I've been working with Scott Colby for some years now -- he's been my editor for several of the Baeg Tobar pieces I've written, all of which have been better for his input. Now, he's just released his first self-published novel as an e-book! (It also features cover art by the awesome Jeremy Mohler, who was my editor on Cowboys and Aliens II.)

Shotgun is now available at Amazon, and if it's anything like the quality of Scott's short stories for Baeg Tobar, it will be well worth checking out. You can also keep up with news on Scott's novel on facebook.

In honor of the recent release, Scott wrote up a guest blog about his writing process. Without further ado: Scott Colby!


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When I self-published my debut novel, Shotgun, a few weeks ago, it was the culmination of years of hard work, several dozen gallons of coffee, and lots of time spent staring off into space debating whether my latest idea was a brainstorm or just a brain fart. I wrote the first version of the story ten years ago, in the back of my high school classrooms, when I should've been taking notes. Following several rewrites later and a decision to finally get serious about it this summer, I've got a story I'm very proud of and a world I plan to play with for a while.

One of the most fun parts of this process has been looking back at how my work has changed. I'm not sure what happened to my original spiral notebooks, but thanks to the magic of technology, I can look back at what I wrote in college and directly after. I didn't do much thinking ahead back then, but for some reason I had the presence of mind to save multiple versions of Shotgun rather than just overwriting my previous attempt at literary stardom. I can find the point where, after reading Frank Herbert's Dune, I introduced a reluctant traitor and commoditized an item that had previously just been a plot device. There's a few discarded documents where the comedy went way over the top, and there's a version where I brought it back down to Earth–well, as close to Earth as contemporary fantasy with a dash of very silly magic can get. There's the point where I ditched my terrible original first chapter which featured my main character singing along to “Sweet Home Alabama” as his pickup truck bounced along a dirt road on his way to meet his soon-to-be-murdered friends in a hunting cabin. And there's the time I decided to stop taking my elves too seriously and just let them fall off the rails. I've got fifteen chapters of an unfinished sequel that doesn't work at all anymore and another twelve of a prequel that might be salvagable with a bit of finagling and a strong pot of coffee.

What I've got is a complete record of my favorite hobby. It's proof that even though I don't know all there is to know about writing, at least I'm improving. It's an in depth look into a corner of my psyche throughout the years, flavored with elves and magic and terrible, horrible ideas I'm glad I got rid of but which I know seemed awesome at the time. Nullet the talking donkey? Pike's live-in groupie? Good riddance! None of you were as good as the pound cake summoning scene that's survived three iterations.

Anyway, to the point: keep copies of what you write, even if you think it's absolute garbage. Maintain files for different versions, too, rather than just overwriting what you've all ready done. I've been lucky with my computers, but I'm not foolish enough to keep anything in just one place anymore. I'm a big fan of Dropbox and I suggest you find something that works for you. Losing work is one thing; losing memories is another.

Oh, and check out Shotgun. I guarantee it's worth at least the $2.99 I'm charging. And if you read it and you think it isn't, well, just be glad this easy self-publishing technology wasn't around when I was an even crappier writer.

A couple of interesting bits of knowledge about digital publishing came to my attention recently, both first via PW, but their link to the B&N/nook divide didn't work, so you get a TechCrunch column (via John Andrews) instead.

Here's the deal with B&N/nook: according to John Biggs at TechCrunch, the company has announced that they're considering spinning off nook as a separate company. What strikes me about this is that it's really not a new strategy for B&N to split off branches of the company into their own separate companies. B&N, B&N.com, and B&N College were all, at one point, separate companies. I want to say that the college stores are now back under B&N proper, but I'm not sure if B&N.com is operating as a separate company or not. Functionally, as far as the user is concerned, they're all the same, and they certainly share customer information among the companies. So it wouldn't surprise me if nook splits off for now, and as B&N figures out where it's going in the marketplace, it may recombine again in the future. That seems to be how B&N typically works over the long haul.

Now, granted, whether they can compete long term with Amazon and Apple, who knows? I hope so, because, well, you all know my customer loyalty bias. I do think it's too bad that the nook Simple Touch isn't doing better, since it's a pretty great little device -- there are some things that my nook First Edition did better, but the Simple Touch has some excellent features, and the hyperlinking works very well (for books that are formatted properly for the device; as always, some formats work better than others).

The industry is changing, and according to Hyperion CEO Ellen Archer, in a Digital Book World interview with Jeremy Greenfield, it's not just digital that's making the impact, but media arms. Archer is the publisher behind the Richard Castle novels (with Tom Straw writing as the fictional Castle); the most recent Nikki Heat mystery came in at #1 on a bestseller list (she doesn't mention which one), and she notes that another media tie-in also hit the #1 spot. Since Disney is the parent company to Hyperion, and ABC is the parent company to Disney, Hyperion has a lot of connections in that world, and Archer is projecting that as the future.

All that said, I think we've still got a long ways to go before the market for paper books burns out. (Pun intended.) There really is still an experiential quality there -- and there are still plenty of people who aren't willing to have a devoted digital reading device and hate staring at the computer screen when they're relaxing. Granted, that number grows smaller... but the market is still there.

Although, if it's true that the market for consumer goods is driven by fourteen year olds, the industry shift may come a lot sooner than I anticipate.

*Yes, the quote is from Leverage. Because that show is awesome.

A few years ago, the Glamazombies (my nickname for fans of writer Mark Henry, also known as mdhenry) hosted a 52 book challenge on Mark's mailing list. Since then, I've been tracking the number of books I read, including juvenile literature (nothing shorter than a Roald Dahl chapter book) and graphic novels (I did credit myself for going through all of the archives of Schlock Mercenary last year, but am not giving myself credit for keeping up with the daily reading). I made it to 119 books in 2011, and finished my first read of 2012 this afternoon.

I thought, hey, why not set some goals for next year? I've really just been tracking them and not setting any goals for myself, but I thought maybe I could diversify my reading a little more this year. So along with the goal of hitting the even 120 in 2012, I'm setting the following goals:

• 1 new-to-me nonfiction book not related to work


• 2 novels that are not SFF or romance


• 1 novel by an author who I've worked with on the autobio project, but haven't read before


• 3 rereads of books I've previously loved


• 1 new graphic novel that is not a review book


• 12 books from my as-of-2011 TBR pile (which will only start to make a dent; it keeps growing and I keep not gaining ground)


• 4 kids books beyond the ones on the list for the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Nominations list

My reading challenge to all of you: set one goal for what you will read next year, whether it's in quantity, diversity, or quality. I'd love to hear what they are!

First, if you haven't picked up a copy of Haunted in print yet, it's available for a special discounted price by clicking this link until the end of the year. Get it while it's hot!



Second, friend of the blog John Andrews pointed out this article to me on Ars Technica, and the folks at PW talk about the same thing here. What it amounts to is this: Google has been engaged in a suit for some time about the issue of copyright. They believe they have the right to host scanned books -- often with library assistance -- and make information available for free to users. Copyright holders who make money by selling that information (fiction and nonfiction) feel otherwise, and don't particularly care for the opt-out policy that was offered. Jim Hines wrote about it back in March of this year, and back when I was writing for Literature Community News, a co-writer of mine did a piece about where she thought Google Books was headed (i.e. into controversy), which would have been back in 2005-06. In the past two weeks, Google has tried to convince the courts that the Authors Guild should not be allowed to represent the authors, and that only individuals should be able to press suit. This strikes me as kind of amusing, because my understanding of what the guild is supposed to do is represent individuals as a group rather than making them do all the work themselves. It looks, on the outside, like an attempt at union busting.

I like Google. I have friends who work for the company. They put out good products that I use. So I really wish there were a shiny happy side to this dispute. But there's not, and I find myself irked with Google for what looks to me like pulling an Amazon.

Last link of the day is also a lawsuit issue, as reported by PW: an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple and several major traditional publishers, accusing them of e-book price fixing, is moving forward. It sounds as though several similar cases are being consolidated, and the official complaint is to be lodged by January 20th. I am not a huge fan of the agency model -- it seems to me that retailers ought to be able to decide what they charge, and what they're willing to lose money on, so long as they pay an agreed upon price for a product. But I do think the agency model was a good attempt at trying to keep the value of writing up -- and keep us writers getting paid. So it's an interesting issue, and I'm eagerly awaiting further developments.

Someone (maybe jeff_duntemann?) said not too long ago that the world of e-books is publishing's Wild West. There's a lot going on with the digital world, and there's a lot of legislation trying to figure out how to manage this brave new world we're a part of. How it shakes out is going to affect us for a good long time!

Rather than launching into industry news after a month of minding my own business (and neglecting to post here), I thought I'd write a little bit about some thoughts I've been having this holiday season in relation to my own personal mythology (i.e. religion).

Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend about the futility of the universe -- the idea that, eventually, it's likely to all draw back in on itself, thus erasing everything that has gone on before and reducing humanity to a footnote of the universe (if anything in the universe is taking notes). I don't remember it that's the current popular theory for the end of the universe -- there's another one that we'll expand indefinitely, as I recall, but I've long since stopped worrying about the end of everything, as I won't be around to see it. What the conversation ended up coming around to was whether or not anything humanity did mattered, in the grand scheme of things, and whether there was any hope. I said, "I know this sounds like a cop out, but I think it's just in my nature to hope."

There is power in hope -- something supported by science as well as by common/folk wisdom. My sister recently visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and a friend of Frank's said at one point that Frank thought all her family members were dead. The friend believed that if Frank had known her father was alive, she would have survived -- but she'd lost all hope. If she'd known that the concentration camp where she was located would be liberated in two days, might she have made it? I suspect so, because I think hope gives people a reason to hold on, even when they don't precisely know what they're hoping for.

I was a reader for our Christmas Eve church service out here, and one of the passages I read was from Luke 2 -- the story of the shepherds. I've sung it before from Handel's Messiah, and I had to focus on the translation I'd been instructed to read in order to avoid the "sore afraid"s and the "And lo!"s. Reading it aloud this year made me think about how a lot of my world-view ends up being rather like the way the shepherds react after they leave the manger scene: they are full of awe, wonder, and hope.



At the end of all things, will any of what we've experienced here have mattered? Will it have had any meaning bigger than just the components? I can't guarantee it, but I believe that, in some grand scheme of things, our experiences matter and our stories matter. And I can't help thinking that it's much nicer to be filled with hope that to not have any at all.

When Amazon first said that the Kindle was going to work with Overdrive back in April, I was excited. As a former library staffer, I thought this could only be a win for library users and libraries in general. Good for libraries how, you say? Circulation statistics help libraries get funding, whether those circs are from print books or e-books. More circs = better library statistics = better chance for grants. So, hurrah Amazon for helping libraries out!

But wait. As of last week, Penguin just pulled all their new books from Overdrive. Why? Apparently the new Kindle/Overdrive platform has increased concerns about security for their digital files. Apparently if you want to borrow a book for your Kindle, your library directs you to Amazon's site, rather than to the Overdrive program (and Adobe Digital Editions), which is how I've always used Overdrive. (This is conjecture on my part, based on news coverage.) According to a recent article in PW, libraries may end up on the losing end of this disagreement, since now only one of the Big Six publishers (Random House) is fully on board with library lending. And they're taking a look at their policy, so who knows, what that will mean for the future?

I hate to sound like I'm always coming down on Amazon. As a resource, I love Amazon. I use them heavily for publication dates and information, and I shop there for all sorts of non-book items. I rent digital-streaming movies from Amazon. I buy music there. I really want Amazon to be the kind of company that I want to shop at. And I don't think that the traditional publishers are automatically in the right. But it seems like there are just too many hijinks where Amazon is concerned to automatically assume that Amazon is the good guy.

Especially, it seems, for independent publishers in international circles. I forget where this link came from (possibly also the PW newsletter), but Mark from The Writer's Guide to E-Publishing breaks down what your book actually costs on Amazon if you're selling it abroad. If you've priced it for free -- or at 99 cents -- that's not what folks in Europe are going to end up paying (and remember, they've got the exchange rate in their favor).

Some day I want to open up the PW newsletter and find some really awesome, feel-good, heart-warming Amazon related news. But I'm not holding my breath.

I am delighted to have Jennifer Estep back here at Myth, the Universe, and Everything in honor of the release of her second book in the "Mythos Academy" series, Kiss of Frost. Rather than doing a guest blog, as Jennifer did for the release of Touch of Frost (here), we decided to do an interview, which gets into bits of the novel that I enjoyed, as well as some series questions.



Jennifer has also graciously offered to do a giveaway of Kiss of Frost to one of our commenters! Leave a comment answering the question: What kind of Mythos Academy warrior do you think you'd be: Valkyrie, Viking, Roman, Amazon, Celt, Samurai, Ninja, Spartan, Gypsy, or something else? Give us a second comment with a link to a tweet or blog post where you mention the contest and we'll enter you a second time. (This contest is U.S. only -- sorry international friends!) Only livejournal comments will be counted as contest entries, so if you're reading this on a syndicated site, pop over to lj to comment! Comments must be posted by 11/30 at midnight EST to be counted as contest entries. I'll announce the winner on December 1st.

And without further ado: here's Jennifer!

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MtU&E: Although Kiss of Frost is the second "Mythos Academy" book, it's actually the third story -- you published the prequel story "First Frost" as an e-book along with Touch of Frost when the first novel was released. We've got some interest in e-books here at MtU&E: What made you decide to release the e-prequel, and has it done well for you?

JE: It seems like more and more authors are doing prequels, short stories, and other bonus material to tie into their books. As a reader, I like extras like that, and they can be fun to create as an author. I’ve written several free short stories to go along with my "Elemental Assassin" adult urban fantasy series. Readers really seem to have enjoyed those stories, and I thought it would be fun to write something for the "Mythos Academy" series too. My editor and publisher agreed, and we came up with First Frost, a prequel story that shows exactly how my heroine, Gwen Frost, winds up at Mythos Academy. I’ve gotten a lot of nice comments from readers about the prequel story, which I appreciate.

I’ve also written "Halloween Frost," a "Mythos Academy" short story, that is in the Entangled e-anthology that I am participating in with several other authors. Proceeds from that e-anthology benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. "Halloween Frost" takes place after the events of Touch of Frost.

There are also some extras in the back of Touch of Frost and Kiss of Frost, including Gwen’s class schedule, a who’s who of characters, and things like that. Hopefully, readers have as much fun reading the material as I did writing it.

MtU&E: One of the ideas in Touch of Frost that is mentioned very briefly in Kiss of Frost is that if a person believes an illusion is real, that illusion is as dangerous as if it were real. Awesome metaphysics! Will illusion magic like that come into play as the series progresses?

JE: Thanks. Glad you liked that. The illusion magic is something that I hope to do more with in future books. I think it would be fun to dream up different ways the heroes and villains could use that sort of magic. As the series goes along, I hope to introduce some new magic/powers as well. For example, in Dark Frost, the third book in the series, someone has a similar power to the illusion magic mentioned in Touch of Frost.

MtU&E: In Kiss of Frost, we get to hang out with not one, but three Spartan warriors. How did you decide that their most formidable ability would be using improvised weapons?

JE: When I was thinking about the warrior whiz kids at Mythos Academy and the various abilities they might have, I thought it would be interesting to have some warriors who didn’t need traditional weapons to fight with. So I decided to give these warriors a killer instinct that would let them pick up any object and automatically know how to wield it as a weapon, and that this instinct would make them some of the most feared fighters at the academy. So the idea just sort of snowballed into Logan Quinn and his Spartan friends, Oliver Hector and Kenzie Tanaka.

MtU&E: In Norse mythology, Fenrir (or Fenrisulfr) is one of the big bad monsters, destined to kill Odin at Ragnarok. One of Gwen's lessons in myth-history class is about how the monsters trained by the Reapers have free will -- that they are not inherently evil. There's a great scene in the book where a Fenrir wolf shows just how true that lesson is. What was the impulse behind that moment in the story?

JE: There’s a lot of talk and stories in mythology about things being fated, and that you can’t escape your destiny, good or bad. Then, you have beings like the Fates themselves.

So I thought it would be interesting to do a mythology story and play around with the idea of what may or may not be destined versus free will. A couple of characters talk about free will in the "Mythos Academy" books, and the idea that people are responsible for their own actions and their own destinies. I thought if people are responsible for their own actions, then why not the mythological creatures too? So that’s something that comes into play with a Fenrir wolf in Kiss of Frost. Plus, the idea of free will is something that will also play a part in future books in the series.

MtU&E: Last (and easiest) question: how many "Mythos Academy" books do you currently have under contract, and how many do you hope will eventually finish off the series? (Here's hoping that those two numbers match!)

JE: Right now, I’m under contract for six books in the "Mythos Academy" series. Dark Frost, the third book, will be out in June 2012, while Crimson Frost, the fourth book, is tentatively set to be published in January 2013. At this point, I’m not sure if I will finish out the series with these six books or not. I’ll just have to see where Gwen and the other characters take me.

For more information about my books, folks can visit my website at www.jenniferestep.com. Happy reading, everyone!

I just discovered today, via Rose Fox at Genreville, that Anne McCaffrey died on August 21st. Locus has a short memorium available online, and will be running a full obituary in print in January.

Back probably eight years ago now, I had the opportunity to work with Anne on an essay for Gale's autobio project while I was an in house editor. She is one of those shining memories of an author who was not only an absolute delight to work with, but in all regards a very classy and gracious individual. Even then, she was cutting back on her workload, and cowriting books with her son, because her health was deteriorating. She wrote in her essay (which you can find in Something about the Author volume 152, which was published in 2005, and may be available in print or electronically through your local library), that she had been thrilled to have one of her novels travel to space with NASA astronaut Colonel Pamela Melroy -- a story that I think of every time I encounter one of Anne's novels in the bookstore.

Her autobiography is delightful, and well worth reading, especially as we celebrate her life. I feel lucky to have gotten to work with her, albeit briefly, as my life is greater for her presence in it.

Look at what I got in the mail!



Remember back to two years ago when slwhitman was running a Kickstarter campaign (which I wrote about frequently) to start Tu Books? A refresher on what happened next: the campaign was successful enough to grab the attention of Lee & Low, who brought Tu Books on as am imprint with Stacy at the head. The above book is from the first publishing season of the house, and was a gift for my contribution to the Kickstarter campaign. Inside, Stacy did a little doodle for me.



I am clearly thrilled for Stacy, and wish her the best in continued successes. All three of this season's books look fantastic!

I also got my contributor copy of Haunted in the mail this week, and it is super exciting to see my name right there on the cover. It's nifty that my married name has made me alphabetically first so frequently. We also got a very thoughtful and largely positive review from Hunter C. Eden over at Ravenous Monster, and I especially appreciated his comments about the characterization in "Missing Molly." He writes: "Abbott's sensitive portrayal of the soldier's state of mind admirably avoids both 'psychotic veteran' and 'American hero' clichés in favor of genuine character development well-served by the author's command of dialogue." (That's a review to pin to my bulletin board to cheer me up on frustrating days!)

In more personal news, I am sick of having a cold (pun intended), but despite being under the weather, I did pass my kempo test on Friday, so I am now a second degree brown belt. Twostripe had his third degree black belt test on Sunday, and from now on shall be known as Threestripe here on MtU&E. Huzzah!

Whenever new technology gets introduced to the publishing trade, people are sure that the old formats are going to die -- at least, according to the lecture I attended back in 2000, back when the Sony RocketBook was the height of e-reading technology. According to the speaker (whose name I sadly cannot recall), when the mass market paperback was introduced, people proclaimed that it would be the death of the hardcover. The hardcover market has certainly changed, but those big boys are still around, and I know readers who vastly prefer them to the paperback counterparts.

So whenever people proclaim e-books as the death of print, I'm skeptical. E-books as the death of bookstores, however -- well, there seems to be something to that. Not on the whole, I think, but I do believe that the digital revolution helped bring about Borders's downfall. A recent article by Ben Austen in Business Week looks at the Borders situation and comes up with an interesting hypothesis about what it means for the bookselling business: it's possible that e-books may actually make it more likely for small bookstores to survive. People who shop at bookstores tend to want to be at bookstores -- they like the environment, and they may want a physical gift to give to someone rather than a digital download.

According to consultant Jeff Green: “It’s the only retail industry I can think of that will go full circle, back to the way it originally was. . . . From the small-village bookstore to the big-box retailer and then back again. That doesn’t ever happen in retail.”

The full article is pretty interesting, and I think there are some good insights, not just into why Borders failed, but into what the industry may need to consider in order to stay flying.