10,000

I've been very belatedly adding up my numbers, and it seems that at the end of 2012 I hit 10,000 books sold.

To celebrate, I'm going to give away a copy of whatever book the winner chooses!  [Up to and including the doorstop hardcover edition of The Touchstone Trilogy.]  (If you happen to have all my released books, then an e- and/or pb copy of Hunting.)

Entries can be done using the rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Web Comics of the moment

I read quite a few web comics, and have also been experimenting with the paid e-comic services such as Comixology and JManga, since I rarely buy the physical ones any more due to the immense amount of space they end up taking*.  JManga turned out to be not worth the money for me, both because their selection is full of sub-genres of manga I'm not interested in, but mainly because 90% of it is region-locked against icky Australians.

But the web comics are there for everyone.  It's always fascinating to watch them grow from their clunky, learning-to-draw beginnings (or swish, polished beginnings), so here's my current bookmarks for those who are looking to read online:

• Candi.  Comic book artist in college.  You'd be surprised the number of web comics with this self-same concept!  This is 90% non SFF, but with a telepathic flying ferret and Vendetta Squirrels.
• Ctrl+Alt+Delete.  Hey, I have to read at least _one_ gamer web comic.
• Oglaf.  Severely, severely, totally NSFW.  But very funny.  [Loved this artist's previous work, Platinum Grit, and hope she finishes it one day.]
• Goblins.  Funny, D&D from the POV of the monsters.
• Gunnerkrigg Court.  While I think this story has lost some momentum in the latest book, it is still a very intriguing magic and strange tech story.
• Plume.  Slowly releasing as a web comic, but also coming out in paper format (thanks to Kickstarter).  Stylish Old West and Artifacts of the Indiana Jones variety, with revenge theme.
• the adventures of superhero girl.  It's tough trying to make it as a superhero in the shadow of your over-powered older brother.  [On hiatus at the moment, but presumably coming back eventually.]
• Runewriters. Relatively recent, featuring a shapechanging runewriter, a deaf girl and a very grumpy magician.
• Minor Acts of Heroism.  The super-powered children of super-heroes.
• Not a Villain.  Post-apocalyptic plus virtual world game story.  One of my favourites of the moment.  Artist makes a joke of her relatively unpolished style by giving her character drawing skills which...need improvement.
• Blue Milk Special.  The cynic's version of Star Wars.
• Shadowbinders.  Another relatively young comic: an alternate world steampunk and magic story.

There are other webcomics I used to read but ended up fatigued by, such as Order of the Stick, MegaTokyo, and Penny Arcade (which I'd dropped before the dickwolves thing, and now couldn't be bothered with).  And there's Girl Genius, xkcd and Hark, a vagrant!, which all seem so widely read I don't think they need links.

Along with all these, I've been quite taken by Korean web comics lately.  Korean manga/manwha I've encountered in the past hasn't been to my taste, but the web comics seem to be an entirely different kettle of fish.  [The web comics have a hit-based income, so they fall into more of a grey area than reading pirated scanlations of paperborn work - just make sure to visit the original pages of new issues before reading any scanlations.  Still would be nice if there was a donation structure - I often donate to the Western web comics, but there's no mechanism for these except clicking at the moment.]

My two favourites are:

Tower of God.  A tower (where each level is basically a continent) which is said to grant wishes if you reach the top.  Much competition involved in getting there.  This is primarily the story of Baam, a boy born in darkness who wants only company.  With so many characters - plenty of interesting females - you're sure to hit on one you really like.  This is immensely detailed and multi-layered and fascinating.

Kubera.  Called "a story without villains" (which, given the wholesale slaughter, I'd say was debatable), it revolves around a girl named Kubera Leez, who has the 'name of a god' (and all the potential power that goes along with it).  She's entirely ignorant of that, though, and starts as a fairly standard 'inflated ditz who is strong' type, but is maturing interestingly (and the flashes of her tortured future self are interesting).  But the array of characters (gods, suras, humans, human mages, mixed-breeds) around her are fascinating, and most particularly Asha, the one-armed uber-mage who saves Kubera's life...but perhaps only to fulfil her plans for revenge.

So that's it for my current web comic roster.  Anything interesting to recommend back?
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* I have an entire bookcase of comics from back when I was collecting mainly Vertigo comics.  I really should do something with them - I know that my complete collection of the original Star Wars series is worth a fair bit.

The season of compliments...

This is the season of best of 2012 wrap ups and award short lists.  I woke this morning to lovely compliments from Ana at The Book Smugglers and Lexie from Poisoned Rationality naming And All the Stars among their favourites of the year.

This afternoon I see the Cybils have announced their short lists, and And All the Stars has made it on the YA Science Fiction and Fantasy list!  [I'm not sure if Kate M reads this blog, but I certainly owe her some big thanks for the nomination.]  Picture me stunned - I'm certainly in some illustrious company on that list!

A lovely way to start the year. ;)

Travelling Fantasy Roundtable : Part 10 : Food in Fantasy

Part 10 of the Travelling Fantasy Round Table, our roaming discussion on aspects of fantasy literature, is up at Sylvia Kelso's blog. This month we're talking about food in fantasy.

The Hobbit

The dinner scene at the start could have been shortened at little, but otherwise I think this worked very well.  Indeed, having watched it, I wonder if it would have been possible to film it as a single movie.  Or, I expect it would have been possible, but it would have been close to a 'training montage' of a movie.  This is very much a loving, lingering homage but that just means plenty of the visual spectacle which is half the reason I watch such movies.

Radagast's rabbits were way awesome.

Jackson chose to include a few visible dwarvish women in the crowds escaping from the Dwarven city, and there is a very powerful scene from Galadriel, but I think I'm going to continue with my theory that Fili and Kili are actually what female dwarves look like, just to balance the overwhelming levels of Y chromosome.

Time for Grinching

What's a year without a good, therapeutic session of complaining talking about things which have irked, which have bugged, which have FINGERSDOWNTHECHALKBOARD bothered me?  These are the things I could have done without this year:

Special Australian Prices

Things cost more in Australia.  It's not because of shipping.  It's not taxes.  It's not the exchange rate.  It's Because. 

For example, Redshirts costs just over $11 in the US Kindle store, and over $17 in the same store, if you're Australian.  Publishers (and other manufacturers, such as game companies) are aware that Australians got stuck paying much more back in the 80s when the Australian dollar was worth 60c US and everything was physical, not electronically transmitted.  Once those factors changed, the prices were artificially jacked up because there was an opportunity for money to be made. 

I buy 90% of my books in e-form.  If I hit an artificially inflated price, I usually just lose interest in the book and go buy something else.  [The highest e-book novel price I've encountered was $27.  I've heard tell of much higher.]

Special Australian Release Dates

From The Hobbit (released a week later than the rest of the world) to Doctor Who, to entire series of television, to e-books with Australian release dates of Never.

The Scalzi example above is an interesting one, because he gets quite shirty with people who complain about the prices and availability of his books when he posts about them on his blog. His stance being that he needs to maximise his income and selling by region is one of the ways to do it, so don't complain to him.

Yeah, perfectly justifiable attitude, but, well, I guess I'm no loss to him as a reader.

KDP Select

KDP Select, which Amazon brought in at the end of last year, offers self-publishers advantages (most importantly better treatment by its algorithms) in exchange for exclusivity.  It instantly divided the self-publishing community, and continues to be a large point of contention.

This year Amazon upped by ante by giving favourable royalties to those in Select (in all its newer stores, those in Select get 70% royalty, and the rest of us get 35%).

I hate exclusivity so, even though I don't sell particularly well on the other retailers, I won't go near Select.  But it annoys the heck out of me because (either coincidentally or as a result), my sales momentum dropped considerably when it came in.  I've never again sold in the numbers I managed just prior to Select.

"Bullying"

The thing which annoyed me most about all the reviewer bullying dramas this past year is the complete incomprehension of the word "bullying".  Bullying is not having a different opinion from a crowd or an individual.  Bullying is not saying you didn't like something.  Even if you express that opinion harshly, or with funny pictures.

Extra-infuriating was the fact that most of the really over-the-top "bullying" accusations of the year revolved around politely-worded, even-handed reviews which happened to discuss the poor depiction of women.

There's other things which annoyed me over the year (the Australian media's campaign against Julia Gillard for a start), but these are the big ones, so that's it for my Christmas Eve grinch.

What brought out the bah-humbug in you this year?

The Next Big Thing

Sylvia Kelso tagged me for this meme, and though I'm not usually much of a meme-participant, I thought this one was quite interesting.  [Sylvia, incidentally, is one of the few fantasy and science fiction writers who sets most of her stories in an Australian landscape (though not necessarily Australia).  If you have a taste for compact, poetic prose and characters tortured by impossible circumstances, check her out!]

What is the working title of your next book?

"Hunting".

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Self-published.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I was reading Georgette Heyer's "Regency Buck" and finding it tremendously frustrating.  That story features a girl who thinks she can take care of herself, but so obviously can't, and continually needs rescuing (by a very smug love interest).  So I decided I wanted a story where the girl runs about rescuing all the people all the time.  [She's not quite that bad, but she does a good piece of rescuing, and rarely requires it.]  I was also in the mood for a fantasy murder mystery, and wanted a herbalist to be a character.

What genre does your book fall under?

High fantasy/young adult.

How long does it take to write the first draft of your manuscript?

This varies wildly.  The shortest would have been around three months.  The longest over a year.  "The Touchstone Trilogy" was exactly a year, since I wrote it in "real time" as diary entries.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre

Well, it's a girl-disguised-as-a-boy book, so any of those.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

No-one springs to mind for Ash (amusingly, if I Google image search for 'androgynous teen actress' the most common result is Justin Bieber, but she doesn't look like him).  I guess Natalie Portman when she was in "V for Vendetta"?  But not so pretty, and much shorter.  [Edit: except apparently Natalie Portman is very short, which I didn't know.]

The next major character, Thornaster, also doesn't have anyone close enough, but if you took Odad Fehr (back in his Ardeth Bay days) added a dash of the Old Spice Guy and a sprinkle of Daniel Day-Lewis, you might get something close?
 

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

Me?

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

More neologisms than you can poke a stick at!  Make your head spin trying to remember new words!

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Mary Sue, Mary Sue, let me go kick ass with you... 

[Oh, okay.  Ash probably doesn't qualify as a Mary Sue.  She has no special powers for a start.  Just a can-do attitude and a penchant for climbing things.]

Time to tag someone else:  A. C. Fellows met in North Queensland and lived there a long time. For the past eight years they have lived a long way from anyone on the New England Tableland in New South Wales. They have two children, a role-playing system, and any number of worlds, the most well-developed one of which is Tsai. While most of their works are not strictly co-written, they grow out of a tangled mass of stories, characters, and backgrounds that they have generated together.  They'll have a post up about their Next Big Thing forthwith.