I was out and about today in my lovely downtown perusing my lovely city for dark and dangerous looking places. It was a great day for it, as it rained most of the morning and was very dark all day. Not that cloudy ‘it might rain’ sort of dark, but that ‘the world is ending today’ kind of dark. The ground was wet, the wind was blowing and the sky threatened disaster.
My city, or large town, whatever you like to call it, has a great feel to it, and I set a lot of what I write not only here, but within a couple of blocks of what has traditionally been our town center. My novelette I released and ranted about last month was set in my city as it was at the end of the 19th century. I’ve got a near future novel (mostly written) set in the same locale.
I think it’s because days like today have a surreal quality about them that is often lacking when the skies are blue. When I went outside today, with tens of thousands of people working around me, I pretty much had run of the place… all of downtown was my playground.
So I took a few pictures, nominally for an art project I’m working on, but mostly because I want to experience the weirdness the day was offering.
The rain held off for the hour or so I was out, and I felt a bit like I was the lone survivor of the apocalypse Pretty cool.
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| I'm not really that tall - I was looking out my office window |
Okay, just a quick point of order, Rogue Mutt mentioned in his post yesterday… maybe it was the day before, something about marketing. Well, as I was catching up on podcasts I’d missed over the past few weeks while I was listening to a book I hit upon episode 187 of The Dead Robots Society with guest Robin Sullivan. She is the editor/marketer for Ridan publishing, which is built on the back of her husband, whose self-published novels routinely sell in the range of 10,000 copies per month or more. They got a six figure deal from Orbit books to reprint those same books. Astounding.
She has guested on the podcast before, and I get excited every time I realize I’m about to hear her talk about publishing. This lady gives a nice breakdown of all the things she did to contribute to her husband’s success, as well as the other authors that that are now part of her fledgling publishing house – from a previous interview I believe she said all of Ridan authors write full time because they all earn enough income from their books to do so – I don’t think any other publishing house can say the same, period.
It’s a ton of knowledge, and all of us dipping our toes in the self-publishing market should probably listen.
