Independent Book Review - Raiders!

Relic Worlds Source in Star Wars

Since May the 4th was yesterday, and this is a big year for Star Wars with the movie coming out, I should probably say something about my own closest connection to the series, which is Relic Worlds.  I did not intend to do much with Relic Worlds until the last half of this year, but it keeps creeping into so many things that I'm doing during these first months because of outside elements over which I have no control.  For instance, Wondercon, the Star Wars convention, May the 4th, and all the trailers being released.  Plus, I need to get the stories written in advance so that they can come out on a schedule during the latter half of the year.

So Relic Worlds is a mixture of the two biggest media influences of my youth: Indiana Jones and Star Wars.  It was, in fact, originally developed without Indy so much involved, as much as I wanted to create my own galaxy far, far away.  I invented it first as a science fiction series called Travelers that I pitched to Digital Domain.  They were in the process of doing the effects for Titanic, and the top managers there believed the movie would be a flop, so they wanted to prepare their company to go independent of James Cameron as soon as it did.  Of course, the movie was a hit, and everyone denied they were planning to jump ship, as it were.

It was then redesigned as a TV series that got overlooked by everyone, including the Sci Fi Channel a number of times.  At last it was finding a home in internet channels in 1999 and 2000.  The bubble burst, and they ran out of money.  But rather than just admitting that, they acted like they had never met me before.  It was strange.

When Firefly appeared on TV, the style was so similar to my concept that it was pointless to even pitch it.  So I put it on a shelf for a while, only to come down a few times when it seemed relevant to be pitching it.

I wound up doing something similar in comic book form which came close to having some success, but it faltered as well.

That was when I got into independent publishing, and I learned through my first book The Table of Truth, that publishing through Amazon was not only the best bet, but had the best chance at getting noticed by the public.  Somehow, book distribution through Amazon got more attention than comic books, even online ones.  My belief is that people who read comics fall into two categories: Those who want to see comedy, and those who want to read the same material over and over.

This last is a problem we have in geek culture.  Many self-defined "nerds," the people who will read a lot of comic books and graphic novels, have a sort of obsessive compulsion today.  They will read anything written about subjects of which they already know, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel or DC superheroes, Firefly; anything that's been shoved down their throats by corporations.  But hand them anything that's new, even something similar to their interests like Relic Worlds which is a combination of two series geeks love, and they won't even try it.

And as a result, new graphic novels that are not comedies will not be read by anyone.  But there is a pretty strong audience for independent books of all genres.

I guess I didn't get around to talking about Relic Worlds connection to Star Wars per se, but you can read more about that at the Relic Worlds blog: http://relicworldsobservationsandthoughts.blogspot.com/.

I’m Concerned for Geek and Nerd Culture

In so many ways, this is the best time to be a nerd.  When I was growing up, the title of geek or nerd was an insult, a degradation, a put down.  Now we live in a world where Weird Al Yankovich is a number one top seller, and geek culture has entered the mainstream.  It’s even popular to call yourself a nerd.

And that’s where my concern lies.

Any time something becomes popular, people want to emulate it, even if they don’t care about it.  It becomes all about conformity.  Comic Con is a great example.  Once a hive for those of us who enjoy stories that were off the beaten path, it’s now become the place for the mainstream to come see celebrities.

We don’t want to exclude anyone, of course, but it does seem less than genuine when Entertainment Tonight and their wannabes are hash tagging themselves as “total nerds” when they’ve really just followed fad after fad, and they will leave when this one fades.

But my concern runs deeper still.  To me, one of the major definitions of nerd and geek culture was giving a chance to the more alternative art forms.  While everyone else was following Debbie Gibson and Tiffany and whatever nameless movies were the latest fads in the late ‘80s, I was reading The Dark Knight, watching Indiana Jones, and listening to Weird Al.  What was the common string in all these things and others I was into?  They broke new ground.  Only Spike Jones had done anything remotely close to Weird Al.  Indiana Jones was an entirely new invention; it wasn’t based on books or old TV shows.  And even The Dark Knight, though it was based on Batman who had been around for 40 years, it was an entirely new take on him, and superheroes in general.  The entire genre has blossomed from that.

The point is, we were willing to try new things.  That’s really what made a “nerd” or a “geek” more than something being cerebral or fantasy-oriented.  Today, however, it seems as though few self-proclaimed nerds and geeks are willing to try anything new.  They are stuck repeating the same things over and over.  For instance, I took my new series Relic Worlds to the Indiana Jones fan club at Comic Con.  It’s inspired by the series, and has elements of Lucas’s other great creation, Star Wars.  Those movies caused me to grow up and want to do something new, though similar.  Instead of giving it a try, the fan club showed no interest.  What would have happened if our parents had given the same chance to Raiders of the Lost Arc in 1980?  If, instead of giving a chance to this new movie by these aspiring filmmakers, they were too busy obsessing over something nearly 35 years old?  If they had been like current fans, they would have been so busy obsessing over something from 1945 that Raiders would have been a failure, and would not exist today in the lexicon of great adventure movies.

And the same is true across the board.  It’s the reason why Hollywood and publishers are obsessing on toys from the past.  It’s not that there aren’t good ideas out there.  I know of many authors and filmmakers who are striving to be heard; and many of them are in the areas that geek and nerd culture would love.  But people are so obsessed with what’s in the past they’re not willing to give a chance to what’s in the present.

So this is a call to all nerds and geeks out there.  Find your roots.  And by that, I don’t mean your old comic books and toys still in their wrappers.  I mean, remember that what made all the things you enjoy from the past famous is because people gave them a chance.  And there are new works that are equally great just waiting to be found.  Give them a chance.  Stop looking backward all the time.

Relic Worlds Novel Free Today on Kindle through KDP Select

My latest novel, Relic Worlds: Lancaster James and theSearch for the Promised World, is now available for the Kindle on Amazon.  I had been releasing the series on Drivethru Fiction, and had even done this book as a serial there, releasing each chapter as I finished it.  As such, I was going to have the novel come out on Drivethru and all the other e-readers upon release.

However, I looked over the results of my last two books, Pro Bono and The Great Heist.  I released the former through the free on Kindle program, and even though I gave thousands of copies away for free, I sold thousands more after the promotion.  That book still sells better than any of my others.  Meanwhile, I put The Great Heist through Amazon’s other promotion program, Kindle Countdown Deal, where it is sold for a lower price for a limited time.  I had almost no luck with that, selling only a few copies during the promotion period, and it’s never taken off, despite the fact that the subject matter is even more appealing to the general public than Pro Bono.

Of course, none of the other major e-reader platforms have a good promotion program other than Drivethru, which, unfortunately, is not a site highly trafficked enough to get a huge amount of sales.  So as a result, I’m going exclusively with Amazon to give away those copies for free so hopefully those people will spread the word.

I am doing this promotion in two stages:

First promotion:  I’m making it free for two days over a weekend to give it away to all the fans of Relic Worlds and people who have been following me on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  It’s a bonus to them, and hopefully those people will begin spreading the word in time for the second promotion.

Second promotion:  About a month later, I’m making it free for three days.  I will be promoting this one far more widely.  Those areas include:  Book Bub, Pixel of Ink, Facebook sci fi sites, Google + sci fi sites, Kindle Daily, etc.  This is the one I’ll really be pushing, and trying to get people to purchase.

The intent is to generate interest while there’s still time left in the exclusive Kindle deal.  The reason this is helpful is because it maximizes the book’s exposure in one area, making it more likely to get on their top books list.  If people have multiple readers, they purchase it on Amazon, and that pushes me up the Amazon list higher.  If it was on multiple readers, the book would go more evenly up multiple lists, thus making it so the book never reaches bestseller status on any one site.

Since the other e-reader sites do not have promotions that support independent artists like Amazon does, I chose Amazon Kindle.  Simple as that.  They all bemoan Amazon for having unfair business practices, but they do that while not improving their own services for independent authors like myself; so I don’t feel too sorry for them.

Serials or Short Stories?

It’s no secret the Relic Worlds has its inspiration in the movies I grew up with, Indiana Jones and Star Wars, as well as a smattering of others of the time, like Buck Rogers and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  These, in turn, have their basis in serialized movies and books of earlier ages; the 50s, the 30s, and even before that.  The days of radio were huge on serialized stories, episodes only a few minutes long that took characters part way through an ongoing story to the next cliff-hanger.

Serialized stories have their roots in the 19th century, appearing first as the penny dreadful serials in England.  They were also called penny awful, penny blood, penny number, and penny horrible.  They were called penny because that’s how much they cost.  Each had a part of the story which was released that week, and you had to wait until the next week to get the next part.  They were printed on cheap pulp paper, which later gave them the name “pulp fiction.”

The difference between these and short stories, of course, is that serials continue ongoing stories and character arcs.  Storylines don’t pay off within the confines of the story, but may go throughout an entire season of episodes.

This is the dilemma I have had with creating Relic Worlds; whether to follow a serial or short stories.  The intent of the short stories is to introduce new readers to the storyline without charging them any money.  This works better in an episodic as people can jump in at any time and get a sense of what’s going on.  But a serial will continue complex and interesting story elements both for the characters and for the mystery at large.  As such, the compromise I came to was to provide individual short stories with ongoing elements that appear in all the short stories.  You put them all together, and they create storylines and mysteries that get solved and paid off throughout the various stories.  There are a few stories that go for several episodes, but I’m keeping them short so people can see the where the beginnings and ends are to go through them with ease.