Author Archives: Thomas A. Mays

The Question Has Been Put

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So, stupid man that I am, I’ve sent a query to Baen Books regarding the current status of my on-hold manuscript for A Sword Into Darkness.  In the last two years (first submitted it in August 2011) it has gone from submitted to the Baen Slushpile, pulled out of the Baen Slush into a group of 40 books requiring further consideration, then to a group of 15 books, then 9 books, and now who knows.  Baen has a lot of stuff on their plate and I have nothing but respect for them and the situation they are in, working through whether or not to take a gamble on an unknown author or not.

But on a personal level, it’s maddening.  The manuscript is not accepted or rejected — just in Limbo — and like the souls stuck in Limbo, it’s not Heaven nor Hell, it’s just . . . blah.  Kinda there, not sucking, but not great either.  Indeterminate.  Frustrating.  Lame.

The work over the last couple of weeks on the self-publishing / Stealth Books imprint route has been exciting and productive, however.  I’ve got a proof-ready copy of the physical novel ready to ship, with a kick-ass cover and a professionally formatted interior (all thanks to the guidance and ministrations of Jeff Edwards).  It’s been awesome working on it with Jeff, but he fully knows and understands that I would throw a 100% of it aside if Baen or another traditional house only would say “yes.”

I should have an answer or more questions soon.  I’m quite nervous right now.

ASID Full Cover 2 Desktop

The Horror . . . The Funny, Funny Horror . . . .

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As I finalize my “A Sword Into Darkness” cover design, back-cover copy, and polish off my mad Photoshop skillzzz, I was keen to look around for advice on how to do it right, and — more importantly — how to do it wrong.  Thus, I discovered the following hilarious and frightening treasure trove:

http://lousybookcovers.com/

You’ll lose at least a day browsing.  Now, I’m off to completely re-design EVERYTHING!

 

Cover Contest!!!!!

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Happy Friday and hoping you’re all going in to a wonderful weekend.

That being said, you’ve got some work to do first, so no shirking your responsibilities, Mister/Miss!  I’m proceeding on the depressed assumption that my standing queries with Baen and Ace are not going anywhere fast, so it behooves me to move forward with the Stealth Books e-publishing option.  This is much more of a do-it-yourself affair, so I have done the cover myself, but I can’t decide on exactly which one to choose.  This is where y’all come in!

Please peruse the following covers and pick which one you like best (i.e. which one is most enticing/professional and would instantly make you WANT this book).  I eagerly await the judgement of the internets.

Cover 1, centered title.  This one is standard, but the title might be more difficult to read in a thumbnail on Amazon.

ASID Ebook Cover 1 Desktop

Cover 2, the “Z” layout.  This one makes more effective use of open space and pushes the Sword of Liberty further back.  Oh, and if you noted it’s not as bright as the other pic, that’s easily fixable.  Specifically, which layout is best?

Aegis Ebook Cover 2

Cover 3, the “S” layout.  This one uses the pic from the first post, but maximizes title size for thumbnails.

Aegis Ebook Cover 3

And that’s it.  If none of these appeal, or one appeals particularly, or you think a particular tweak is needed, please leave a comment below.  Otherwise, absolutely please vote in the following poll.  Multiple visits and votes are allowed.  May the best cover win!

That First Step Into the Abyss Is a Doozy

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Hmmm.  I don’t know whether to be proud of myself or angry.

I’ve stuck to my “traditional publishing first” guns since day one, despite the advice of MANY.  Now, with the opportunities to achieve that waning, I . . . wavered.

I just spent the free time of the day reformatting the manuscript for ASID in order to conform to the Nook Press requirements.  Then I tweaked it, wrote a book description, filled in my metadata and publishing info, uploaded a cover, and voila!  A whole damn book, ready to publish.  And it was so EASY!  I wonder if Kindle Direct is just as smooth?  How does the trade paperback on demand thing work?

I can’t hit that Publish button yet though.  I still haven’t heard from Ace yet, and I do still have the ever-dwindling number of books ahead of mine in Baen’s let’s-give-it-a-deeper-look pile.

So how long should I wait?  How long would YOU wait?

 

A “Pyr”less Effort

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Well, the bad news just keeps on rolling.

Got a rejection e-mail, this time from publisher Pyr.  I’m only waiting on a pass from Ace to officially declare I’m batting .000.

Yes, I’m still on hold from Baen, and no, I have not yet submitted to any small indie markets yet, but once this final, delayed rejection comes in, it puts a cork in my fantasy of being pro-published the traditional way right out the gate.  As for the agent hunt, I’ve submitted to 6 major agencies, targeting their newly listed agents who are actively searching for clients.  So far, I’m 0 for 6.

I’m still engaged in writing, working on Echomancer, “Bumped”, and “ILYAMY” intermittently, but I really had high hopes for A Sword Into Darkness.  I even re-read it this last week and sent it off to another reader who had expressed a fascination with the book.  I think it’s good.  What could be the factor turning editors off about it?  What could I tweak or re-write to make it past those initial gate-keepers?

Ah, well.  I’ve pulled down “Bumped” this week and I’m finishing off a re-write now.  It’ll go off into the aether this weekend, along with “ILYAMY”. Maybe I can put my count of pro-published shorts to 3 or 4.

Any advice from the internets?

 

New Short Story!! “Bumped” Live for the next two weeks! – UPDATED

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SORRY, TAKEN DOWN FOR SUBMISSIONS.  THANKS FOR ALL THE COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS!!

Thank you, again, to all the folks who contributed to “ILYAMY”.  My hope is to fix it up and get it started on the magazine rejection cycle as soon as possible.  I’ll keep you, dear reader, updated as things unfold.

And now for something completely different.  Where “ILYAMY” was straight-up SF drama and somewhat dark-ish, this new tale is a bit of frothy fun (at least my definition of it).  “Bumped” is an old-school adventure yarn.  Were I forced to pigeon-hole it, I’d classify it as a mad-scientist romance / gadget caper.  If that’s your thing (and how could it NOT be?), I think you’ll get a kick out of it.  It had a little-seen previous version on Baen’s Bar, but I excised about 2000 words and punched it up quite a bit.  It’s now a good bit funner.

As with the last short story in progress, this’ll be up for a couple of weeks and then it will vanish from the internets in order to find its way to a paying market.

Let me know what you think!  Happy Reading!!

“ILYAMY” Live For the Next 10 Days (or so) – UPDATED

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Here you go, a new story from the Improbable Author:

https://improbableauthor.com/ilyamy-2/

It’ll be up for the next 10 days or so, and I am actively looking for your comments, critiques, questions, kudos, etc.  You can either e-mail me or post a comment here or on the story (I’m easy, whatever works for you).

After that, I’ll pull it down, polish it, and it’ll make the magazine acceptance/rejection rounds.  Slushpiles ho!

And, again, this story is dedicated to the memory of Jackie Price Dunn.  I’m not sure if I ever shared my stories with her before her tragic accident.  She was a beautiful soul.  I’m sure my work would have been all the better for her input.

Jackie, hope you enjoy it up there on your cloud, between eternal bike rides.

 

UPDATE:  ILYAMY has expired and is now down.  Thank you all for the many comments and suggestions.  I’m now tweaking it and will be sending it to the various magazines, where I hope it finds a happy, pro-published home.  If you get a hankering to read it before you can see it in a pay setting, just drop me a line.  I’m always looking for feedback!

 

A Too-Long Delayed Return

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Sorry, Loyal Readers, it’s been a helluva couple of weeks.

Between my last post and today, life has been topsy-turvy.  As many of you may face as well, I’ve been juggling the simultaneous challenges of a new job, new home-ownership, getting used to a pay-cut and new expenses (where the HELL is all my money going every month), and now a cross-country trip and a month-long service school on an out-of-pocket shoestring budget.  I’ve been missing my family and I’ve been unable to re-establish any sort of literary routine.

Then I found out about the tragic death of a friend on the other side of the country.  My pain and my wife’s pain is nothing compared to the pain felt by our friend’s husband or her parents or family, but it is still a pain that we are suffering in relative isolation.  I want nothing more than to hold my wife and comfort her, and she and I want to be there for our friend’s husband (who is also our friend), but there are issues of time, distance, and finance preventing it.  Facebook has been a help in this, but it is not nearly enough.

But I have been writing.  Script work continues on Strategic Deployment, plus I have completed the extensive re-write of ILYAMY.  It is a bit of a maudlin tale, but it matches my mood.  And though it was initially written well before this recent accident that stole away our friend, and has nothing to do with her, it’s title is a poignant enough link.  So I am dedicating this latest short story to the memory of Jackie Price Dunn. 

For the next ten days or so, I’ll have ILYAMY up on the website here.  I hope you’ll read it, I hope you’ll like it, and I hope you’ll send me a note with any comments or suggestions you have for it.  At the end of that time, I’ll be bringing it down, polishing it up, and sending it off to make the magazine acceptance/rejection rounds.  I encourage your thoughts and suggestions.  And thanks for reading and sticking with me.

All “Tor”n Up

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The Wife has now experienced the momentary confusion of the thin, self-addressed, stamped envelope.

A new SASE arrived yesterday with the anticipated-but-not-desired rejection form letter, this time from TOR/FORGE, Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. She apologized when she handed me the thin envelope, already torn open. She had no idea why I’d be mailing myself a letter and had ripped it open without remembering the submissions, much like I had last time with the rejection from DAW. It was fine though. Like last time, I figured publishing contracts would probably take up more than a page.

That brings the current rejection/acceptance tally to 2 against (TOR/FORGE and DAW (or is that 3 against?)), and 0 for, with Baen Books/Simon & Schuster (on hold for well over a year), Ace/Penguin, and Pyr/Prometheus still yet to report out of the “Big Six” publishers I submitted to. I don’t recall if I mentioned it before, but Random House (Bantam, Del Rey, Ballantine, and Spectra), Harper Collins (Eos/Prism, Voyager), and Hachette (Orbit) don’t accept unsolicited submissions without a literary agent — and a literary agent is pretty much just as hard to get without a contract in hand as a book publisher.

Ah well. At least I won’t be getting any more thin SASEs. All my remaining submissions were electronic. The time is ticking for the obligatory rejection form e-mails, however.

Sorry. I hate to be a downer. If any of the remaining three say “yes”, it’ll be amazing, but if all say no, it won’t stop A Sword Into Darkness. Assuming that happens, I’ll either re-submit to smaller publishers, finally get a pickup from a literary agent, or I’ll just publish it myself on Amazon/Apple/Barnes&Noble and hope it picks up on its own. And separate from all that, I still have a number of projects in the works.

As Dory said, just keep swimming!

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There! Fixed it.

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I knew I was messing up somewhere.  So, here you go:

Mmmmmmmm

Office 3

NOW it’s a worthy writer’s study.

Well, aside from missing out on the classic creative powers of alcohol, what have I been up to?  This last weekend was Memorial Day, so I celebrated it in the standard fashion:  beer, BBQ, flags, remembrance, and totally unbridled patriotism.  It was also the end of my grace period at The Job, so I had the entire four-day weekend off.  I have been unreasonably fortunate in my Navy time, in that my jobs have all been shore or ship-side.  I’ve been assigned to go to the big sandlot three different times, but each time Fate intervened to call me onto a different path (and those are three stories for a different day).  That being said, the wars have touched my career and life.  My brother-in-law has deployed to both AOR’s numerous times, and we were overjoyed to hear that he is on his way back early from this latest deployment.  I also remember when I was posted to a shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and saw the USS Cole brought in atop a Norwegian heavy-lift vessel, with a great, gaping hole in her side.  Our shipyard eventually put her back together and she steams across the seas today, defending freedom . . .  but when they brought her in, they were still finding remains of the brave crewmembers who died aboard her, including a local son of the community.

I admit I don’t remember to pray every day for my lost compatriots, my fellow sailors, my brothers and sisters in harm’s way, but no one should have gone this last weekend without a long period of reflection.

Well.

In other news, I have finished a re-write of my short story “Strategic Deployment” in the form of a short film script and it has gone on to better hands than mine to perhaps lead to something new and different.  If you have not read the original story, I urge you to try it out over on the pages here, or head to the link and see it in its original published format.  Either way, I think it’s an awesome read, and I am pleased by the changes made to get it ready for a more dramatic format.

Night all.  I have some single malt to drink.