FINISHED!

Not that it's of great importance or immediate relevance, but the First Reader is out and the kids could care less, and I have to gloat to somebody. I've just typed the last words of the seventh book in the Applied Topology series - the one I thought I wasn't going to write, but Thalia ambushed me. And as usual, I'm inordinately pleased. Not to mention being grateful to Real Life, for letting me finish it thirty-six hours before I have to present myself to the hospital for the first knee surgery. I figure I can lounge in bed or on a couch and edit the thing, even in the hospital and then at home, but I'm not so sure about placing a laptop on my knees or concentrating well enough to write new words in that first week.

For chronological reasons this book will have to be published after the first two books in the upcoming Dragon Speech series, because the first one has to take place less than a year after A Revolution of Rubies. Furthermore, Thalia makes cameo appearances in both Dragon Speech books; in the first one she's pregnant, in the second she's nursing a newborn, and in this book the baby is 10 months and she is just, with some reluctance, agreeing to go back to work part-time. I could edit the cameo appearances, but I don't see any way around the Revolution of Rubies connection. Ah, the joys of writing two series in the same universe! And when I think that I did this to myself... oh, well. It does not materially diminish the joy of completing this one.

The working title, which I rather like, is A Child of Magic. As always, reactions and suggestions are always welcome, but bear in mind that I'd like to keep to the format of the first six Applied Topology books: A [NOUN] of [NOUN].

Intertwingled series

Everything is deeply intertwingled - Ted Nelson

Yes, but he was talking about hypertext and computers! I wasn't prepared for intertwingularity in my writing life!

Back in January, when I stopped writing to wrestle with the alligators that occasionally crop up in Real Life, my writing plans were straightforward. The sixth and final book in the Applied Topology series was ready to go, and in fact I did manage to hold off the swamp denizens long enough release A Revolution of Rubies last month. Subsequently I had written a stand-alone Regency fantasy, Salt Magic, and had started a new series that I thought of as a spin-off from the Applied Topology books. It was set in Austin and had a new set of characters and a new take on magic. Thalia from Applied Topology made a couple of cameo appearances, but the books could be read completely independently. I'd written The Language of the Dragon and A Trail of Dragon Scales and was halfway through Like a Dragon when I had to put everything on hold for a while.

Fast-forward to last week, when I resumed working, and... well, I should never have named the lead character in the Applied Topology series for Thalia, the Greek muse of comedy. She has enjoyed messing with my mind from Day One. And so while my attention was all on putting out fires, she used the unwatched back of my head to develop a seventh Applied Topology book. What's more, internal considerations dictate that this book happens after the first two Dragon Speech books but before the third.

Does't necessarily mean that they have to be written or published in this order, of course. Lois McMaster Bujold hops back and forth a lot in her Vorkosigan universe. But it's easier on me if I write the books in chronological order; that way I don't run into the problem of characters in Book N+1 not being aware of events that scarred them for life in Book N. And it's probably easier on readers if the books are published in chronological order.

So here I am with two different series operating in the same fictional world. How do I signal to readers that these books actually share not only a world but some characters and events, and that if they want to follow a strict chronology they should read Applied Topology 1-6, Dragon Speech 1-2, Applied Topology 7 and then Dragon Speech 3? Do I even need to do that? The first two Dragon Speech novels can be read without knowing anything about the Applied Topology events, although readers of the first series may get a few chuckles at how Thalia is perceived by someone outside her little circle of topologists. If I'm careful about writing the 7th Applied Topology book, it should neither depend on events in the Dragon Speech books nor give away the major elements of those books. Similar care will be required when I get back to Like a Dragon.

I guess I've muddled around to the point of answering my own question! Separate series, separate numberings, and do some fancy dancing around the intertwingularities.

Still, I'd like some way of letting potential readers know that these series operate in the same world and even overlap to some extent. After a suggestion from Mad Genius Club, I'm wondering if there's some way to tag all the books with something like "A Keep Austin Weird Book". Or would that be too much information? And would it be meaningless to people from the rest of the known universe? I'm used to seeing "Keep Austin Weird" bumper stickers every time I go out, but would someone from Michigan get the reference?

Now at just $0.99!

After looking at recent sales numbers and reading a whole slew of advice, I've decided to change the prices of my Applied Topology series. The first 5 books were all priced at $2.99. A couple of weeks ago I released the 6th book, A Revolution of Rubies, at $3.99. The slightly higher price hasn't hurt sales; if anything, it's selling better than the earlier books. I've also been looking at the results of an acquaintance's attempt to boost sales by dropping prices from $3.99 to $2.99. I've yet to hear his analysis of the results, but judging from Amazon rankings, the price drop doesn't seem to have made much difference.

So... I've decided to raise the price on Books 2-5 to $3.99. This is not so much about the slightly increased royalty (I'll make a whopping 65 cents extra on each sale, whee) as about perceptions of what the book is worth. I feel that raising the price to the average e-book price in the fantasy genre is a statement that I believe this is a good book and well worth $3.99. The $2.99 price is below average and seems to me to be slightly apologetic: please please please take a chance on this book!

Yeah, yeah, it's all in my head. What else? That's where I live!

At the same time, I've dropped the price of the first book in series, A Pocketful of Stars, to $0.99. I'm hoping that the lowered price will attract more new readers (who will then, of course, be so taken with the book that they'll rush right back to Amazon and download the other 5 books). I'd actually have liked to make it free, but at present that requires a little dance with Amazon that I don't have the patience for. I'd have to format it for publication on another platform, price it at $0.00 there, then write to Amazon and ask them to pretty please match the price on the other platform.

In a couple of months I'll report on the first results of this change... just in case anybody here is passionately interested in the details of ebook pricing.

Whole lotta books review: Wine of the Gods

I'm about two-thirds of the way through Pam Uphoff's Wine of the Gods series and loving every minute. There are 31 books in the series now - I hope there will be more - so even somebody who reads too fast, like me, can enjoy her invented world for quite some time. Worlds.

The books are fun to read. That's the most important thing. The characters are mostly likeable, the plot twists and turns keep me guessing, problems are resolved believably.

And as a writer, I am insanely jealous of the complex universe she's created with its infinite possibilities.

Begin with a collection of genetically engineered children, some of whom can influence computers with their minds, and a corporation that's using them to explore gates to alternate worlds; in this telling, there are infinitely many worlds more or less like our own, but in a tree where splits occur with major astronomical events.

I don't want to introduce too many spoilers, but I have to tell just a little more to illustrate just how fine this device is:

Exile all genetically engineered beings to one of these alternate worlds, an unpopulated one, along with the non-engineered families who want to go with their children. Let them blow up the gate on their way out so that they're truly alone. Show them building a new society.

Jump forward a millenium or so, and look at the countries that have been formed and how descendants of the genetically engineered do or don't fit into these societies. By now, they've developed a lot of interesting abilities, and they call the collection of skills "magic" (you know, as in "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Thirteen of the original exiles appear to be functionally immortal, but due to brain damage during the exile they don't have very clear memories of how they got here. The collective subconscious has fitted them into archetypes and declared them to be gods. So as well as witches, wizards, and mages, you have the God of War, the God of Peace, the Goddess of Health and Fertility, and so on.

And you get some extremely amusing consequences when the God of War and the Goddess of Health get drunk together and decide to create a self-replicating wine containing all the useful spells they can think of.

Before the possibilities of Comet Fall, this new world. are even partially explored, Uphoff throws a wild card into the mix: Earth regains contact with the world of Comet Fall and decides to treat them like all the other worlds they've made Gates to, as a resource to be abused and exploited. (Hint: this does not work out well. For Earth.)

Getting dizzy yet? Here's another wild card: there is a third world with a small population of genetically enhanced people and a religion built around them. And they're interested in Comet Fall, too.

By Book Five everybody is spying on everybody else.

It's a beautiful setup. Uphoff starts small and then keeps expanding the original worldview. The possibilities for interaction between "magic" and engineering, the conflicts between the countries of Comet Fall, the conflicts between worlds provide an inexhaustible source of stories. And oh yes, there's another asteroid on a collision course with Comet Fall...

You see why I envy this? It's every sf/f writer's dream to build a world with so many possibilities that you never run out of stories to tell.