One of the things I wondered about before starting up this blog was the wisdom of publishing my fiction on it. There are, unsurprisingly, differing viewpoints on it around the web. The main opinion for, is that people can read your writing and you can build a following that way. The main argument against, is that when you put your fiction on the web, it is “published” and you can never sell that fiction again for First Publication Rights (i.e. the best possible rates). As someone who would love to make a living from writing, it poses a bit of a dilemma.
To make a long story short, I have decided that it is prudent to get my fiction out there for people to read. While I have a few stories submitted to various web magazines right now, there is no published fiction that readers can check out, only programmed adventures from Dark City Games. So I have a plan to publish a novel in serialized format. After it is complete, I’ll sell a cleaned up version as an e-book on Amazon.
Every week(ish), I’ll put a chapter up here on the blog. This will be a good challenge for me, both to see if I can maintain the necessary pace, and if I am as creative under the gun as I need to be.
The novel will be set on the Stormspeake Peninsula, where the majority of the adventures I have written for Dark City Games are set. This has the advantages of being a setting I am familiar with, as will any DCG customers that stop by here, and also not compromising any of my own Intellectual Property.
My goal is to put the first chapter up next Friday.
Before that, I want to have the third issue of the Greywater Chronicles up, and a page where I briefly discuss the essential Sword & Sorcery texts (and with links to those still in print). That last will not be a comprehensive examination, just an overview. I have in the back of my mind a series of posts examining the greatest authors in more detail, but that will be later. With this new commitment to writing a novel and publishing it here, I don’t want to stretch myself too thin.
So: next week, Chapter 1!