Divine Intermission now available on Amazon!

For the two or three people who may have been anticipating its arrival, the wait is over: book one of Divine Intermission is officially live and available as an ebook exclusively on Amazon's Kindle Store. That means if you are an Amazon Prime member, you can borrow the book at no cost. If you're not a Prime member, you can still get the book for a mere 99 cents.

In other news, I ran across this article (via Io9)about Amanda Hocking and how she is "still the exception" in the publishing biz. Anyone who reads about indie publishing should know that she is an indie author who, after selling over a million copies of her work, signed a $2 million book deal with St. Martin's Press. The author of the article goes on to describe "hybrid authors," or those who are at once published by legacy houses while continuing to self publish their own work.

What we have to remember is that Amanda Hocking's experience couldn't have happened five or six years ago. Sure, JA Konrath was blazing a trail along with a few others.

But when we look at Amanda Hocking or John Hartness or Kerry Schafer, we can't get jaded and say, "Oh, they're exceptions to the rules. Indie authors getting signed to publishing houses? That's not how it should be."



We have to stop thinking in terms of, "This is not how it's supposed to happen." Instead, we need to frame our experiences and the experiences of others in the indie publishing industry in terms of What Is Possible.

Is it possible to write and publish my own book? Yes.

Is it possible to reach a global audience with my fiction? Yes.

Is it possible that a publisher might want to relaunch my work one day? Yes.

Is it possible that I might be more successful without that publisher's help?...

What do you think?

The Novella That Wasn't There...

According to my last blog post, today was supposed to mark the debut of my novella "Divine Intermission."

Well, plans changed.

I'm still shooting for a January release, but it probably won't happen this week. I could spend a few minutes coming up with reasons why it didn't go live when it should have... instead, I'm just going to talk about some other things that have been on my mind the past few weeks.

If you've been paying attention to my blog since the beginning, and have been able to withstand all the times I've dropped off the grid, you may have noticed my growing fascination for serial fiction and short novels. Since I'm still less than a year into the indie publishing gig, I'm still experimenting with ways to get my work into the hands of readers.

My first experiment of the year is this series of novellas collectively called "Divine Intermission." The plan is to publish the first four books of this series throughout the year.

My gut instinct has been that ebook consumers are going to be more interested in shorter novels. It's like the weight loss advice that says eating several small meals is better than eating a few large feasts. Some of my fiction will be available in bite-sized morsels.

And I think this is where we're headed as indie authors.


Some would say that shorter fiction indicates more simplistic writing, which could also suggest that an author is writing to the lowest common denominator. This criticism is, of course, ridiculous.

Anyone who's tried to pack the power of a novel into the body of a short story knows that brief fiction does not equal easier fiction.

For a clear example of the shorter being more complex, take a look at the following two pieces of fiction:

578 printed pages

110 printed pages

If indie authors begin focusing on novellas or novelettes or just shorter novels, we may see a surge in author innovation and a rejuvenation of the craft itself. In fact, I would argue that the rise of ereaders may also give rise to a new golden age of fiction... that is, fiction of the shorter persuasion.

What do you think? Are readers hungry for tiny morsels or enormous feasts?

Divine Intermission: A Comedy

2012. Supposedly, this is the year our world ends.

I'm not normally one to fall victim to fads - even though I wore my fair share of cutoff jean shorts when I was a kid and I sported a totally rad mullet between the ages of 10 and 14. Those weren't fads, though. I was just awesome.

My point is this: I don't want to jump on the apocalypse bandwagon. I simply want to pose a question for you.

What would happen if the creator of the universe simply walked away from their godly duties to take an epic smoke break?

In "Divine Intermission," the first novella in a series to be published throughout 2012, the multiverse is crumbling apart because the gods aren't doing their jobs. A depressed writer and electronics salesman named Carl has been trapped in an endless series of doomed realities in which he relives different versions of the same basic life, all the while sensing that something is amiss on a cosmic level. Carl soon finds himself in the presence of immortal beings and is sent on a quest that might bring him face to face with his own magnificent Creator.

Then again, he may just get killed.

2012. The Year of the Dragon. The end of the world. The year after 2011 and before 2013.

This is the year of "Divine Intermission."

Available as an ebook on January 10.