Having posted "A Singular Being" to this blog marks me wanting and finding new ways to do things. I am more interested in finding readership than in getting the kudos involved in publishing, and the traditional publishing industry.
It is sort of outmoded isn't it? Submitting manuscripts eternally to magazines, agents and publishing houses, accumulating a stack of rejections? OK, it did work for Stephen King and Octavia E. Butler, but that's because they started when they were ten, a pretty long time ago.
In any case, I did NANOWRIMO this year, putting together "Being" with 2 sequels, and adding that extra chemistry that comes with the drive to hit 50,000 words. I ended up with THE CHRONICLES OF P'NEUMIA, the life story of my protagonist, P'neumia.
What's with the apostrophe, you may ask?
This story has been through http://critters.org more than once, and one of the main criticisms I got was the character names. I suppose it's a sci-fi rookie mistake to try to make things sound alien by spelling them weird. So in one revision I changed everything. However, the original name of my planet and it's dominant species, TSENDIA/TSENDIAN turned out to mean something very appropriate in English, some kind of measuring equipment used on ships. So I thought maybe I'd been tuned into something when I made that up. In any case, I decided instead of making up new names to be consistent in how they were spelled. So almost every Tsendian name is spelled with an initial letter followed by an apostrophe.
The theme of "Being" was the juxtaposition of the sorrow of human life, from a perspective of working at an elder law office, with an alien whose life continues after bodily death. But one of my sequels involved P'neumia finding a mate. One of the things that happened in the short story was based on the life cycle of terrestrial octopuses. They die after they mate, both sexes.
In the frenzy of last minute research that can come with nanowrimo, I found this: The Marine Life Series. Its author has had meaningful relationships with many octopuses over the years, always needing a new one, as they do not live very long.
So I managed to resolve my theme of the tension between longevity and one's animal nature, applying it to humans as well as octopuses.
In the process, I received mail from Jukepop Serials, one of the sponsors of nanowrimo, with a suggestion of what to do with your novel after November is over. Submit the story chapter by chapter as a serial. So I submitted, and am waiting 6-8 weeks to find out if it's accepted.
It seems like distributing media to the audience has changed, and I don't really want to keep hitting my head against the brick wall of the traditional ways. I feel like life is too short.
I am also considering Kindle Publishing
Meanwhile, JukePop Serials is for readers as well as writers. Heres's what I'm reading: Bookshelf
