Traveller's Tales

Some days, creativity’s a trickle, condensation running down a cold rock. Some days it’s more of a stream, flowing past rocks, squeaking around obstacles and making my feet cool. Occasionally, it’s actually riverlike, shoving those same rocks and annoyances aside in its strong current and taking me along with it.

On extremely rare occasions, it’s violent, and it blows your mind.

I’ve been working on my mongrel media marketing campaign for the last few days, and it wasn’t long before I made an uncomfortable realization: one of the characters from the marketing has insisted on joining the story.

At first I resisted, even knowing that these sort of out-of-nowhere developments tend to lead to the best stories. There’s no place for her in the saga, I griped. She complicates things, I whined. She dilutes the message, I grumped. (Grump, grump, grump.)

And then I relented, and the stars aligned.

It’s perfect, I now realize; it’s the ultimate fusion of my “real-world” stories and my other-world stories. Characters that have always threatened to straddle worlds now do without apology. I don’t have to worry about where the lines start and end; they’re all part of a cohesive whole now, part of a much, much larger story.

Freed by this revelation, the story for the campaign surged. I’ve done more story development in the last couple of hours than I’ve done during entire weeks where I thought I was focused on the campaign. It was always intended to be story first, marketing second, but it’s mutated beautifully into full-on story first, marketing as a distant second, and I’m really enjoying how it’s taking shape.

And, as often happens when the stars truly align, there are other fascinating forces in play to aid and abet this story, from all sorts of unexpected directions. I don’t know how it’ll all turn out yet, and I really can’t say anything specific, but the possibilities are incredibly exciting.

Watch out. This is the year.

The new faces are at http://www.absolutewrite.com/ – an excellent writer’s resource/community I’ve somehow managed to miss entirely for years now, apparently. I’ve been a part of several communities over the years — misc.writing, for one, and Ravenscar Nights for another — but the web communities that popped up after m.w became unreadable and RN died off just didn’t seem to capture the mood I was looking for. Regardless, AW seems like a lovely place to hang your hat if you’re a writer of any stripe, so I’m going to hang there a bit. If you do the writing thing too, give it a go.

The new challenges are in this new media crap. I’ve got some great stuff to deliver storywise for the marketing push, but the trick is distribution — not just specifically distribution, but the actual path people will take between chunks of media — yes, it’s going to be what I call a ‘mongrel media’ production — it’s lots of chunks of various media instead of one consistent experience. Long story short, it’s really a lot more complex than I thought it was, and I thought it was complex. Right now it’s doing my head in. I’ll get through it, but the infinite variables are still throwing me for a loop, so I need to compartmentalize better and narrow each step down to its component parts. Big pictures are scary, you know?

Stamps procured from the Lexington Avenue Post office; envelopes from the Duane Reade across the street. Watch out, Agent A, it’s coming and it has your name on it.

K, now I wait for a few weeks. To borrow a phrase from the massive multiplayer crowd… /twiddle.

In the meantime, I’ve reinstalled Lotus Word Pro on my laptop — not because I’m going to write in it (as much of a joy as that word processor was to use, I’m an Open Office fan now), but because a shedload of my old research, historical documentation and backstory is in various Word Pro docs, and if I’m serious about continuing to improve the Codex daily, I’m going to need that stuff. Not to mention the rules to the RPG that’s based in the same world as the book.

Lastly, I’m prioritizing time now on developing the promotional materials for Knight — mainly because they’re actually fun, and tell a bit more of a part of the story that really doesn’t have much detail. That and I don’t have to actively try to resolve some of Lord’s stickier problems while I focus on selling the first book. It’s only mulling, though, I promise — there have been some good new bits in Lord the last couple of days and the engine’s definitely on again.

The letter is written; I’ve reviewed it with someone in the field who knows what a good one looks like, and it has passed muster with one edit. I’ve got a short list of target agents I’m taking aim at first, based on that same friend’s feedback, and now it’s time to fire them off and wait.

Now taking aim at Agent A: letter is printed out, lacking only blank envelopes to send the letter with. Based on the agency writeup, I expect to hear a response in 2-3 weeks, and I’ll post the result here. In fact, I’ll probably make up a new blog category just for those status updates, assuming the process is as long and arduous as it’s usually described — but hey, maybe I’ll get lucky.

Update to the Codex: five new entries and a new category for them — Magic.

No more bullshit. This year it gets published. I’ll write about every last little nasty detail right here, but that’s it. 2007 is the year. It’s 25 years since I first made contact with that wild little world in my head, and it’s about time everyone else got to hear about it, too.

Step one: query letter. Written. I’m not sharing it publicly yet because I haven’t secured an agent yet, but when that happens I’ll post it.

Step two: viral advertising. Talked with my good bud today and it’s going forward. Yes, that means there’s going to be some interesting viral marketing around the book. No, I can’t talk about it yet, but given the atmosphere of conspiracies, ancient struggles and misdirection in the book, you can expect the viral stuff will have the same feel. What’s more, it’ll have something neat you can get at the end, if you’re fast enough to figure everything out.

Step three: research. In progress now. I’m narrowing down the list of agents I want to hit first. Once I have that list, I’ll post it here, and we can follow the list of polite rejections until we find someone who loves the book as much as I do.

Keep your eyes peeled: Step Four is incoming.

No BS. This is the year.