(We've been on the brink of giving up on the "get Keegan to Amazon" project. In fact, we were actually within 24 hours of going to Merchant Card Services and reversing the credit card transaction for the proof copy that was ordered waaaay back on 11/19, to see if that would get the attention of someone at CreateSpace! And then --)
Yes! We got an email this morning: a human being (as opposed to a java'bot) is looking at the problem, and the proof copy of FORTUNES OF WAR has been printed and shipped, as of 11/29. This a great news -- half the problem is now fixed.
So, if CreateSpace can just get a real, live software technician to un-gridlock the shopping cart, we can get our oars back in the water! (And yes, we do indeed appreciate that specialists don't work weekends and double-don't work Thanksgiving weekend: patience is a virtue.)
In other news -- don't miss the sample chapters from LORDS OF HARBENDANE, which went online yesterday: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/lords-of-harbendane-sample-readings.html, and also ...
The actual preview page for the 2009 Calendar went up on the main website yesterday: http://www.dream-craft.com/melkeegan/calendar.htm. The page looks a treat, and there is one specific montage image which is so stunning, I'm going to paste it in here:
This gives you a really good look at the color-saturated beauty of the thing. Lovely.
Right now, we're working on webpage updates for the main site ... I'm giving some serious thought to hiving off, here, and having a special "writing blog," or maybe a "writing and publishing" blog, which would leave The World According to Yours Truly to wander through a wide variety of subjects, as suits me on the day. I've always been very much aware that the "subject" of this blog is, well, Keegan, and my posts ought to have SOMETHING to do with my books, characters, universes, or at least the writing and publishing side of it. In recent months, though, I've wandered off into politics, religion, photography --
And the "experts" do tell me that this is the kiss of death for a blog! You're supposed to pick a subject and stick to it. Now they tell me.
Well ... rats. Or even oops. (But I did stick to a subject: the subject was Keegan! Thin argument there, Mel. Anorexic.)
It's been suggested to me that I need to edit the hell out of this blog, probably split it up into several different blogs! This would be ... a lot of work, to put it mildly. It would be a job for the new year, if it happens. It's almost easier to start another one! Almost. Not quite.
Another thing that interests me strangely is the world of the "digital novel." Have you even heard if this? Millions of people have ... about ten times more blog surfies have not -- yet -- cottoned onto this. I stumbled over this two days ago, and it's one of those ideas that bubbles and simmers in the back of your mind.
A digital novel is, essentially, a novel uploaded to a blog in ~2,000 word chunks. It would take something like 100 posts to put up a loooong novel; people can then save the post (which is in html format, obviously) and read it on their various devices. They can save the segments. They come back every day for a new one. A very long series might run for a year.
What would Keegan get out of this? Well, there'd be a $1 donation button in the margin, and about 1% of visitors would (statistically) give it a click. If you're getting 100,000 visitors a month (the top-of-the-range digital novels get a LOT more than that, incidentally), you can make enough in donations to get interesting. (I might have been skeptical about this, but it's happening out there. People have broken trail ahead of us all, and proved it out. It works. Nobody pays more than a tiny sum, everybody gets tons of essentially free fiction, and the author, over the space of a year or more, gets to earn some quite reasonably royalties. It, uh, works.)
Now, it happens that I do have several novels which are so long, it's ridiculous. One of them would be 1,200pp if printed as a paperback; another would be 900pp. Big, steamy, lush, luscious, "unputdownable," extremely gay novels, serialized, free ... and just give me a $1 click on the donation button now and then, thanks, people. Food for thought, isn't it?!
So I'm thinking about it. Seriously. There is a real possibility that I might just be able to put up a sign soon,
"FREE MEL KEEGAN NOVELS, GET YOUR FREE GAY NOVELS HERE!"
I'll, uh, keep you posted!
Now, I have to get some work done before I head out for Christmas shopping after lunch.
Cheers,
MK
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