Remember me?

[sleigh]

I've been absent for, well, awhile. The truth is that this semester is kicking my butt with stuff to read and critique, with committee meetings, and administrivia. I sometimes feel like I barely have time to breathe.

Now, before you say the obligatory "Ah, poor Steve..." let me state that I like being busy. I'm bored if I don't have stuff to do, and I usually keep myself fairly 'booked.' So I bring a lot of this upon myself, and do so willingly. And it's also not as if I'm not getting other stuff done. I finished the submission draft of one book and handed it in to my editor for her editorial notes (and sent it out to my first readers for theirs). I've started drafting the other book in the contract queue and I've written about 12,500 words on that so far.

I've also gotten off my duff and started looking at putting more of my stuff online, like all the Cool Kids are doing these days. My 'current work (the S.L. Farrell novels) are already available in e-book form through DAW, as are the Stephen Leigh novels Dark Water's Embrace, Speaking Stones, and The Shape of SIlence (formerly Thunder Rift by Matthew Farrell) through Phoenix Pick Books. I'm looking at other backlist novels and intend to put them up in e-book form this summer.

But first, I've also begun putting together my short fiction. I'll be releasing two short story collections hopefully within the next few months. The first will be twelve unconnected pieces -- essentially, my non-WIld Card stories for the last few decades, mostly work done for original anthologies. I have that largely put together (though I need to work on a cover for it), but I still need to go back over the files and proof them for typos, etc.

The second anthology will be my "Alliance Universe" stories: back when I first started writing and selling, I set the majority of my short stories in the same future history, which would also be the setting for my first three novels. I published 7 or so pieces of short fiction in that universe, and I'm going to gather them together (along with a novelette that I always liked but never managed to sell). This one's more work, since all the stories are pre-computer, which means that some of them don't exist in digital form, and I have to re-type them and then proof the copy. That's going to take some time.

So that's what I've been doing while there's been this long silence on the blog. What about you? What have you been up to?

Comments

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

I'll be curious to hear how the short story collections do. I've got Goblin Tales going live next week, and was thinking about trying to do the same with some of my other short fiction.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

My expectation is that it will do as well as 'traditionally-published' short story collections: not so hot. I don't delude myself that I have the kind of 'name' and following that would cause everyone with a Kindle or Nook or iPad to rush out and buy it. I've had some of them on fictionwise, but after the initial first few months, the sales dwindled to almost nothing for the most part.

But if I can bring in a few extra bucks a month, it all helps the budget, and right now the stories are mostly just sitting there. I'll let you know, Jim!

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

I've got some stories on Fictionwise, but they haven't done much in recent years. I think my last check was for $2. A single sale of a self-pubbed $2.99 Kindle collection would bring in the same thing.

So while everything I've read suggests you're right that collections just aren't going to do as well as novels, I still think they might at least bring in the occasional "Take your wife out to dinner" check.