Tuesday, April 9th

The Daily Report

Well, the first Tales of MU Kindle book has debuted at number 26,360 in the Kindle store, a position similar to the one I was so proud of having pushed I Do Not Fight Monsters to with a couple of weeks of exposure. That's only all of 9 sales, of course, but those 9 sales are worth more than fifty short story sales in terms of royalties. It even has its first review without me having to remind anyone to do it.

The whole thing has me feeling a bit more optimistic and motivated about the whole thing, to the point that I started the document for the next ebook this morning. I've also been thinking about the stories I've written under the MU "Other Tales" umbrella that can stand on their own as short stories.

Today's a posting day for Tales of MU. I have a 2,000 word draft that I'm going to need to spend some time with this afternoon. I'm going to take a slight detour from my relentless optimism about the writing ahead thing to admit that the further ahead I get, the sketchier the results have been. But two things I'm keeping in mind.

One, this may be due to non-permanent factors. For instance, for this last week, I've been out of some of the braining pills that my brain uses to brain (I'm getting more tomrorow). For another thing, I'm doing something that's very new, so it's perfectly natural that I wouldn't be perfect at it right out of the gate. I may get better at time.

Two, even having a sketchy and incomplete outline of what's coming up is better than not.

I've been thinking of myself as having been writing these chapters in a single day, but the fact is that every single one of them gets at least a little revision or expansion before going up. This is really a two-day process. On production days (the days I'm writing and not posting), I can focus on keeping to the schedule. On publishing days, I can focus on making it good. Eventually I might get far enough ahead that I can polish in advance of posting: produce, polish, publish. But one thing at a time. I'm still getting used to the idea of writing to a deadline that isn't for immediate publication.

The State of the Me

Were continuing to edge into the weather where heat makes sleep difficult for me. A late night thunderstorm dropped the temperatures a bit, though.

Plans For Today

I have a chapter of MU to finish off and post, as mentioned before. I also have to get my act together on Wander... my resolution to post an update every day this week didn't last one day. I know I can do this. I think the problem is that so far I've been relying on the idea that it doesn't take much work to carry me through... it's easy, so of course it will get done. What I need is an actual process, and I do have an idea for how to make it work.

Just a note to Nook owners...

The Tales of MU ebooks that are currently available in the Nook store aren't the same thing that I put up on Kindle the other day. They're from Lulu.com, the site I originally used for print-on-demand services and PDF e-books. So not only are they a higher price than I've ever charged for a MU ebook, they're also lower quality.

The good news is that being aware of this has motivated me to take a look at Nook's self-publishing platform. I'm encountering an error when I try to upload a manuscript, but I expect to have the same ebook with author commentary available in the Nook store for the same price as on the Kindle within the week.

(Tip of the hat to reader Cindy Davis for bringing this to my attention. Thanks!)

Economies of Scale Mail

I saw a conversation recently about economics in D&D/Pathfinder that was interesting and amusing (as things so often are), but just reinforced my desire to leave such things as an abstract background element in A Wilder World.

Yeah, it's terribly amusing to hear about adventuring parties who do things like steal the adamantite gates from the entrance to a dungeon and leave the rest of the loot to the deathtraps and the monsters because it can't be worth a tenth as much as the giant pieces of ultra-rare magical metal, or the party who upon getting a "knowledge was their treasure" ending looks up the price of old parchment in the rulebook and sells the library of the ancients for list price. That kind of thing is part of the culture of D&D, just like rolling into town and selling the leather shirts that ten kobolds died in is. Looting everything that's not nailed down (and bringing a +2 crowbar of prying for the rest) is just part of the culture of gaming.

But this is the kind of thing I mean when I talk about how D&D is better at simulating a game of D&D than it is simulating a fantasy adventure story. If someone behaves like that in a fantasy story, you know it's a self-aware D&D/gaming parody... outside of those things, this kind of behavior is a highly distinct character trait, not just normal behavior.

None of this is to bag on D&D. I like D&D. I play D&D. And I know it's possible to run the game in a way that deprecates looting and/or mitigates the need to scramble after every last copper. But I think there's room for systems that are built from the ground up to tell a different kind of story.