Free Book Out Tomorrow!

We're literally hours away from Stepping Forward going live on the Internet. Hours. I plan on staying up to sort out getting it available as early as possible on December 15th (local time, of course...). The best part, of course, is that the book is free to download. This has a number of advantages:

1. It means that you, the reader, do not have to pay to read a longer work of fiction that I have written.
2. It means that there is literally no point in anyone pirating this e-book: all someone has to do is go to the Smashwords page and download themselves in whatever format they want.
3. And yes, I did say in whatever format. This is keeping in mind the available formats from Smashwords, but what it boils down to is that most, if not all, e-readers will be able to support the file.

One thing people haven't asked me is why I'm releasing the book for free. For a start, it helps me get my name out there. I plan on editing Meet Sam a lot over the next few weeks to get it ready for submission to a publisher, and this will be something I hope people can enjoy in the meantime.

There's also the fact that I've wanted to give a Christmas present out for a very long time: this is that present. Free for me and free for you. Simple.

I enjoyed writing the book, and the few people who have read it have enjoyed it, so with any luck it will appeal to the wider audience of the whole of the Internet. (I jest, of course...).

And why Smashwords? Aside from hearing a lot of good things about them, I wanted to get the book away from the little corner on the Internet I call my website. While I love my website, and while I loved the idea of having the free chapters there to download, it wasn't practical. While the server would have been able to deal with the traffic, I had no way of knowing how many people were actually downloading the book. Smashwords should fix that problem, while also putting the book in the market.

Mostly, though, I just want to have fun with this, and I want to have a book available for people to read. So many people in college have heard me say I'm a writer and aside from the website, there's nothing there for them to really base that on.

I do have a request, however: I want people to read this book. I want honest feedback on the book. What did people like? What did they not like? Would they recommend it to a friend? Is there a glaringly obvious typing error I missed in my edits? (That one's a joke... I've done everything I can to make this as perfect as possible in terms of spelling and grammar!) Mostly, I want to know if people enjoyed the book. Reading should be fun.

Remember, though, that this isn't the last book I'll be releasing. I have a project in mind that I have told people on various social networking sites, and I aim to publish things to do with that in the same way, while aiming towards the traditional publishing route with other books. I don't believe authors should restrict themselves to one or the other, especially not today.

Readers who still buy paper books should be given the option to read something extra by an author if they really want to. At the same time, readers who have only read the e-books might be encouraged to go for a paper book if they liked the author enough. This isn't just me I'm talking about. This is how I believe the publishing industry might survive in an age when e-books are getting stronger. Readers need more options, but not authors shouldn't be restricted to one market or the other in order to give a reader these options.

With that said, this is my first step into the publishing world. This is the first, but not the last, free book I publish. I can't say for sure what's coming next or when, but I will do my utmost best to ensure that there will always be new material out there by myself for people to read. This is a lot for myself as it is for people who genuinely love to read, and given the economic climate, I'd like to offer something for free to make sure that, so long as people have Internet access, people always have options of books to read.

So, quick recap, back to where this started: Stepping Forward is out tomorrow, December 15th 2011, for free. The first step of the longest journey of my life begins then.

Hypothetiverse Fiction

Over the space of the last days, I've gone on a bit of an adventure with my writing. I started a novella on Thursday at about three in the afternoon. I knew it was a novella as I started to write it. It felt like a novella. I wrote a bit over four thousand words that day. I picked it up again early on Friday morning, the same novella, the same feel to it, and got nine thousand words done. Yesterday, I got another four thousand or so words done, before and after work and Doctor Who (side note: that episode was AMAZING!). I might have gotten more done, but there was a particular situation that required my full and immediate attention. I don't regret it.

I finished the book this morning, with another two thousand words added on. The total, by my word processor's count, is 20436 words. And I thought, Wow, I wrote a book in less than 72 hours. Okay, it was a short book, but it's a book nonetheless.

The cover has since been designed, and the files uploaded to Createspace.com. I have a coupon to get a free proof copy of my NaNoWriMo novel, but I'm using it for this instead. There will be one copy of this book, and that is it. I have one person in my target market, and he's been told this. Before I do anything with this book from here on, I have to know he's okay with it.

Why only one person? It's Hypothetiverse Fiction. This is the term I'm using to describe the story; it's narration that follows an idea of looking in the hypothetical future of an event that itself may be hypothetical. The book is something of a bildungsroman, but not always entirely personal. Much of the other person's life is discussed, and details are assumed where the truth isn't known. Names are changed, some facts are hidden, but ultimately the story comes down to a few things from real life that haven't changed.

For a start, one of the characters shares the same traits of crazy as I do, while another shares some of the general traits of the other person. How I feel about him and how it is sometimes, wrongly assumed he feels about me are discussed in the book. The consequences of an unexplained event make up the plot of the book; neither of the characters are safe from suffering as a result of it, but neither are pushed over the limit. Okay, one might appear to be...

To make things interesting, I've toyed with time a bit. There are three dates in the book, but the narration doesn't follow them linearly. It starts on the last day, moves to the first, visits the middel day, but doesn't only visit them once. Only the third of the mentioned days is there once, but from the perspectives of two characters. I jump from character to character, place to place, examining emotions and thoughts and this big, secret history from the first day to the last, a whole life before it, and the pains that result from the big event on the last day. At the risk of sounding like a pompous, self-obsessed, egotistical maniac, this book is very interesting. A little bit maddening, but very interesting.

So, four days of hypothetiverse. You'd think I'd be tired. Okay, I am, but not because of this. It fascinates me, enthralls me, entertains me, teaches me; I can't get enough of it, and I'm going to write more. I have two ideas for similar books, books that I don't know what they'll be like. One examines the very strange idea of love, while another is an exploration into religion, death and second and subsequent chances. Then there are a couple of other ideas I have, one which tries to put words to a night out I have only heard about, but that i wasn't present for, while another goes on a completely different route: it's a YA Fantasy. Say what?

So, summer is here for another ten weeks or so, for me. I wonder how many first drafts can get written between now and then while I continue to live my life as I had been doing (though with significantly less time spent on Facebook...)