Fencing Academy, a commercial retrospective

TL;DR -- Thanks for your support, FA was a success so far, I'm going to keep writing, I like feedback, there's a lot of challenges ahead of me.

A week after the publication of Fencing Academy, I feel I've been abandoned at some strange crossroads, each path heading in some dangerous yet wonderful direction. The one I am staring down leads to being a full-time writer. That is a delirious dream of mine; my screen name, Another Wannabe, pretty much embodied my self-assessment of becoming a professional.

The dream is still a little far off for me to be comfortable with. My book sold well for a first-time author (hitting Amazon ranking #20,000 or so) but unless I consistently perform that well, it's not really enough to live on, but it's a taste enough to keep going down the path, even if it's rocky for some time to come!

But here's an important fact to underline: anyone who takes this path never does it alone. In a plot twist worthy of M. Night Shyalaman: that means you. Yes you, take your hand out of your pants for a second, I'm being serious. It's not just about buying a book -- you could have bought a copy, told your friends to buy one, wrote up an Amazon review (BERST BERK EVAR!!!) and then, I dunno, cosplayed Lyza Dunwall (in drag, let's be honest!) and you would have made a great contribution -- but even people who read this blog casually still contribute. It's a grain of rice in the scheme of things, sure, but to paraphrase the Disney classic Mulan: even that can tip the balance!

So, to everyone who reads this blog, and especially to those who bought the book, and especially to those who took the time to write a review, this is a bit of a love letter to you. Figuratively, of course. I don't actually love love you, that'd be creepy. But really, honestly, thank you.

Here are the things I learned:

#1: Feedback is more valuable than money.

You need the latter to live, but you live for the former. If I had to pick between having a sale and getting a review, my heart says hands down the review, but my head says I need the sale to eat! It doesn't even matter that the review was good or bad -- any thoughtful examination that's fair or even critical is encouraging, it says this person took me seriously enough to take my work seriously. That's a great compliment even if I did otherwise sux ballz.

Posting on Literotica was a great way to get feedback. I miss it a little, I'm definitely going to write there more, not just to promote my commercial work but to get that ego stroke that everyone needs.

Finally, I've noticed something odd. I always thought that people were quicker to give feedback than pay for things, which is certainly true for me. Apparently it's the complete opposite! Only a tiny minority of those who bought the book actually wrote a review, just as only a fraction of the people who read this blog write comments. I think anyone who does anyone on the net wonders, "Who are these shadow people who look at all my stuff but don't say anything?" If you are a mysterious shadow person, inquiring minds want to know what you think!

#2: Managing expectations is really hard.

This naked ape is an optimist. Even after consciously telling myself, "Okay, really, you'll do well if you even sell 1,000 copies over a year," it did nothing to deflate wild fantasies of being #1 New York Times Best Seller. It's always good to aim high, but the risk is when you don't hit that bulls eye you chalk things up as a failure. Fencing Academy was, commercially, a success for what it was: a niche book by a first-time author, at a time where we're all drowning in self-published 23-page "novels" that cost almost as much. I'm happy with how it went, but only after some convincing.

(On a side-note, I now understand the annoyance with hack-writers. It's a little frustrating that your labor of love is as commercially viable as someone else's cynical cash-in!)

If I was Ash Ketchum before, entering this world with nothing but naive expectations of immediate success, I feel now I'm reentering the arena as Maximus Decimus Meridius, armed with a steely gaze and a fuller appreciation of how much hard work is front of me. Literal blood, sweat and tears were shed to make Fencing Academy a reality and there's going to be more to come!

In closing

I really hope you guys continue following me. Knowing even a handful of people are interested is incredibly encouraging, and I'll definitely need support/eyeballs if I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing far into the future. So... thanks!

Tommorrow's the Big Day

It's so big I feel like I should be wearing a suit. My first book is out tomorrow, and I'm full of nerves.

You know, I don't mean to make a fuss, but here's a link to the book so sorry to bother you!

Map Porn for Map Lovers (Hopefully Working Now)

If you are like me, you masturbate a lot to fantasy maps.

...did I just say that? I meant, I admire fantasy maps, I admire all over them.

Take this one, for example, a map of the region where the Fencing Academy books take place.

Oh yeah, Zachon, damn you sexy. Your oxbow lakes have just the right curves!

And then here's a map of the whole continent.

Took me a while to make that one. It reminds me of South America, I think. This one is more of a draft, but it's pretty close to where I think everything will be.

In other news, I'm making an effort to cross post Blogger and made newly-made Tumblr you can find http://awfreyr.tumblr.com/.

New Years Resolutions

It's that time of year: time to make some resolutions. First, let's look at what I promised myself last year. Unfortunately for me, I saved the evidence.

My primary objective this year is to finish up Version 1 of the AIF Toolkit and to release at least one major game.

Oh dear. 50% ain't bad... isn't it?

 Well, to be fair, I had no idea I would be publishing a book this year. It was also a pretty difficult year personally, so there's that. Still, I really would have liked to release at least one game.

In addition to all of my personal resolutions, I have a few that are a little AIF related.

#1 Write and read more, play video games less.

I have to admit that I have a video game addiction. That became pretty clear when I saw how many hours I'd logged on Steam this week. It's that draw-dropping moment when you're like, "oh shit, I don't play that many video games, do I?" and it's like, "yeah, yeah you really do."

And the funny thing is that I find writing far more emotionally satisfying. I'm not sure why I spend so much time playing when writing is what gives me that sense of accomplishment where I say to myself this was a full day's work. For the amount I play, I could have produced at least two AIF games and that would have felt a lot better.

Or better yet, maybe I could have had a social life.

#2 AIF Toolkit Recipe Book

I've talked a little about writing an manual for the AIF Toolkit. I've decided that a printed manual would be less useful than a recipe book, an addendum to the AIF Toolkit that contains advice, templates, ways to perform specific tasks, etc, just like the Inform 7 Recipe Book. I've already started work on it. Last week I wrote one project template and three sex scene templates that can be simply dropped into the source code to make a fully-interactive scene. I'll need to debug them but I think this will be very useful to people who are not programming inclined.

I'll write a little more about the book later, as I'll be soliciting for specific topics that people are interested in.

#3 Stick to a project

 My non-productivity this year was not because I didn't find the time to work on AIF, it's that I kept schizophrenically switching from one project to another. To illustrate, here's a list of AIF games I made significant headway into this year but never managed to follow through on finishing.

Bad Neighbor -- A spiritual sequel to Bad Sister. Started and restarted several times this year.
Dextro: Professional Male Stripper -- A comedy game where you're a male stripper training to be a superspy.
Five Finger Discount -- A game where you play a female thief doing various robberies and fucking a lot of people.
Monster City -- A noir detective story with monster girls.
Odd Ones Out -- An erotic horror AIF. I got pretty far into this one.
Soccer Story -- A sports management game where you manage a girl's soccer story (restarted from last year)

I am interested to know which of those ideas people would most like to see. Ideally, I'd have people vote, that's setting up an expectation that I'll definitely do that particular idea and I don't exactly want to do that.

Whichever of these I end up with, it will probably start after I finish work on Pervert Action: Legacy.

#4 Expand my writing career

I'll be honest. All I really want to do is write. If I can, I'd just do it full time. I'll always be writing and working on projects for fun, but I'd also like to start making money on some of my projects, especially because I'm between jobs right now and hemorrhaging money. My novels are a start, but I'd like to start doing more... ghostwriting, short stories by commission, professional editing, that sort of thing.

I'm very uncomfortable advertising, so the most it will probably be is a little thing on the sidebar for those who are interested. I have no plans on turning this blog into a gigantic commercial enterprise... like everyone else I like free stuff and I want to write free stuff for people.

Anyways, those are the four main things this year. Of course, I have my own resolutions (i.e. get in better shape so I don't die by 40) but these are the ones that will most effect the blog.

That's enough from me. What are your resolutions? Let us me know in the comments.

Writing Your First Book, Pt. 2

Before you even start writing your first page, there are a few considerations worth going through that will effect how your book will turn out. It is pretty rare that people are possessed by inspiration so awesome that they stomp out a novel in 2-3 days. Good ideas and structure take time. What you start writing is rarely what you actually end up with.

For me at least, when I first fill an empty page, my ideas are pretty shitty. It really starts with a wish fulfillment fantasy -- "Man, wouldn't it be awesome to be locked in a mansion with twenty horny babes." Whether it's a errant professionalism, some kind of aspiration to be a better artist, or just plain boredom, my plots become more and more complicated. I add layers -- "What if one of the girls in the mansion is a ghost?!" A little intrigue here and there. An interesting character flaw. And it keeps going -- "Maybe she's not really a ghost... and it's everyone else whose dead!!"

Sitting down and just writing ideas is pretty hard for me. I can only do that for ten minutes before I start playing Crusader Kings II. The brainstorming for me is in the execution... I'm doing something and then I think of something I want to play around with. That could mean I throw out everything I've done so far... perhaps thousands of words. I've done it before... I'll do it again. That's in stark contrast to a writer such as BBBen, who will sit down and write pages and pages and pages of notes before committing even the introduction. That's a skill I want to have.

If you have a plot that's of any kind of complicated, some measure of planning is basically required, or else you're just writing Lost, you're throwing twists at the viewer with vague promises that it'll all make sense eventually. That's a cynical way to write a story. On the other hand, you don't have to map out the story all beforehand. You have to leave some room for the plot to expand and change according to the direction of the story. My plot outline for Fencing Academy came out to be a page long, and I sort of stuck to that. I have other notes, but it's all world building and notes for myself in case I forget certain things.

Basically, if you are anything like me, it's very likely you'll throw out your first dozen efforts to write a novel. But that's good. You'll get a feel for the characters. Whose important. Whose boring. After you sleep on your failed efforts for a while, you'll come back and write something better than that.

And maybe throw that out too, just to start it anew.

Writing Your First Book, Pt. 1

A couple of days ago I submitted the second draft of Fencing Academy to my publisher. A day after that, I saw the cover art (which is REALLY cool!) Needless to say, I can't wait to share it with you all. I thought I'd write a few thoughts down on writing a book. Perhaps it would be helpful for those of you out there thinking about writing one.

The process of writing says something about you. Not to sound cheesy, you do learn an awful lot about yourself. You discover whether you're a morning or evening person (me, I'm a morning person, though I've always fancied myself a night person), what sort of work flow works best for you, and whether you're a do-it-all-now-and-revise-later person or a make-sure-it's-perfect-then-move-on person.

The late-and-great Kurt Vonnegut reckons there are two types of writers, and he gave funny names to them which I can't remember offhand. The first type writes as quickly as possible before going back and taking a long period of revision. The second type writes slowly and surely, making sure each sentence is perfect before moving on. The good thing about the first type of writer is that they get rough drafts out very quickly. The good thing about the second type is that they don't really have to revise. There is no "superior" method, it's just what works for you. I had always thought I was in the first group. It turns I'm in the second group.

The point is that you don't know these things until you find them out yourself. Until you learn them, it's very difficult to follow projects through to completion. I think that's the value in starting big projects you may or may not finish, you find this stuff out. And as you find them out, you learn, finally, how to follow through. So if you're the sort with a billion aborted projects, don't despair. You're doing the right thing, keep aborting projects until you get the hang of things.

The next part of this series will come before publication, and it will go deeper into challenges you might face. You'll get to see the cover art before then, hopefully. The cover is so good I feel a little inferior to it... I only hope the story is as good as the art!

Fencing Academy... published?

Some pretty heady news today. The stories I've been working on and submitting to Literotica are getting published... in an actual (e) book!

A few days ago, I signed a contract with Uruk Press, giving them the digital publishing rights to the Fencing Academy stories. They are a new and small publisher specializing in erotic fantasy, definitely worth checking out. Needless to say, this is pretty awesome. I've been working my entire life to write professionally and now the time has finally come.

This is really the chance to do something truly special. Publishing like this is going to give me a lot of flexibility and support to write the best story I can. I'm hoping to write several Fencing Academy books, though the details are all up in the air for right now.

Anyways, as new stuff comes out I'll let you guys know.

You can read the first four chapters on my literotica page.

Fencing Academy Part 4

Parts 1, 2 and 3 can be found on my Literotica page here.

Chapter 4 can be opened below (Warning: Large file)

Fencing Academy Part 3, More Reviews, and the Minicomp

Fencing Academy Part 3 is up. You can read it here. Unfortunately, I tried to post it on the blog itself but it appears there are technical issues with posting a lot of text. I will need to figure that out before I do it again.

The minicomp is coming up, and I'm going to be working on an entry. Unfortunately, because of real-life issues I have not had a ton of time to work on it, but with approximately a month and a half to go I feel like I have plenty of time. I will be releasing it with an annotated, open source and it will also serve as a demonstration game for the AIF Toolkit. It shows off a lot of fancy tricks and I hope people enjoy it.

BTW, if anyone needs any technical assistance with their entry, I'd be happy to help.

I also want to say I'm planning on writing a review of Magician's Nephew at some point, I just haven't had the time to sit down and play the game. I usually try and avoid reading ExLibris's until I get a chance to play it myself. So that's something to look forward to.

Fencing Academy

How's it going everyone?

So, I wanted to let people know that I'm working on a series of short stories called "Fencing Academy". The first two parts are here and here. They were, to my pleasure, well received. I'll start posting the stories in full on this blog before they hit Literotica, so this is the place to check if you're checking for updates.

As you might suspect, this was supposed to be the big AIF game I was working on. Unfortunately, for many reasons it just didn't work. While there were but two girls, the plot was, in essence, too grand. Naively I thought reducing the number of girls to two meant "small game". It didn't.

I've been kind of disconnected from the AIF community as of late and I want to say there are still projects in the pipeline that are AIF-related, so I'm not going away. In the short term, it looks like a lot was released on the AIF front and so you can expect a few reviews in the future. Typically, I try not to read ExLibris's reviews before I have a chance to play the games, so look forward to that.