck of a Dahabiya watching the Nile drift by. It was an amazing trip!

We Renovated our house. Thankfully we were in Egypt for some of it. But the house we moved into had a few less than perfect things about it. Namely, a kitchen that was too small, a dining room we didn’t need, and a master bathroom that was anything but masterful. So we gutted. We have an amazing open kitchen now that we love. We have a master bathroom that’s stunning and we couldn’t be happier. The house is much more ‘us’. It was neat to see the house torn back to studs and in the case of the first floor, the original brick. I’m so bummed we had to re cover it but someone in the past through you could nail plaster and lathe to brick… Same for the original hardwood floors (no I’m not Karen from the 80s, we put down new wood #carpetsucks).

And we will likely never do a renovation project again. That shit is stressful. But I did find a wizard staff hidden in the wall, so there’s that.

A few 2010s Numbers.

Number of Space Rogues books released: 5. 7 if you count the two short stories.

Number of non-Space Rogues books released: 0

Number of non-Space Rogues books written: 1

Number of eBooks sold: 23,197

Number of Paperbacks sold: Not many, Hard to break out past about 90 days, but about 200.

Number of eBooks given away: 46,552

Number of Books put to Audio: 1

Number of conferences created: 3

Number of conferences put out to pasture: 2

Number of moves for Nicole and I: 1

Rogue Publishing LogoWriting.

I’m pretty excited that writing is going so well. People seem to really like the Space Rogue series. The 5th book was just released with the highest number of pre-orders yet. Book one has been hanging around the top 500 or so free Kindle books for the last two months (It’s going back to full price 1/1 if you haven’t grabbed it yet!). In 2019 I made about 5x more than I did in 2018. I don’t want to jinx things but can see “Full-time writer” as my occupation in a few years if things keep going well.

Mid-2019 I wrote what I hope is the first book in a new series. It’ll be released sometime around the first of the year, in addition to Space Rogues 6. I’m excited to try something new, to branch out, and I HOPE, add a new revenue stream to my business.

I decided in 2019 to start putting myself out there more in person, so I have been applying for author alley’s or paying for booths at conventions. I’ve written about that already so won’t rehash it here, but I’ve signed a couple of dozen books now for people, which is pretty fucking cool, even if I still haven’t found “my thing” when signing. I’ll be doing more in 2020.

The last bit of writing news is that I spun up a merch store. I’m still working on it, fine-tuning, but I’ve had enough readers ask about shirts and stickers and such that the couple hours it took to get it going, should be worth it. I mean I’ve already sold 2 shirts and a coffee mug so, ¯\_(?)_/¯ . I won’t lie, I’m looking forward to the day I see someone on the street in a Space Rogues shirt.

Lots of Eggs, Many baskets.

I’ve talked about being wide before so I will skip the details but here’s an update.

Amazon now accounts for ‘just’ 74% of my income. My hope is to move that closer to 50% or less. There are a few companies I trust with silos, Amazon isn’t one of them. My books are available on every device and in every store that sells ebooks.

While I dislike exclusivity, I am a bit locked in with Audible. Because I’ve set up a royalty share with my awesome narrator, I’m locked into Audible for 7 years. That’s unlikely to change, unfortunately.

Conferences

360conferences banner

360|Conferences had it’s oh shit moment during the 2010s. Specifically, 2017, where attendance at 360|iDev dropped by 50% without any warning. The hard part there is when you plan, and commit to 400 ppl, and only 200 show up, hotels and vendors aren’t overly sympathetic. It was made worse by having already taken a significant loss in spinning up a new conference. Thankfully the Grand Hyatt (Where 360|iDev has been for 3 years now) are actually really awesome partners. 2018-19 were years of regrouping and figuring my shit out for the conferences. I’m happy to report I might have finally kind figured this out. Still pretty upside down, but not in a way that it feels hopeless.

One big thing for me was that I realized that while being the ‘biggest’ was neat, it wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t really what I wanted. Being the ‘best’ is what I want, and think we’re doing pretty good there. 2018 was a record profit year for all three conferences, and 2019 was pretty good (a few stumbles). I’ve made some changes for 2020 that I think will be awesome. Of course after 2017, all this “record profit” and “best year yet” stuff is just digging out a pretty deep hole. I’m thankful I was given a chance to dig out vs. walking away from debt and hosing a partner.

I’m thankful that 360|Conferences is celebrating a decade of existing, not many conference companies get to say that. The communities that I’ve had the privilege of supporting are amazing, and I’ve formed a ton of friendships by doing these conferences.

A Few Highlights.

360|Flex was put to bed. This happened pretty early in the decade. I tried to rebrand, failed. Tried to bring 360|Flex back as more niche, didn’t enjoy it. So I pulled the plug 100%. A shady travel company managed to grab the domain, then lost it, the new owner then stole the twitter account, fun.

360|intersect was born and died. I’m still convinced intersect was just ahead of it’s time, but regardless, as much as I loved it and the content, not enough people were coming. While all my conferences are near and dear, 360|intersect brought together some really awesome people to tell their stories.

360|AnDev was born. Dave and Chiu-Ki approached me about doing an Android event here in Denver. I was hesitant since I’d said Android wasn’t really for me, but with their help on the community side, we’ve created a world-class event.

Chicago Roboto was born. Ryan and Jerrell reached out after 360|AnDev about doing another Android event, this time in Chicago. I still wasn’t sure, but again, they managed the community aspect, and I executed. Chicago Roboto has quickly caught up to its sister 360|AnDev in terms of size and speaker quality. I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve done.

360|iDev has continued to lead the iOS developer event pack. A few more events have closed up shop (This ain’t an easy business!). I made the conscious decision that 360|iDev was a 200 person event. no more creeping up to 300, then 350, then 400. At 200 it’s sold out. The end.

AltConf is still THE community event at WWDC. I love working with Rob and Anna and the rest of the AltConf team. We execute a truly massive (Thousand of attendees, dozens of sponsors) event, that is free to attend whether you’re a WWDC ticket holder or not.

And of course (not 360|Conferences) Ignite Denver is still something I’m super proud of. The first Ignite event in CO, and the longest-running.

 

So…

That’s the 2010s for me. I’m exceptionally excited or 2020 and the decade it brings. I’m excited to see where the iOS and Android communities go. I’m excited to bring more stories to the world, who knows, maybe one day you’ll see Wil Calder on the screen (big or small).

 

Happy Holidays, Merry New Year, Successful Festivus.

 

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