Two Things

I’ve got two things to talk about. The first one’s fun. The second is a little more mixed (but not bad).

First then, I’ve joined up with a bunch of other superhero fiction authors to create a group for mutual promotion. It’s called The Pen and Cape Society. Please check out the website. For what it’s worth, I wrote  a short “origin story” for how I came to write superhero fiction.

Some of you may have seen the second thing in the comments of the most recent post, but I thought I’d address it in it’s own post where people are likely to actually read it.

1889 Labs put out the first Legion of Nothing book, and they did a great job. Unfortunately the owner of 1889 Labs (a small press) has had to deal with a series of unfortunate life events. The result is that he won’t be putting out any more books for a while.

The practical result of that is that I’m on my own with regards to publishing. This isn’t the end of the world, but it requires a bit of work on my part. Also, a bit of money. Why money? I’d like to rehire the same artist as we used for the first cover, and have someone go over the final draft for typos (some of which will likely have been introduced by editing).

Thus, I’ll likely do a Kickstarter campaign in the next month or two. Hopefully there will be a good response.

 

10 thoughts on “Two Things”

  1. What type of things are you thinking of having for the different Kickstarter tiers? I’d recommend signed books of course, and maybe if you can get a good artist an art print of the characters?

  2. Awesome Jim — if you want to blog about it at online-novels, please poke me.
    Also, mentioned this post and news about your new collective. If you hadn’t tweeted this, wouldn’t have caught this. Seems like Drew hasn’t tweeted about it or I’ve missed it. You should throw some bricks at him 😀

    1. Sgl: I’ll be interested in writing about the collective. We’ve got a number of things to do get the most out of it, but we’re working on it. Personally, I think the best thing about it is that it’s not just serial writers. It also includes people who just write for ereaders–potentially opening up their audience to serials.

  3. That’s sad news about the publishing, Jim, my copy of the first book is greatly prized and I was very impressed by 1889 studios work and range of distribution.

  4. A kickstarter sounds very promising. I hope there is an international option because I’d love to contribute.

  5. If you wanted to you could have a competition for the artist to do the front (and back?) cover, and, put the entries on your web site, indefinitely. As a “third prize” the artwork to go on a special bookmark, that became a Kickstarter reward.

    The artists would get exposure, you’d get a range of artwork to choose between, and you’d get Kickstarter rewards out of it. Disc space is pretty cheap, these days, after all – it is the social connections to media that people look for.

    For a serious Kickstarter reward, “Legion of Nothing” the role-playing game?

    (I’d make it “Hero System” based, given a choice. Even just writing-up a spec for each of the current, or classic, Legion under Hero System 4th/5th Edition would be a big thing. I suspect people reading LoN would volunteer to help do that. [grin])

    Just a thought…

  6. So if roleplaying Nick in a new Legion of Nothing system, I guess you’d get extra points in “Engineering” at the cost of taking the “distractible” disadvantage. Whenever confronted with interesting new tech, roll to stay focused on the task at hand. If you fail, your character takes an initiative penalty because he’s busy analyzing the gizmo.

    Could be fun.

    On a separate note: Jim, I take it from your phrasing that you’re only looking for an editor to examine mechanical stuff, rather than style/structure/tone/etc; is that correct?

    CG

  7. The site looks good, Jim. Wish I could say I wrote super powered fiction. The closest I can come is saying I write science fiction where some people can be super powered in a virtual world, but the main character doesn’t like to engage in the virtual world much. 🙂

  8. With regards to the Kickstarter: I don’t know what the rewards would be. Books, signed or not, would be the obvious one. Depending on the cost, posters of the cover would be cool. Bookmarks, maybe?

    A key point is that it’s got to be affordable, and planned for as part of the Kickstarter. So sometime soon, I’m going to be sitting down with a spreadsheet, and figuring things out.

    With regards to a Legion of Nothing RPG… I’ve occasionally thought about making one, but honestly, that would be a lot of work. I’d have to write it, playtest it, and probably hire multiple artists. I’d likely do something based on it’s own unique system, but add the necessary material to make it easy for people to adapt it to their preferred system.

    In short, if it happens, it’ll require its own Kickstarter. Once a game is created though, it would be a great reward for the mid to high levels of donation.

    Curious George: I’m specifically looking for copyediting. My editor at 1889 Labs already did all the structural/tonal/stylistic editing before 1889 Labs went on hiatus.

    Alter Alias: From what I understand Kickstarter works for international donations, but it doesn’t work at all for international Kickstarter campaigns.

    Unwise Owl: I was impressed with 1889 Labs too, and I’d be willing to work with them again if things get better.

    Farmerbob1: If you organize a similar science fiction group, it might be worth your while.

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