The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars - Now Published!

THE MAN WHO

FOUND BIRDS

AMONG THE STARS

PART ONE

EAGLE ASCENDANT

Special price:

  only 99 cents

until the Launch

Party 

Launch Party to be held on Saturday,

January 14, 2017, on Facebook

You may win a FREE Copy!

You'll love this book

if you like biography and you like space heroes who have flaws, and

if you're interested in my version of the future history of Earth.

Buy at

Amazon (US) (note pbk and Kindle haven't been linked yet)

Smashwords

       Like all my other books, I began this one years ago; I found older versions of the MS that were created in 2005, and I continued writing no matter how long it became.  After I began to self-publish my books, this one remained on the back burner because its length had gotten out of hand and it still wasn't finished.  I put up some samples on this blog and one person who read them was ecstatic about the piece.  I proceeded to send him the MS and he read the whole darn thing and urged me to publish it.  So -- I'm making a beginning on that, even though the entire opus still isn't finished.

       A lot of you have been reading lines from Part One on the Twitter hashtag author games lately, and others have seen excerpts on certain Facebook events like Tidbit Tuesday.  I hope this has whetted your desire to read the entire book.

       Also, some of you have read an extract from a later part of Man Who Found Birds, which I published as Fathers and Demons.  The current offering gives you the earliest history of the Captain who appears in that book.

       Here is the description that you'll find on Amazon and Smashwords (an expansion of the blurb on the back cover above):

Robbin Haysus Nikalishin was born on 31 October of the year 2729 and ultimately became the first starship Captain to make contact with extraterrestrials.  This fictionalized biography, composed 50 years after Nikalishin’s death, recounts the first 31 years of the life of a man who is hailed as one of Earth’s greatest heroes. During this portion of his life he enjoyed many triumphs, joys, and loves, but he was not immune to failure and tragedy.  In 2761 a major space disaster completely changes the course of his life.  Whether it will be for better or worse is left for the reader to decide.

All heroes are human beings and all human beings are flawed, and the man the Earth came to know as “Capt. Robbie” was a very human man.  

Children of the Music - Published!

"LUCKY 11 LAUNCH PARTY FOR 

CHILDREN OF THE MUSIC"

THURSDAY, AUG.11, 2016, ON FACEBOOK

BECAUSE IT'S THE 11TH BOOK I'VE PUBLISHED!

Here are the buy links:

Amazon (all countries) 

Paperback on Amazon (US) (they haven't linked them yet)

Smashwords

     I'm optimistic about the appeal of this book because I think it's the most accessible tale I've written so far.  Some of my books are a bit specialized and -- let's face it -- a bit difficult.  You should have a strong interest in languages and communication to really appreciate The Termite Queen, and you have to have the tenacity to plow through to the end of v.2 to get the most out of it.  Not everybody has done that and so they have missed out on a lot.  The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head series is best read after finishing The Termite Queen, but those who have read the whole thing love it! "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder" is a shocker; lots of people think it's excellent (see the reviews on Amazon), but it turns off some people, and it's entirely different from my other books, which are much tamer.  Fathers and Demons is a piece of weighty speculative fiction containing a long discursion into the Jewish religion as well as an absorbing psychological study of a troubled Rabbi and a disturbed spacefarer.

     So what makes Children of the Music different?  The length is moderate (Smashwords lists it at 122,000 words, but some of that is Character Tables and an Afternote by the author (me!)  It's laid in a world of medieval cultural level, and the genre can only be called fantasy, although magic is restricted to prophetic utterances and the strange effect the Golden-Eyed Siritoch have on the Epanishai, the invaders of their land.  Back in the 1970s when I wrote this book, I called the genre the "realistic treatment of an imaginary world," which is what I considered LotR to be.  I had no knowledge of the term "constructed world" at that time; today I would probably say "realistic treatment of a conworld."  

     Realistic treatment means that the characters are recognizably real -- you can relate to them as human beings no matter whether they are good guys or villains, Siritoch or Epanishai.  The characters are admirable but also flawed.  And there is a lot of irony -- both people honor the God of Life but in such radically different ways that, as I say on the back cover, "When two such peoples are driven together, which one has the most to lose?"

     But there is another reason you should enjoy this book: Its tone is lyrical -- smooth, poetic, flowing ...   You should simply begin reading and let the sound of the words and the movement of circumstances flow through your consciousness and captivate you.  It affected me that way when I first read it after hardly thinking about it for 30 years (the odd thing is, I barely remember writing this book -- spooky!)  And the characters evoke so much empathy -- my favorites are (in Part One) Himrith the Headman's wife,  the pivotal characters of Leys and his great-grandson Nebet, and of course Daborno, the Chieftain of the invaders. In Part Two, you have to love Ondrach the shepherd who rebels against the circumstances of Siritoch existence; his wife Lisarith, who grows in stature as the book progresses; Saremna the willful child of the Epanishai; Cumiso the Chieftain of Galana; his brother Sembal ... 

     I'm going to end this with an extract to illustrate what I meant about the lyrical flow of the text.   I hope you enjoy this sample and choose to immerse yourselves in the entire book.

From Chapter 15 (The Makers of Music) Ondrach and his family have gone to the village of Preymis to earn some money entertaining the Mayor and his cohorts on his wedding anniversary:

But then there came a lull, while the laughter died back, the guests wiped eyes streaming with merriment, the horns were drained and refilled.  In the midst of the relative quiet, Doranath struck his harp, and the tone was altered – as gay as a moment before – as quick and teasing – but different: sunlight on dew-silvered spider-silk – hummingbird flight – a whisper of dawn-wind among harebells.  Real silence drew down upon the hall as the Siritoch began to play Siritoch music. 

At first it was only the harps, but soon pipe and flute joined in, and the lute, and the tinkling finger bells.  And then the tone changed again – sunlit gaiety darkened into mystery as Doranath and Farnol began to sing. 

The words were ancient, older than Siritoch memories, coming from the clouds that were whirling up the years – from the Clouded Time that was past yet ever drawing perilously nearer.  The Siritoch were forgetting their tongue.  They often spoke Epanishai even among themselves.  When they did not, they spoke a dialect in which the concrete realities were their own but the movements and relationships were borrowed from a less patient race.  The cherry tree might be “thirnam,” but the word that made it bloom had passed away. 

The songs, passed from parent to child at the crib, kept the ancient tongue pure, but even these held only traditional meaning.  No Siritoch could have translated phrase by phrase from the song into Epanishai, or even into the dialect.  This song was the river; another was the stars.  The words and the melody were fused; they meant themselves, no more and no less: they were the Music. 

And the Epanishai felt this, but they did not understand.  In fear they called the Siritoch witch-people and their music incantations.  At the same time they treasured the spell.  They felt in it the dark groping of the roots of their own dawn-tree and the lifting of its branches toward the sun, and they yearned to be swept toward a depth of joy, endurance, and serenity that most of them could never plumb. 

So Doranath and Farnol sang words whose lost meanings were perfectly understood, while the Epanishai stood silent, their drinking horns forgotten in their hands, stirred by the glimpse of trembling stars, the dark waters of the luminous sea, the soaring of the eagle around dread, forbidden crags.  And when the song passed into silence, they could not quite remember what they had felt, but they wiped tears from their eyes. 

The youngest adults of the troupe had donned dancing cloaks and the Epanishai pressed back to give them room.  There was a pause.  The youth and the girl stood facing each other, an arm’s length of emptiness separating their extended hands.  Then the music commenced – flute and lute and the wordless descant of a woman’s voice, and the throbbing of a tabor to mark the rhythm. 

In a moment boy and girl began to move – circling slowly, always facing, never touching – swaying to and fro, bending and stretching – two willow wands caught in the winds of the music.  The movement grew swifter, the tempo more demanding.  The eyes of the dancers bound them together, their glances never parting even when their bodies turned.  Still those bodies within the floating cloaks did not meet, and the watchers began to desire their contact – to wait with breathless pain to see arms and torsos entwine as intensely as the eye beams. 

But some in the crowd gazed more at the minstrels than at the dancers – at the solemn little boy who beat the low-toned drum – at the woman whose fingers moved over the twelve-stringed lute as tenderly as if it were her child – at the man whose fluting brooded, one with the woman’s chanting, like the shadow of an oak tree on a starlit night.  The woman’s eyes were the color of swirling gray river mist touched by the sun; the man’s were moss green and leaf color, the forest floor dappled with sunlight.  The watchers did not look long into those eyes, which like the pulsing of the instruments spoke of things more ancient, more golden, and more living than the Epanishai could bear to contemplate. 

The tempo had grown – not frantic, such a word might never conjure up the mood – but stretched to a tension that could only break.  And then it did break – the boy and girl had come together, she bent backward in his arms while he bowed above her body.  For a moment all was suspended.  The Music was silent.  If the dancers should never move, the world would hang timeless for eternity.  

But the dancers did move, springing apart and darting from the hall through yielding revelers.  And the Epanishai sighed, vaguely disappointed, half relieved.  What they had experienced was too strong for them.  They were glad to be done with it – they wanted it again – it made them angry to be at once so shaken and so unsatisfied. 

And so someone called for Epanishai songs – ”Enough of this dirge-playing!” – and someone called for a dance tune – “To stamp the foot to! That’s the way to hoof it!” – and soon the rousing rhythms had cast out the stars and sealed up the depths of the ocean and bound the eagle’s wings.  The Epanishai danced – reels and jigs and circles that drove faster and faster until one nearly fell dead from laughter and breathlessness. 

The ale flowed and the mead was brought out.  The crowd grew unruly and inattentive; they could hardly hear the music and made little attempt to keep its rhythm.  Some, drunken, called the Siritoch “pasty-face” and “wool-sucker” and more obscene epithets, while others, scarcely more sober, tried to repress them.  “You want a curse on you? You want a two-headed calf like last year?”  “You want to see your daughter violated?”  “Faugh, those tales are rot!  These lily-loined runts haven’t the stomach to bed a stout Epanishai woman!”

“It’s time to take the money,” said Horbet quietly, “and leave before our welcome goes before us.” 

I could quote a whole array of passages to illustrate 

why I think you'll relish this book, but I have to stop. 

 Please do pick up a copy!

 Ebooks are only $2.99!  

And come to my event if you're on Facebook!

There will be prizes of free books!

Writing about Immortality

ONLY ONE MORE WEEK 

IN SMASHWORDS'

JULY SUMMER/WINTER SALE!

ALL MY BOOKS ARE

50% OFF THROUGH JULY 31, 2016!

     I haven't updated my progress on publishing Children of the Music since May!  I'm happy to report that I'm close to considering it ready and will try to publish it before the end of August.  The book was meant to be a prequel to a much longer fantasy, which I never completed and do not plan to complete. This means that the prophecies uttered in Children leave the reader with a lot of unanswered questions.  I have been writing an Author's Note to set at the end of the book, explaining what was meant to happen in the larger work.  I'm going to quote parts of the Author's Note here (without giving away anything important about Children!) and add a few comments that I cut from the Note.

The “big story” was entitled To Sing with the Wind (a title I never especially liked) and it grew out of my fascination with the immortality of Tolkien’s elves.  I began to wonder – what would it actually be like to be immortal, especially in a world also inhabited by mortals? To explore this, I created an immortal race of my own called the Demrai, who fell victim to hubris, dominating and mistreating the “inferior” mortal peoples of the world who were supposed to be under Demran care. Their god (Dar) punished them by mewing them up in the mountains, unable to find a way out.  However, they were promised a Liberator who would come when they were worthy and guide them back into a life in the larger world. Simultaneously, all mortals were imbued with a sense of horror toward the spine of mountains that bisects their land, ensuring that there would be no accidental contact between mortals and Demrai.   

Now a few words about the difficulties of creating a race of believable immortal beings.  For example, if Immortals propagated at even a slower-than-human rate, they would ultimately overrun the earth.  There had to be a way to kill off some of them.  Furthermore, what would happen to Immortals who were maimed in some way?  Would they simply regrow a severed hand or an eye?  My invention of the Demrai predated Highlander, but the writers of that motion picture and series had to deal with some of these same problems.  Highlander-style Immortals are sterile, so that fixes the propagation problem.  And as we all know, they can die if their heads are cut off. 

My Immortals didn’t get off so easily.  The only way for them to die was to will their own deaths.  Life can become very tedious if it has no end (remember the song in Highlander “Who wants to live forever?”)  Depression would surely have been rampant among the Demrai, especially since their lives have lost all purpose during their separation from mortals.  When their Liberator finally appears, their numbers are in a dangerous decline.  

Several dilemmas are solved by the suicide concept.  What happens if an Immortal is buried in a landslide?  Would this person still be alive if he or she was disinterred thousands of years later?  Such a situation would surely be unendurable, and a person in this situation would undoubtedly choose to end his or her own life.  

And what about physical damage?  In Highlander: the Series it is made clear that severed limbs of an Immortal don’t regrow and that if the voice box is damaged, a glorious singing voice can be destroyed.  In my version one of the main characters is a blind Demran priest.  But I never tackled the question: What would happen to a Demra is his or her head was cut off?  Or if he were chopped into a hundred pieces?

I remained fixated on immortal beings for years.  I couldn't seem to come up with any other theme, even though I had already mentally stored away the concept of a race of giant intelligent termites.  After I abandoned To Sing with the Wind in the late 1970s, I invented a new world with another version of immortal beings.  The series, laid in a much more fantastic world with more fantastic beings, was to be called The Wizards of Starbell Mountain.  I did manage to complete the first volume, but later efforts also fell victim to the improvisation virus that had doomed Wind.  Anyone who is interested can get a taste of this world in my novelette “The Blessing of Krozem,” which is perpetually FREE on Smashwords.  It was written as a Prologue to the Starbell Mountain series.  Someday I might look into publishing that first volume.  But don't hold your breath.

Sneak Preview of Father and Demons

PUBLICATION DATE


SET FOR APRIL 9, 2015!

COME TO MY LAUNCH PARTY

FRIDAY, APRIL 10

ON FACEBOOK!

COPIES OF FATHERS AND DEMONS

WILL BE GIVEN AWAY AND

ALL MY BOOKS WILL BE 99 CENTS!

 

My next publication (due to be released sometime in the next six weeks) is entitled Fathers and Demons; Glimpses of the Future, and it doesn't have any giant termites!  In fact, it’s a serious work of speculative fiction about future human beings.  For the first time the general reading public will get to meet Capt. Robbin Nikalishin, the protagonist of my still unfinished opus, The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  The best way to introduce my new book to you is to present excerpts from the book’s introductory matter.

A Note from the Author

When I set out to write the life story of Capt. Robbin Nikalishin (the first starship commander to make contact with extraterrestrials), I intended it to be one longish novel entitled The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  Among other goals, I wanted to depict the history and state of Earth’s future civilization in greater depth than I had been able to do in my novel The Termite Queen.  This included recounting what had become of certain remnant elements of society – specifically, defined religious populations.  The Jews constituted one of these populations.

So I introduced a Jewish character who was about to get married.  I began to research Jewish weddings and ended spending a good three months immersed in all aspects of Jewish religion and culture.  I even studied a bit of Hebrew.  This new fascination caused the Jewish wedding section to expand into a lengthy tome that encompassed not only an exposition of Judaism but also a probe into the nature of gods and their relationship with human beings. 

Obviously, a chunk this weighty could not remain part of the basic novel.  However, the piece contains many striking and provocative elements, so I have extracted it, shortened it by some 10,000 words, and turned it into a separate “novel.”  In fact, it is not exactly a novel, since it starts and stops in medias res, with only enough explanation of what has gone before to make it comprehensible.  It consists of several sections, some that elaborate on the future history of Earth; some that illuminate Jewish faith, philosophy, and culture and the future history of religion in general; and some that detail the stories of certain individuals, both Jewish and secular.  The theme of fatherhood and the connections between fathers and gods form the mesh that binds the book together. 

The most appropriate designation to accord this piece is speculative literary fiction; it is science fiction in that it takes place in a future time, at the very inception of interstellar travel, but it also deals with demons and gods that may or may not be real, introducing an element of the supernatural.  The style varies; within a framework of omnipotent narration, certain history and tales are told through conversation or related by one of the characters, and there is even a venture into epistolary form.  It is a bit like a musical work, with each segment having its own tempo, theme, and mood.  …

Lorinda J. Taylor

Colorado Springs

April, 2015

By Way of Introduction: Earth and Space, 28th Century

       All human beings must live with demons, but those demons are unusually powerful when they are summoned by the sort of catastrophe that happened aboard the Darter in 2761.  Robbin Nikalishin, the Captain of that interstellar ship, had succeeded, by dint of much help and a determined will, in subduing his own demons, but no member of his crew had completely escaped being affected.  That was especially true of Cmdr. Ian Glencrosse, the Darter’s 2nd Assistant Engineer.  Nevertheless, when the rehabilitated Captain received command of the first real interstellar mission under the new Phenix Project, he selected Ian Glencrosse to serve as his Chief Engineer.  The choice was limited, because few officers expert in temporal quantum drive were still alive; furthermore Nikalishin and Glencrosse had become close friends.  And in spite of (or perhaps because of) his own demons, Glencrosse had accepted the appointment.  After all, he had saved his Captain’s life during the catastrophe.  A proverb says, when you save someone’s life, you become responsible for that person forever. 

       As the launch date for the “Big Mission” approached – the day when the IS Ariana would depart for Epsilon Eridani – the crew took leave time.  The excuse was the wedding of the Communications Officer, Lt. Avi Oman, and Capt. Mercedes Tulu, Administrative Aide to Adm. Sergey Malakoff, the Phenix Project’s Mission Director.  Lt. Oman hailed from the Istrian Judish Enclave, a place of origin mysterious to most 28th-century Earthers.  Mercedes was Midammeriken, born in the citrus-growing regions of Teyhas, but her father had immigrated from Ethopa in East Afrik.  Since she had Flasha ancestors, Avi’s family had blessed the marriage.

       Cmdr. Glencrosse did not accompany his fellow crewmembers on this happy excursion to the Adriantic Sea’s northern coast.  He had something other than recreation on his mind.  He had long been haunted by visions of a malevolent entity that inhabited the depths of space – the very entity that was responsible for destroying the Darter as the ship emerged from a temporal quantum pod.  Both his Captain and the team psychologist, Dr. Gill Winehandle, knew about this aberration; in fact, the doctor had at one time improvised an unfortunate nickname for the entity – “the god in the pod.”  While the Engineer’s peers thought his delusions were under control, Ian still secretly believed in the reality of this demon space-god – that it disapproved of humans’ invasion of its territory and therefore had doomed the upcoming mission to destruction.  Ian was convinced he would not survive the voyage and so he was heading home to Mitchican Prefecture, where after a long separation he would confront his parents and make his peace.

I will post updates on the release date on

 Facebook (my page: https://www.facebook.com/Termitewriter -

like me while you’re there!)

 Twitter (@TermiteWriter)

Google+ (my community: Books by TermiteWriter).

And visit my Amazon and Smashwords pages

to check out my published books.

Publishing Update: The Valley of Thorns

 

       Volume Three (The Valley of Thorns) of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head has been successfully published on Amazon, both paperback and Kindle, and on Smashwords!  The Smashwords went easier than it ever has (unless they find something to quibble about in considering it for the Premium Catalog).  You can download a 25% sample on Smashwords, which will include the preliminary material and approximately four chapters.  Amazon hasn't linked up the paperback and the Kindle yet, but ultimately you will be able to get a Kindle version FREE if you buy a paperback.

       I'm having an Anniversary Party as a Facebook event on November 15.  Two years ago I published my first book, Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder, on that date.  Now I have six books published, plus the little free novelette on Smashwords, "The Blessing of Krozem." All my Facebook Friends are invited.  If you're not my friend yet but are on Facebook, go in and friend me, and I'll invite you.

 

Why would you want to come to my party?

 

Witty conversation, free virtual food,

information about my books,

maybe a surprise reveal of the unfinished

cover for v.4: Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear

 

Plus, I'm going to have special prices on all my books,

as well as a drawing for a couple of paperbacks

from the names of the people who attend.

Go to TermiteWriter's Anniversary Party

and check it out!

 

Some Random Thoughts, and a Cover Reveal

     I've been posting more regularly on my other blog lately, because most of what I've had to say involves either the Ki'shto'ba series or material about myth.  I have a special ongoing at the moment:

THE WAR OF THE STOLEN MOTHER

 (v.1 of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head)

will be priced at only 99 cents through Sunday, Sept. 8,

for the Kindle version at Amazon or for the Smashwords edition.

 

       I just participated in Tidbit Tuesday, a monthly event run by Patrick O'Scheen on Facebook, and I ended up increasing my likes on my FB page from 45 to 98 (at this moment of writing). A really nice reward!

       That brings up a question.  People always seem interested in my work and my ideas, and they say nice things about my drawings.  But none of this produces any sales, particularly of my Ki'shto'ba series, which I still say is superior to anything else I've written, especially for its originality. 

       Why is this?  I think I might have some idea.  My termites naturally talk is a high style -- they simply don't speak colloquial English.  That is, to preserve the fiction, Kaitrin Oliva envisions them as talking is an elevated, literary style (I had nothing to do with it -- ha, ha!) and she translates them that way.  And probably the scholarly apparatus, which I so love, puts people off (the footnotes, in particular, and possibly the asides between Di'fa'kro'mi and his scribe, something I find really entertaining, and also maybe the "difficult" names).  One person told me he didn't like the narrative form -- the fact that somebody was telling the story.  My opinion of that is that it's a personal quirk.  Lots of books are written in the first person, including The Great Gatsby.  And Di'fa'kro'mi is a Bard, after all -- it's his job to tell tales.  He participated in Ki'shto'ba's quest and it makes sense to have him tell the story as a reminiscence, as his own memoirs.  We may know he survived, but that doesn't mean that anybody else in the quest made it back home (after all in the present moment in which Di'fa'kro'mi is speaking, we never see a single other person who went on the quest), so it doesn't damage the suspense.

 

       Now a random and disconnected remark ...  I've noticed lately that a lot of book covers show closeups of one or two heads with serious, strained, or possibly lustful expressions on their faces.  Hmm.  That would work only for books in The Man Who Found Birds series (yes, it will be a series).  I may have to find somebody to do the covers for those, if I can find somebody who won't charge me thousands of dollars.  I'll repeat, I can do termites and I can make my own maps, but real people?  Forget it!  The faces I've attempted improved with practice, but they are still basically cartoons.  I don't think anything I could do would work.  So stay tuned.

 

       And now I present the back cover for The Valley of Thorns.  It was Marva Dasef who suggested I incorporate the map so I could employ a colorized version.  I did a detail showing the region around the battle area.  For the full black and white map, go here. 

 

Click for larger view

 

      

Writing Progress: So What's Next on My Agenda?

       For a while now, I've been playing up Fathers and Demons as the next book I planned to publish, but now I've changed tactics.  I mentioned that Fathers and Demons was a big chunk of my WIP The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars, too long to leave within the boundaries of that book.  I've long been thinking that I might never get around to making MWFB publishable, and Fathers and Demons somewhat summarized the plot of the longer book, thus at least getting a bit of it preserved.

I published this drawing once before
but I thought you ought to know
what Robbie looks like at the time
of Fathers & Demons.

       But working on the shorter book rejuvenated my interest in MWFB and I realized that F & D was going to play the spoiler for the parent book if I do publish it.  It reveals an important plot point that I'd rather people didn't know before they read Man Who Found Birds.

       So I've decided to delay publication of F & D until I approach the point in MWFB where the Jewish section occurred.  I had already formatted it completely for CreateSpace, but so what?  It will just sit there in my computer until I'm ready for it.  I hadn't done the Kindle and the Smashwords, so I'll put that off.  I apologize to the people who have expressed interest in Fathers and Demons and in my future Jewish history.  I assure you that sooner or later this piece will get published.

       In the meantime I've begun the daunting task of restructuring and reworking and especially abridging MWFB.  I won't tell you how long the original MS is, and it isn't even finished!  However, the first chunks are readable in and of themselves, so I'll at least plan to publish those.  Even at that, it will have to become a series.  But I think I can work it out so that each volume is self-contained and not too long.

 

       Some of you know that I've been posting chapters of MWFB (I'm up to Chapter 12) here on this blog.  I get a lot of pageviews on the chapters, and I had hoped that I would get feedback comments, but I've hardly had any, except from one person who has fallen in love with this book and impatiently begs for the next chapter!  I want to thank this very loyal fan for his support!  It's really gratifying and it played a part in my decision to work on the book.  I had never planned to continue publishing chapters forever, and I'm about to stop.  I mean to complete Chapter 12 and I do plan to post Chapter 13, because it finishes something left hanging in Chapter 11, but that will be the last.

       One reason for stopping is that I'm restructuring the book, eliminating the flash back/flash forward organization.  I had originally thought that I could do the whole book that way, but I ended up running out of material for the future part and extending the early part almost endlessly.  So a straight chonological organization will function better and help to shorten it (I hope).

 

        So how would I characterize The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars?  It's a fictionalized biography of the spaceship Captain Robbin Nikalishin, who commanded the expedition that made first contact with extraterrestrials.  With my usual intent of keeping the future context, I set it up as a piece written by an Oxkam Professor in commoration of the fiftieth anniversay of the Captain's death.  Personally, I like that ploy, and I'll probably keep it, adding an extra title page from the future, the way I do with the Ki'shto'ba series.  This future author will not be narrating the story, however, and there will be no footnotes or other scholarly apparatus -- just a straightforward, mostly omnipotent-narrator piece of storytelling in the third person.  It should be eminently easy to read, at least until the aliens appear (when the conlang they speak becomes an essential part of things), but that's so far off I'm not even going to think about it now.  We have to get through the many problems of Robbin Nikalishin's early life first!

       I'm going to leave the Prologue (the martial eagle story) intact, and then pick up from that, calling the first three sections of the book "Eagle Ascending," "Eagle Falling," and "Survivor." 

       (Disclaimer:  Any and all of the above is subject to change at any time!)

       I also may work occasionally on The Valley of Thorns (Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, v.3).  The text is pretty much ready, but the cover is only about half done and the map isn't ready at all, except as part of a larger map.  And that reminds me -- I don't have any cover art for MWFB, or rather, I have a cover but it's no good -- one of my hopeless attempts at figure drawing.

       That sounds like I have a lot to do, doesn't it? !!  I guess it's time I quit dithering and got busy!

So What's Next, Now That The Storm-Wing Is Published?

       This piece will be a kind of roadmap of what I intend to do in the upcoming weeks and months, both on my blogs and in the area of writing and publishing.

 

       First, I should say that I won't be publishing anything for a while.  I plan to let readers get caught up with the verbiage I have already produced! (LOL!)  And the third volume of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head isn't anywhere near ready (I've shortened the name from The Tale of the Valley of Thorns to simply The Valley of Thorns.  I think, since I've chopped this into so many volumes, shorter is better). The text is in partially formatted shape, but it needs a good bit more editing and polishing, and I don't have a map or cover drawn.  That is, I have a large map of the whole Quest but I'll have to cut it down to fit the setting of this particular book, which will cover only a small part of the termite world.  I want to come up with a different way to show the mountains.  I don't like that hatched background -- makes the place-names hard to read (see the map for The Storm-Wing here).

       As for the cover ... well, I have only one drawing for this part of the book and it's very stiff and not to my liking.  Here it is (comments?):



Click for a larger view

       Actually, this picture isn't as bad as I remembered, but obviously it's oriented wrong to be a cover picture.  Also, you can see by the date in the left corner that I drew this way back in 2003.  At that time I was outlining all my termites in black.  Now I do them in orange -- it softens the effect.  I also don't like the canyon walls, so I would need to find some photos of rocky cliffs to use as models.  But "Lug'tei'a Battles the Demon-Sorcerer" may very well be the subject of the cover, although I have another idea that would require a brand-new drawing.

 

     So!  I will be working on all that off and on.  First, however, I'm going to take a break and do some reading.  I've promised several people to read and review their books, and also one person is waiting for me to read her WIP and comment on it.  I need to get caught up on all that.  I'm afraid my rather ambitious intention of analyzing all four of Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion retellings is going to have be put on the back burner.  I've only done the first one -- Prince of Annwn (see all four posts here, on my other blog) -- and I do intend to get back to it someday, but I need to do some other things first.

       One of these things is to extract a section of The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars that deals with what happens to the Jews in my future world and also with the psychological struggles of the first star-mission's Chief Engineer.  Most of that will have to be dropped from the final book if I ever get it published because it's somewhat peripheral to Capt. Nikalishin's life, but it's too compelling to leave on the cutting room floor.  So I intend to work seriously on that and it will probably be the next thing I publish.  It will have to be drastically shortened and condensed, with a lot of rewrite.  It will be a complete change of pace from my termite SF/fantasies and maybe that will be good -- show I can write about something besides termites and conlangs and introduce some variety into my backlist.  The book will probably be called Of Fathers and Demons.

       Betwixt and between, I want to keep posting chapters from Man Who Found Birds (in spite of the fact that I still don't know whether anybody is reading them), and I want to do more Mythmaker explication and also some more Olde Grammarian posts, etc., plus other less ponderous stuff.  On the termitespeaker blog, I have more bird myth material to post (people seem to like that), and I may put book reviews on both blogs.  I will also keep updating my progress on formatting The Valley of Thorns.  And there will always be promotional tasks to undertake.

       So I think I'm going to keep busy, don't you think?  Stay tuned!  And keep trying my books!  Read sample chapters!   Download samples from Smashwords!  And please do comment more!  I really enjoy your opinions!

 

VISIT MY INTERVIEW AT THE LIMEBIRDS WEBSITE

 BY APRIL 8 AND LEAVE A COMMENT,

AND YOU WILL BE ENTERED TO WIN A COPY OF

 "MONSTER IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER"!

 



 

New Review of "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder" - Plus Another Publishing Update

       I just received my seventh review of my novella on Amazon Kindle, plus an additional one on the paperback version, and still others on Smashwords.  This one is a 5-star and it's by Vanessa Chapman, one of the Limebirds.  I'm re-posting it here because I think some of you might like to read it:

"I literally said 'Wow' out loud when I finished this book! Before I started it I had thought it was going to be a bit hard going, but it wasn't at all, it was very readable. I sat down on a Sunday afternoon thinking I would make a start reading the first few pages, but as it turned out I couldn't put it down and read it in one sitting. It's shocking and compelling, and has a moral message, but it's one that feels incidental rather than the story being contrived to bring out the moral point.
"I've never read anything quite like this and it's not a story I'm going to forget in a hurry."

       See, I keep telling people my books are worth reading, but who pays any attention to an author's brags?  LOL  If you want to read "Monster" or any of my other books, go to Amazon or to Smashwords.  It's only $1.99 for the e-books or $5.49 for the paperback, where you'll get that striking cover as a bonus (looks much better in print than in e-format).

       Also, I want to report that I finished the upload of The Storm-Wing on CreateSpace and ordered my proof copy.  It won't arrive until Mar. 19 (CS is slow as molasses), but I'll begin working on the e-book formatting in the meantime.

       My computer seems to be working fine.  I canceled the repair man.  He said my problems sounded more like internet than computer, anyway.  But today is also the day I get rid of my car!  Woe!  I'll be a little nostalgic for a while and it's going to be a shock to look out into the garage and see nothing there, but I'll get used to it. 

My Computer Decided It Wants to Live! Plus a Publishing Update

      

Final version of the cover for
The Storm-Wing
(Watch for publication soon!)

       Wouldn't you know it?  I call for a computer repairman, he's coming out at 8:30 Monday morning -- and immediately my computer decides to begin behaving like it was brand-new!  I have not had a single hiccup since noon on Friday!  Oh, well, I'll go ahead and get it diagnosed.  I just hope the technician doesn't find any fatal flaw, because I really don't want to get a new computer.

 

       Therefore, my silence over the last two days had nothing to do with computer problems.  I've been completing the formatting of The Storm-Wing (v.2 of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head) and I've uploaded it on CreateSpace.  I had a couple of dinky but pesky problems that took most of yesterday and part of today to solve.  One involved pagination (sigh -- the eternal flaw in Word).  There are quite a few preliminary pages and I wanted them paged a certain way, with small Roman numerals.  And I couldn't get "ii" off a blank page without causing the numbers to disappear from some of the subsequent pages.  Blank pages are not supposed to have numbers on them.  I finally solved the problem -- don't ask me how.
       Then CreateSpace told me my little title page drawing (shown below) didn't have enough DPI.  I was puzzled, because I thought that the t.p. drawings on The Termite Queen were simply copied over from Word and not even put in .jpg format.  It turned out that the problem was the eyes.  I have used a fill containing little dots for the eyes in my cover drawings, but the strange thing with the fill is that it won't change size if you change the size of the drawing.  After a couple of unsuccessful adjustments I just deleted the fill with the dots and made the eyes solid gray.  Then it took the plain drawing without a quibble.

Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer,
narrator of the Labors series

       I'm waiting now for approval to publish.  But I think this time I'm going to order a printed proof copy.  I think that's a good idea, because it was hard to tell in the online mock-up whether the t.p. drawing is going to look right. I'm not in any hurry to publish, anyway, so I don't mind waiting 10 days or so.  In the meantime I can work on the Kindle and Smashwords editions -- I haven't even begun that formatting.  However, it's pretty easy once you've done it a few times.  The only time-consuming aspect is embedding the footnotes in the text.  Then, once all three are available, I'll put up some kind of celebratory special offer!  So stay tuned!

Potpourri of Posts: Ribs, Publisher's Block, and Jewish Future History

The Saga of the Fractured Rib

 

       To bring this topic to a conclusion and to use my probably least favorite cliche: What a difference a week makes!  Last week at this time I was contemplating a visit to the ER.  By now, the rib has mostly stopped hurting.  I don't holler any more when I twist or bend or get up and down or even when I sneeze (I've only produced one serious sneeze; otherwise I've tried to surpress it).  Deep coughs are still forbidden, so I've been trying hard not to swallow anything the wrong way.   I found that Vicodin doesn't do a damn thing for arthritis pain.  I think the fall made the arthritis worse -- jars every joint in the body.  And so that's that -- enough of boring senior citizen topics!
       PS (added the following day):  I'm starting to get some unusual lower back pain.  I hope that's not some ominous aftereffect that was late showing up.

 



Publisher's Block

 

       I have been threatening for some time to publish v.2 of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, but I can't seem to get myself into the frame of mind to do it.  The cover and the map are finished, and the book is completely formatted for print.  I'm still contemplating the Glossary -- it's inserted but needs a second look to make sure there are no problems (unless I decide to omit the Glossary entirely -- can't make up my mind). 

       Anyway, I think the reason I can't make myself get into CreateSpace and upload everything and hit that publish button is that nobody is buying v.1.  I am truly puzzled by that fact.  So I'm going to put a question out there to anybody who reads this blog:

 

What is it about the retelling of myth within a termite culture that doesn't seem to turn people on?

 

       I would really like some comment on this.  I may have had a couple of comments on Twitter or elsewhere saying things like "Sounds fascinating!" but nobody wants to read it.  People seems interested in myth in general if the pages on my termitespeaker blog are any indication.  I get lots of views on my discussions of myth and on the Bird Myth recountings and on my reviews of books that deal with myth in literature, so I can't think it's a disinterest in myth itself. 

       I have two theories.  First, I keep saying that The War of the Stolen Mother is a spoiler for  Termite Queen, so maybe the people who have bought TQ want to read it first, and it's so long that they don't get to it very quickly.  Maybe after they finish, they will proceed to buy Labors.  Second, people read the sample chapters on the termitespeaker blog and they're put off by the footnotes or by the scholarly apparatus that opens the book.  I admit that my books don't always have slam-bang openers ("Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder" is another case in point), but I really don't apologize for that.  I happen to like scholarly apparatus.  It gives the book a sense of its time and place.  After all, you're certainly aware that I neither wrote nor edited The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer composed it and Prf. Kaitrin Oliva translated and edited it.  All I did was channel it from the future!  (Tongue-in-cheek there, in case you couldn't tell.)

       Maybe I should post up the two opening chapters from v.2, The Storm-Wing.  It starts out a lot faster, especially after you reach Ch. 2.

       So what do you think?  Why does nobody want to read what I think is the best stuff I ever wrote?

 

Jewish Future History  

 

       My latest post over on the other blog (Bird Myths, Pt. 3: The Jewish Ziz) is attracting a good bit of attention and an exchange of comments got me to thinking about the section of The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars that deals with the saga of the Jewish people after the Second Dark Age.  For some time I have been pondering the idea of extracting that section and publishing it as a novella.  After the exchange on that post, I did copy the text into a different document and I was appalled to find out it was 123,000 words!  That just goes to show how out of control MWFB really became, and why I could never publish it as it stands!  The Jewish section seemed to me short enough for a novella -- no more than maybe 30,000 words! 
       However that may be, I have gotten interested now in possibly whipping it into publishable shape, so that's another reason I've lost enthusiasm for preparing The Storm-Wing for publication.  I think I would call the book something like Of Fathers and Demons.  I need to shorten it drastically -- I'd like to get it below 100,000 words at the maximum.  Some characters who pertain to the larger novel but have no real function here need to be eliminated.    One of the problems is that it's not really a novel -- a book with a coherent plot; developing, interacting characters; a climax or climaxes; and a true beginning, middle, and end.  It certainly isn't science fiction (although it's future history) and it certainly isn't fantasy.  Its style is really uneven.  It has portions that are compelling renditions of character and it has one sequence where one character tells the life story of another (an absorbing novella in itself), but a lot of it is exposition -- an info dump, if you will, although I hate that term.  The original purpose was to show what became of the Jewish people after the Second Dark Age and what is happening with them by the time of the 28th century.  So there is a lot of one character sitting there and narrating that history to others who aren't familiar with it.  There is much philosophical argument in another section.  Will anybody want to read that sort of thing?  I don't know.  But some parts of it are really good, if I do say so myself, so I may persist.  I think if I ever publish MWFB that section will have to be eliminated for the sake of that coherent novel business that I spoke of above.  And I don't want what I wrote there to be left on the cutting room floor.

       So what do you think?  Would any of you find the story of Judaism in the 28th century interesting enough to read?  Give me your views on this, too!

       I'm going to post this now, and it was hastily put together, so forgive any typos.

 

 

      





Why Do I Have a Conniption Fit Every Morning?

Conniption:

Informal. A fit of hysterical excitement or anger [Dictionary.com]

Derivation: Americanism, origin uncertain
 

       Because I'm having a terrible time getting any serious work done, that's why!  I work best first thing in the morning.  Every morning my plan is to get right on the final proofread/revision of The Storm-Wing with a view to publishing the paperback very soon.  But that email is irresistibly enticing. 

      Will somebody have reviewed one of my books?  Will I have a communication from one of my online friends with whom I really enjoy contact?  Maybe I'll have new Twitter and Goodreads followers! Will there be a new blog post that I just have to read, or a message on Facebook, or a comment on Google+ or on one of my blogs?  Maybe I will have sold a book on Smashwords, which notifies you of sales by email!  So I can't resist looking before I start working. 

       And of course I find about 50 emails, and become engaged in deleting about 40 of them.  Then there are the spam notifications.  That gets me into my own blogs, which leads to checking stats, and then certainly I have to check the sales stats on Kindle and Createspace, and check whether anybody has downloaded any samples on Smashwords ...  And what about Goodreads and some of the other groups I belong to?   There might be something interesting there ...  (And oh, look, that little red 1 just popped up in the Google+ box!  I have to check that out!)

 

       By that time the morning is at least half gone and the conniption fit is in full bloom!  "I'm never going to get this book ready to publish!  Grrr!  It's hopeless!"  It's promotion that's keeping me from publishing my next book!

       It's been especially bad these last four days, because I have been having this Smashwords Giveaway of "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder" -- promotion ends tomorrow morning as soon as I log in, which will be about 7:00 AM Mountain Standard (US) time, so hustle on over to Smashwords  and download a copy.  The Giveaway has required me to do more tweeting and posting on social media than usual.  However, it's been worth it.  I've gotten one review out of it, thanks to Chris Graham, whom I met on Goodreads (check me out there), and Kat Anthony recently put up a review of "Monster," although in her case she bought the book, I believe, some time ago.  And as of a few moments ago, I had given away twelve copies in a little less than three days.  Some people may not think that's many, but look at it this way -- if all twelve of those people read the book and decide to review it, I'll be making a pretty good showing!
       I've also given away 34 copies of the novelette "The Blessing of Krozem."  It will remain free on Smashwords, so you can get it any time you like.  It's not a piece of major literature and it isn't as meaty and strenuous as "Monster," but it makes for a pleasant hour's reading and I'm not at all sorry I resurrected it and published it in this manner.

       Now why am I writing this post, in the midst of a conniption fit?  I'm supposed to be working on The Storm-Wing, for goodness' sakes!  But not only did I need to vent -- I figured I needed a new post on this blog to stimulate people's interest.  And I needed a publishing update.
       I do plan to finish that proofing this afternoon!  I swear!  Will I be foresworn?  Stay tuned!  But that won't mean I'll be ready to publish, because I've decided to compile a glossary of Shshi words that are used in the book.  My conlanging friends prefer that a piece of fiction containing constructed languages have a glossary, so I've decided to oblige them.  It means searching the book for italicized words (thank god for the Word Search feature) and then copying the words into a table or list, alphabetizing them, writing definitions and other possible explanations ...  Well, you can see it could be time-consuming.
       But that will give me time for some heavier promotion of both The Termite Queen and the first volume of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, which as you all know is entitled The War of the Stolen Mother.  I also need to do some work on the termitespeaker blog, where my posts on Evangeline Walton's Prince of Annwn are attracting page views but only one comment so far.  I'm going to let those cook awhile longer, and then I'm going to put up another bird-myth post.  This one will be on the Jewish bird, the Ziz.
       So expect some things to come.   But definitely it will all go smoother if I can just discipline myself to get to work before I check my email.  After all, I don't need to be first-thing-in-the-morning sharp to delete emails and respond to them!

       More notes on origin of "conniption":

       Wiktionary (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/conniption) says: "American origin, perhaps related to corruption or captious."

       http://wiki.answers.com says: "The origins of the word conniption, which appeared in usage in the 1830s, are cloudy and several theories have taken root into possible origins of the word:
1) Conniption is a literal corruption of the word 'corruption' which at one time meant feelings of anger or sadness.
2) Conniption is a nonsense word hinting at a mock latin origin.
3) Conniption is of Yiddish origins, such as the word Knish, due to the use of hard Ks and Ns."

       http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-conniption-fit.htm compares a conniption fit to a hissy fit or tantrum.  I don't think mine is quite on the level of a tantrum, but hissy fit works pretty well!

       

Blogging and Self-Publishing: My First Year in Review

       Actually, it's been more than a year.  I put up my first blog post on October 11, 2011, about a year and four months ago.  That post was entitled "An Introduction to My Worlds" and featured a picture of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  Here's the picture:

 

 

        At that time I didn't know how to turn an image into a JPEG, so I printed out my drawing and took a picture of the print with my new digital camera.  That's why it has that funny shadowing around the edge.  I'm surprised it came out as good as it did!

 

       Boy, have I learned a lot since then!  Not that I've become an expert on anything, but I do know how to use Paint or GIMP to make a JPEG! 

 

       I published my first book ("Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder") on November 11, 2011.  Easy to remember -- 11/11/11.  I thought this novella would make a good trial run, to learn the self-publishing ropes with CreateSpace and Kindle, and later (not until February 2012) on Smashwords.  At that time, since I still didn't know how to make a JPEG, I elected to go with a generic cover for the print edition.  Not long ago, I republished it with my own cover, but because of the subtitle that appears on the paperback entry and not on the Kindle entry, Amazon has never put the two together.  But they definitely are the same book, and the cover turned out great in the print version!  If you plan to read the novella sometime, you really should shell out the $5.49 for the paperback.  The cover makes it worth it.

 

       I went on to publish The Termite Queen, v.1: The Speaking of the Dead on March 12, 2012; The Termite Queen, v.2: The Wound That Has No Healing on May 12, 2012; and The War of the Stolen Mother (v.1 of the series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head) on July 16, 2012.  Now if you're thinking, boy, is she prolific!  She wrote all those books (which are not short, except for "Monster") in less than a year?  'Course I didn't!  I wrote them between the years 2000 and 2003.  Then I began The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars, and got bogged down for several years (enough on that for now!)  But during the three and a half years when I was writing about my termites, I wrote the entire Ki'shto'ba series, which consisted originally of three volumes, now split into six.   Therefore, I have another five volumes ready (or close to being ready) to publish.  I haven't written anything this past year except blog posts (although the splitting of the series necessitated a lot of revising).  That doesn't mean I don't have more new things in mind to write, but first things first.  I always have liked to finish what I start.

 

       So why did I start a blog?   I never intended to write a social blog or a humor blog, and I never intended to try to teach people how to write (there are scores of blogs out there aiming to do just that).  Also, I was not looking to learn how to write, because I don't consider myself to be a beginning writer.  I wrote too many words back in the first part of my life, even though I never published anything at that time.  I write best when I don't think too much about theory and just let it flow.  I think the best way to prepare to be a writer is to obtain a good liberal education (writing is always a part of that), study literature, and read, read, read, especially in the genre you intend to write.

      

       My main purpose in starting a blog was to promote my books and give myself an outlet for some of my ideas (as in the Mythmaker posts; a new one of those is long overdue).   However, I've ended up with three blogs to maintain and I've done some things with them I never intended.  The blog you're reading now, Ruminations of a Remembrancer, is my primary blog and it's become more diversified, with nostalgia posts about myself and my family, essays on poetry and grammar, a few book reviews, extracts from some of my unpublished writings, and some quite popular posts on how to format books for self-publishing.  I even put up a recipe at Christmas, which attracted a lot more attention than I expected! 

       The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head started out as my conlanging blog, with a different title.  Later, when I published the first volume of the series, I decided that a six-volume series needed a blog of its own, so I moved my specialized conlang materials to a website sponsored by the Language Creation Society (Conlangs of a Remembrancer).  Then I found I didn't have enough material for the "Labors" blog so I expanded it to include semi-scholarly discussions of myth as it's utilized in literature (after all, that's what I'm doing in the Ki'shto'ba series).  Besides discussing the background of the Labors series and the myths on which it is based, I've used some of the bird myth research that I conducted for Man Who Found Birds.  I've also had a nice guest post by Fel Wetzig on insects in folklore, analyzed one of Kat Anthony's stories that's based on Sumerian myth, and am now running a series on Welsh myth as retold by Evangeline Walton.  All that is a lot of fun, but pretty time-consuming.  Why don't you stop over there and take a look at some of the material?

       (And by the way, if anyone would like to write a guest post similar to the one Fel Wetzig did on insects, or if you would like to dissect a novel that is based on any variety of myth or folklore, or if you've published a piece of fiction that utilizes myth and want to do a little self-promotion, feel free to contact me.) 

 

       So what's next?  First off, I need to maintain my level of promotion.  Not nearly as many people have read my books as I would like, and that's too bad, because for the right person, they're terrific!  (Sorry -- I can't help blowing my own horn, because I love my books.  I know they aren't perfect, but they have a lot of meat in them, they have powerful characters and unexpected plot twists, and they move fast in spite of being long.)

       I'm especially disgruntled because almost nobody has read The War of the Stolen Mother.  Now, it does take off from the end of The Termite Queen, and it's probably better if you read TQ first, because a lot of plot points refer to what happened in that book.  But it's entirely possible to read The War of the Stolen Mother without reading TQ first, and so I'm going to be doing more promotion for my series on this blog.  I believe more people read this blog than read the other one. 

       And I'm working right now on preparing v.2: The Storm-Wing for publication.  I published v.1 way back in July and I intended to publish v.2 in about three months, but I waited, hoping people would start reading the first volume.  Now I'm not waiting any longer.  I'm doing a final proofread on the CreateSpace template right now (and I'm glad I am, because I'm catching a number of little mistakes, like "in" for "it," and a period following an exclamation mark, and missing quotation marks.  As everyone knows, it's really tough to proofread your own work, but since I have nobody to do it for me, I just plow ahead.

       I'll be doing another post soon on The Storm-Wing.  The other blog already has a lot of material about it -- go there and click on the Label "Storm-Wing" if you're interested.  And here is my cover art for the book (not too shabby):

 

   Click for larger image   

 

        So, what have I learned from this year's worth of blogging and self-publishing other than technical information about how to handle images and how to format for CreateSpace and Kindle and Smashwords?  I would say -- patience!  If you believe in what you write (and I do), you have to stay the course!  Every time I check my publishing stats, I think, well, one of these days there will be a dozen sales, and some of those people will read the books, and some of those people will review them, and then somebody else will read the reviews and decide to buy the books, etc.  (by the way, I've never had an adverse review on any of my books, and the rankings average out to 4 stars, although "Monster" has achieved 5 stars.)

       And I keep making interesting internet contacts with all kinds of fascinating people whose acquaintance I really enjoy.  That can't hurt, either.  I resurrected a fantasy novelette that I wrote back in the '70s called "The Blessing of Krozem" and have made it free on Smashwords.  Go over there and pick up a copy!  I've had 26 takers, gotten one little review and attracted some attention for my other books on Goodreads and through sample downloads on Smashwords.  I haven't become a best-seller -- probably never will.  But if I can reach enough people who like my type of literature (yes, I call it literature -- it's certainly not pulp) and keep growing a following, then I'll be willing to call myself a successful author.