Update, and daydreaming in digital

[maldoror_chant]

It's been so long since I updated this, I don't know how many follow this page anymore, but it's a practical spot to post an update on Outlands, and also some musings in regards to serious writing decisions I'm contemplating in the future.



So, yes, I missed my deadline of my last chapter of Outlands by a mile due to considerable (and still ongoing) Family Drama. Which is odd because we're Canadian, and thus don't even celebrate Thanksgiving at this time of year ^^; So far things are in an acceptable holding pattern and we're hoping to pull out the other side eventually. No, it's not COVID, except indirectly as this eternity of lockdown has certainly added to all the usual problems you may expect and then some... let's just summarize with, very sick beloved family pet of many years, compounding existing mental health issues within the direct family circle. If shit really hits the fan, I'll just bung on the last chapter as is and then, well, who knows. But if we sail on through - and it's not looking too bad at the moment - then I'll simply update next Saturday or the one after that, and continue on my merry way with an even greater appreciation for my family and my hobby and everything good in my life (gosh, we're back on the theme of thanksgiving.)


Now for the musings, and questions for anyone who might be reading this.

Before the family drama happened, and in between moments when I needed to take a break from it and think about me and my future for awhile, I'd been looking into the possibility of putting Outlands out in serial book form on a Wordpress site. This would allow me to:

- give it one last real good cleanup and work-over, as it has evolved over the MANY years, and some concepts have drifted, vocabulary for invented shit needs to be tightened and cleaned up, etc.

- it might also allow me to monetize my seriously huge heap of woman-hours spent on this hobby of mine. Nothing serious, I cannot go the Kindle or ePub route unfortunately due to Circumstances Beyond The Scope of This Post Involving the Evil Known As The IRS, but I could bung a Buy Me A Coffee button on a Wordpress page, and see what happens.

- if that works, I might look into digging into other original works to post in the same manner, and this is where I need feedback.

The two or three concept works I have sitting on my hard drive that I could develop are more similar to Outlands than to most fanfics, i.e., it's definitely more about the story/adventure/fantasy than the romance, and it also features female leads (yay!) Two of the concept I have would thus be m/f, and one is seriously shaping up to have an ace OFC lead. But I have no idea if my current readers would be interested in that. I guess this is the opportunity to branch out and see if I can attract other readers too, but the problem with that is, first off, I LOVE YOU GUYS so so much, after so much fun and encouragements and all that over the years, and also, let's be real, for anything like a web serial to work out there in the big wide world full of other people writing the same thing, a starter audience is very helpful.

That's why I'm thinking of starting with Outlands. I get my feet wet, I have a HUGE buffer of words, and I think it's a pretty solid work that will hopefully slowly grow interest over time.

The downside being, though, is that I might also pick up readers who are exclusively interested in queer fiction only, but I suppose that will be a bridge that I cross when I get to it. Also, I have to be careful and do some more research about what can and cannot be posted on Wordpress (or whatever site I go to eventually). Outlands doesn't have anything that's outright NC17 outside of one completely bonus chapter, but I still have to be careful of Child Protection Laws etc. I was doing some research when Family Drama started...

Final downside of course it that Outlands is posted on AO3, and I have no intention of taking it down. It might be hard to keep people hooked on weekly updates of a story they can go and binge-read immediately elsewhere. But I'm hoping to get attention onto my serial site anyway due to cover art (in development!! Coming soon!!) and maybe bonus chapterettes here and there, and of course the final arc due next year. I will still be archiving the final arc on AO3 eventually, and even on Wordpress the writing won't be pay-locked or anything, this is still a hobby, I'm just trying to see if I can make a bit of money at it since I am currently jobless due to being in a country I'm not allowed to work in (bluh) and stuff.

Why serial format, you may be wondering? Well, due to not wanting to be anywhere near the utter madness that is the IRS, I can't use a lot of regular methods of getting self-published. I would need a Canadian site, and Lulu is the only one out there I can see, and is THE SUCK for online books. I'd make virtually nothing out of it even if I did manage to get some traction there, which is far from a given. Well I may contemplate this at some point if enough people say they'd be interested in an actual hard copy of Outlands, but that's Pie In The Sky thinking. The other possibility is that I simply leave Outlands in the happy free fields of AO3, and write up one of my other concepts in private for actual real-life publishing, and then start looking for an agent. In that case I might be looking for a couple of beta readers, who knows. The thing is, that means that I don't get this chapter by chapter feedback loop between me and readers, which I do love and which helps me write, and also, I know that the chance of making it in the publishing world, especially for someone far away from North America and its conventions, writing circles etc , is 0.00001% (re-bluh). Now I am in the fortunate position of not needing income from writing in order to eat. If this doesn't work out, I'll go back to the day job eventually. I am very, very lucky that way. But it makes me a little sad to think of writing a novel, with all the pain, blood, sweat and tears (and I remember Freeport, and others of that level, there's a LOT of blood and tears and snot and stuff involved), and then having it never read by anyone because it never made the grade, and now I'm meandering...

I hope all of this make sense, because due to the Family Drama, I have slept an average of four hours a night in the past four days. Note that none of any of this could happen at all, not even the web serial stuff, as I still have some hurdles to jump over, some research to do, and some stuff to write. I'll update here if/when anything happens, but in the meantime, if anyone has any thoughts or feedback on the whole concept, I'd love to hear it.

Mal out.

Comments

[lexicology]

I am still here and listening! I'm sorry you're having to deal with family drama right now, that sounds like it sucks. And not in the good way.

I would be delighted to read any more original fiction you had, whether it's m/f or gen or what. You are one of my all-time favorite writers. Do feel free to look into whatever you have to to avoid the clutches of the IRS.

[maldoror_chant]

Thanks! The support means the world ^__^ As for the m/m vs f/m, I mean, I'm torn, I think the book scene needs more queer fiction, but it also needs more LGBTQ+ writers. It also needs more interesting and layered female leads IMHO, and I finally feel ready to tackle that. I hope. You'd think it'd be my treehouse, but maybe that's why I'm nervous, I might feel the failure to express what I want all the more accurately and let the side down ^__^;;

[macey]

Hi! Not sure if we've directly interacted before, but, long-term fan of yours from back in Gundam Wing days (on a continuing mission to get my scifi dude buddies to read Freeport), fellow melder-of-fandom-and-pro-writing, & I have retreated to dreamwidth in this Time of Much Yelling On Twitter, hello. (and many sympathy for the unable-to-work-because-immigration thing - I did that for a while in 2012, and it is aggravating)

So, a thing which may be of interest (or you may already know!): there is a small but non-trivial pattern of folks getting agents and selling books from works which were already posted-in-full on Ao3. The most recent is Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell, bought by Tor & coming out in February, which was on Ao3 as The Course of Honour for a handful of years - before that, the one I'm familiar with was Emily Tesh's Silver in the Wood, from Tor-dot-com's novella line, which won the 2020 World Fantasy Award for best novella.

I'm less familiar w/ Ev's path, but I know Emily signed on the basis of her agent reading the novella on Ao3 (..because Kurestin's also my agent, and I'm the one who linked it to her) and then asking to read any novel-length works. So the trick may be that you also need something 'traditionally query-able', ie a novel. But being on Ao3 doesn't burn a work for pro-publishing.

(I'll also note that this year, of all years, is a better one to get into the convention-ing/pro sf/f scene, if you're not nearby geographically, because it's all virtual anyways. Although I've several fandom friends who've made it work from Australia even before now (Freya Marske, for ex), because Connections count for less than you might think if you have the 'knowing how to write, how to edit, and have access to critique' part handled.)

[maldoror_chant]

That's interesting, actually, and I hadn't actually known that. Thanks! I thought that once something was out in public, publishers would no longer be interested because, well, how can you sell something everyone's already got (so to speak) plus all the copyright issues and whatever. Coincidentally, I actually have Silver in the Woods on my iPad book reading list, I bought near the start of the year to read on the holiday that Did Not Happen Due To Pandemic. I should take time to read it...

I had planned to put whatever I post on wordpress into AO3 eventually, to archive it (I really want everything I write to get archived there for safekeeping if nothing else) so the possibility of getting spotted there might still have legs. I'm thinking it's the 'winning the lottery twice in a row' likelihood of being picked up that way, but that doesn't make it impossible. And I can still do the wordpress buy-me-a-coffee thing too anyway, which can also get me exposure on sites that aggregate web serial novels. I suppose they are not mutually exclusive as far as I can see.

Out of curiosity, how are you melded/transitioned the hobby writing and the pro writing? You mention an agent, so did you go straight to trying to publish, or did you do half-steps as well? (Fascinating times we live in, there used to be only one real path to publication a decade ago, now its like we're back in the time of Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle :) )

[macey]

It does seem like publishing is getting pretty flexible? There have been several 'self-pub' or free-to-read works that've been quietly taken down, repackaged, and pro-pubbed (Captive Prince, The Martian, In Other Lands (though that was an indie house)). I suspect it's just a whole different audience, in bookstores? Kinda like the difference between listening to an album and going to a gig? That and, a lot of editorial folks have fanfic backgrounds to varying degree. As do many agents..

(I really like it! It's actually pretty short, only 20k words, and so very full of trees.)

AO3 is just such a good archive? Ugh, I love it. Just from a technology / indexing / download perspective... It's so good.

Yeah, hmm, 'lounging on the internet hoping to get Talent Spotted' is probably not an effective entire strategy XD But it's more, hmm, something in your back pocket if you do find rep, in whatever way makes sense.

Yeah! So, I've always written short fanfic and long original fic - tons of NaNoWriMo part-novels I never showed anyone - & when I decided to start trying to actually publish, in 2015, I basically flipped over to working on pro fiction, but in my spare time. I did end up doing a fair bit of the convention circuit, through which I heard about the Viable Paradise workshop, which was short enough - 1 week - I could do it in dayjob vacation time. I ended up finding my agent through a twitter contest, but I was also querying other agents via the standard 'email me a query' process. That was 2017, that book didn't sell, took a while to get the next one out on submission, and in the interim I accidentally started a podcast about respecting fanfic and got back into yuletide etc, so now it's like... both at once? Who knows XD

[maldoror_chant]

Who knows indeed? :) Well good luck to us both!

[szzzt]

Other long time reader here who did not know you had a dreamwidth until mentioned in your author's notes on that last latest Outlands chapter :D
just popping in to say I would read other ofic no matter the central relationship, and ace OFC made me perk up like a squirrel. I love AO3, I won't turn down porn or plotless h/c (and a few years reading mostly fic have deeply informed how I think about characterization), but action and plot get me where I live...

[maldoror_chant]

Glad to hear it :) It's funny, I love to read a well-written romance, and I like writing them too, but... how can I say this? When I write it, the romance has to be part of the plot, it has to be one of the motors. Otherwise I just feel like I'm forcing myself and the Fun Factor fades.