I wrote poetry in high school, and essays on trains that won the Illinois State Student Historical contest, and wrote tales from the world of Jorde. The latter was my first real taste of writing fantasy - I had finished the LotR series in 8th grade and had encountered the just published Dungeons and Dragons in the 9th, and so of course was primed. I started telling my youngest brother - at that time just entering elementary school - about the Lady Tanea, mage and healer, the charismatic Ren the Bard, the valiant and ultimately tragic knight Ten Aguar, and their adventures in the wilds of a world called Jorde, based on the Swedish word for Earth. A quarter century later, my brother has now written extensively for Wizards of the Coast, and I like to think I may have had something to do with that.
During my college years, I wrote fairly prolifically (most of the stories that are now extant on the web from me came from that period), and eventually ended up publishing and editing a small fantasy magazine called Arcane which actually saw three issues in print before we finally pulled the plug. It proved a useful experience in later years - I have spent far more time working for publishing companies of one stripe or another than I have for "formal" companies, and have been a managing editor for both magazines and, later, websites. Yet over the years I also transitioned away from writing fantasy and towards writing technical analysis or computer programming books, though the goal of getting a paperback series in print has always been one of my major ones.
Fast forward a quarter of a century. I'm establishing web policy with the W3C, helping to build the US National Archives electronic records archives, and have more than a dozen books in print ... and yet ... I still occasionally write fiction, and the storytelling urge is perhaps stronger in me today than it has been in years. I'm republishing a lot of my older work that has faded - sometimes chapters of incompleted stories that I still need to finish, sometimes existing shorter works - but am also going to start publishing my latest works here.
Why not write a book? I've already decided that I will, but it will likely be self-published. Why? Because the traditional book publishing infrastructure in this country is on its last legs, because there is very little "value-add" that I feel a traditional publisher can give me, and because my goal is not to become fabulously wealthy from my writing, but simply to have a vehicle where I CAN write and be published.
On the other hand, writing on the web has two advantages - it provides a ready made audience who will likely make their own comments, and in some respects it's far more likely to be read. This was one of those realizations that is far from obvious. A few years ago, unless I had a blockbuster, I might reach an audience of 10,000 or 20,000 fans if I was very lucky, over the brief shelf-like of the book. If I wasn't - the book might very well sit in limbo, waiting to be published, as likely to be cut as not if there was a long enough queue, or the market didn't look right, or the company in question suddenly found themselves well believe third quarter projections.
I'm far more likely to have people read it, far more likely to develop a fan base, if I publish it to the web. Some of my stories, have been read more than 100,000 times. Not all, by any means, and there are a few stories that have also disappeared into the sinkhole of time, but I believe that in this day and age, if you want to be read, then writing for the web is ultimately the best option.
So this is my home for experiments - chapters I'm working on, short stories, even character sketches and ideas. It'll be where I sell eBooks or physicals when I get that far. Feel free to comment - I can't know what people think unless I hear from them.
During my college years, I wrote fairly prolifically (most of the stories that are now extant on the web from me came from that period), and eventually ended up publishing and editing a small fantasy magazine called Arcane which actually saw three issues in print before we finally pulled the plug. It proved a useful experience in later years - I have spent far more time working for publishing companies of one stripe or another than I have for "formal" companies, and have been a managing editor for both magazines and, later, websites. Yet over the years I also transitioned away from writing fantasy and towards writing technical analysis or computer programming books, though the goal of getting a paperback series in print has always been one of my major ones.
Fast forward a quarter of a century. I'm establishing web policy with the W3C, helping to build the US National Archives electronic records archives, and have more than a dozen books in print ... and yet ... I still occasionally write fiction, and the storytelling urge is perhaps stronger in me today than it has been in years. I'm republishing a lot of my older work that has faded - sometimes chapters of incompleted stories that I still need to finish, sometimes existing shorter works - but am also going to start publishing my latest works here.
Why not write a book? I've already decided that I will, but it will likely be self-published. Why? Because the traditional book publishing infrastructure in this country is on its last legs, because there is very little "value-add" that I feel a traditional publisher can give me, and because my goal is not to become fabulously wealthy from my writing, but simply to have a vehicle where I CAN write and be published.
On the other hand, writing on the web has two advantages - it provides a ready made audience who will likely make their own comments, and in some respects it's far more likely to be read. This was one of those realizations that is far from obvious. A few years ago, unless I had a blockbuster, I might reach an audience of 10,000 or 20,000 fans if I was very lucky, over the brief shelf-like of the book. If I wasn't - the book might very well sit in limbo, waiting to be published, as likely to be cut as not if there was a long enough queue, or the market didn't look right, or the company in question suddenly found themselves well believe third quarter projections.
I'm far more likely to have people read it, far more likely to develop a fan base, if I publish it to the web. Some of my stories, have been read more than 100,000 times. Not all, by any means, and there are a few stories that have also disappeared into the sinkhole of time, but I believe that in this day and age, if you want to be read, then writing for the web is ultimately the best option.
So this is my home for experiments - chapters I'm working on, short stories, even character sketches and ideas. It'll be where I sell eBooks or physicals when I get that far. Feel free to comment - I can't know what people think unless I hear from them.
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