I like history. Most of my novels are set in the past, predominantly during wars. Even the contemporary ones, such as The Alukam (written as Jacob Thomson) spend a good bit of time in the distant past. Much of Returning is set in the distant future, so the history in that one is speculative. Some of it is contemporary, and I'll take a look at that a little later in this post.
The latest story is not only historical fiction, being set in a Great War trench on the eve of a battle, but even has a history of its own. We'll All Die in the Morning falls into the longish short-story category. I suppose I could have tried to get a full novel out of it, but I think it tells the story at its present length. It also took something like 47 years to write. Maybe a bit more. I had it in finished form as a one-act play by 1971. I think I may have started writing it in high school, and certainly did parts of it while I was in the Army.
Then the dog ate it. Literally. He tended to chew on things if I left him alone too long. On a different occasion he ate one of my favorite pipes. On that day he ate the only existing copy of the play. Remember, this was 1971, long before personal computers and easy archiving. If you were writing a play and wanted a backup, you used carbon paper in a typewriter. I tried to reconstruct it over the years, but never managed to do that.
Then, recently, I essentially started over, retaining the basic premise of a World War I trench and dugout, and one incident during the night, but otherwise rebooting the story. The original play had involved American troops, with a good part of it taking place as several enlisted men played poker. There were also small, walk-on type parts for two or three women, who appeared as memories of girlfriends, wives, mothers, or that girl in Paris who became so affectionate once you handed over a wad of francs.
Rewritten as a story, the characters became British, and the action was moved to an earlier point in the war, after it was known that America would be entering the fight, but before the troops started to arrive. The story no longer centers on several enlisted men, but focuses on Lieutenant Oliver Black, the platoon commander. Having survived two major battles, he's not too keen on trying again. I speak about some of this in this video.
This is actually the second version of this video. My eldest son works as a CGI animator, film technician, and film restorer, and he gave me a hard time about the color in the first try. Too moody, for one thing. I've still played with the color a bit here, because the raw footage tends to look a bit over-exposed, but I have to admit it does look a lot better this way.
The video serves a dual purpose. It advertises the story, at least to the usual handful of people who will actually see the thing. It also plugs the audiobook version, which I narrated myself. I don't read anything from the story in the video, but I do talk, so an audiobook buyer gets some idea of what he's buying.
Videos such as this, and frequent Twitter posts, are a part of what you call viral marketing. The idea is simple enough. You post something, someone reads it and shares or retweets it to their own followers, those followers do the same thing, and before you know it a simple video such as this one has been viewed by hundreds or thousands of people, a certain percentage of whom actually buy the book. For a $0.99 book such as We'll All Die in the Morning, a thousand sales are worth roughly $700, and 10,000 sales worth $7,000. Of course, at the moment I believe I've sold six copies, four of them in the UK, and a single audiobook, also in the UK.
Well, it's a British unit in the story, and it's written in English, not American, so perhaps there's reason for that. Still, I've tweeted about the story dozens of times. The tweets have gone out to my followers, who number less than 100, and, so far as I can tell, that's as far as they've gone. There have been a couple likes, but no retweets. I may be trying for viral marketing, but at this point it appears I've been vaccinated.
What else have I been up to lately. I'm looking at doing some work on Broadway Beat, my 1940s noir detective story set in the New York theater district. That's a project for my Patreon patrons. Since I still don't have any, the story is stuck in limbo for now.
There's a play I've been working on, on and off, for the last year. I should probably try to finish it, so that it can join the rest of my unproduced masterpieces on the shelf. I'd love to see it actually produced, of course. One of the roles would be a perfect vehicle for Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, or Derek Jacoby. I doubt I'll ever see it with any of them, but, of course, Bob Anderson in Coming Out was written with Rowan Atkinson in mind, and I ended up playing him myself. That's more or less how it goes.
I could make a good argument for regretting ever producing that show, or for producing Hamlet in 2015, since both of those ended up as significant losses, and right now I could use the money. They entertained some people, certainly, but not enough of them. Coming Out could easily have netted thirty thousand or more if we'd managed to fill the theater every night, but ended up as a $13,000 loss. Hamlet only lost about $3,500, mostly because it didn't run as long, so the rent was less. Right now, still having that money would be really useful.
If anyone would like to help out with that, there's a GoFundMe campaign for my septic system. Ostensibly. At this point, it's really more a "help pay the mortgage while the rent is being withheld to pay for the septic system" fund. The rental agent is paying the septic tank people, but I won't get any rent until they've been paid back. The most likely outcome here will be losing the house and starving to death in relative comfort, since I think my Social Security will cover the rent and utilities, but definitely won't cover anything to eat.
That lack of virality more or less assures writing income won't make up the difference. And there's not a particularly big job market for 69-year-old men. Me simply being me more or less assures that the GoFundMe, like every other fundraising attempt, will remain at Zero, or never net enough to even make the bank inclined to the slightest leniency.
Recent Comments