I’m working my ass off but posting very little; please be patient. Among many irons in the fire, Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels looms large. Progress has been made. I’ve never written a whole book and ending it has been hard. (I still have more shit to say!)
Regardless, I think folks will like it. I promise I’m not slacking off.
WTF am I talking about?
For those of you who aren’t long time readers of this blog, eight years ago I started writing a humorous serialized novel. It’s a satirical allegory about Lesbian Activist Squirrels. They’ve learned to harness the mind-control power of bullshit. They wreak havoc on their immediate surroundings and then double down by heading to Portland, the place where you go if you’ve screwed up in life, have no resources, and have no good plan. They were last seen en route to a heavily foreshadowed big boss battle.
I posted as I wrote; dozens of posts adding up to several hundred of pages. I wanted to make sure it’s a fun read and I humbly think I succeeded. But I’m a slow writer, so posts have been infrequent. (Forgive me for sounding like I take my self seriously as a writer of “literature”. I assure you, I don’t.)
Anyway, I started the story with a good heart and that’s still where I am. It was a small attempt to help us all lighten up. At the time of its inception, America was losing its shit over the looming, unavoidable, absolutely certain, completely without doubt, statistically guaranteed, coronation of Hillary Clinton. Remember her? Politics is always dirty but that the campaign “season” was the worst, ugliest, most overwrought, most propaganda laden, miserable festival of human indignity I’d yet experienced. (Little did I know what would follow!)
Too much bullshit was making everyone freak out. It’s ok to pay attention to politics but you shouldn’t let it drive you mad. I fretted that many people were taking politics too seriously, thus willing a horrific clusterfuck into being. (A situation that, in my opinion, came to pass.)
Our dog, a big white Great Pyrenes, challenged a black bear. The bear had been raiding my favorite bird feeder. I joked that the only possible reason a white dog would bark at a black bear was racism. Right now, I’m 650 pages and eight years into that joke!
The first bit went on-line during the time of Barak Obama. (Remember all the racial healing?) Every single event that happened, from the rising of the sun to one’s preference in breakfast cereal was attributed to racism. It was all so exhausting. I mocked it. Mockery turned out to be a good idea. I needed it. We all did.
Are you old enough to remember a time that was modestly more sane? I am. It wasn’t half bad! Folks were calm at least some of the time. There were gaps between election cycles. When the guy you liked lost, you could shrug your shoulders and think “better luck next time”. You could see a campaign speech and not wonder “will he be arrested or assassinated first”. I’m so old I remember when the FBI solved crimes (or at least appeared to) rather than perpetrating them. I’m so naïve I once believed we’d find out what the deal was with Epstein. Can you imagine?
Anyway, I wrote a few funny posts about the bear and it felt like saner times. Humor is a lifeline!
I kept writing and the story grew. Meanwhile, other sources of humor dried up. Hollywood crawled up its own ass. Saturday Night Live and the Tonight Show were early casualties. Seinfeld gave up going near college campuses. Chapelle was nearly crushed. J. K. Rowling only persists because she’s apparently unkillable.
Never stop laughing! Satire allows us to face truth.
Exactly four months ago, I wrote the ending to Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels. To decompress, I hopped on my dirtbike and rode across Wyoming. I’d written a rough draft. I know enough to let a story “rest” for a while and then edit the hell out of it.
Recently I re-edited the ending. As expected, I changed all sorts of shit. The major events remain the same but presentation, order, and details are all new… and better. Editing is hard. It takes time, but it’s worth it.
I’m not done but I’m closer. Now comes the final push…
I’m going to go over the book a couple more times this month and then move forward with logistics.
I have no idea how to format a POD book (POD = print on demand, i.e. actually printed on dead tree). Nor do I know how to format an Amazon Kindle file. I guess I’ll learn.
My plan is to sell both printed on paper and Kindle, probably through Amazon (it’s the the monopoly du jour, why fight it?). I might sell printed on paper, directly though my blog too.
It’s going to take a while to figure out all that formatting and stuff. I’m sorry, but I won’t have it done by Christmas. I tried but I’m just one guy (and I’ve got a day job!).
Up until Christmas Eve 2022, I’d posted very word of the story (several hundred pages). I also left it “live” on my blog. I wanted to continue that approach but Amazon won’t allow it. Something about “exclusively on Amazon and not on some rando’s blog”. Don’t blame me, I don’t make the rules.
As a first pass with compliance I shut down the index. Meaning what you could read before you can still read but it’s “hard to find”. I’m gonna’ take those pieces down but not yet. Part of that is I’m not a WordPress programmer and never found one I could hire.
But don’t fret. I’ve got an idea.
I’m going to check the rules carefully. Once I get things ready I’ll announce it. It’ll be “available for pre-order” or something like that. Plus I think I can sell anything I want on “dead tree” paper. (Still checking on that.)
Then, if I can, I think I’ll post all the pieces I’d already posted. Don’t think I’m holding out on ya’ that’s something like 141 posts! Plus there’s about 120 pages that have never seen the light of day!
I think I can comply by putting up a post and then taking it down, in succession, for all those pieces. A 1,500 word chunk goes live, then the next day or whatever, it vanishes and the next 1,500 word chunk follows. I’ve never heard of anyone else putting up a full novel that way. It’s a big undertaking, by my reckoning, it would be a post a day, every day for about six months. (I really could use a WordPress nerd.)
I really want it available for free (in addition to for sale), but I think this is all I can do if Amazon cracks the whip.
If all this sounds like the ravings of an unpublished author who needs to be hit with a clue by four… well maybe it is. At least you know:
- I’m working on it and approaching done.
- Sooner or later you’ll be able to read it.
Also, I hope y’all have a Merry Christmas. (If you insist instead on a Happy Holidays, I won’t stop you.)
A.C.
“I think I can comply by putting up a post and then taking it down, in succession, for all those pieces. A 1,500 word chunk goes live, then the next day or whatever, it vanishes and the next 1,500 word chunk follows.”
I don’t understand this. You are posting using a WP theme so I would think you could write those ‘chunks’ on pages rather than posts. When you have all the pages completed then you can try to jump through all of Amazon’s hoops about publishing them as a book. Am I missing something?
I was just spitballin’ how to post the whole thing in pieces and then make the pieces disappear to satisfy Amazon. Which might be a goofy idea anyway. I already have 150 odd “posts” with a single “page” that indexes them. Honestly, it was a huge PITA doing that but I was writing a little at a time so I just sorta’ bulldozed through it. (In case you’re thinking you’ve read it all, the concluding 2 chapters which have never been live are a good 100+ pages of Squirrely goodness.)
I think Amazon considers a book “out there” whether it’s a single 600 page “post” or several hundred posts spread all over creation. I’ll have to ponder this further, because uploading and then disappearing 300+ posts would take forever. Literally a year at a post a day! Often when the thing you’re trying to do is hugely difficult within the specified software, it’s because you’re doing something dumb. What do I know?
By the way, the book already lives as a complete manuscript (in Scrivener). Aside from some messy formatting, it’s complete. I can probably get that on dead tree with a print on demand company without driving myself nuts. I could even forget about Amazon (which might shut me down for any or no reason) and just sell dead tree paperbacks from my blog.
P.S. The complete manuscript is slightly different from what’s gone live on my blog. I changed bits and sentences here and there for continuity and often to smooth out my writing.
“By the way, the book already lives as a complete manuscript (in Scrivener). Aside from some messy formatting, it’s complete. I can probably get that on dead tree with a print on demand company without driving myself nuts. I could even forget about Amazon (which might shut me down for any or no reason) and just sell dead tree paperbacks from my blog.”
I think you should forget about Amazon. If you have a complete manuscript in Scrivener then you are just a step away from being able to create eBooks in PDF, ePub or even Kindle formats. Then there are a lot of eBook distributors that will ‘sell’ you book for you with a smaller commission than Amazon. I assume you are familiar with this web page: https://www.scrivenervirgin.com/2019/05/compiling-kindle/
I’ll have to read up on that page.
You don’t have to be exclusively Amazon. There are many, many ways of self-publishing nowadays that don’t involve giving Amazon too many rights. Google it a bit to find a way that suits what you want to achieve.
Dave
You’re right. I really haven’t thought about publishing. I was just happy to be writing. The whole “marketing” thing is my least strong suit.
Also, I might be an outlier but I “read” 90% of my books on Kindle. I almost forget that books on real paper still exist and work fine.
Has it really been 8 years? Where does the time go? I’ve read every episode and am one of the Squirrels biggest fans. Looking forward to the final chapters.
Thank you! I’m biased of course, but I think the ending is pretty good.
Media will get sorted out in due time. Whether it comes out on paperback (sold through my blog?), kindle and paperback (through the monopoly that is Amazon), or I just staple pages to telephone poles… it’s still a darned fun story.
If you’re going to put the arboreal rodent saga back on the anvil, will you take the opportunity to include a requiem for Peanut the Martyr and his buddy Fred?
Stefan v.
I’d like to but the book’s length was getting out of hand. Also I tried to avoid most references to actual real world things. I wanted it to be fiction slightly out of time, rather than a straight reflection of our already strange world. For example, I wrote a satire in 2024 that doesn’t explicitly mention Trump or Biden… which is almost inhumanly hard.
The one exception, is that I mocked Paul Krugman as being the most wrong a person can be. For some reason, possibly involving Satan and a populace with the memory of a gnat, Paul Krugman has had a long and successful career despite (or because) predictions that are flat out earth shatteringly wrong. The dude infuriates me. The same is true of Paul Ehrlich, but I left him out of it. I theorize younger readers have been steeped in overpopulation Malthusian bullshit since the day of their birth but they don’t actually know it’s “Ehrlich” who worked so successfully to light that fuse. Same for that dweeb Greta, she has no idea.
Maybe someday I’ll add an epilogue with Peanut and Fred. I can totally imagine my squirrels would love to frame some innocent unrelated squirrel. Also, the State of NY did in real life basically what my fictional spastic dipshit Extreme Greeters do.
“Sir, we went to arrest the squirrel!”
“And?”
“It’s dead.”
“But…”
“And a raccoon too.”
“Why would you?”
“And we killed an elephant, and carpet bombed Syracuse.”
It writes itself.
Indeed it does, though it does feel like my scenes are scripted by Kafka.
I believe Larry Correia posted his first novel, Monster Hunter International, as a chapter or so a week on one of the early gun forums, and then as print-on-demand before being picked up by Baen. Seems to have worked out pretty well for him, he’s hit a few of the best-seller lists and seems to make a pretty decent living at it.
I’m humbled to be mentioned in even the same sentence as Monster Hunter. I’d be happy if I can take just a few steps on his path! Maybe I should look up Baen and start groveling. I’ve not the slightest idea how to do that. You think they’d like a gift basket?
I usually like to read something in one sitting, but sometimes a serial can be more fun. You get to wait and anticipate what’s coming next? Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling serialized much of their work.
It started as serialized because I was waaaaaaay too chicken to shoot for a book all at once. Plus, it was nice to crank out a chapter or two at various times when people society seemed unusually tense. If the only thing I can do for the good of society is a silly story so be it. Then it grew and I decided it needed to be a book. Without the “discipline” of a book (which must end) it would lose some of the plot arc. I wish I’d wrapped up the book in time for Christmas (not out of some marketing genius but because it would’ve made a great “present”) but it’s more important it be well written than delivered at some arbitrary date.
I like serialized stuff. I remember serialized sci-fi on Omni (?) back when I was a kid. It’s hard to imagine newspapers and such doing serial fiction now but if they did I’d maybe start buying newspapers again.
It might be worth checking out Raconteur Press.
“We publish entertaining fiction.” If you poke around their substack and .com you might find some folks familiar to you. They have also spotlighted other publishers they think well of.
Jim_R
I’ll have to check out Raconteur. Honestly, I’m procrastinating because “cold calling” just ain’t my skill. I suppose that’s not uncommon among people who write. All the human interaction of turning a file into a book is daunting.
Another vote for Raconteur. It seems they’re really into anthologies, but advice is free, right? You might remember I’m not a huge squirrel fan, but I will buy the book out of respect for your years of hard work, and your other stories I have always enjoyed. I can’t wait until someone notices it on my shelf and asks… Oh, and my wife’s bible study group is called “The Squirrels”, so there’s that.
A bible study group called the squirrels? That’s awesome!