Buy One or All of My Many Books

This article manifested itself when I realized I have one or more things that you all could be buying RIGHT NOW! I even called up Billy Mays, but then it turned out he was dead. Damn.

Oh, just look slightly to the right. I’m too lazy to advertise further.

That should have been the actual title, come to think of it. My basic philosophy has been that, aside from informing everybody where they can buy what I write, I should advertise my stuff to distributors (read: bookstores), after which the distributors would put the books on shelves (physical or ether) and browsing readers would stumble across books as they always have. My only real goal is to have as large as possible a section of that bookshelf devoted to my writing.

I base this, mostly, on the fact that that’s how I find books. If you actively advertise a book at me, I’ll probably not pick it up. Unless it’s awesome or has a great blurb? So keep advertising at me, I’ll buy anything.

I suck, but it'd be an awful short article if I admitted that.

A Book That Took Altogether Too Long To Write

We're just babies, making up a game...

Controlling drones mapping the surface of a forgotten Earth is a pretty sweet gig, especially since Ernie Centrifuge can work from the comfort of his computer room on the floating city of Megalopolis...but when he takes a job to survey a mysterious island, he finds himself entangled in a deadly competition for a lost and priceless treasure! With the help of his sister (a psion), her husband (a pilot), and a sarcastic lady he meets in a car accident (a police inspector), Ernie races to find out who's who in a world where no one really knows what's what.

A technological thriller with a double shot of humor and romance: Play-world, a science fiction short novel by David Barron. (Smashwords) (Amazon for Kindle) (Barnes & Noble) (Other1)

OK, have you bought it already? Pretty awesome, right? Good. Now that I can't scare you away, I'll roll into  Lessons Learned Time.

This Book Took A Long Time To Get Written Down

Well, that's not technically true, in that this 20,000 word, 21 chapter short novel was written in about 15 days of basic effort (i.e. ~1200 words in a day). But those 15 days were scattered throughout a nine-month period, during which (admittedly) I wrote a whole crap-load of other, equally awesome stuff. It's not like I was thinking about the plot of this book all that time, either. I had a full bracket-outline after day 2, and it didn't change the whole time I was writing. My point is, if anybody asks me if I worked real hard on this book, I'll say "Yes!", but in the same way as I say I ran a marathon over the course of a few months, with frequent rest days and side journeys to look at cool forts.

But, I now know my "Resting word-count"
Yes, with no effort whatsoever beyond forcing myself to actually type, I write 1200 words in about 4 hours (henceforth referred to as a Writing Unit because I like making things up). Considering that a Writing Unit is about the amount of time I can make free in a day with absolutely no effort (beyond not sleeping 10 hours a night) we can call that the Resting Daily Word Count, but we don't have to.

That's pitiful, but that's not the point. I can now theoretically schedule out a book based on minimal effort. So, say I'll write a 40,000 word book next...it should be done in 34 Writing Units. This is known as "Quantified Business". Take notes.

Books are Fun to Write
Well, one would hope so. They're just longer stories, and stories are fun to write.

This Book was Fun to Write
It was cool! There was a laser! And most importantly, now that it's finished, I never have to look at again.

Until I Write the Sequel
There's a sequel?

Sure, why not?
It IS a pretty cool setting...

Anyways, this is all the promotion I'm going to do for this book. (I'm busy.) So enjoy!

Refilling The Well

The Greatest Show on Earth
Richard Dawkins 
Over the weekend, my writing productivity plummeted as I sat down and read the big pile of eBooks that had been, predictably, piling up all around me. I started with this one because evolution is fun and it has pretty pictures (for which I should probably have got the hardback edition). Lots of cool writing ideas, obviously. I'm much better at biological and political SF than I am at mechanical and technical SF. Biopunk?

Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond
I should say anthropological SF, because that's even more fun. This book really gives me a lot of solid tools and ideas for world-building. It has also enlightened me to the point where I can never right classic Fantasy, ever. Without hanging a lampshade on everything by saying MAGIC a lot. So. Sorry? It's probably for the best. There are so many writers who are so much more qualified to write Fantasy than I am. This is an excellent source for alternate history, though. I need to write more of that.

Packing for Mars
Mary Roach
This book was surprisingly unhelpful when it comes to the kind of SF I like to write, but it's pretty awesome nonetheless. If I ever write a 'mundane hard SF', this'll be the book I turn to for the space portions. That'd be pretty interesting, really...

1491: New Revelations of America Before Columbus
Charles C. Mann
Going back to anthropology by way of focusing on the interesting bits, reading this rather horrifying book about how there were whole unknown civilizations running the length of the Americas, doing their own thing and being ridiculously well-fed because they mastered the environment...and then they all pretty much died of DEATH (and also being stabbed sometimes.) Admittedly, it did encourage me to write Fantasy again, because there's a lot of mysterious stuff lying around for people to explore.

The Lost City of Z
David Grann
Like this. Pretty cool, eh? Some guy wanders into a jungle looking for stuff while his comrades drop like flies of horrible illnesses, interacting with tribes of Indians and getting a more dim view of the civilized world every second. Then he doesn't come back and a journalist has to find him 100 years later. Neat.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Susanna Clarke
This was surprisingly good in eBook form, mostly because all the illustrations were already black and white so you didn't miss anything. Still, I'm glad I have the hardcover already. This one deserves it. Oh, and something about magic.

Back to writing, so I can get another book out on Kindle and totally link to it in one of these articles at some point.