Psychedelia Gothique

The problem with writing a book that starts off with a science fictional premise is that its hard to market as anything but science fiction. Once it’s been labelled that way, readers look at it through a science fictional lens and judge it by the standards they use to judge all science fiction. For many of those with a science fictional mindset, that entails a withdrawal of their willing suspension of disbelief if everything doesn’t play out in a convincingly logical way. Forgive me, but I honestly couldn’t come up with another way to market it.Avenging Glory (the diptych) was never intended to be a science fiction book, even though this first book, The Human Template has a very science fictional premise. It presents as sci-fi, even though it was conceived more as a satirical, action adventure.This was a concern to me when I wrote it and will probably become even more of a concern when I release the second book, which pretty much drops all pretense of being science fiction and becomes…

As the pandemic wears on, I suppose it’s only natural to start looking for positive aspects, good things that have come about at least partly because of Covid. A number of television series that wrapped just before the pandemic took hold were released as scheduled and some of the early ones didn’t have much impact at the time.Season two of Showtime’s stellar comedy, Kidding ran in February, which turned out to be somewhat unfortunate timing, since the corona virus probably distracted us from realizing this was one of the best things on television and we had no idea how little good entertainment was going to be released in the coming months. Magic realist, dark, funny; this one’s certainly worth looking up if you haven’t seen it. Watch now and you get to see both seasons back to back. If you actively dislike Jim Carrey, then even the wonderful supporting cast (including Catherine Keener and Frank Langella) may not sway you. But if you liked The Truman Show, even a little, then you sho…

Of my dozen or two established writer friends in the 1990s, most of them had multi-book contracts through their agents. They would do signings and interviews and bookstore launches. 60% of them published through Tor; most of the rest with other large genre imprints like DAW or BAEN. And a few had books published by prestige small publishers. The closest anyone came to self-publishing was putting out occasional chapbooks through tiny self-owned imprints. Those days, a mere 20 to 25 years ago, seem very ordered and genteel (if a trifle elitist) compared to now.
Here are Some of the Many Ways the World has Changed for Writers:I still have half a dozen writer friends with recent Tor books, and/or online novellas. A few others have drifted from TOR to either mainstream or well-known alternative publishers. A few writer friends whose books were orphaned by the demise of their publishers have been picked up with great results by Open Media. A number are still publishing with the surviving sma…

I’m all about the Free Webinars.The other day, it was “New York Times Bestselling Author” Alessandra Torre, whose promotional post I found on Facebook. She writes romance and erotic suspense and seems to do well at it. She promised to teach me (and countless others) "5 Secret Site Tools on Goodreads to Sell More Books."'m already investing hundreds or thousands of dollars, and hundreds of hours; on publishing and promoting my book; so, anytime I can get something free, it's worth at least looking into. Reedsy and MailChimp and Ingram Spark all offer free training and tutorials. Mostly it's stuff you'll have heard dozens of time before - primarily aimed at complete beginners. Depending what part of the learning curve you're in, every one of these 'courses' can teach you something useful or at least help you work out where you stand in the grand scheme of things. I've sat through tutorials at all three of those sites - usually just tracking dow…

A few weeks back, I mentioned on the listserver for SF Canada (a professional writer’s organization of which I am a member), that I was starting a blog series on self-publishing that was going to essentially be a report from the trenches regarding the challenges and triumphs I encountered on the way to launching my first novel, The Human Template. I was hoping that some other members who are currently going through or have recently gone through the same experience would be will to do guest posts on my blog.Several of them expressed an interest, so today, I am posting the first of those. Joe Mahoney’s first novel, A Time and a Place came out in October 2017 from now-defunct Canadian small press, Five Rivers Publishing. I have long believed that author promotion shouldn’t end shortly after your book is launched and falls short of the bestseller lists. Mahoney is an living example of someone following that conviction. He gave me permission to reprint a post from his blog, assortednonsens…

I’m curious to see how this web series takes shape as I move on. I’m tired of blogs delivering mini-tutorials on Self-Publishing, while seldom delivering any nitty gritty from the trenches. By sharing my journey, I’m hoping you can find something to take away that helps you on your journey. You can say, “that worked for Sproule, why not for me” or “that didn’t work for him. Should I scrap or tweak my approach to the same marketing challenge?Here’s one of my biggest challenges – staying organized to help everything come together at the right time. Keeping track of ALL of the marketing efforts I’m making on every front is going to be essential over the coming months.I have a natural aversion to unnecessary administrative work. Goes against my ADD attention span.I start a list in one place and leave it on the computer there, so it’s not available over the weekend. Then I start a second list and despite whatever good intentions I may have, the two lists seldom get amalgamated. So then I …