The novella The Shattered World Within (published in Giganotosaurus Feb, 2013), describes how the characters find an odd planet:

The seventh planet was perhaps the oddest of all. This planet, too, was a gas giant, blue-purple in colour, with a wide system of pretty rings. It had thirty-five moons, all of them either too small for a colony or too dangerously close to the rings. Many had erratic orbits. The planet described an elliptical orbit perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. And it moved backwards, spinning rapidly. More oddly, when the crew obtained a higher magnification scan, it showed that the planet wasn’t circular; it was more like a coagulating cloud.

This story, set in my space opera world, takes place about 100 years before the present. The world “discovered” in the story is the weird and wonderful world of Hedron. Long ago, it was a nice, green planet in the habitable zone, when a rogue wandering planet knocked it out of orbit. Sunlight has vanished in the cloud of gas and debris. Vegetation has fossilised or vanished. Some life still exists underground.

How long would it take for and Earth-like planet to lose habitability
- if it remained cloaked in an insulating cloud
- if it had a molten core
- if a chemical process supplemented oxygen (yay, space opera here, so I can wave my hands as much as I want)

The philosophy about Hedron is that sometimes the universe throws us really weird curveballs. Things–like life–exist in places where by rights they shouldn’t.

Today’s Hedron has a dead and cold surface, but not cold enough for the atmosphere to freeze out. It has retains breathable air and an atmosphere. This far from the sun, and hidden behind clouds of gas and rubbish, the surface sees little sunlight. The planet itself is rich in metals. The planet’s atmospheric composition and orbit are probably not stable. But stable enough for people to live (and hide) there for a good period of time, give or take a couple of thousand years.

The people who settled there 100 years ago, as described in The Shattered World Within, were rebels and outcasts from Asto. Within a few “years” (year is a rather useless term of time measurement, because it’s well over 200 Earth years), these people got their act together and started a mining venture. It has a weird system of government, where the board of the mining company is also the government, but where all residents are shareholders and as such, can’t sacked. Casual observers will find a fair number of features of the system resembling communism, whereas the society presents a commercial face in other aspects.

Hedron has been mentioned in almost every Aghyrians story, but I’ve never set anything there. The main character from Soldier’s Duty, Izramith Ezmi, is from Hedron. She has never seen sunshine, or any vegetation that is not artificially grown. She has never seen houses in the open air, or streets, or any of the things that we see when we look out the window.

Last week, I picked up three large boxes from the post office. The above picture shows what was in them (more than the one copy for each title shown above, obviously). Real live books! To take to Supanova.

This, for me, is part of what makes a success. I had a one-day table at Conflux. I took four boxes of books. I came back with one small box.

Success? People are reading my books.

As I said yesterday, as soon as the mid-year (northern hemisphere summer) slump hits, people start navelgazing and wondering if success has passed them by. But it really depends on how we define success. Obviously, bestseller, household name authors are successful, but there are a couple of tiers of writers underneath those that can also be called successful to a certain extent.

At this point in time, I make between a couple of hundred to a thousand dollars per month from my books. Not so much in this slow time of the year, but in March, I made very close to $1000. That is not enough to live off, obviously, but it definitely makes writing fun for me. It makes me go out and spend $4000 on a camera. It makes me not skimp on con costs, like getting a room by myself in the con hotel and not worrying about how much I spend on food while I’m there.

So yeah, I would call myself reasonably successful. I know that there will be money at the end of the month that I can choose to do stuff with. I also know that there are places where I haven’t yet gone (like, a deal from a major publishing house), but because this money keeps coming in and sales keep tallying up on my dashboard (mainly on Kobo), I feel relaxed about whether or not this will actually happen. I feel that I don’t need a big deal to prove myself, or to get some income from my writing (and seriously, have you seen the appalling advances lately?). I feel confident enough to say that I’m not interested in an ebook-only deal unless some amazing conditions come with it (that said, what is more amazing than getting 70% off each book I sell on Kobo? And I sold two while I was writing this post).

If your definition of success is mega-bestseller-dom, then you’re always going to be disappointed. Being a writer is about your body of work, not about writing the best-selling book since … [The Da Vinci code/Hunger Games/Harry Potter/Twilight]. Those best-selling books are freak occurrences. Many writers make a really decent income by selling much less.

You can’t control freak occurrences. You can’t control whether or not your work ends up on award lists, but you can keep expanding your body of work, and you will get a modest but regular income that keeps writing fun.

That is the baseline of what I call success.

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Patty writes hard Science Fiction, space opera and fantasy. Her latest book is Trader’s Honour, in the space opera series The Return of the Aghyrians. If you’d like to be kept up-to-date with new releases, remember to sign up for Patty’s new release newsletter.

As we move into the months where book sales are traditionally slow, I’ve been hearing self-published writers express the feeling that they feel “lost in a tide of crap” and “it’s so much harder to gain traction now than it was two years ago” and “you might be better off with a traditional publisher”.

Is self-publishing about to come full-circle?

Here are a few of my thoughts about this:

1. It’s right that the early wave of self-publishing had a lot of luck. Ebooks were new, self-publishing was exciting, and a couple of writers had phenomenal success. There weren’t as many books to choose from, and Amazon sweetened the deal with the Select program that helped many writers sell thousands of books. The industry is maturing. It’s not so exciting anymore. Books are again about telling a good story and hooking the reader, and Amazon has whittled away any unintentional advantages gained by giving away massive numbers of books. OK, what’s new? No one said it would be a picnic.

2. The “tide of crap” argument. This makes me uneasy. Yeah, OK, there is stuff out there that probably shouldn’t be, but implied in the “tide of crap” statement is that your books aren’t going to be judged part of that “crap” by someone else. Guess what? So please, spare me the downputting terminology. There are a lot of books out there. Reading is becoming much more diverse. I think this is a good thing. I see people express the feeling that they’re tired of standing in the Amazon stream and shouting to be heard. But I think if you’re trying to do that, you’re not doing it right. People buy because of word of mouth. So let Amazon be and work on creating word of mouth through the three B’s: Be there (on Facebook and Twitter etc), Be interesting (by posting about whatever interests you), Be genuine.

3. Self-publishing is about seeing some money from your work, and traditional publishing is about gaining traction in a different market. I passed a milestone recently. SFWA considers a novel a “pro” sale when you’ve received more than $2000 as advance. Some time this month, I passed that for Fire & Ice. The book still sells every day. The other two volumes are not far behind. Neither is Watcher’s Web. All these books are still selling, and this is what keeps my motivation going.

4. Being published is hard work. Many people will try and give up.

I think that a lot of people who jumped into the self-pub market will drop out because they become discouraged, but the vast majority of those will be lost as writers altogether. That is not that different from how it has always been. Self-publishing has just made this whole process more public.

Nothing has changed except the technology.

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Patty writes hard Science Fiction, space opera and fantasy. Her latest book is Trader’s Honour, in the space opera series The Return of the Aghyrians. If you’d like to be kept up-to-date with new releases, remember to sign up for Patty’s new release newsletter. The image in the header of this post is the new header for Patty’s Facebook page, where you are all welcome.

It’s Monday, and the day of the week that I get up at stupid-o-clock to drop my husband off at central before heading somewhere to take sunrise pictures. I’d been heading south before last week, when I went to Bronte, which was north, but I decided to continue my way south.

So. Little Bay. A lot has changed there since I used to go there with some friends to look at marine life. A whole suburb has sprung up. The bay itself is only small (DUH!) and the hinterland not very interesting (whaddyamean, not another bloody golf course??). Surprisingly also, there was almost no bird life, save for a seagull roost at the northern end of the beach–and I left those in peace. I’ve always found a lot of birds on golf courses, but not today. So we have some pretty pictures of the ocean.

First light. You can’t tell in this picture, but it was so dark that this is a 25-second exposure. I couldn’t see what I was doing with the camera, so had to use my phone to light the top of the dial to set the auto-timer. If you have the camera on a tripod and the shutter is going to be open a long time, you want to step away from it so that the tripod stops wobbling before it starts taking the picture. I take all long exposure and HDR shots (all of the ones in this post are double exposures) with the self timer. You can’t use the camera’s HDR function without a tripod.

Sunrise over turbulent water.

A rocky bay in the next inlet.

There is no one here on a Monday morning. Believe it or not, but there are lots of houses and apartments less than 100m from where I took this picture.

So, I went to the zoo in Canberra. The above picture (click on post title if you’re not seeing a cheetah) is not a trick. At Canberra zoo, they have tame cheetahs. Cheetahs are one of the few predators that can be tamed and trusted after they’ve become used to being around people. Cheetahs can also not roar. The bucket, by the way, contained a whole chicken. Later, I spotted one of the cheetahs trying to catch a magpie.

Tigers, though, is an entirely different matter, although this particular one was not interested in roaring.

Otters!

Meerkat. Yay for big telephoto lenses.

This lungfish especially for fellow writer Annie Bellet. Look up her books on Amazon and see why.

A huge groper. I have a whole series of pictures where the eye looks in different directions. Also, yay for the 6400 ISO setting on the camera. No flash needed.

Emu

Wallaby

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Patty writes hard Science Fiction, space opera and fantasy. Her latest book is Trader’s Honour, in the space opera series The Return of the Aghyrians. If you’d like to be kept up-to-date with new releases, remember to sign up for Patty’s new release newsletter.

In the header (click on the post title if you’re not seeing what I’m talking about below): the War Memorial in Canberra.

I drove to Canberra on Wednesday. I’d always wanted to stop at Lake George. It’s the weirdest thing ever, a lake without water, except that one time in 1991 (I think) when we came over the dam on the Collector side and we went like WHOA! because it was full of water, all the way up to the road. It felt like having discovered the elusive inland ocean. On Wednesday, however, Lake George was its usual, barren, dry self. It’s windy (hence the windmills) and absolutely bloody freezing.

The weather was awful on Wednesday. I wanted to take sunset pictures, but man, it was waaayy too windy and too cold. By the time I took this, my ears were about to fall off.

View of old and new parliament house from the top floor of the War Memorial, with the aid of a big telephoto lens.

Poppies at the War Memorial.

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Patty writes hard Science Fiction, space opera and fantasy. Her latest book is Trader’s Honour, in the space opera series The Return of the Aghyrians. If you’d like to be kept up-to-date with new releases, remember to sign up for Patty’s new release newsletter.

A few pictures I took last Friday.

Peeping under the bridge to Luna Park:

City buildings from Macquarie Street.

Harbour Bridge off-ramp in front of the Conservatorium of Music.

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Patty writes hard Science Fiction, space opera and fantasy. Her latest book is Trader’s Honour, in the space opera series The Return of the Aghyrians. If you’d like to be kept up-to-date with new releases, remember to sign up for Patty’s new release newsletter.

With the above image (taken at the lakeside walkway in Belconnen, Canberra), I officially announce autumn. A bit late, but it’s been warmer than usual. If you don’t see the image, it’s because you’re seeing this in the home page. Click on the post title and you will see it.

I suppose most of you will already know this, but in case you don’t, Trader’s Honour has finally trickled through all sites and is now available everywhere, even on Sony–although don’t ask me where the cover went. I suspect it will show up at some point in the future. Sony needs to pull up its socks, but that aside.

This page on my official author site details all the places where you can get it.

I’ve also taken delivery of print copies to sell at Supanova Sydney, where I will share a stand with fellow Kindleboarders Anya Allen and Selina Fenech. Both Anya and Selina are locals. We hope to meet Kindleboarder extra-ordinaire Colin Taber (from Perth) there, who is a true self-published Guest of Honour at the convention.

After the poll I did, I haven’t decided what the next project is going to be, so I’ve started on a couple:

I’ve made a start on Soldier’s Duty, book 3 of the Return of the Aghyrians series. In the style of the previous two books, this novel features a different main character. This character is Izramith Ezmi, and if you’re familiar with my world, you may get that she’s from Hedron. She’s one of the feared, veiled and heavily-armed guards. She’s very, very angry about something done to her family. The story offers a different perspective on the world, while we continue to follow the overall threads of the series: the sliding into total badassery of the Mirani council and the trials and tribulations of the extended Andrahar family. This is becoming an epic space opera!

I’ve also picked up a half-finished draft of a hard-SF novel set in the ISF-Allion world. This novel will show some of the reasons why ISF and Allion slid into war, and builds on some of the setting covered in His Name In Lights. The main character for this is a really weird guppy, a guy by the name of Fabio Velazquez, who is a poster child for why messing with artificial minds and artificial bodies is a Really Bad Idea.

I really need to write some short fiction and have started a Solaris Agency story (my WOTF-winning story was another such story). These are space-detective stories.

I am aware that there is a lot of stuff I haven’t started on, but Russ is threatening to send me edits for the novel and when they arrive, I’ll have to deal with those first, and I probably don’t need any further projects.

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Patty writes hard Science Fiction, space opera and fantasy. Her latest book is Trader’s Honour, in the space opera series The Return of the Aghyrians. If you’d like to be kept up-to-date with new releases, remember to sign up for Patty’s new release newsletter.

I said last week that I wanted to go further north, but I didn’t end up going back to Maroubra. I ended up going to Bronte. From the clifftops, you get this pretty view over Bronte beach and the headlands at Bondi.

And then I came across this! Waverley cemetery. I suppose I should have known that it was there, but I forgot.

This is a picture I took while it was still dark. I goofed up, and moved the camera while the shutter was still open, and got this eerie ghostly effect. Awesome!

Sad dogs waiting for their owners at Bronte beach. Take note of the sign on the fence.

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Patty writes hard Science Fiction, space opera and fantasy. Her latest book is Trader’s Honour, in the space opera series The Return of the Aghyrians. If you’d like to be kept up-to-date with new releases, remember to sign up for Patty’s new release newsletter.

I’m taking part in a massive giveaway of ebooks from 10-15 May on the site of fellow author Elle Casey. Click on each title for more information. As you can see, I have both Watcher’s Web and Trader’s Honour in there.

CLICK HERE to enter the giveaway

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Patty writes hard Science Fiction, space opera and fantasy. Her latest book is Trader’s Honour, in the space opera series The Return of the Aghyrians. If you’d like to be kept up-to-date with new releases, remember to sign up for Patty’s new release newsletter.