It's a new month, and I have a lot of things flying around in my head that need settling down. May was my first full month of twittering, blogging, and social media excitement - I think it went well, and although 100 followers in a month may be a bit slow, I'm really excited to hit that milestone, given that, well, frankly, I haven't the faintest clue what I'm doing. I've had a few ups and downs already, and I've made a few decisions about the direction that I'm going to be headed from here on out that I wanted to share, so here's what's happening:
1. My Kickstarter campaign failed.
This isn't too big of a deal. While I would've preferred to go through an e-publishing house like Lucky Bat, I know lots of people have success with Smashwords, and that's the backup route I'm planning to take.
2. Genevieve will be coming out later this month.
I need to run my final set of edits and add in chapter headings, but my goal is to get The Nativity of St. Genevieve uploaded to Smashwords and published before my birthday, June 25. With a deadline that important, I'm going to make it, come hell or high water.
3. I will not begin work on the sequels to Nativity once it's published.
Nativity was envisioned as the first book of a trilogy, but it stands on its own fairly well. I likely will finish the trilogy eventually, but in the time I've spent on twitter so far, the number of people who've shown interest in a medieval fantasy novel has been minuscule compared to the number of people who are interested in the work I've done/am planning to do in an Appalachian Steampunk setting. So my current plan is to focus more on that setting, and hopefully deliver something that readers will be more interested in.
4. My next project is a collection of steampunk short stories, all set in the Appalachian Mountains.
I have plans for about ten stories; three are already written. My biggest question/concern here is whether I should release the stories as I write them, and follow them up with a discounted anthology once I have all ten, or if I should release the anthology first, and then make the stories available individually shortly afterwards. I'm honestly not at the point where I really want to spend the money on cover art for ten separate stories, though I may have to accept that as a necessity at some point. If anyone with some experience in the matter would like to offer advice, I'd be most grateful.
5. I'll be beginning work on my second novel soon, the first in the Mountaineer Free State series.
This is my steampunk setting; I have plans for at least two novels, though I'm not sure how many after that. However many I come up with, I suppose. I don't have a working title yet, but this book will be set in Chattanooga during the American Civil War. I seem to recall once saying that I really didn't want to write Civil War steampunk, but somehow I'm really excited anyway, and I promise it will have a distinctly Appalachian flair to it.
I'm excited that I'll finally have some work out there by the end of the month. I've been feeling rather like I'm all talk and no show, and I want people to get a better idea of what I can do and what I'm all about. I'm also really excited about the idea of bringing forth Appalachian Steampunk as a genre. The mountains are my home, for all that I'm currently stuck in the lowlands, and I want to share their culture and spirit with as many people as I can, especially since the mountaineer spirit matches well with the core ethos of steampunk. I love them both, and I think I can meld them in a way that will make people understand why.
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