Admiral’s Revenge and other Updates
First off thanks for everyone whose helped support my new Fantasy series. Its much appreciated.
Now in other news. Admiral’s Revenge is up to 66k words written and the current plan is to have a first rough draft finished by early September. I ‘hope’ I can keep to it! After that beta copies will be dependent on how fast the Brother can get to the first stage editing!
Also Current thought is to break out the Akantha goes to Capria stuff into its own Novella (Admiral’s Lady: Ashes for Ashes, Blood for Blood) and stay more focused on Jason centric or Jason set into motion stuff that directly impacts his ‘Revenge’. For anyone interested to find out more of what happened and how it all came to be when Akantha went to Capria stay tuned for a sneak peak at the end of Revenge. For those of you who don’t like diverting to read about secondary characters, you won’t miss ‘too’ much. LOL.
Struggling to come up with more stuff here…. Ah I remember. For those of you who are interested in staying in the know. The tentative title for Book 6 in the Spineward Sectors is: Admiral Invincible and while its totally going to end how you’d imagine, on the other hand its totally ‘not’ going to end at all like you’re thinking! You’ll have to find out when I get to it and actually write it. But I think its safe to say it’ll have the fan’s in a tizzy. 😉
So current writing schedule is Admiral’s Revenge. Admiral’s Lady. Admiral Invincible. And Falon: The Painting.
The Brother’s thinking about tearing into a Nikomedes Prequel that might be split into two parts depending on material. And he’s offered to help with Ashes for Ashes, Blood for Blood. Seriously considering letting him do the next Akantha Novella like he did the last one but I’ve got some serious ideas on the Akantha goes to Capria stuff rolling around in my head. So I’m honestly torn. What happens next on that Novella will probably depend a lot on 1: how fast I can write, 2: how much he’s chomping at the bit to tear into it and 3: whether or not I do some kind of involved plot line for the book.
In other news I have been sitting on a Spalding short that I’ve had written for a while and not entirely sure what to do with it. Cabe wrote some Jason prequel stuff that I haven’t finished going over completely and we initially planned to merge it into a novella. But now the brother is thinking to start his own editing website and we might offer that stuff for free reading over there. But that might take a while. So I thought hmm, maybe post the Spalding short (a prequel mainly with Gants while the Clover is still getting ready for Imperial occupation prior to joining the MSP) here. Then again I might not. I could wait. I could offer it for a limited time here and then delete the post until the brother’s site is up… Why don’t you guys tell us what you think!
The Deposed King
27 comments
Ayende Rahien - August 20, 2013 1:43 am
I like the idea of splitting the stories. I want to read about the Little Admiral, period.
Akantha is cool, but mostly in her interactions with Jason
Kitten - August 20, 2013 3:34 am
I am a little brain dead from TAFE today but I just wanted to comment and say awesome!
Reader1980 - August 20, 2013 3:21 pm
All those word used and not in a Book (Looks Woebegone)
Thank you for the update…. I’m hoping for at least 20 books in the series so I’ve got high hopes as you can tell.
Johntae - August 20, 2013 6:26 pm
Why not do anthologies? The various ships on patrol have got to be running into interesting things and people. The border worlds aren’t all going up in flames, some are holding their own, I’m sure they’ve got interesting stories to tell.
Ulrich - August 21, 2013 1:52 pm
Josh,
first I don’t think it makes sense to put so much up for free.
Second I would second the opinion of Johntae. Make an anthology, put the Akantha story upfront, install the Spalding part and what you have on top and you have a full blown out book.
Look I bought both Falon books instead of going for the the free day. You are trying to build a living on your writting and than it should be something people pay for.
Now you can put smaller spots out here for some time but than you should put it into the anthology anyway. People await a book they pay for to have at least so and so much words in it and except of the Akantha story plot nothing is really needed for the main line at the moment, so waiting a little bit more for that stuff would not be so much problem for me at least.
Now possibly people like to write their own fun fiction on some backround stuff which they than would have to give over for an anthology, but I am not sure if that is possible by law that way. Also depends if you would be interested into it in the first case.
I am not sure if it is allowed for you to pay them only in mentioning their names and making money on it yourself.
In the 163x-verse people got paid for real for their produced work.
Now I would not have any problems with something that way, only that I can’t do some writting on that as my english is far to bad.
I some way – as I expressed before in the mailings – I am misding so much of backround on the mentioned reasons and at the same time I understand that people want to read about our beloved *Little Admiral* that going for an anthology with backround stories would be the best way to handle that.
People who like that stuff could still go for it and people who don’t let it stay.
Ulrich
The Deposed King - August 22, 2013 12:32 am
Anthologies are an idea. Right now we’re kind of focused on the novella idea for prequel back ground on side characters and for side adventures like with Akantha goes to Capria to vent her spleen.
I don’t do fanfiction, which BTW, is illegal to sell without the Author’s permission. Which by many definitions most of the time makes it no longer ‘fan fiction’ but universe cannon. Unless specified otherwise.
We may do some anthologies at some point. And the idea of throwing the Spalding short into the back of the next Akantha novella is a definite idea.
As for the novella’s being too short. I guess I’m of two minds on those. My main line book are 120-140k and ‘most’ of the competition books out there are 70-90k. So if you tack on the additional 40k to a novella you’re pretty much paying the same amount of pages if you bought one mainline book and one novella as you would be if you bought two competitor books and as of right now I don’t have near the same number of novellas as mainline books. Also since them main character is Jason its not ‘necessary’ to read the novellas to know what’s going on or what happens to him.
So I’m a little conflicted. On the one hand I wouldn’t mind expanding the novellas to make them larger, except that would take time away from the mainline. On the other yes the novella is half the size of a competitor novel for the same price, on the other hand, my main line novels are 50% larger than theirs.
Anyway I’ll see how it goes! Thanks for the thoughts guys!
The Deposed King
BoneCrushin - August 24, 2013 1:11 pm
I agree that i am more interested in akantha interacting with jason and the crew, but i enjoyed the novella. I also think i enjoyed the novella in part because its so short, if that makes since. I personally love free things, but i’d rather have 10 books instead of 5 because you ran out of money. Think about a preferred reader discount instead of free, cool with me :). Also wondering whats going on with the other promethian ship the little admiral sent on patrol, so get into that soon. I am also hoping for a long series, i started this series as filler to read while waiting for the next book in the other series I’m reading. Admiral quickly made top 5, read them all in a week. Can’t wait for more novel or novella! Keep up the good work!
Vamen - August 24, 2013 6:58 pm
Well, I’m 23k words into the Nikomedes novel. It won’t be 400+ pages like the mainline’s, but it’s looking to be well over half that size. Will be lucky to get to 300 pages, since I am going for high octane, rock ’em, sock ’em robots action with this one.
Am having difficulty coming up with a title though. My latest thoughts are thus:
The story happens within the Spineward Sectors, but more than half the book will be on Tracto, so should it be a Spineward Sectors Novel? I was thinking to put it in a sub-series called ‘The Tracto Tales’…thoughts?
Also, for the title I have a couple thoughts. Honor is integral to Nikomedes’ character, so my first thought was ‘The Price of Honor.’ Second thought was ‘The Hero of Men’ (wink wink), and third was ‘The Forge of Men.’
Still a few weeks from completion, so there’s time for some discussion. Let me know your thoughts!
Ulrich - August 24, 2013 11:18 pm
Josh,
it seems we had some misunderstanding.
a.) Yes *Fan Fiction* becomes cannon when printed and yes, you can not do that without agreements between author and holder of universe and an author is only allowed to write something with the permission of the holder in that universe as fan fiction.
b.) I were not saying you >shouldcouldknowOh, tomorrow, tomorrow it will be out.that is how it isunbelievablewhere does this or that come frompersonal< opinion and I don’t want that to happen, at least not to soon as I really like the stories. That was why I bought the prequel FALON book instead taking it on the *FREE FOR ALL* date.
I want you to have the money to write on and that was also the reason I said that you should not put short stories out for free but put them into some books or put them at the end of a book and there you can make some advertising by saying that this story and others were *FREE FOR All* on your homepage etc.
In the end – everybody knows – it is about money and income. If you can’t live or at least mostly live from your books you have to stop or at least write in a much slower circle as you have to make some time for some other job.
And the Fan Fiction for cannon was only an idea how you could overcome one of the main problem I see with the books / story line but that is you decision to be made and as you clearly difined Fan Fiction a no go that is ok. I only wanted to explain where my though came from as I got the feeling you were *p.. ..f* as I said.
Ulrich
Ulrich - August 24, 2013 11:19 pm
Oh shit, forget ybout the last one, half what I wrote is overwritten and gone. Have to redo it.
Ulrich
The Deposed King - August 24, 2013 11:26 pm
No I’m not upset. The suggestions are fine. I just thought unworkable and not really the way I roll.
Not much of a fanfiction guy.
Anyway what do you guys think about the doing like with the Drizzit DoUrden books. Drizzt was always doing trilogies or arcs in his books. I mean after Revenge, I’m wondering if the next sequence might more appropirately be renamed Admiral’s War, instead of Spineward Sectors. Just a thought my brother hand.
The Deposed King
BoneCrushin - August 25, 2013 6:31 pm
Think you should keep the spineward sectors as your main titles as long as your in that part of the universe. For instance. Spineward sectors: tracto tales. If you decide later on to make a new character over in the gorgon wars then. Change from spineward.
Johntae - September 2, 2013 4:37 pm
You should at least keep Spineward in what ever new direction you go. The Spineward Conquest?
The Spineward War?
A tricky one requiring a really good multi-tool.
Emil - September 2, 2013 11:40 pm
Idk about fanfictions or w/e, I just want to read whatever you write 🙂
Its good books: The quality, The price, The SIZE!
The story of the book have drawn me in from book one, and I have been buying your next books as they come out.
Obviously, that means your doing SOMETHING right 🙂
Why change the magic formula? Why fix something when its not broken?
About free books: As you release a new book, how about you make one of the older books free instead? I imagine they would rather start in the beginning of the series than the ending. And anyone who already bought the other books wont care about your price. (Its cheap dammit!)
Emil - September 2, 2013 11:40 pm
Aha! I was able to post! Halleuja!
N.1 Euro Fan
The Deposed King - September 3, 2013 1:02 am
Thanks for the comments guys!
BTW – Great to see you can post again Emil!
The Deposed King
Hyruler - September 3, 2013 8:12 pm
It’s now September any update on AR?
The Deposed King - September 3, 2013 10:44 pm
Its been toughter than I expected but I’m up to 93k on the 1st draft as of today.
The Deposed King
Emil - September 4, 2013 11:38 am
The mere thought of the next book gives me shivers!
Btw, whats this about a Spalding side story?! You cant just throw out a teaser like that and just look smug! Elaborate!
Keep up the good work, you got some real fans out here who are looking forward to your next book!
N.1 Euro Fan
The Deposed King - September 5, 2013 12:31 am
I have a 15-17k short story with Spalding and Gants while the Clover is still being refitted for the patrol and outfitted before the Imperials under Janeksi arrive to take over. It also gives a few more hints and clues about the Automated Underground and the mysteries hidden down in deck 13.
And another 2k short that shows how Spalding met Brence and Castwell.
Just been wondering when and where to put it up. The brother is starting his author help/editing website at some point and wants to put it up for free there. I’m wondering if I should wait or let you guys take a peak. I was half thinking about making a compendium of Spineward Sectors short stories. We’ve got one with Jason and Janeski before book one, while they’re still on patrol and he’s a figurehead that my brother wrote. I was going to put them up for sale but now leaning toward making it free somewhere.
Anyway just thought to throw it out there and see what you guys wanted.
The Deposed King
Emil - September 5, 2013 9:13 am
I like the idea of a book, “Spineward Sector Short stories” /Side stories. I’d buy it atleast 🙂
I’d say you should focus on selling more books instead of giving stuff away, if you get more more money, you can get a better site. A site where you could
host a proper forum, fansection (Pictures etc) and side stories.
Also, if you get more money => You write more books => I read more books/ I buy more books => Never ending loop! An ever increasing pile of $$!
N.1 Euro Fan
BoneCrushin - September 6, 2013 5:12 pm
I agree with emil. Appreciate the sentiment though.
Vamen - September 6, 2013 8:18 pm
There are ways to make a free book actually pay for itself. It’s not really too complicated, just something people don’t think about too often. When my website is ready to use, I’m going to have gobs of free content available as part of a nonstandard business model. We’re just trying to figure which pieces fit where in the big puzzle.
The primary revenue stream for an author is obviously book sales, but maximizing the value of one’s catalogue actually becomes MORE important than writing new books at a certain point in the process. Josh isn’t quite there yet, but he’s at least halfway, so we need to work on increasing our market penetration soon. Unfortunately, advertising ebooks is really hard and the only outlets that are available are either restricted to the ‘in crowd,’ or competitive to the point of being a bad investmet.
It’s a fun fight though, and I have every intention of winning it 😉
book munch - September 9, 2013 9:33 am
wouldn’t mind reading a Captain Moonlights Crusade, or the wizrds younger years,or sum such about spalding and his coninuous un-heralded work in keeping AI’s from returning to power, whilst his labors go largely un-marked and un-napreciated by even those closest to him. resulting in the familial break.
might even allow you to answer, who is doing that work now? or, what result’s from his dropping his responibilites to follow the clover; which was no doubt the most dangerouse of the AI Multi Access Networks seeking return to sentience.
Ulrich - September 10, 2013 10:00 am
Josh,
wanted to put in my two cent on the point of triologies ala DRIZZT.
I don’t think that will work as my POV is you need to have the story build up that way from the beginning. That is not the case with yours. IMO it is more running alongside to the Honor Harrington story in the way that you have a main plot and possibly some poltlines alongside.
So if you have some spinoff you can take a second line to it like with the *TRAKO STORIES*.
I must confess that I can’t imagine a complete rewritting as by *SPINEWARD WARS*, for me that would need a complete new story line like going big time against the Empire of MAN and I must confess I am hard presse to imagine that – at least in the near future.
Near future hereby would mean the next 10 year or so. In that case at some point you really would need to to produce a time jump.
Ulrich
Colin - October 31, 2013 4:49 pm
Great books! But they do suffer from poor proofreading………extra words in sentences, spelling mistakes etc. I have been turning a few friends on to these novels, but warning them not to judge the mistakes and just go with the story. I can see from a few posts that you are thinking about free novellas etc. in order to get extra interest, I think you need to charge for all your work! The story and concept are great, and are worth people paying for. I would cut down on the modern popular references, as you have created a rich and believable galaxy in your own right. Also be careful that you do not dilute the interest by losing focus on Jason with too many spin offs. I have thoroughly enjoyed the Spineward series so far, and I eagerly await the release of Admiral’s Revenge, but I would wait an extra month just to see this one as error free as possible. Pay a good proof reader and edit out repeated phrases etc. and I think you could attract some big attention to this series, and hopefully some big money as well!!
Best Regards from Scotland
Colin.
The Deposed King - October 31, 2013 8:53 pm
Thanks for the comments Colin. Its always good to hear what people think.
The Deposed King