January, 2021 | Sweet Weasel Words

Sketch of upcoming Fester prequel POWWOWS, by amazing Portland artist Ken Huey.

Things are staring to coalesce around the projects that I mentioned in the previous post. To be brief, I have a novel manuscript called Fester that I wrote several years ago that I decided to publish. While the process of editing and general literary turd-polishing is going on, I have a prequel that I wanted to release early as sort of a teaser/promo for the full-length novel.

At first I thought about just posting the story right here, as I did with “Reset.” Then I decided to go ahead and publish it as an eBook, and charge something ridiculously low, like 99 cents. I really didn’t plumb the depths of eBookery when I released Jackrabbit; it was more like an afterthought, an extra box to check on the Amazon KDP form. As I’ve done a little more research on eBook publishing, I realized that I had perhaps skimmed over an important aspect of self-publishing.

At first I thought that I might be shooting myself in the foot by charging almost-a-buck rather than just giving it away. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, though. First, I’m talking about a measly 99 cents. Anybody’s got a dollar to spare, and with this, you get change! How much entertainment will 99% of a dollar get you elsewhere? Not much, my friends, not much.

Then there’s the whole bass-ackwards notion of how we assign value in a hyper-materialistic society. In our world, dollar signs are all. By charging the public for this story rather than giving it away for free, the signal is received that this is worth something. Price tag determines value in the minds of most.

This is especially true in the world or literature and bookselling. I have a good friend who once specialized in rare children’s books. He had a number of really high-demand titles in his catalog that he was listing for very reasonable prices. Despite having collectable titles at great prices, the books weren’t selling. Flummoxed, he asked another bookseller what he should do. The other bookseller took a look at the catalog listings and immediately said, “Double the prices.” My friend was skeptical, but at that point he had little to lose. He doubled the prices of the books, and within a week they had all sold.

The moral of this story: we’re all idiots. I know I sure am.

So, while Fester is getting the editorial beatdown it so richly deserves, I will dive into the deep end of eBook publishing. Stay tuned for further adventures.

Cover of Jackrabbit, new John Dillinger novel — Yes, still hawking this on Amazon, in both eBook and paperback.

I’ve decided to take a little time off of my constant doomscrolling obligation to do some actual writing. Well, not writing in a literal sense, but actually editing something I had written a while back, with a thought towards publishing. Initially, I had thought that the story wasn’t really good enough to publish. Now, with the perspective of some more experience, I realize that hardly anybody’s going to read the damn thing, so what the hell. Why not?

The latest project(s) started out as a novel manuscript that I began in 2008. It was about a fictional town in Pennsylvania called Lester. The gag was that the town founders were trying to follow the style of naming towns after ones in England. This town was to be named after Leicester, but the town founders got the spelling wrong. Then I found out that there actually is a Lester, PA. From what I can tell, it’s little more than a collection of industrial warehouses at the end of the Philadelphia airport runway, but it sort of spoiled the name. SO I changed the name of my town to Fester, which actually works a little better as far as gag town names go.

The first draft of Fester topped out at around 160,000 words, which is paltry if you’re George R.R. Martin or Neal Stephenson, but pretty big for a debut novel. Even pleading the case of world-building to boost the word count, it’s still excessive. So I chopped and chopped.

One of the things I chopped was a story arc about a witchcraft murder, similar to one that occurred near my hometown of York, PA back in 1928. I thought that it might be able to function as a standalone short story, but I was more focused on getting the Fester MS down to a more manageable size. I was shooting for 100,000 words, but I ended up settling for 110,000.

I made some attempts to interest some agents in Fester, but they were unsuccessful and I got distracted by the early stages of Jackrabbit. Pretty soon, I was up to my eyebrows in Dillingeriana, and I had forgotten about the doings in Fester, Pennsylvania.

There were a few more small writing projects last year, and then I got started on another novel MS, about stand-up comedians (working title: Laughingstock). As the first few chapters began to coalesce, it became apparent that this was going to be a long-term project. To have something to talk about besides my glacial writing process, I dusted off Fester. I decided to have a pro do the editing, since it seemed to work well for Jackrabbit. At the moment, I’m shopping around for editors.

While that’s going on, I went back to the first draft and began reassembling the story arc about the witchcraft murder. It was clear that it was going to need a lot of TLC. It was also apparent that it was going to be a bit longer than a short story. At 15,000 words, it inhabits that uncomfortable literary gray zone called “novella” or “novelette.” I’m sure there’s a technical difference, but to me it’s academic.

I’m hitting the keys on the witchcraft story, which has a working name of Powwows. Not sure if I will publish it as an e-book, publish it in its entirety here, or both. Regardless, readers will soon be able to get a glimpse into the strange little town in the Allegheny foothills that I call Fester.

Month: January 2021

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