X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter, 01 October 2019

Greetings Dear Subscribers to X.HoYen's Author Newsletter, working to get MINIMUM SAFE DISTANCE properly published!

01 Oct 2019 (last one was sent 02 Sep 2019)

Status

I attended the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers (rmfw.org) Colorado Gold 2019 writers conference last month, my first writers conference. While it was informative, it was also great to discover that I've already learned a hell of a lot in my own self-education over the years. The panels I found most useful were the ones about marketing, distribution, the publishing process, that sort of thing (the yucky stuff).

I especially enjoyed meeting and making friends with dayjobber spec fic writers like me. It was a real shot in the arm, and possibly the first time I've truly felt like part of a community.

RMFW does an annual short story anthology, and I may have mentioned in a previous newsletter that I submitted a story to the 2020 edition. They'll be making selection announcements this month. Maybe I'll get lucky. There are so many excellent writers out there.

The long querying process for MSD continues. The more I hear from other authors, and from agents and editors, the more I hear that it can take hundreds of agent queries to find interest, which is highly subjective and also a matter of lucky timing.

However things go, I'll need to put multiple products to market. So realistically I need to focus more on continuing to write, both to improve and to offer more to interested readers.

As mentioned in the last newsletter, I did revise my MSD query and am much happier with it. Thanks to those who weighed in!


Other Writings

Recently I had inspiration for my next novel. It hit me in the middle of the night, so I woke up and scribbled it down. Shortly thereafter I found myself plotting and writing. It's a follow-on to MSD but with a different vibe and definitely not "just more of the same for the sake of having more of that world". It took me 7 years to get past my internal editor and begin to write my first novel, and 6 years after that to finish it. This one will go much faster!

Clickbait and the Polarizers
Play "Vacuum Genesis"
Live at Mare Tranquilizus!

"In a maelstrom 22nd century, a NeoRetroGlam eyecandy band, Clickbait and the Polarizers, unknowingly become the stewards of humanity's salvation. If the band's only smart member could put their funk behind them (Gaga Funk, in particular), the band might realize the importance of the device they're using as the new show's centerpiece prop. But a rival band, Yoyogasm, plans to ruin the Polarizers' big show on the Moon by sabotaging the prop. This could be the end of everything, or the start of something wonderful."

Yes, I admit it, the "something wonderful" is a wording reference to "2001: A Space Odyssey". I intend to seed this thing heavily with such homage references/eggs. And while I'll never be funny or clever like they are, I'm hoping to at least draw some inspiration from the likes of Douglas Adams and especially Doug Naylor [of Red Dwarf fame].

On another topic, I recently finished reading Sylvain Neuvel's "Sleeping Giants (The Themis Files)". It was pretty good, I must say, and it was encouraging to see that there's interest in/a market for alternative novel structures. Neuvel's novel is almost entirely dialogue, and it works!

Would any of you like to recommend a good hard sci fi book for me to read? I'm super picky and need help finding good hard sci fi reads. I'm not so interested in straight genre sci fi; you know, galaxy-spanning civilizations and wars with aliens and such. Those kinds of stories tend to be light on the intellectual speculation and personal transformation and heavier on the "military stories simply set in space". The worst of them are thinly-veiled fear-of-foreigners stories, and I've had enough of that. I miss books like Card's "Speaker for the Dead".


Standard stuff

Please do share the URL with fellow sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoyed The Martian, Infomocracy, Sleeping Giants, or is enjoying 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
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