Robert New

Next month I’m hoping to release an *air quotes* “new book.” Due to its relatively short length (only 46 pages), Mug Punter is more akin to a promotional item than a book. The e-book is likely to retail for between 99c and $1.49 (TBD) and the paperback $5.99.

The stories in Mug Punter were going to be included in Movemind, but they seemed out of place. They were then going to be included in Colours of Death: Sergeant Thomas’ Casebook (out next year) as the original plan was to divide the book into four groups of stories; work out how the person died, work out who did it, catch the killer before someone dies, and criminal capers. Once again, the capers just seemed out of place, and didn’t fit the colour theme so they were cut. But I liked the stories and my writers group has given positive feedback on them. So I want them to see the light of day, which is why I’m self-releasing Mug Punter (although it will still be distributed through Tale Publishing).

The stories themselves are similar in tone and style of The Legend of Legend and The Lost Chapter from Movemind and while they do have my usual sprinkling of ‘here’s an interesting idea,’ it’s less of a feature; They’re fun, light-hearted short stories in the vein of the Dortmunder series (by Donald E. Westlake). I hope you enjoy them.

I’m giving away e-book copies of Incite Insight until the 3rd October. They’re available worldwide through Amazon until then.

Movemind is also on sale for 99c/99p in the UK and USA, until the 5th October.

August has mostly been kind to me by providing me with several ‘little wins.’ For perspective, there have also been some little losses such as a negative review and negligible progress on my non-fiction book. However, I’m choosing to focus on the positives to keep me motivated.

The first occurred on the 2^nd of the month. I went to 37o South, aka Books @ MIFF (the Melbourne International Film Festival). Part of the day was spent in nine back-to-back, one-on-one, 20 minute pitch sessions with producers. I was there to promote the idea of adapting Rapture by Jeremy Stanford as a movie or TV series, but this also gave me an opportunity to offer my book Incite Insight for consideration. To my pleasant surprise several producers showed interest. One producer even asked me to mail her a copy of Incite Insight after I’d run out of the give-away copies I’d brought. Whether anything comes of it is yet to be determined and statistically unlikely, but I’m pleased I was bold enough to put myself out there and give it a go.

Wins number two, three and four came during the quarterly promotion (when I discount the e-books of my stories) of my books. Incite Insight passed 800 sales and at the same time Movemind sold through its first 100 copies. If I count my (badly) self-published novel, The Conversationist, I have now sold over a thousand copies of my books.

Another small win came when my next book, Colours of Death: Sgt Thomas’ Casebook, went to my editor, Kathryn Moore for editing. This is quite a step in the publishing process and brings it closer to being ready to ‘proof.’ I also received the semi-finalised cover from the cover designer (see above), who I think has done a brilliant job and raised the standard of my previous covers considerably. I’ll definitely be seeking to use her again, if I ever get the two books I’m working on at the moment past the outline stage.

I also wrote the introduction for an anthology due out later this year. The anthology is for the Monash Writers Group (which I chair) and I’ll also be contributing a short story to it.

There’s still nine days to go this month. I wonder what other little wins I’ll be able to celebrate before the end?

My Son found a pile of bookmarks which I’d had printed as a give away/promotional material for my book, Incite Insight. He decided that sitting in a box with some printed copies of the book was not the best use for them. He asked me to build a “Doom Ship” like Bowser’s in the various Mario Bros games. The ship is nothing but bookmarks and sticky tape (still a work in progress). The ship is able to carry four “Clown Carts” (made from other resources) for him to use when battling his Mario toys.

You know what? Despite the environmental cost of the paper and tape I think this was a really good use for the bookmarks. My Son and I got to spend quality time together making it and he certainly appreciated that I’d donated my resources and the final outcome of the boat.

After a long weekend spent at the Continuum Speculative Fiction convention, I was exhausted. Then a text came through – was I interested in a radio interview this week? ‘Yes,’ I replied. Such an opportunity is a rare thing for an unknown author like me, so I seized the chance. My day job as a teacher, meant I couldn’t record the interview live-to-air, but I was able to phone it in as a ‘pre-record.’ I’ve just finished recording the interview from the passenger seat in my car! It goes to air tomorrow (15/6/18) at 10.35am as part of ‘Viewpoints’ with Henry Grossek on 3SER. I’ll post the audio next week.

3SER https://tunein.com/radio/Casey-Radio-977-s7651/

I spent January revising and editing Movemind (now available for pre-order). Since February, I’ve had a target of writing 250 words a day during the week and 500 a day on weekends. It’s really worked for me and I rarely write only the target for the day. 250 words is manageable – roughly 15-25 minutes. I know some authors go for a thousand or 750 words a day. When I try that I invariably fail; the time required interferes with my day job and family too much. 250 words also happens to be roughly the amount of words of one page of a book. The feeling of continually making progress is rewarding. I also like that by the time I get to write again, I’ve spent so much time thinking about what comes next I don’t get distracted and write efficiently.

As a result of this practice, I’ve just finished the seventh story of a planned nine story collection. I’ve written 42,000 words since February, with a rough estimate of 10,000 to go for the last two stories. With a bit of luck, I’ll have the book out early next year, which means I’ll have published two books within a year!

Some stories are based on a well-plotted out plan, some from ideas that have percolated for a long time, but not necessarily written down, and some just on a single sentence. The latest story (called The Storyteller) was a total “pantser.” I had a one-sentence idea: ‘An arsonist sets fires so he can write a story about who tries to stop it.’ That was it. I think it was an idea from a dream I had roughly four years ago. I really like how the story turned out and had a heap of fun writing it, probably because I had no pre-conceived ideas about where it was going. Firmly setting the story in Perth helped the story develop as it led to some plot points coming from local landmarks. The resulting plot become the closest companion story I’ve written for Incite Insight in terms of content.

The collection is tentatively titled: The Colours of Death: Sgt Thomas’ Casebook. It’s detective fiction with my usual sprinkling of science. The main character in the stories is the detective from Incite Insight. The stories are set after the events of that story, and Sgt Thomas is now an extremely effective detective. Each story has a colour based theme. For example; the victims turn blue, violet is the name of a drug, a uniform colour is indigo and so on. I’ve based the colours off the rainbow (ROYGBIV) and added black and white. I still have white and green to write. White is a ‘percolated’ story — one I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years and green will be another ‘pantser’ where I only know it will involve a code being broken (although,  I’ve already worked out how).

It’s not my only project at the moment, as I’m also writing a short story for an anthology which should come out around Christmas time. More on that project in another post.