X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter, 2 May 2021

Greetings Dear Subscribers to X.HoYen's Author Newsletter.

2 May 2021 (last one was sent 21 Mar 2021)


Personal Growth

I've removed all that header stuff on the MSD web page. I realize now it was unprofessional, and probably self-defeating. (If any of you thought so, too, and didn't tell me, shame on you! :)

Also, recently I had a revelation about how to add more 'hook' to MSD without spoilers or messing with the carefully chosen chronology. So a new leading portion of the Prologue has been added. I'm very happy about it, and my team agrees. Yay! (Interesting how it can take so many years and revisions to get a novel into a final state. "Writing is revising" so the saying goes.)

So I've begun querying agents again. Confidence is an interesting thing. I still don't think the industry wants to try to sell a novel like MSD, but this change puts my confidence level over the "try anyway" threshold. :) Maybe that's the rollercoaster I'll be riding from now on.

Also, I've submitted my short story, "The Cog Bunker", to the TLDV (The Last Dangerous Visions) unpublished author contest. That would be quite a cap feather. Recently I wrote another short story, "A Steaming First First Contact", this one with a comedic bent, and have submitted it to a number of other contests.

We'll see how all this goes, but I'm enjoying the short story format and feel like I've improved greatly in that realm. Building a shelf full of worthy short stories and especially winning or shortlisting in a contest would help with the MSD querying process, too, aside from just the fun and gratification of it. It sure would be neat to have a short story published outside of a contest, too. I just want to write! This self-reinvention stuff is quite a challenge.

I've also decided to go ahead and add previous newsletters to that section on the web site. Why not?


An Opportunity just for Newsletter Subscribers

If any of you with gmail accounts would like to read the first several chapters of MSD rev.d, let me know and I'll grant your gmail address access privileges to a shortened file on my ringo.garrett Google Drive. Available formats would be PDF, EPUB, or MOBI, so let me know which format you'd use. I will only deploy to gmail addresses, because otherwise I'm opening up my GDrive to an "anyone with a link can access this file" situation. I'll disable privileges on 16 May 2021, so this is a limited time opportunity. I hope you enjoy what you see and find yourself wanting more. :)


Recently Read

I recently read "Productivity Is For Robots: How To (re)Connect, Get Creative, And Stay Human In The New World" by Corey McComb. It reminded me of the non-fiction book I wrote in 2005, "Metathinking: Judge for Yourself", which I had deployed via Cafepress.com and which miraculously sold one copy despite my total lack of marketing.

My theory is that the single copy of MJ4Y that sold was to the CIA, on the theory that they buy and read every book out there, just in case it reveals actionable intel. (Amusing idea: someone self-publishes a harmless, perhaps even empty book with a preposterously provocative title and charges a ridiculous amount of money for it, just to test this theory. lol)

I used Cafepress as a printing service and personally handed out the printed book to younger folks I thought could/would benefit from what I'd learned up to that point in my journey through trauma and PTSD, in a "so you don't have to reinvent the wheel" way.

But the latter half of MJ4Y was pretty abstract (i.e. difficult). McComb's book is definitely more accessible, and I can recommend it to anyone for whom its title resonates. Unlike "self help" books filled with unsubstantiated platitudes or mere vocabulary replacement, McComb's book draws upon the lessons of modern psychology and from his experience of transforming himself out of productivity addiction using those lessons. "I am not a robot: check here []."

On that note, I still have a couple of t-shirt/mouse pad/miscellany stores on Cafepress featuring my own designs from long ago which I think you'll agree remain relevant. Just in case anyone's interested, here are the links:

https://www.cafepress.com/vatbrain (a graphic inspired by the classic "brain in a vat" thought experiment, with the words "Our Similarities Outweigh Our Differences")

https://www.cafepress.com/riab (a graphic depicting growth through certainty and into uncertainty, with the words "Reassessment is Adult Behavior")

Should I add these links to my author page? Maybe it's more of a general "creative products" page. What do you think?



Standard stuff

Please do share my URL with fellow realism-based sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoyed The Martian, Infomocracy, or 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
https://twitter.com/XHoYenAuthor

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