I try not to clog up the board with too much spam, but in the interests of keeping folks up to date here's a few things I've done that I don't think I've mentioned here: THE SPIDER: EXTREME PREJUDICE, a new anthology of hard-boiled crimefighting tales from Moonstone Books Extreme sworn enemy of crime, The SPIDER clashes against super-criminals whom no one else can handle. More just than the law, more dangerous than the Underworld...hated, feared, wanted by both. He remains one step ahead of the law in his endless crusade to destroy the human vipers that nest in our society. In "Prey of the Mask Reaper" I.A. Watson recounts how the Spider and mysterious rival vigilante Black Bat must collaborate to tackle a sadistic enemy who is sytematically destroying mystery men and women and those they love - and who has targeted Spider and Black Bat next! "The Spider: Extreme Prejudice" ISBN-10: 1936814463 ISBN-13: 978-1936814466 Release date: July 2013 Edited by Joe Gentile and Tommy Hancock Published by Moonstone Books Purchase from Moonstone Books or Amazon Retail Price: $18.95 Softcover, $29.99 Hardcover GRAND CENTRAL NOIR Released to celebrate the centenary of New York's palatial Grand Central Rail Terminal, this Amazon bestseller collection includes stories by Ron Fortier, Matt Hilton, Terrence P McCauley, and other pulp fiction luminaries. I.A. Watson's contribution is "Lost Property", wherein a thug loses his loot, a traveller loses his auntie's hat, and a lonely young luggage checkout clerk will lose her heart - and maybe her life! Proceeds from this anthology are donated to the New York charity God's Love We Deliver, which works to feed and house the homeless and people in extreme poverty. "Grand Central Noir" ASIN No: B00DFA32KM Release date: 17th June 2013 Edited by Terrence P McCauley Published by Metropolitan Crime Publishers Purchase for Kindle from Amazon Retail Price: $2.99 ALL STAR PULP COMICS #2 is an anthology of graphic illustrated stories from Airship 27 and Rosebud Studios. It includes Robin Hood: Lionheart's Gold written by I.A. Watson and illustrated by Rob Davis. With King Richard imprisoned for ransom in Europe, his mother the manipulative Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine vies with his ambitious brother Prince John to control the vast treasure that could free the Lionheart or condemn him to perpetual imprisonment - and Robin Hood is caught in the middle of the fight!. Proceeds from the first six months' sales of this volume will be donated to the Boston Red Cross. "All-Star Pulp Comics #2" Release date: May 2013 Edited by Ron Fortier and Rob Davis Published by Airship 27 and Rosebud Studios Purchase from Indy Planet Retail Price: $7.99 Next up is probably ROBIN HOOD: FREEDOM'S OUTLAW, the concluding part of my novel trilogy. There's a tie-in novella due out in autumn too from Pro-Se Presents. I'm still intending to finish off novels about Sir Mumphrey Wilton and Vinnie de Soth but at the moment they're having to take a backseat to other demands from publishers who offer money. A full list of my fiction publications and some free stuff is available at http://www.chillwater.org.uk/writing/iawatsonhome.htm That is all. Proceed. IW

I always enjoy hearing about what you have been up to. Spam away I say.

And this reminds me, I must get back to the Blackthorn serial. For some reason I stopped mid-way...and it was very interesting!

Al B. (who wishes he was half as productive)

Read fast. I don't know how much longer the story will be online for free. Sooner of later White Rocket Books will put out an extended edition as an actual book and I expect they'll want the previous version taking down.

I was asked today to make some comments on the Spider/Bat story for a pulp publication. Here's what I gave them:

I was asked to contribute a story where the Spider meets the Black Bat, which was quite challenging for me since I'd not written either character previously.

There were a few things to consider. First off, both characters have somewhat similar backgrounds and situations. One's a criminologist who occasionally helps out the police. The other's a former DA who occasionally helps out the police. Both have dazzling female accomplices with whom they have "irregular" relationships. Both have a team of allies and agents upon whom they call at need. Both disguise themselves and use terror to bring a brutal justice to criminals. Neither is in what we would nowadays call good mental health.

Moreover, both are now being developed by Moonstone, who quite rightly want their series to build upon the original works but still offer development and new directions. So the continuity needed to respect the stuff established by the original creators (I wouldn't have been interested in the project otherwise) and to encompass what has already been done with Spider and Black Bat in their modern publication history. Since this was to be their first encounter with each other, it also had to answer some pragmatic questions including why hadn't they met before? And because I like to leave things tidy for the next guy behind the typewriter, it had to set up why these two men wouldn't keep bumping into each other every adventure afterwards.

Moonstone had established very firmly that Richard Wentworth operates out of his 5th Avenue penthouse, just as he was described in Steeger's original series. It seemed best to me if the Spider and the Black Bat didn't occupy the same city regularly, because every time there was a rash of mysterious murders in the mean streets thereafter they'd be constantly tripping over each other to solve the case. The Black Bat from Thrilling Publications, usually written by Norman Daniels under house name G. Wayman Jones, was less firmly rooted in a real-life city, so it felt acceptable to establish that he came to New York "from out of town" for the purposes of my story.

It also seemed important to show the differences between two characters that were superficially near-identical. Moonstone had helped a little with this; their version of Tony Quinn was suffering from a developing multiple personality disorder, exemplified in some publications by different internal voices playing out each of the pasts of a court case inside the Bat's head: a prosecutor making accusations, a defender mitigating, a judge sentencing and so on. Wentworth, meanwhile, had a different kind of personality discontinuity. He changed his character when he donned his mask, almost becoming possessed by his alternate identity. I tried to play upon the differences in their methods of operation too. The Spider, Master of Men, tends first to pursue people to interview - or beat up - for information. He is a consummate psychologist. The Bat is a little more into forensic clues, and may chase up a piece of physical evidence before descending like the wrath of God on an unsuspecting perpetrator.

Of course, part of the fun for fans of both characters is seeing how the two heroes interact, and how their supporting casts might get on together too. I wasn't about to miss the opportunity for the deadly Ram Singh to encounter the hulking Butch O'Leary. They at least got to do the traditional fight-then-team-up scene that I didn't do with their bosses (my view was that a battle between the Bat and the Spider ends with at least one corpse). Likewise I wanted to put Quinn's sneaky "valet" Silk Kirby in a scene with Wentworth's impeccable butler Jenkyns. If the word count would have allowed me to sit Commissioner Kirkpatrick with Commissioner Warner I'd have done that too.

Then there were the women. Exquisite socialite Nita van Sloan had to meet tough policeman's daughter Carol Baldwin. They had a lot in common. Both enabled very complicated and driven men. Both regularly got involved in crimefighting missions, and each had at some point even donned a mask themselves. Both had somewhat disgraced themselves in society by their romantic liaisons with their men. Both lived with the probability that they, or the man they loved, would die violently and possibly soon. I wanted to show these strong women coming to a mutual alliance (even though neither knows the other dates a vigilante) in a storyline where an enemy is actively trying to find and destroy the heroes' loved ones.

And I wanted to touch on all of that while trying to bring readers unfamiliar with the characters up to speed without bombing them with backstory.

The key to this, I determined, was to have the right kind of villain. I needed an enemy who could analyse the methods of his adversaries, even seek to manipulate them through his understanding of how they operated. I needed a foe who could offer a very real menace if he managed to determine the heroes' true identities; I established that he had already captured, tortured, then murdered (and eaten) the families of a dozen mystery-men and women before going after the big guns. His attacks weren't merely to eliminate the heroes, but to destroy their belief in their missions. That way we got to see the Spider and the Black Bat reflecting on - or getting on with - those missions. And the darker the villain, the darker these vigilantes will go to reach and eliminate him.

Anyway, "Prey of the Mask Reaper" is there in the anthology if you want to see how it turned out; although some fellow named T.A. Watson wrote it according to the back cover. I can only hope he succeeded in wrestling with all the things he felt a crossover deserved to have in the work count available.

All views on how to run a proper pulp crossover gratefully received.

When I get bored, I tend to write essays and circulate them to folks who might be interested. When I'm trying to get myself into a mental state to write a particular story I do the same, often codifying my research into some kind of text piece.

Imagine my surprise when a publisher contacted me this afternoon to see if I was interested in collecting them together in a non-fiction volume.

I've just spent the evening trawling through around 1100 e-mails to see what's in them that might be worth reprinting. I've managed to identify 39 articles filling about 48,000 words of a 60,000 word book, so I might have to generate the remainder if we decide to go for it. Still, it was a remarkable offer.

Here's an example of one I prepared earlier:

The First Defenestration of Prague

How has history come to overlook an event so gloriously named as the First Defenestration of Prague? Come on! It’s an event that set a good part of Europe ablaze. As the title implies it involved people in the capital of Bohemia being thrown out of a window. And, as the name also suggests, this was only the first time it happened in Prague.

Charles University is probably the oldest university in mainland Europe. Founded by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV at the height of his power, the Prague-based Universitas Carolina Pragensis was a seat of liberal learning and pioneering scholarship in the fourteenth century. But in 1402 it got a new rector, the fiery young reformer Jan Hus, a priest who admired the English radical Wycliff and read his works from the pulpit – and a scholar who argued for a doctrine of impanation (the theological belief that the elements of Christian sacrament are not physically mystically transmuted to the flesh and blood of Christ as Roman Catholic doctrine holds but rather underwent a symbolic and spiritual metamorphosis).

This was important and controversial stuff at the time. Hus’ teachings later inspired Luthor, Calvin, and Zwingli and played a major role in the Protestant movement. Hus was reprimanded by Pope Gregory XII, but since Gregory was currently one of two warring Popes (the other being Benedict XIII), Hus did the only logical thing and threw his support and that of his institution behind a third candidate, Alexander V, whom the Catholic church now considers an Antipope. No, honestly.

However, Alexander turned against Wycliff, ordering all his works destroyed, threatening terrible retribution on those who followed his “heretical teachings” (such as translating the Bible into anything other than Latin). Hus fell out with the new Pope in fine style, ignored the Papal Bull, was excommunicated, and carried on regardless. He crusaded against the giving of indulgences – pre-paid forgivenesses for sins yet to be committed. The Pope interdicted Prague, meaning Christians there were no longer allowed to participate in the rites of the church. They did anyway, because Hus said so.

Alexander responded by dying. The new Antipope was John XIII, who called for a crusade against the anti-indulgenists. There was civil unrest in Prague. Three common men who denied the efficacy or authority of indulgences were beheaded. Hus preached a seminal sermon arguing that “man obtains true forgiveness of sins by repentance, not money”. His followers began to argue that Hus, not the Pope, should be the authority of Christian doctrine.

The Council of Constance convened in November 1414 to try and heal the schisms that were tearing church and states apart. Hus was offered safe passage there to state his case, but once he arrived he was arrested and imprisoned. He was chained in a dungeon, starved, and isolated while he faced a series of trials at which he was not allowed to offer evidence in his defence. Refusing to recant, he was burned at the stake in 1415. His ashes were scattered in the Rhine. It was over.

Except that now, instead of being a living annoyance, Hus was a dead martyr. Does nobody learn from history? Strike him down and he became more powerful than you could ever imagine. Within months, what would become known as the Hussite Wars had begun.

There are lessons to be learned from the aftermath of Hus’ execution, such as:

1. If you are Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, do not send follow-up letters to Bohemia, Hus’ homeland, warning that you will “shortly drown all Wycliffeites and Hussites”.

2. Do not persecute the Hussites so they spread all across Europe taking their message with them and whip up flash mobs to form a spontaneous army.

3. Do not throw stones at Hussite parades from the windows of the Prague New Town Hall. It can lead to serious defenestration.

Yes. We’re at the first defenestration at last. On 30th July 1419, Hussites protested Prague town council’s refusal to exchange their Hussite prisoners. Someone hurled a stone from the Town Hall window at the priest leading the procession. An enraged mob stormed the building and threw the judge, the burgomaster, and thirteen councilmen out of the same window. Those who survived the fall were beaten to death by the crowd. King Wenceslas (not the good one, his descendant) of Bohemia was so shocked by the news that he fell sick and died.

And then there was war. The Hussites formed militia, very effective “cart units” with unusual tactics that proved very successful against medieval military methods. Rings of upended wagons formed makeshift defences to protect against cavalry charges, while combinations of crossbowmen, hand-gunners, and flailmen targeted horses first. It was the first time knightly charges proved ineffective against infantry.

Catholics were hounded from Bohemia. Pope Martin V proclaimed a crusade “for the destruction of Wycliffites, Hussites, and all other heretics in Bohemia”. A vast crusading army, including huge numbers of fortune-hunting adventurers, descended on Prague and captured it; but as soon as the army had dispersed, the citizen of Prague themselves besieged the fortress and recaptured it. King Sigismund, who claimed the Bohemian crown, tried to break the siege and was decisively defeated by the Hussites’ carts in winter 1420.

The year after, a second crusade attacked, this time with German troops. Sigismund, whom I picture as a medieval Dick Dastardly for some reason, managed to capture a town before being chased off again by the Hussite peasant army. Drat and double drat!

Between then and the third anti-Hussite crusade (of five), the Hussites amused themselves by schisming. The moderate Utraqists wanted religious tolerance and the extremist Taborites held that there were only two sacraments, baptism and holy communion. Their weapon of choice was the Böhmischer Ohrlöffel or Knebelspiess, a triple-spiked polearm whose name translates into English as the Bohemian earspoon. No civil war fought with Bohemian earspoons can possibly be dull.

The condequences of defenstration rippled on, though. The Pope proclaimed a third crusade to interrupt the internal earspooning. Nobody came. Well, the Danish got part way but went home when nobody else turned up. The Hussites got bored waiting to be attacked and invaded Moravia instead. For the next couple of years they amused themselves by intermittently conquering Germany.

The amazing thing is, though, that this rag-tag force consistently defeated organised military resistance and managed to terrorise the crowned heads of Europe and the Catholic church. They were like that shabby new neighbour who tosses his garbage into your yard then asks what you’re going to do about it. They brought down the property values but nobody was able to object. And they continued to kill each other on the issue of how many sacraments God had authorised. Whole cities now proclaimed themselves as Utraquist or Taborite; Tabor, for example, was Taborite.

The Hussites were so powerful now that they were offering various crowned heads of Europe the monarcy of Bohemia – they had serious problems recruiting to the post. Their chavauchées (“beautiful rides”) saw them raiding through Silesia, Saxony, Hungary, Lusitania, Meissen, pretty much everywhere that had ever supported the crusaders earlier on. Their adversaries included the marvelously-named Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights (incorporating the Livonian Brotherhood of the Sword – I’m not making this up). They eventually conquered as far as the Baltic Sea near Danzig and boasted that only an ocean couild stop the march of the Hussites.

By 1431 the only chance of peace was the Council of Basel, at which the Catholic church reluctantly admitted the Hussite heretics but drew the line at Greek Orthodox clerics being present. But the Papacy decided that before the conference it was best to prepare things by throwing one last really good crusade at Bohemia. The Elector of Brandenburg lead an invading force to siege the city of Domazlice. When the Hussites arrived singing their battle hymn – of course they had a battle hymn – the Papal forces ran away again.

Basel didn’t solve anything. In the end, the Hussites were defeated by their worst enemy, the Hussites. The factions warred, then split, then warred with the sub-factions. Earspoons flew. On 30th May 1434 the leaders of the Taborite Hussites fell in battle against the Utraquists at Lipany. The storm unleashed by Jan Hus’ burning and a badly-judged rock from a town hall window finally passed into drizzle and bluster. Bohemia was a scorched wasteland. The remaining Hussites began to call themselves Protestants.

A peace settlement guaranteed religious tolerance in Bohemia and Moravia, which lasted right until 1618 and the second Defenstration of Prague that triggered the Thirty Years War. But that’s another story, and besides on that occasion the defenstrated clergymen fell into a pile of manure and were miraculously saved.

IW


Text copyright © 2013 reserved by Ian Watson. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

ROBIN HOOD: FREEDOM'S OUTLAW My third Robin Hood novel's now out in the shops and online, available in old-fashioned dead tree format and in some flashy new electronic wizardry that'll never replace the horse. I liked this book. It's the third in my Robin Hood series. I only intended to do one Robin Hood book, but the story kind of proliferated (as my stories often do) and there were three logical pretty-much self-contained parts, so a trilogy it was. Fortunately the publisher was alright with this and stood up like a gentleman to the ordeal of additional editions. I like each part of a three-volume series to stand alone, so no previous experience is required to read this one. There's a sample bit of the story, the best self-contained piece I could find from early in the book, available here. There's more relevant material, including samples from the other volumes and maps that were too difficult to publish on my Robin Hood Homepage I thought this would be the end of my involvement with the Sherwood outlaws, but the publisher asked me to provide some promotional short tie-in stories to offer to magazines. I did one such story for Pulp Spirit #14, available as .pdf file Robin Hood and the Slavers of Whitby, and I scripted the short Robin Hood comic story in All-Star Pulp Tales #2. They wanted more, but the next short story I did, "Robin Hood and the Maiden of the Tower", proliferated into a novella (that is, it turned out to be half the length of a novel). It's going to occupy the entirity of the issue of the magazine it will appear in; it might go out as a special edition. The publisher (of the Hood trilogy, not the magazine) suggested that these stories, plus a bit of additional material from me, might be collected into a fourth edition, or a compilation hardback. I agreed to write a couple more short stories so as to make up a complete follow-up volume. Unfortunately the next short story, "Robin Hood and the Black Monk" also turned into a novella. I've not yet written my final planned tale, "The Death of Robin Hood", but I worry for its brevity. I haven't heard back yet from my stunned publisher what he wants to do about this. That won't make the trilogy a quadrology however. The events of the three volumes now on sale all take place over one summer and have direct links. The rest of the stories happen over the rest of Robin's career as we see what becomes of the outlaw and his cast. There's a definite distance. Anyway, should people want to track down my novels, including the newly released Hood book and the newly Kindled volumes 2 and 3, you can go to: Robin Hood: King of Sherwood http://www.amazon.com/dp/1934935654 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BB40O1O Robin Hood: Arrow of Justice http://www.amazon.com/dp/1613420277 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com//dp/B00E22ONG4 Robin Hood: Freedom's Outlaw http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615852947 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E0UVUPU Blackthorn: Dynasty of Mars http://www.amazon.com/dp/0615676545 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/p/B008NYCVLQ Amazon reviews would also be helpful. Five-star reviews are like gold dust there. In other literary news, I recieved my author's copies of THE SPIDER: EXTREME JUSTICE this week. This is the first time any of my work has appeared in hardback and I must admit the package was very nice. I could use more of my work going out in that format, I really could. And GRAND CENTRAL NOIR did well for charity. At one point it peaked at #10 on the Amazon detective anthologies sales chart, which is pretty good out of 450,000 offerings. I'm told a four figure cheque will be heading off to the homeless/poverty charity "God's Love We Care", hopefully with more to follow. This is turning into a pretty hectic year for me, publishing-wise. I joked before that I might have an average of one book a month out in 2013, but if you count a comic and a magazine story or two then I might actually do it! A couple of weeks ago a different publisher contacted me to pitch me publishing a book of non-fiction articles. This was a bit of a surprise, but I agreed to repackage a bunch of things I've already done plus some new material. The aim is to publish in November. I've had text pieces before in Assembled and Assembled 2, books about the Avengers (and I turned in my stuff for Assembled 3 about five years back now) but this is the first time an entire volume of my ramblings will go out in print. There's one exception to the non-fiction bit, though. One of the articles is called "On Heroines" and it talks about fictional treatment of romantic partners of the principal character. This was early on in my assembling the compilation when I was worried there wouldn't be a big enough word count, so after that section I tossed in a short piece of fiction that humourosly addressed the same topic. It's a story called "Rescue Me" that I first posted here on the Parodyverse board about a decade ago. Now the finished word count has overshot (again) by about 8,000 words and that story, being fiction in a non-fiction volume, is probably first on the cutting list, but if it somehow survives then I think that will be the first story originating from this board to actually end up in a published book (not the first characters, though; those would be Scott's vampire children, I think). It's a strange world. IW I.A. Watson's Publications "Robin Hood: Freedom's Outlaw" ISBN: 0-615852-94-7 ISBN 13: 978-0-615852-94-2 Release date: 18th July 2013 Produced by Airship 27 EDITED IN POST-SCRIPT: I just got the first (5 star) Amazon review for ROBIN HOOD: FREEDOM'S OUTLAW It concludes: "A highly recommended book from a highly recommended series. The characterisation is, as previously described, top-quality; the plot is inventive and believable; and the mythic quality of the subject matter is respected and understood. If you liked the previous volumes then you will also like this, if you have not read the previous volumes then congratulations on having just discovered not just one but three excellent reads" Couldn't really ask for better than that.

...I don't think the publisher has any distribution deal with any of the UK distribution chains, and doesn't seem to want any (probably for financial reasons), which means shelf-stock volumes over here will remain very rare.

Once for a book which was virtually non-existent, and the half for two Manga that they did track down, but thought that £500 was a rather excessive price. I had to agree with them...

Robin Hood 1,2,3 and Blackthorn: Dynasty of Mars are on their way. I will be tracking you down to sign them sometime. I always like to request authors to sign a book if I am able. I once bought a Jeffrey Archer book just to ask him to sign it because he was there (looking rather glum and bored in Brisbane airport). I will also post a review on Amazon once I have read them.

Amazon is annoying. It kept telling me i was eligible for free shipping - but at the end I wasn't because; not living in the Sates. Stupid Amazon. Shipping ended up almost as much as the overall cost of the books themselves for the slow "cheap" option.

I have been wanting to finish RH: King of Sherwood since reading the first chapters a while ago when you first posted it, so am very much looking forward to my early Christmas present. Oh I also got the Blackthorn one due to the spiffy cover. And because I figure I've already read half - let's read the other half in real book form.

Anyway - yay me!

Al B.

These are all good things from my perspective; especially the bit about Jeffrey Archer being glum.




That is pretty annoying. I bet you'll still get your copy of the new volume before I get mine, though.




That's not spiffy on the cover, it's Shep. And that's not really a common mistake for folks to make!

I should perhaps warn you, however, that DYNASTY OF MARS is an entirely different novel to SPIRES OF MARS, and precedes it in continuity.

Y'see, what happened was I decided I wanted to do a novel to follow up an anthology of Blackthorn stories I'd contributed to a year or so earlier. That anthology was all from Blackthorn's point of view - the Earthman adventurer in space trope. I wanted to turn it around and do it from the female lead's perspective - the mysterious outsider comes into town and sets things right trope. So that meant I had to retell the main events from the first couple of short stories in a different way. And because I like my stories to be self-contained I ended up doing an epic that can stand alone.

DYNASTY starts about a thousand years before the anthology THUNDER ON MARS and it ends about two-thirds of the way through, except for the epilogue that continues after THUNDER'S epilogue.

It was one of three finalist nominees for best pulp novel of last year but didn't win, making three years running that's happened with my books (Robin Hoods 1 and 2 were also nominated).

I was convinced by the publisher to write a short free online story, maybe four parts or so, that could be used to promote the novel. Unfortunately that proliferated to thirty parts or so and became another novel. That's what you were reading online, SPIRES OF MARS, which fits after DYNASTY and just before the last story of THUNDER (a story I also wrote, and which I think might have got an award nomination for best pulp short story and also didn't win!).

At some stage I'm supposed to do a refining draft of SPIRES to smooth out the episodic recaps, provide prologue and epilogue, and then send it off so that can be properly published as an actual book. Then you can get drustrated with Amazon all over again.




Yay you. Thanks for taking an interest.

It was after his prison term. He was probably thinking "I'm in Brisbane airport in a...this isn't even a real bookshop! Oh how my life has fallen."







I've just received an email to indicate it has shipped and is due Friday 13 of September. Friday 13th. Spooky!







Shep is moonlighting as the Princess of Mars?



















Understood.







But of course. I have been interested ever since you first posted about it. It's just been the difficulty in getting a copy here which has precluded me from replying moreso till now. I would still very much like to see an original character/concept novel released from you at some stage too - I think Sir Mumphrey would be great.

September? It's being shipped there by brigantine sailing schooner? Or printed on Alpha Centuri? We used to be able to transport bloody convicts over there quicker than that!




Well, according to the artist, some guy named Diller, he reused a half-completed picture of one of the Caphans, but there's a strange resemblance to another person of our mutual acquaintance, as you can see from the cover. I reckon Shep got to him.

I'm just surprised because the last time she posed for an artist (in Paris in the 80s, as far as I know) she wasn't quite so covered up.







I've had a Sir Mumphrey novel ready for a final proofread for a year now. It's adapted and expanded from the World War II adventure with Miss Canterbury that appeared here on the board. I've also got 65,000 thousand words of a Vinnie de Soth novel "in the can", although admittedly it could run to a trilogy.

The problem with these is... I'm not sure how I want to see them in print. I could probably convince five or six small publishers to put out editions now if I went to them with the finished product, but I don't think I'd get much if any advance or any guarantee that they'd be marketed or "pushed", or even put out anywhere except via Amazon. Sales would likely be very limited. And once the first volume's out there with one publisher its hard to change to another for a character's second outing.

Alternately, I could go via a literary agent, who would negotiate something for me with a larger publisher; but many agents' contracts now include not only a percentage of book earnings (which is fair) but a percentage of earning from any future use of characters debuting in those books (which is not). I'm reluctant to get into the legal detail that a good deal would entail.

Or I could set up a company and publish them myself. The technology's out there now and the set-up costs are manageable. Trouble is, that feels a bit like vanity publishing to me, even if it makes a profit, and I'm not sure I want the hassle about what is really just my spare-time hobby. Plus, promoting a book requires a lot of time, energy, and expertise. I'm just not that into "pushing" myself.

Every time I look at these works - and half a dozen other books I've written "for myself" rather than at a publisher's request - I end up in a looping decision spiral then wander off and do something else instead.

I think it's coming round trip via Caph. If it arrives with a green-skinned beauty who wants to do my bidding I will keep her. Just saying.







I reckon she did.

Okay - well after I get you to sign it, I'll track down that Diller guy to sign it, then I suppose I should also try to track down Sarah to sign it too. Sounds like quite the adventure really.




I'm happy to make my proofreading skills available to you for free!




Wow, I had no idea. That does not sound fair at all.




You need your own Roni Y Avis style agent. Or not.

It's the only kind thing to do. Also, that kind ofpromotion would probably help sales.




Proceed.







It's not just about spotting the many typos. I also need to make sure the pacing is right, the dialogue isn't too trite, and all the other bits that I hardly ever bother with when I'm posting a Parodyverse story. The last draft tends to bulk up by up to 5% when I do it. Some things get cut out, "missing bits" get put in.







The case for it is that launching a brand character should garner the successful agent an ongoing reward. For example, if J.K. Rowling had switched agents after Potter vol 1 then the agent who had managed to place that first book and "establish the franchise" would not benefit from the juggernaut he or she had helped set in motion thereafter. Under the new contracts, he'd have got a slice of all the other books' income, plus movies, merchandising etc.

The case against this is that there's a distinction between a recognised creative process with intellectual and legal ownership of the product and an administrative function that expects an ongoing stake in subsequent re-use of concepts that utilised that administration. It's the equivalent of Madonna's first chauffeur wanting a cut of all her albums thereafter. He might have been a brilliant driver in 1982 but...

At least that's my take on it. Poster-JJJ and other legal types might have a different and better understanding of it.




I need some external help to take this stuff forward, that's for sure, but who and how I don't know.