05.28.07
Solo Mode
I was talking with Pez last night a little about the Metal Rogue project, and he asked why I was going to do this one as a self-published effort. I gave him my ready-built answer: “I have no intention of sending this to a real publisher because it’s going to be bad. On purpose. If I’m lucky I’m going for ’so bad it’s good’ status.” That, of course, is half of the reason. There’s another root cause.
First, though, the matter of my crippling lack of self-esteem. To be perfectly honest I don’t think it’s going to be terrible. There is going to be some amount of technical skill involved; it’s not going to read like really bad fan fiction. However, the outline I drew up yesterday (and I got a little more of it fleshed out last night, too) is in no way reminiscent of Tom Clancy or Robert Jordan. This story isn’t exactly treading any original waters, though the situation, characters, and scenario are all more or less from whole cloth (in the end, I only wound up cribbing two names from Inconsequential, one in a way I didn’t even anticipate). By self-publishing, I can have a finished book or two out there and “public” while I concentrate on other, more polished projects. Metal Rogue is more or less my ‘hobby’ book, and by removing the pressure of “will people like this?” I can actually enjoy the writing a bit more. Not to say I don’t enjoy writing to begin with– if I didn’t, do you think I’d do it more or less every day?– but it reduces the stress level significantly, which means I’m less likely to put it off, thinking “that’s too stressful for me to do right now, I’m going to go eat Ding Dongs and play Uno”.
The other reason is sort of a selfish one, and really sort of a shot in the dark. See, I have nothing published yet. Everything I do have published is on Netjak and bears little to no resemblance to my fiction. (I removed all of my fan fiction from the RPGamer archives, I think; that was something I needed to do, so that I didn’t go back and rely too much on that.) By self-publishing this ‘off-Broadway’ series, assuming, y’know, it sells at all, I can get a little bit of acclaim and build up a little momentum in getting Incon or another full novel published. The money certainly wouldn’t hurt, either, but mostly it’s just getting something out there. I have no idea whether or not even hinting that I’m going to self-publish Metal Rogue will hurt Incon in the long run (though I don’t believe it will).
In any event, what you’ve all been waiting for; in what I hope to be a very, very short series, I give you the first:
Metal Rogue Progress Update: Outlines for the first two books have been completed and underwent some slight metamorphosis already. The third book outline is sketched out in a brief synopsis; I’ll probably flesh that out closer to the end of the first book. Book One’s prologue has 1100 words to it so far and I hope to have that finished at some point today between all the other things I need to do. So, without further delay, I’ll get right back to that.