X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter (21 Sep 2023)
Greetings Dear Subscribers,
How are you? Any news? Send me a note!
* General tag-up (5 items)
* The standard stuff
============ General tag-up ============
1) Why did I become a writer of fiction? Is this just a “dumb hobby”, an old man’s indulgence?
The simple answer is this is my way of having a legacy of contributing to civilization, which is something I’ve always considered a top priority. I’ve always wanted to contribute to that “something bigger than me” thing that people who are in governments, militaries, and religious organizations talk about. It’s not just for them. It’s for all of us.
My career in space exploration has been tremendously gratifying and I’m proud of it. Looking ahead to my retirement, I knew that I’d need something else. There are many ways to be a good citizen of Planet Earth. This is my way. I will write books, and those books will not only be interesting and entertaining but will speak truths and influence minds and hearts, as did the books that taught me and expanded me when I was young.
When the U.S. assassinated Qasem Soleimani in Iraq, the Iranian propaganda machine said, among other things, that Americans have no heroes, just fictional superheroes. They were wrong, at least for my generation. I can’t speak for the younger generations, but my heroes were astronauts and those space explorers who used robots for exploration, and truth-telling, boundary-pushing writers — and some were both, like Carl Sagan — as well as social justice warriors, and scientists doing basic research without a business or political agenda, i.e. seekers of truth and justice.
Is it really a “dumb hobby” or an “indulgence” to strive to be like them? I say no. I hope you can agree.
2)
Having accumulated a little more confidence in complete strangers’ appreciation for “Minimum Safe Distance”, I’ve taken the plunge and have paid for editorial reviews from three of the industry’s big name editorial review entities: Kirkus, Foreword/Clarion, and Blue Ink. Having submitted MSD as a contest entry at BookLife/Publisher’s Weekly, they will also review it. (These are much bigger names than the UK’s The Wishing Shelf Award.) We’ll see how it goes. I can’t bring myself to believe they’ll flatly pan it.
We’ll also see how it fares over the next year in the Hoffer, Rubery, IAN, and SPSFC contests. This is the ‘authoring’ side of the writer/author equation, and it’s far more difficult and time-consuming now than the writing itself. Promo promo promo. Get reviews. Find an audience. About FOUR MILLION new novels come out every year. This is why sales are alright, but reviews are platinum. Please help if you can. :)
3)
Below are a few quick and dirty sample pics as teasers for my upcoming "Space Autistic Author" VLOG set in my "Innerverse", which will be posted to my new youtube channel. For this project I'm using only copyright-free, good for commercial-use A/V assets, usually customized by me, or my own hand made works. e.g. I made a Hal 9000-esque lens graphic by doing what the makers of 2001: A Space Odyssey did: photographing a camera lens (and manipulating the image afterward). And I’ve had to get into Blender for alteration and manipulation of some 3D models, and am learning more and more about Audacity, Photoshop Elements, and Premiere Elements. I’m in drinking-from-a-firehose mode on this project.
Why would I do this instead of getting going on the next book? It’s that promo promo promo problem, but here's why in particular:
I've now left/unjoined at least half a dozen fb groups "for writers and readers", because my simple posts get rejected/declined.
In one group, just now I saw a guy advertising his book using a background image from a major motion picture (Morpheus from “The Matrix”), a clear copyright infringement, and totally unethical. That post was not removed.
Others post constantly (i.e. spam) with the basest ads for the basest books. Yet my simple post about receiving a 5-star editorial review from The Wishing Shelf Awards was removed. Why?
So was my Sturgeon's Law post.
A different group's admins declined to even approve my Sturgeon's Law post in the first place.
On reflection, I've altered the wording at the end of that post slightly. It was too autistic, I know. But really, was the original so, so problematic that it could not even be posted?
Here’s the original (as best I can remember it):
"
(Theodore) Sturgeon's Law:
Short version:
"90% of everything is crap."
Longer version:
"Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as other artforms."
I strive to be in the 10%, which is why I've always been terribly uncomfortable with all the writing advice to "write to your audience"/"know your genre/category/subcategory's expectations", and such. Those pieces of advice generate the 90%. I know this won’t make me friends among my fellow writers. But we’re in a world that requires truth be told or we’re all doomed. There it is. Classic X. Ho Yen.
"
In my updated version, I replaced what follows “Those pieces of advice generate the 90%.” with this:
”Be the 10%.”
Thus, I grow ever more disenchanted with "social media". If "writers and readers" groups can't handle posts like my 5-star post (ZERO controversial content) and my Sturgeon’s Law post, how is someone who’s trying to be in Sturgeon's 10% to find an audience there? If I can't post a proud announcement about a 5-star editorial review, what is the value of those groups to me? What is the value of SM?
As a friend of mine has said more than once, many readers can enjoy both the 90% and the 10%. That’s great, but this constant rejection by the machine that generates the 90% is what’s so frustrating, both emotionally and operationally. I would really rather write, but the machine blocks me and forces me to work 90 times harder on the ‘authoring’ side of the equation. Meanwhile, writers of the 90% earn 5, sometimes 6 figures! I’m still very much in the red. (expected at this stage, but it's the principle I'm talking about) So I hope you can forgive my ranting about this.
This pushes me even more to do my fictional world VLOG instead. I’ll get to stay behind my mask and discuss the things I want to discuss, and my vids won't be arbitrarily removed by some fb group admin who's too afraid of boat-rocking. They only want the 90%, possibly because they're making money from ads and the 90% is, of course, 90% of the market. That's the entire problem with SM, and it goes well beyond my struggles.
Thanks for letting me vent. If I can’t vent to you about this stuff, who then?
I hope these sample pics are somewhat titillating (a word that would no doubt get an SM post removed, despite the constant stream of fleshy erotic novel covers being spammed… oh, wait, I’m venting again…):
The central area of the bridge (with placeholder silhouette)
Dizdain in the port nook of the bridge
Part of the authorship Endoprise, from a zooming shot
X. awakens from a night terror instigated by (iN)Security Bot!
The as-yet-unnamed ship’s shuttle. I’m seriously considering naming it the Sagan. Got any better ideas?
4)
I just finished reading Theodore Sturgeon’s “To Marry Medusa”. What amazed me about this book is that it’s written entirely in omniscient narrator. How did he do that?
He has an interesting bio. You should look it up.
5)
”Custodians of the Future” is on track for a mid-October release. I’ve delayed its release on Amazon and IngramSpark to give time to the aforementioned review organizations to complete their reviews of MSD. It’s important to release CotF with as much clout behind MSD as possible.
But CotF is available for PRE-ORDER right now on other ebook vendors through this link:
https://books2read.com/CotF
And those sites will actually start selling the book on 9 October. This book is a quick read, and it would be grand if there could be some reviews already posted by the time the Amazon and Ingram releases happen a couple of weeks later.
Even if you’re not interested at this time, I humbly request that you consider who you know who might be interested. Thanks!
============ The standard stuff ============
Here’s a printable, one-page ad for MSD if anyone has a nice bulletin board/ad column nearby.
All purchase options can be found in the X.HoYen Author Store (https://XHoYenAuthor.com/store) or at GrandUnificationMonastery.com. You can give Kindle eBooks as gifts: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200652260
Thanks for sticking with me! I hope it’s at least mildly entertaining to watch this author second career thing come together. Please do share my page with fellow realism-based sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoyed Weir’s The Martian and Project Hail Mary, Older’s Infomocracy, Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Card’s Speaker for the Dead, Suarez’ Delta-V, Mandel’s Station Eleven, or Corey’s The Expanse. I'm convinced Minimum Safe Distance would appeal to the same audience, because I wrote it for me and *I'm* in that audience. Thanks for your support! XHY https://XHoYenAuthor.com