It feels like fireworks are going off in my head.

First: Today is my sixth anniversary as a full time science fiction and fantasy author. In 2012, my day job left me and I was left with only an 8 title back list and no real hope of working in higher education again. It’s worked out okay so far.

Second: Today is my first day as the Chief Financial Officer of the Science-Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. It’s a wonderful opportunity to give back to science-fiction and the community that surrounds it. I’m honored to have been elected.

Third (but hardly least): I’ve been working on new structures to support my writing since February when I went to the Smarter Artists Summit in Austin. This last month brought back a tool that I used in the past but forgot–the tracking spreadsheet.

When the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers do their periodic NovelRama – 25,000 words in 4 days – I always track my writing by session. It helps me keep track of where I am in the day, how many words I’ve written that day, and how many more I need to write before I can sleep. NovelRama is great fun and I’ve always been sad when it ends. It’s almost always been a great way to jump start a stalled project.

This last week, I had that spreadsheet idea brought back to me and I spent some time playing with it, trying to make it easier and more informative.

It’s made writing fun again. Really fun. The kind of fun that I remember having but had lost track of in the day-to-day slog of trying to set and meet deadlines, keep up with my health, see my kids often enough to be able to pick them out of a line up and all the other stuff that people do.

Honestly, I’m a little giddy.

Status:

1. The first draft of Home Run is nearly completed. I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll find the ending in the next 3-5 days. There’s still a lot of work to do to make it ebook ready, but that day is coming soon.

2. My stretch goal for the month of July is finishing up another paperback. I did South Coast last month. This month I’m shooting for To Fire Called. Fingers crossed on this because…

3. I also have to do the free-write and outline for By Darkness Forged. I plan to do that while betas and editors are playing with Home Run.

4. Artistic Whispers is still working on the Audible production of Tanyth Fairport.

5. Podium (Jeffrey Kafer) will be getting By Darkness Forged as soon as I get it done.

Happy Fourth for those who celebrate it. I know I’ll be celebrating with the fireworks in my head.

Long may they blow my mind!

Until next month, crew. Safe voyage.

Image credit:Sehsuan at English Wikipedia [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC BY 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

I’m a little late. The month snuck up on me, what with the Nebula Weekend and all. Yes, I’ll be the CFO for SFWA starting July 1. No, nothing I ever post here will be me speaking for the organization, the board of directors, or its members. I will never post anything here in my capacity as CFO. (I’m required to make that disclaimer because apparently people don’t really understand how organizations work.)

I’m still plugging away on Home Run. My goal is to get this book’s first draft wrapped up tomorrow. I don’t expect to meet that goal, but for those of you who need a date, that’s my goal. It’s as realistic as anything else I can give you. I’m at 52k and the story is finally coming together here in the middle so all I really need is a few days without website issues, car problems, kid problems, doctors appointments, or any of the other confusions that seem to bedevil me these days.

The Smuggler’s Tales will be made into audio books. Some day. Probably not this year. I’m still working with Artistic Whispers to get the Tanyth Fairport stories up and the Smuggler’s Tales will have to wait until that three book project is complete. Hiring audio production is expensive and I haven’t released enough new works to support running parallel audio projects.

I’m currently behind on paperbacks for Milk Run, Suicide Run, and To Fire Called. I don’t have a date for those. I’ll get at least one of them done by year end 2018.

For those who don’t understand why I don’t place a higher priority on paper, it’s because that final step from ebook to paper is the most expensive of any step after I have a completed manuscript. Converting the final manuscript to ebook is about a day. Converting the ebook to paper is about a month of elapsed time and another week of actual labor. The revenue contribution of paper is 8%. Even audiobooks that I’ve licensed through Podium contribute more. That’s bad news for those who love dead trees and I appreciate that my delaying the production of paper probably exacerbates the problem but for me to release both at the same time means nobody gets a book for at least a month later than the ebook is actually available.

Oh, and I get requests for signed paperbacks rather frequently. I’ve been lax in answering those requests and now state Use Tax regulations adopted by 42 states requires me to collect sales tax on books sold to people in those states and pay that (or notify how much people in those states owe to both the people who purchased and the state’s revenue office). Until this gets sorted or changed, I’m giving up on stocking books for sale here. It’s just too much overhead for me to deal with.

And before you ask, yes, there are ceilings that I probably won’t reach but in the event of a state audit, I’d still need to prove I didn’t meet them and it’s just not going to happen.

So, some good news, some bad news, and a few mea culpas.

I really need to get back to this book. It’s gettin’ really interesting.

See you next month.

So I felt guilty about having this book sitting beside me for – literally – months when all I needed to do was spend a couple of days correcting the files. The hard work was done and I just kept putting it off.

So.

Here’s a paperback. Now I’m only three behind.