Coming Soon: The Survivor of San Guillermo

I promised in my last post (see below) that I’d be making an announcement of sorts in the coming week for all of those who regularly (or semi-regularly) come to my site and supposedly give a shit. And here it is.

It is my intention to publish a novel this year, using whatever combination is most viable of Barnes & Noble’s PubIt!, Amazon’s DTP, Smashwords, CreateSpace, and Lulu. The novel is a science fiction/Western/historical fiction work called The Survivor of San Guillermo. More on it later.

At the moment, let me tell you definitively that no, I don’t know enough yet to even know if using PubIt!, DTP, etc. in combination is cost-efficient or worthwhile or even possible. I don’t know which one is best suited for my purposes. I know very little at this point of the technical aspects of any of them - I only know that they exist, what they exist for, and that for certain writers they have proven to be an inspired resource.

 But I intend to explore all three thoroughly in the coming months.

Right THIS minute, I’m concentrating on creating a finished product that is worthy of publication. I’ve employed an editor - a REAL editor, not a “book doctor” - and we are weekly adding more and more pages of polished material to the heap. I’m going to start looking for an illustrator for the book during April, and as of this post I’m going to start peddling it ahead of its “street date”, which I’m hoping will be sometime in late November or early December. Just it time for the holidays! (Hint.)

Part of the impetus behind my decision to “indie-publish” The Survivor of San Guillermo can be found here, at Joe Konrath’s blog. It’s a rather long blog post - probably the longest one I’ve ever read - but even if you sample it, you’ll get the idea.

I’m simultaneously still trying to get an agent interested in my other book, The Talented Boys, which I finished last year - I’m trying to publish it using traditional means. I’ve been rather lax in doing so, having only sent it out to a small handful of agencies, but it’s out there. Somewhere. Given the newsworthiness of Atlanta graffiti, which figures prominently in the story, and the announcement of a movie based on Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which significantly influenced it, one would hope that an agent or editor would pick up on it soon. In the meantime, I’ve decided to do something with San Guillermo, which has been languishing in a drawer for five or six years, screaming at me to let it out. And who knows? If San Guillermo does even remotely well, and The Talented Boys continues to make no headway with traditional/legacy publishers, and the benefits of indie-publishing continue to add up for me, then maybe I’ll be telling you the same thing about Boys in a year or two that I’m telling you about San Guillermo now.

Now, just a little about The Survivor of San Guillermo before I let you go. I’ll add more details later as I decide which details to add, and hopefully some information will show up in the future at my new URL, www.thesurvivorofsanguillermo.com (nothing’s there now so don’t bother).

San Guillermo follows the experiences of a Texas Ranger named Thom Reynolds in Arizona Territory in 1871. Thom’s just rolling along one day, doing his job, when suddenly he’s plunked down into a bunch of plots and counterplots perpetrated by a bunch of well-meaning scientists and assorted assholes from the future. And… pretty soon things start to suck for Thom. Poor guy.

So, if you know anybody who wants a good editor who’s new to the game but - as far as I can tell - quite capable of playing it, then let me know. I’ll put you in touch. Also, if you know a good sci-fi/Western illustrator who’s willing to work on spec, then again, let me know. Finally, WATCH THIS SPACE , and watch www.thesurvivorofsanguillermo.com for future developments on this particular project.

Thanks.