Sometimes you grovel, sometimes you don't...

So I'm getting close to the finish with both of the books I'm writing—one mostly realistic except for the fact that there's a future, and a demon; the other a full-on science fiction dystopia—and I've decided I've got the patience to shop exactly ONE of them around the soggy-biscuit ring of agents and publishers.

The science fiction book more obviously fits into a category, so it's pretty clearly going to be less of a pain in the ass to sum up in fifty ass-licks or less; it will therefore go the query-letter rounds.

The other one is an odd, cranky fish, with the odd title of THE TALKATIVE CORPSE: A LOVE LETTER, and GEEEEHD knows no publisher will jump up to risk that, considering the fact that the public gets 50% more brain damaged with every Firefox update. I could have gone to my previous novel NVSQVAM's publisher, Chip Smith, with it—he takes a loss on most of what he does, and if he didn't like it enough to take that loss he would tell me now, not after five months of groveling and pissing away my precious telomeres—but I'm determined that this book should come out as quickly as possible, via e-edition, and Chip, bless his heart, hates those things.

So at the risk—a roughly 100 percent risk, as I'm well aware, and fuck you in advance—of losing readers to the vanity press stigma (or to be more precise, to the lack of a publisher's stamp of approval), I'm going to spend all of my energy editing rather than begging on this one, and "print" it myself as a straight-to-Kindle ebook using Amazon.*

While I polish what's left to be polished, in the interests of letting you decide whether you want to read this for yourself rather than relying, indeed, on that publisher's stamp of approval, I am going to leak the first three sample chapters right here, in serial form. (I had the sample chapters all polished up and ready to send to an agent before I came to the conclusion that fuck them, let the readers decide.) By the time the ensuing tidal wave of frenzied anticipation comes to its juddering peak, I shall likely be ready to "print."

I'm not against anyone else publishing this book without my having to chase them like a horny freshman boy, mind you, so if anyone wants to approach ME about publishing it on paper, go ahead, that would be nice and tactile and respeccable.** It's just that, like I said, I've only got about one grovel in me per year, and then I start wearing thorough what's left of my stomach lining. (Used the last year's stock getting a job, so I don't have any rollover grovels. Sorry.) So stay tuned! I'm thinking intro chapter: Friday.




*Note: it is not in fact necessary to own a Kindle to read electronic books on Amazon, by the by; you can download them via the Kindle cloud reader and read the text on your computer. Exciting note: there are tons of books that have gone public-domain on there for free. Much better than shelling out money that won't ever help the book's (dead) author anyway. It's like the Gutenberg project with better typefaces. (You need an Amazon account, but if you're so paranoid that this would disturb you, what are you doing on the Intertubes in the first place? Don't you know how easy the tubes make it for them to see you? Yeah, I know, Amazon is evil, but so are life and job and the computer you're using, unless it's slave-labor-free and made of hemp.)

**Also, if anyone out there would like to help fund the film version of NVSQVAM (screenplay by Chicago indie filmmaker Emil Hyde), that would be great too. Just sticking that out there.