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The Dragonswarm Is Live!

In case you didn’t already know, The Dragonswarm is now available!

You can find it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

These are currently just the digital editions, but the paperback should be available some time next week.  I’ll let you know when that happens.

Status Update

I know a lot of you are personally interested in the success of my writing and of this book in particular. It’s only been live for about 15 hours at this point, and Amazon hasn’t even finished hooking up all the moving parts yet. That’ll take a couple days still.

But I can give you a little bit of information:

  • In the first 15 hours (and prior to any major public announcements), The Dragonswarm sold 168 copies.
  • It’s now being tracked on two category lists, and is ranked #11 in Kindle Fantasy Epics, and #21 in all Fantasy Epics.
  • My current overall sales rank among all Kindle books is 512. (It took months for Taming Fire to get under 1,000.)
  • I also currently already have ten customer reviews up at Amazon, thanks to my incredible fans who requested Advance Reading Copies. So far, they all love it.

These are all very positive numbers. Obviously there’s going to be some launch-day enthusiasm, but I anticipate even better numbers one Amazon gets everything hooked up, and then maybe another big boost from Christmas.

Some Things

I’ve been hearing wonderful things about the book from the people who’ve read it. I’ve been watching sales climb and climb. I’m…ecstatic. I’m at work today, and having to fight very hard not to get up and dance out of my cubicle. It’s my lunch break now, so maybe no one would notice….

I’m also having a hard time concentrating enough to write a coherent blog post. So I’ll just throw some other exciting things at you.

  • The Dragonswarm is my fifth published novel. It’s the seventh novel published by Consortium Books, and the ninth title (we also have a short story collection and an individual short story available).
  • The Dragonswarm features a world map. The map deserves a post all its own. It’s gorgeous. I’m so excited we were able to include that in the book. Huge thanks have to go to Becca J. Campbell and Daniel Lunsford for putting it together in record time.
  • The Dragonswarm was published with the financial backing of our very first KickStarter campaign. We asked $2,000 and were able to raise it in just 20 days. And the next campaign is already running, to fund Joshua Unruh’s young-adult spy-fi adventure TEEN Agents in The Plundered Parent Protocol. Naturally, you’ll be hearing more about that.
  • I finished writing new scenes for The Dragonswarm about 36 hours before publishing it to Amazon. (If you find any typos, that’s why.)
  • One week before The Dragonswarm‘s scheduled release date, a behind-the-scenes change in the code at Google Docs broke the custom publishing tool we use at Consortium Books with no warning. We had to scramble to massively rewrite our program while I was also scrambling to finish rewriting the book. That was an adventure. (In the process, we made a whole lot of things work a lot better than they have in the past.)
  • Because of those improvements, I decided to re-release Taming Fire as well. So while I was scrambling to publish The Dragonswarm, I added another book to the pile. But that means Taming Fire now includes a world map, too! If you already have a copy, you can delete it from your Kindle and redownload it, and you should get the updated version.

I love being a writer. I’m surprised how much I love being a publisher, too. Every project is an adventure.

Of course, it certainly helps to have a ton of sales. I owe so much of that to all of you. Thank you. You’re amazing.

The Trial of the ARCs

As of yesterday afternoon, all the Advance Reading Copies of The Dragonswarm have been sent.

Thanks to everyone who requested one! I can’t wait to get your feedback.

Encouraging Comments

I’ve already heard from one satisfied customer. He must have read the book straight-through from the moment he received his email, because before I went to bed last night I had a mention from him on Twitter:

@AaronPogue omg freaking awesome. Just finished reading it and adding the 19th chapter was the right call. WICKED!!!!!!!!

Y’know…it didn’t occur to me when I offered ARCs that I was also soliciting fanmail. Several of the emails I received asking for a copy included a little note saying how much they’d love Taming Fire, and why.

Last week was pretty stressful, between work and my desperate (and oft-delayed) sprint to get the ARCs finished and sent. It really helped to have those messages popping in my inbox every few minutes.

Thanks to everyone who has ever said anything nice about my writing. It lights a warm little fire inside me every time.

While You Wait

If anyone missed out on the chance for an ARC (or if you’ve already finished reading it and Dragonswarm still isn’t showing up on Amazon), I do have some more fantasy available in the same universe (although not the same series).

Check out my publisher’s compilation A Consortium of Worlds. It features a short story I wrote just for that collection, “The Bloodshield Betrayal.”

There’s a cool new character, a promisingly dramatic world situation, and interesting new magic elements that I made up just for this plot. If you like my fantasy, I’ll bet you’d like that story.

And while you’re at it, you get seven other short fantasy/sci-fi stories by the other writers in my little collective (including our own Courtney Cantrell). All of them are worth getting to know.

Dragonswarm News

I’ve got a whole bunch of news concerning The Dragonswarm, including an update on the KickStarter campaign, an official release date, and a link to a live excerpt from the upcoming book. But before I get to that, I want to make an offer.

Advance Reading Copies

Taming Fire has seen extraordinary success, and The Dragonswarm is already much-anticipated, and that’s because I’ve got some amazing fans. You guys are awesome.

I’m incredibly grateful to all of you. You’ve done a lot to support me and help me become the writer I am today.

And now I’m giving you an opportunity to do more. I want to share some Advance Reading Copies of The Dragonswarm with my fans.

With only six more days to get the thing assembled they won’t be very advance, but at least you’ll get a reading copy. I only have digital copies available, but they should be readable on whatever you’re using to read this blog post.

If you’re interested, send me an email through the contact form. Put “Advance Reading Copies” (or just ARC) in the subject line. You don’t even have to write a message.

Sometime tomorrow (I really, really hope), I’ll have a very-nearly-final-draft ready, and send them out to the first hundred people who’ve contacted me. All I’d ask in return is that you write me a review at the digital vendor(s) of your choice. Blog posts are welcome too, of course.

Now, on to other matters!

KickStarter

Sunday night, with barely an hour remaining on the campaign, the KickStarter campaign to publish The Dragonswarm was funded! That’s incredibly exciting news for me personally, for my publishing house, and for writers in general.

Not that I’m sharing the money with all those people. But as I’ve said before, patronage is a much better model for artists than commodification is.

Long-term, I’m hoping to support artists (and be supported as an artist) through the self-funded Consortium model, but until that’s proven, KickStarter is an easy and convenient way to crowdsource patronage.

That deserves a full post of its own. For now, I just want to say how deeply grateful I am to everyone who contributed.

None of you had to contribute. I didn’t even lean too hard on the mercenary sales pitch. You did it out of love for my work and my goals, and that warms my heart. It’s so much easier to do the work knowing people care.

Publishing Stuff

Before I get too sappy, I should move on to other news. And I have news!

  • On Monday afternoon, I finished the rewrite on the novel! And then I got right to work on the editing and publishing of the novel.
  • I’ve gotten complete feedback from Joshua, and should hear final opinions from Courtney and Jessie today or tomorrow. I’m hard at work smoothing down the rough edges and putting a final polish on it, but overall the feedback is good.
  • As a reward to the contributors at KickStarter, I promised to publish an excerpt from the novel if they pledged at least half our funding goal. They did, I did, and you can get a sneak peek at The Dragonswarm on the publisher’s blog now.
  • We’ve also got an official release date! The novel will be available in digital formats on Tuesday, December 20. That’s just six days from now!

Thanks again for your support! I’m so excited about this project.

Pre-Order The Dragonswarm and Support the Arts

For all my fans and supporters, I wanted to share a real quick post reminding you about my next book’s KickStarter campaign. It’s a great way to help support my publisher, play a part in the release of The Dragonswarm, and get your pre-order placed for the book.

We only have two days left on the campaign, so if you were thinking about participating, now’s the time!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/consortiumokc/the-dragonswarm-the-dragonprince-trilogy-2

Writing to the Deadline (A Dragonswarm Update)

I’m a huge fan of GMail. Have I ever mentioned that before? I know I’ve talked about Google Docs, and you can probably take it for granted that anyone who raves about Google Docs appreciates the company’s email service, too.

Still. I’m a huge fan of GMail. I never delete anything. Everything goes in the archive, and it’s astonishing how many questions in my life can be answered by searching through old mail.

The other day Joshua was introducing me to a writer friend and pitching a new fiction project, and he needed to dig up some old synopsis he’d shared with me. So I went searching in my GMail, and discovered we’d first chatted about that project back in early June.

I laughed to see that conversation started with him saying, “Good morning! What’s the Taming Fire emergency today?”

Releasing Taming Fire

Taming Fire was set to come out June 21, meaning for ideal publishing conditions I should really have been done with it by May 7. But May 7 rolled right by and I was still rewriting the original manuscript. I hadn’t even given it to my editor yet!

For that matter, May rolled by before I got my first rewrite done. And then I had Jessie and Courtney and Joshua read through and give me feedback, and they all found big problems, and suddenly it was mid-June and my book was supposed to be out next week and I was still frantically trying to finish writing it (let alone getting cover art and promo text and sales pages set up)!

I got it done. The book went out on time. Then I sat back with a heavy sigh, wiped my brow, and stated loud and clear, “Never again!”

Yet here we are.

Releasing The Dragonswarm

That book’s sequel, The Dragonswarm, was on my publishing schedule for December 13, 2011. I wasn’t going to wait until Nov. 1 to have it done, though. I wouldn’t have time. I was scheduled to write a novel this semester (book 3, The Dragonprince’s Heir) for my Master’s project, and another (Ghost Targets #5, Faith) for NaNoWriMo, and all my publishing staff would be busy with NaNoWriMo, too, so I was determined to have Dragonswarm done before school started.

I didn’t make it. My summer turned out busy. Then school started, but I was still determined to have Dragonswarm done before the end of September so I could really focus on the other stuff. I didn’t make it. I didn’t make October, either. Or November.

Right now, I’m six days from the scheduled release of The Dragonswarm, and I haven’t quite finished the first rewrite. Last night I finished Chapter 16 (out of 18). Jessie’s done an edit up through 10, and Joshua’s given me feedback up through 12. So far, it’s looking pretty good.

But once again, I’ll be sitting up ’til after midnight for the days before my launch. I’ll be frantically typing in every desperate spare moment. I’m skipping meals and canceling plans and missing blog posts.

I don’t want to say, “That’s just how it is.” It isn’t healthy. It’s not fun. And yet…it’s such a thrill. I can’t slow down, can’t second-guess, can’t dither over options. I have to do it now, and do it right, and in a couple days the world will be my judge.

It’s good. I’ll tell you that. It’s huge and loud and action-packed. I’ve killed more dragons in the last week than in the rest of my life combined, and there’s still thousands more rushing to the fight.

That’s where I’ve been. Now I’ll go get back to work.

 

Help Release The Dragonswarm

Incidentally, if you want to check out my KickStarter campaign, it’s here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/consortiumokc/the-dragonswarm-the-dragonprince-trilogy-2

The goal of the campaign is to pay the production costs of publishing an indie novel. I won’t beg and plead with you to share your hard-earned money, because I’ll be publishing this book even if the campaign isn’t funded. I’ve been covering the costs myself for more than a year now.

No, this campaign (and every one that will follow) is an opportunity for those of you who want to be a part of it.

For those of you who want to see me (or any of our other writers) getting to be a full-time writer instead of holding down a day job to pay the bills.

For those of you who want to support a community that creates art as a thing of worth (not a thing of commercial value).

In short, if you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing, KickStarter gives me an easy way to accept your support. And it lets me respond with some very cool rewards. If you want, you can just look it as a way to pre-order your signed copy of The Dragonswarm, sent straight to your door.

Check it out. There’s 12 days remaining, which is just enough time for me to thoroughly freak out. Wish me luck.

Supporting the Arts with a New Patronage

About a month ago I got an email from an old friend and ended up posting my response here as an excellent summary of my plans for the Consortium. You might remember that.

He wrote back right away to ask me for some more details, and it has taken me a month to answer. But once again I’ve impressed myself with my own eloquence, and I wanted to share with you some of the gritty little details I’m taking for granted when I say I’m aiming to “establish a new patronage.”

Here’s the question I was answering:

I’m a fan of the notion of patronage. I see it as an idea whose time has come around again. Do you see a Kickstarter/Indiegogo model where people can “fund” an artist for a given period or a more general non-profit structure that pools donations and “employs” artists?

The answer is the latter. We’re already registered as a non-profit, and we’re within a couple months of really starting to build up our pool. One of the issues I kept running into when I started on this idea was the problem of blockbusters and bestsellers–the record labels signing two dozen bands in the hopes one will pay out (and cover the investment across all the losers).

That works out fine for the labels, but it sucks for the losers. They’re left with a punishing contract, the guilt of an unearned advance, and the realization they’ll probably never see another penny from all future sales of that album. It’s exactly the same way for writers, and that’s all because the funding of art has been through risk-based investment.

Funding the Production (Not Investing in a Product)

I fix half of that problem by going non-profit. It’s not an investment, it’s a public service. But that’s still going to leave the emotional (and value) judgments of winners and losers. To some extent, that’ll always be true, but I don’t want the fickle randomness of the marketplace to determine (and limit) the viability of our projects.

So we’re funding the company through an endowment. That makes startup costs a lot harder (I have to generate sixty bucks for every dollar I want to spend), but it’s a difficulty directly measurable in dollar value, and there are an awful lot of dollars out there to be got. On the other hand, working off an endowment makes the art a whole lot easier to make.

With a million dollars in the bank (speaking in very rough estimates), I could hire a journeyman artist full-time at $50,000. His salary’s coming entirely off spendable interest, which means all the work he does is already funded. By the time he finishes a painting, or a novel, or a radio single, it’s already completely paid for. It was paid for when the money went into the endowment.

His only commercial obligation is to keep making new art (and to keep improving in his craft); there’s no extra (personal financial) incentive to make a product that will turn a quick profit, or to release something before it’s ready–to pander or to spend his time making things that are profitable instead of making the things that make money.

Of course, there’s some merit to having to produce work into a competitive marketplace. It drives people to grow and improve, and that’s critical for any artist. I’m just not convinced the free market provides very good direction for the growth of an artist. Instead, we’re building our company around progression and mastery.

Mastering Your Craft

That’s the other half of the Renaissance model we’re borrowing: apprenticeship. Our employees will apply for admission to one (or more) of our Schools of Art, so a new Creative Writing grad joining the Consortium might come on as an Apprentice in the School of Writing. She’d have a Journeyman as her mentor, and it would be part of the Journeyman’s job (along with producing work and improving his craft) to train up the Apprentice.

And, likewise, every Journeyman will be studying under a Master. I’d like to pay something on the order of

  • $20,000-$40,000 a year for Apprentices
  • $40,000-$60,000 a year for Journeymen
  • $60,000-$120,000 a year for Masters

For my organization, I’d love to have six or seven Schools (Writing, Painting, Photography, Programming, Film, Performance, Music…), with three to seven Masters per school, three to seven Journeymen per Master, and three to seven Apprentices per Journeyman.

That is, of course, extremely long-range thinking. I’d also love to see the Consortium concept take off. I considered franchising it, but I’m thinking I’ll just evangelize it instead. I want there to be a Consortium Austin, and a Consortium San Francisco, and a Consortium Brooklyn.

And I love the idea of every one working under its own structure. Some will use strict patronage (no direct percent of sales royalties go back to the artist), some will use a mix, some will just be meeting-places for artists looking for traditional work.

For now, we’ve got two Schools (Writing and Fine Arts), and about two dozen artists. Probably half are Masters and half are getting there. For now we’re all working for free, but I think I might have enough reliable income to go full-time sometime late next year, and after that I think really exciting things will start to happen quickly.

KickStarter and Other Fundraising

In the meantime, I’m strategizing and building brands. And partly thanks to that first email, I even checked out KickStarter again. My Director of Marketing has been big on KickStarter for a long time now, so I worked with him and we decided to start putting up campaigns for all our book launches (there should be one a month next year). Once we get the hang of it, we’ll start expanding it out to Fine Arts projects, too.

I’m also in a pretty good position to pursue arts grants, thanks to my years of Tech Writer experience. And since we are focusing on the localized Consortium (ours being Consortium OKC), I think there’s a pretty good chance we could get some support from local government and businesses, once we’ve established some credibility.

But ultimately, I’d much rather fund our company through proceeds from our products than through direct fundraising (because you have to spend so much time asking for money instead of spending it on your mission). That said, we have some pretty huge ambitions and if the commercial angle doesn’t cut it, KickStarter could be a very cool way to fill in the gaps.

Work-in-Progress Update for November 2011

Tuesday I talked about being a publisher as well as a writer. I was a little surprised when no one (yet) piped up to complain, because I’ve had a lot of people asking me with vigorous interest, “When will book two be done?!?!”

I always want to feign a little bit of bafflement at that. “Book two? Of what? Ghost Targets? That one’s out. Released it in February. Several hundred copies sold. Or did you mean Sleeping Kings? I finished book two of that one, The Shepherd, for my very first NaNoWriMo, way back in 2007. 130,000 words in one month. What a rush!”

Of course, under the circumstances, I know exactly what they mean. Taming Fire is my big seller, and it does stumble into something of a soft ending. There are plenty of people anxious to read the sequel, and I’m utterly thrilled at that.

I’m also not forsaking any of them in favor of the publishing. In fact, most of the publishing work I’ve done lately has been focused on new tools that will make my record-keeping and production duties far simpler, freeing up my time to focus on the more interesting projects.

I also posted to Twitter Wednesday morning:

I hereby withdraw my bid for a 2011 #NaNoWriMo win. Thank you all for your support. Keep the faith. See you next year.

Just like the publishing improvements, that decision was aimed directly at freeing up my time to focus on a more immediate project. And that is?

The Dragonswarm

Affectionately known as “Book Two,” The Dragonswarm is the sequel to Taming Fire. Like Taming Fire, this project is a rewrite of material I developed twelve years ago while pursuing my undergraduate degree in Writing. Also like Taming Fire, when I started on my rewrite I discovered there were some major pieces missing, including 1) an antagonist and 2) a recognizable plot arc.

I’d had to fix similar problems in the first book, and that involved writing a whole new ending to it (the last three chapters or so), and as a result the beginning to this part of the story became pretty wobbly. So I put in a couple months writing five or six new chapters to get the story set, and since then I’ve been moving more quickly through the cleanup.

The biggest change is that I’ve actually locked down all the rules of the magic this time around, and I’m really letting Daven use it. That makes for a much better story, but it means a lot of double-checking and re-evaluating and balancing powers to keep the story moving from 0ne end to the other.

I’m having a lot of fun and making a much better story, but I’m also running out of time. The book is scheduled for publication in December, and even though digital publishing and agile little indie presses can turn a book around much faster than traditional publishing (which tends to take about 18 months), I still have to give my people some time to get the book reviewed, edited, prepped, and produced. And a significant percentage of “my people” in that case is “me,” so I’m not doing myself any favors by running late.

As I said, I set aside last weekend to finally get the manuscript finished. And then I didn’t get it finished. Well, I’m setting aside this weekend to do the same, apart from a couple short hours Saturday morning to attend a photoshoot for the cover art! I’m really looking forward to that. You can see a really rough snapshot of a tiny portion of the painting at the top of this post, but I promise we’ll get a higher-quality image for the official cover.

Homework

I’m also still hard at work on my Master of Professional Writing degree at OU, and that brings with it a significant workload. For my Master’s Project, I’ve been working on The Dragonprince (which will soon be honorably known as “Book Three”). Honestly, that’s the main thing that’s kept me from finishing The Dragonswarm already.

I’ve done a surprisingly good job of juggling the two stories without too much interference between them, but I’ve had 25 pages of Dragonprince due every Wednesday since August, and while that has led to some remarkable productivity, it’s also accounted for about 80% of the time and energy I have available to work on novels, so Dragonswarm has only sputtered.

I’d also made Dragonprince my NaNoWriMo project, hoping to put in the last 50,000 words and get it out of the way, but that meant spending even more time every week working on it, and it was costing too much. So around the same time I threw in the towel on NaNoWriMo, I went in to speak with my Master’s Project adviser and told her I needed to back down on my weekly commitment. She heartily agreed.

Meanwhile, for a Nonfiction class, I’ve put together a (rather impressive) official proposal for a textbook/self-help book called, How to Write like a Boss: The Handbook of Professional Writing. It’s based on my experience teaching Tech Writing to a bunch of non-English majors, and focuses on using document-type templates to make the writing process easier, faster, and to make your documents look professional and effective at the same time.

And in my short story class, I’ve written “Building Plans” about a young window in Catoosa, Oklahoma, who has to figure out what to do with a mountain of debt and the front wall of a castle, and “Handle with Care” about a lonely, shy programmer at the Post Office who’s trying to find the nerve to talk to the pretty new receptionist.

Other

I’d planned to have a section here about all my current novel projects that are on temporary hold, but it’s far too long and far too interesting. And half of them are getting reactivated in January for the classes I’ll be taking in the spring. So I’ll save that for a January Work-in-Progress update.

And then, of course, there’s business. I could spend several pages telling you what’s going on with the Consortium right now…but that sounds like a post of its own, doesn’t it? So I’ll save that one for next week.

Two days to work my way through two hundred pages. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?

Wish me luck.

On Being a Publisher

It’s National Novel Writing Month. I’ll have to do a post about my annual spreadsheet again this year, because (once again) it’s a very interesting story. Alas, I’m not the story’s hero this time. I’m still pretty thrilled with the plot developments, though.

Here’s what I’m getting at: I’m not getting much writing done. Most years by this time…well, most years I’d be done with NaNoWriMo by now. 50,000 words already in the bank, and grinning as I look forward to writing the last two words of an 80,000-word novel come November 30th.

That’s not going to happen this year, because I’ve got too many projects going. It doesn’t bother me too much. All the other projects I’ve got going are at least as exciting as winning NaNoWriMo.

Still, I was holding out hope right up until last weekend. Last weekend Trish took the kids out of town, and I cleared my schedule, and I dedicated something on the order of fifteen to twenty-five hours to writing, so I could get all caught up and really impress everyone in my writing group.

It didn’t happen. It’s one thing to say I “cleared my schedule,” but that’s sort of like bailing water of a ship that’s already swamped. I can toss as much out as I want, there’s plenty more to rush in and fill the space.

Halfway through my day on Saturday, that came crashing home to me. I realized Trish was going to be getting home in a couple hours and my dedicated writing time was pretty much over. I thought about trying a frantic scramble in those two hours, but I was busy with something at the moment and, really, that something needed to get done.

I don’t even remember what it was right now. (One of a dozen little projects I finished on a Saturday.) But I remember what it was for. Consortium Books. It was a publishing project. Even on my days off I didn’t have time to be a writer because I was too busy being a publisher.

And here’s the exciting part of the story: I realized with sudden clarity that I didn’t mind at all.

I’m not saying I would give up being a writer to be a publisher. If it was an either/or question, I’d choose writer hands down. But it’s not. In fact, it’s only because I chose to be a publisher that I got to be a writer (or one with a multiple-digit readership, anyway).

And for the last year, as I’ve built the Consortium, I’ve done it in the sure knowledge that I was giving up the long-time plan of retiring to a life of writing and (otherwise) idleness. I’ve spent the last year dooming myself to become a publisher, and I came to terms with that pretty early on, but I never stopped to evaluate how I felt about it before.

But, as I mentioned last week, I recently got honored by the same professors and mentors who taught me how to write because I decided to become a publisher. I recently did an interview concerning the effect of the new digital market on authors and I told the guy it’s an amazing opportunity for writers…as long as they’re willing to be businessmen, too.

(For what it’s worth, that has always been the deal. Always. Authors have lived in poverty and paid intermediaries lots and lots of money to help them pretend it wasn’t the deal, but it always was.)

Anyway, it’s been on my mind. I’m a successful writer now. Taming Fire is doing amazing, and the two books I want to work on are both sequels to that, and I spent the weekend constantly getting dragged out of that work to do the work of a publisher instead.

And I loved it. I love the challenges. I love figuring out the dynamics of the market and exploring the potential in the new technologies. I love breaking down barriers and fostering a free competition of ideas. I love helping other writers discover opportunities they might never have known otherwise. I love teaching, and coordinating, and collaborating.

I love it. I love writing, too, and I’ll keep that up, but it’s liberating to discover that all the trappings that go along with it, all the responsibilities and challenges and obstacles I’ll have to overcome are rewarding in their own way. No matter what I’m working on, I’m loving it.

It’s my worst year of NaNoWriMo ever, and easily the best year of my life so far. Funny how things work out.

Honors, Accolades, and Interviews

I spent Tuesday telling you what you already know (about me, about my books, and about my publishing company). I figured maybe I should make up for that by spending today sharing some news.

You might’ve already gotten a hint at some of it if you follow me on Twitter. This morning I posted:

My most recent life discovery: Homecoming is a lot more fun when you’ve got accomplishments to brag about.

That thought crossed my mind last Saturday morning, but it took this long for me to find the time to Tweet it. Yeah. It’s been a busy week.

Graduate Awards

Probably the most exciting news comes from a Homecoming event last Friday night, when my alma mater‘s various colleges each selected an outstanding graduate to honor. The College of Language and Literature chose me.

I gave them some bullet points about my accomplishments in the last year (leaning heavy on the big sales of Taming Fire), then set aside some time on my Friday afternoon and dragged Trish along for what I was sure would be a pretty small, boring event. And it certainly wasn’t huge, but it turned out to be a lot more prestigious than I’d realized.

Some of the other honorees were working as Director of Engineering for the Water4 Foundation, or newly-promoted to head up all promotions at McDonalds nationwide, and many were distinguished professors within their fields.

I was the only person there in jeans.

But I forgot all about that when my friend and former professor Gail Nash stepped up to the mic and started describing my accomplishments. She’d rewritten my bullet points into a glowing bio, and while she mentioned my sales record (and that got me some congratulations and handshakes afterward), she spent most of her time talking about the work I’ve done teaching. And coaching other writers. And building a publishing company that can help others take advantage of these amazing new opportunities for writers, too.

I don’t spend a lot of time feeling proud of myself, but…well, Friday night was a good night. And then after the presentations were over and we were milling about, one of the professors came over to shake my hand and said, “It’s great to meet you. My daughter’s been reading your books and loving them. She’ll be so excited to hear your went to school here!”

That last sentence blew my mind. I hear about a lot of friends of family of friends who’re reading my books. And I know there are quite a lot of strangers reading my books. But this is probably the first time the two have overlapped–when I encountered someone who already knew my name because her daughter had happened across my book entirely on her own.

I felt like a superstar.

Honors Breakfast

Still, it wasn’t until Saturday morning that I had my great new insight. See, every year at Homecoming the Honors group has a reunion breakfast on Saturday morning. It’s always pretty packed, and I usually go grudgingly if I go at all. This year, I was looking forward to it.

I wasn’t sure why, but I found myself wondering if it was happening and hoping I could make the time (which has really never happened before). It wasn’t until I got there and I was shaking hands with an old classmate I hadn’t seen in years and he asked, “What have you been up to?” that I realized what it was.

I had an answer. It’s not that I was going to gloat (my old classmates have done some awfully impressive things themselves). It’s not that I was even going to brag. It’s mainly that I’ve spent the last ten years being a responsible adult, paying my bills and holding down a job, and really not doing anything I cared about.

I was entirely successful as a productive member of society, and utterly boring. I didn’t like talking about it. I’ve spent ten years trying to avoid talking about my work, and suddenly, for the first time, I have something to brag about. Not about me, but about the project I get to be a part of, the vision I get to help create.

World Literature

And I got to talk about it a little more yesterday. In the break between my classes at OU, I sat down for an interview with a writer who works for World Literature Today, a lit. review magazine published at the university. He wanted to discuss the impact of digital media on artists and writers in today’s market.

I spent more than an hour sharing my experiences in digital publishing and the things I’ve learned in my research. We talked about the shortcomings of traditional publishing, the tyranny of expensive production, the extraordinary opportunity (and incumbent responsibilities) for today’s artists, and we talked about everything I hope to do with the Consortium.

It’s an exciting time to be alive. It’s an exciting time to be an artist. And it’s an exciting time to be me.

I hope this post doesn’t come across as arrogant or self-important. I really find it all a little bit baffling and a whole lot amazing, and I wanted to share some of that with you, because you absolutely helped make it happen. Thank you.

Now I’ll get back to work.