Filed under: Amazon, Connections, Feedback, Fireworks, Government, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Science Fiction | Tags: America, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, Fourth of July, free, humor, Independence Day, jim downey, July 4th, Kindle, promotion, Science Fiction
I bought you a book:
Digital List Price: $3.01 What’s this? 
Print List Price: $11.95 Kindle Price: $0.00 You Save: $11.95 (100%)
See? It’s free! Today through Sunday! Go get a copy! Tell your friends to go get a copy! Tell your dog to go get a copy! But not your cat. Cats prefer to read the wallpaper. You know how they are.
Seriously, Happy Fourth to one and all.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Connections, Depression, Feedback, Health, Hospice, Humor, Kindle, Science Fiction | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, dementia, feedback, free, health, Heidegger, Her Final Year, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, reviews, Science Fiction
That’s how a new review of Her Final Year opens. Here’s another bit:
The caregiver puts up with that out of love and decency. This book describes these things in the form of daily and weekly accounts as well as diary log pages of personal fear and depression and exasperation and recurring bubbling senses of humor. I loved this because it made me cry and it made me laugh. It’s not all drudgery. It’s hysterically funny at times. But it wouldn’t be funny at all if you didn’t love the patient. This is a book of love…
So often people see the words “Alzheimer’s” or “dementia” or even “care-giving” and just move on, thinking that the book (and the experience) is nothing but darkness and depression. And yeah, there is darkness there, but to borrow a phrase from Communion of Dreams/Heidegger: “That which emerges from darkness gives definition to the light.”
We’re coming up on the three-year publishing anniversary (July 15). If you haven’t yet read Her Final Year go ahead and do so. If you want to wait a month, the Kindle edition will be available for free download around the anniversary.
And if you have read it, please consider posting your own review on Amazon or elsewhere. It helps.
Thank you.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Artificial Intelligence, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, Genetic Testing, Health, Hospice, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, movies, Promotion, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Aliens, Alzheimer's, Amazon, artificial intelligence, blogging, direct publishing, DNA, feedback, free, health, Her Final Year, hospice, humor, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, movies, promotion, science, Science Fiction, Scrivener, St. Cybi's Well, synthetic biology, technology, writing, www youtube
Catch this news this week?
Synthetic biology: New letters for life’s alphabet
The five bases found in nucleic acids define the ‘alphabet’ used to encode life on Earth. The construction of an organism that stably propagates an unnatural DNA base pair redefines this fundamental feature of life.
* * *
Sorry about the sparseness of posting lately. I’ve been … busy. Have had a couple of interesting things happen which could play out in some very good ways. One is still enough in an embryonic stage that I won’t mention anything about it yet, but the other is far enough along that I’ll share: there’s a literary agent who is potentially interested in representing me, something which I have been thinking about for a while.
And it seems like a good enough fit that I took all of last weekend to put together a submission package for formal consideration. That meant going through and doing fairly thorough revisions to the first few chapters of St Cybi’s Well, using the feedback I have gotten from half a dozen ‘beta readers’, as well as composing a formal synopsis of the book. Frankly, both were a lot of work, and somewhat skewed my normal work schedule such that it is just now getting back to what passes for normal in my life.
But it was also helpful, and forced me to clarify some things which I had left unfocused for the rest of the book. Because of the way I am writing this (using Scrivener), it has been fairly easy for me to block out both the overall arc of the book as well as character developments. But doing so has been based on chapter notes more than anything, meaning that it was still somewhat in flux. Creating a full synopsis meant that I had to put the whole thing into one coherent document. And even though it was something of a pain in the butt, the result is helpful.
I’ll keep you posted as to any concrete developments.
* * *
Remember this scene from Aliens?
Considered a classic, and rightly so. But I’ve always thought that a big part of the brilliance of it is how it sets up what happens immediately after:
Back at the groups’ table, Bishop holds up his hand and examines a tiny cut closely.
BURKE: I thought you never missed, Bishop?
To Ripley’s horror, a trickle of white synthetic blood runs down his finger. Ripley spins on Burke, her tone accusing.
RIPLEY: You never said anything about an android being on board! Why not?!
BURKE: It never occurred to me. It’s common practice. We always have a synthetic on board.
BISHOP: I prefer the term ‘artificial person’ myself.
BURKE: Right.
* * *
Oh, one more thing: in observation of Mother’s Day, the Kindle edition of Her Final Year is available for free download through Sunday, May 11th. If you’re new here, just a quick note: this is our care-giving memoir about the challenges and rewards of caring for someone with dementia, as well as the long recovery/reflection period which comes after. It seems to have helped a lot of people. Perhaps it can help you or someone you know.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Connections, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, NPR, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Quantum mechanics, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, free, Her Final Year, jim downey, Kindle, multiverse, NPR, promotion, religion, science, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, writing
This article is … surprisingly relevant to one of the main themes of St Cybi’s Well. Near the end:
Infinity gets us tangled up in knots. How are we to establish what is normal when, in the realm of the infinite, everything is possible? It is a mind-twisting notion that an infinite multiverse would have infinitely many copies of this and every other possible kind of universe.
A quick note on the two-day promo: there were very few additional downloads of Her Final Year yesterday, for a grand total worldwide of 56 copies. A bit surprising, a little disappointing. Communion of Dreams fared much better, with a total of 1092 downloads around the world. Thanks, everyone!
Jim Downey
*Yup.
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Connections, Health, Italy, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, free, health, Her Final Year, Italy, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, promotion, Science Fiction
OK, now that the foolishness of April First is over and done with, a quick update on how things are going in the two-day promotion.
Currently, just shy of 800 copies of Communion of Dreams have been downloaded worldwide. The bulk of those are here in the US, though there are decent numbers in Europe (including one in Italy – been a while since seen one there!) and Canada. Plus a couple in Australia and another one in India. I still think that’s really cool. Anyway, Communion of Dreams is currently #1 in the Hard Science Fiction subcategory of the free Kindle store, #11 in general Science Fiction, and #286 overall of all books. Not bad.
Her Final Year is doing less well, but still respectably, with 50+ downloads worldwide (including in India and Australia!). It is #1 in the Aging and Elderly Parents subcategories. Nice!
So, the promotion continues today: get your Kindle edition copy of either or both books, if you haven’t already done so! And remember, you don’t actually need to own a Kindle — Amazon has a free Kindle emulator for just about every platform out there.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Connections, Feedback, Health, Humor, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, April Fools, blogging, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, free, health, hospice, humor, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, promotion, reviews, Science Fiction
From giving away copies of my novel and our care-giving memoir, that is.
Yup, in *spite* of the fact that today is April Fool’s Day, or perhaps precisely BECAUSE today is April Fool’s Day, both Communion of Dreams and Her Final Year are free to download all day today. No joke. Really!
Though I’d like to think that perhaps this new review posted on Amazon is a joke:
just OK, March 31, 2014
Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)This review is from: Communion of Dreams (Kindle Edition)usually my kind of story, but felt it took too long to get to the heart of the story. Never felt “connected” to the characters. OK for a free book
Ouch. Ah, well, that makes three ratings each for one, two, and three stars, out of a total of 73 ratings/reviews. Can’t make everyone happy.
But I can try, at least by making the books free to download. Today. And tomorrow. So go get yours!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Hospice, Kindle, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, blogging, care-giving, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, free, Her Final Year, hospice, jim downey, John Bourke, Kindle, marketing, promotion, Science Fiction
Tuesday is April 1, the day when I tend to ignore just about everything said/reported online.
But here’s something that’s legit: Both Communion of Dreams and Her Final Year will be free to download. And just in case you’re like me and tend not to trust *any* special offers on that day, they’ll both also be free to download the next day, as well. And remember, you don’t need to own an actual Kindle — there are free emulators for just about every reader/mobile device/computer.
You’re no fool. Don’t be parted from your money. Get a free copy of the Kindle edition of either or both books.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Expert systems, Feedback, Google, NPR, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech, Wales | Tags: AI, Amazon, augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Expert, feedback, jim downey, NPR, predictions, reviews, Science Fiction, Seth, St. Cybi's Well, St. Seiriol’s Well, technology, Wales, Well Hopper, writing
There are over 70 reviews of Communion of Dreams on Amazon, and if you poke around online you’ll find a bunch more. In addition, I’ve heard from countless friends and fans about the book in private messages and chats. And one of the most common things people will note is just how much they like the character of Seth, the Expert/AI executive assistant for the main character, Jon. The book opens with Seth contacting Jon about something which has come up, and you can get a sense of how useful such a virtual assistant could be:
“Sorry to bother you, Jon, but you’ll need to come back immediately. Business. I’ve made the arrangements. Transport waiting for you in town, take you to Denver. Then commercial flight home.” Audio only. That meant a lot. Tighter beam, easier to encode and keep private. Security protocol.
He wondered if something had gone wrong with the Hawking, the experimental long-range ship undergoing trials, based out at Titan. That was about the only thing he could think of that would require his cutting short his first vacation in four years. No use in asking. “All right. Give me a few minutes to pack my things, and I’ll get started.”
“Understood.”
“And contact my family, let them know I’m on my way back. ”
“Will do. Anything else?”
“Not at present. See you when I get there.”
Of course, CoD is set in 2052, and there have been huge advances in technology which allow for a very natural interaction between a human and a computer.
What’s been fun for me in writing St Cybi’s Well, set in our own time (well, actually, in October 2012), is that I get to plant the seeds for the technology which then shows up in Communion of Dreams. And one of those seeds is an Android app which is a ‘virtual assistant’ named Andi. It’s er, not quite up to Seth’s standards:
Darnell sat there, scanned the blog post. As he read, the assistant repeated “The page you requested is displayed on your screen. Do you need something else?”
“Um, yeah. How about a map to St. Seiriol’s Well?”
“A map is now displayed on your screen. You are presently at the location of St. Seiriol’s Well. Do you need something else?”
“I’m not at the Well. I’m in the parking lot. Where is the Well itself?”
“I’m sorry, available maps indicate you are presently at the Well. Do you need something else?”
“Go back to the Well Hopper site.”
“Very good. The page you requested is displayed on your screen. Do you need something else?”
A bit annoying, eh? Well, the people who have been reading the early chapters of the book have certainly thought so. Which was exactly what I was going for. Because technology doesn’t arrive fully developed. It shows up in an early, buggy form, and then gets improved over time. Think back to when we all had dial-up modems: they were annoying, klunky, and expensive … but they also were very, very cool because they allowed us to “get online”.
Anyway, I had to chuckle over a story on NPR yesterday afternoon which reminded me of this. Here’s the intro:
We’re already giving voice instructions to virtual personal assistants, like Apple’s Siri. But artificial intelligence is getting even smarter. The next wave of behavior-changing computing is a technology called anticipatory computing — systems that learn to predict what you need, even before you ask.
Google Now, which is available on tablets and mobile devices, is an early form of this. You can ask it a question like, “Where is the White House?” and get a spoken-word answer. Then, Google Now recognizes any follow-up questions, like “How far is it from here?” as a human would — the system realizes you’re still asking about the White House, even without you mentioning the search term again. It’s an example of how anticipatory computing is moving the way we interact with devices from tapping or typing to predictive voice control.
It wasn’t a prediction on my part to see this development, rather just paying attention to the current technology and tweaking it a bit to fit into the alternate timeline of CoD/SCW. But still, kinda fun to see things going just the way I envision.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Failure, Feedback, Kindle, Marketing, Music, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Amazon, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, feedback, free, Hugh Howey, Jefferson Starship, jim downey, Kickstarter, Kindle, music, promotion, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, Wool, writing
Last week Hugh Howey, the very successful author of the Wool series, published The Report on his AuthorEarnings site which generated more than a little attention across the publishing/self-publishing world.
I’m not going to get into a real discussion of The Report here. I’m in no way qualified to criticize the data or analysis contained in Howey’s post, and others have already done so with thoroughness. If you’re interested whether or not Howey’s post holds up to scrutiny, I’d recommend reading those.
Howey has had huge success, and seems to have managed that arc of success very well. By his own admission, he has been extremely fortunate with self-publishing, and his success is very much *not* what the vast majority of self-published authors will experience. But his success has made him something of an evangelist for self-publishing, and that is reflected in The Report. Hence the title of this blog post — Howey very much advocates self-publishing for authors at every level, and in using the power which self-publishing has to force changes in the traditional publishing industry to benefit authors.
While I actually largely agree with Howey about the benefits of self-publishing, I thought I would offer my own contrasting experience as a self-published genre author who has had only moderate success.
After years of ‘close calls’ in almost getting Communion of Dreams conventionally published (including what would have been a nightmare – losing the rights to the book when a small publisher went under), in January of 2012 I self-published it. Since then, some 27,000 copies of the book have been downloaded, and about 200 paperback copies have been sold.
Looks pretty good, right?
Well, 80% or more of those downloads were promotional. Which is to say, free. And in addition to the paperback copies sold, I gave away about as many.
No complaints from me — this is using the tools available through Amazon, and I knew what I was doing. But that necessarily means that I didn’t earn any money off those books directly.
So in all of 2012, actual sales generated decent, but modest, income. Not enough to buy even an economy car new, but easily 3 or 4 times the advance that the Publisher Who Shall Not Be Named was going to give me. Then last year residual sales were less than $1000. If you add in my successful Kickstarter (after deducting expenses associated with that), all told I was able to stop doing most freelance writing last year and get to work on the next novel. Of course, while still trying to do enough book conservation work to stay afloat, and almost managing.
I consider this success. It’s not Hugh Howey level success. It’s not even ‘mid-list authors a decade ago’ level sucess. It isn’t enough to live on.
But the first novel is out there, and has been well received. And I’m well on the way to having the next one out later this year.
Which is a hell of a lot better than banging my head against the gates of traditional publishing houses.
Jim Downey
*Reference, for those who are wondering. I’ve been considering doing a series of blog posts getting into rock music with a SF theme, looking at the development of that sub-genre over time. I still have a lot on my plate with SCW, so it’ll probably be a while, but if anyone wants to comment with suggested songs/albums/performers, feel free.
Filed under: Amazon, Connections, Feedback, Science Fiction, Wales, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: Amazon, blogging, Communion of Dreams, jim downey, Pistyll Rhaeadr, reviews, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, video, Wales, writing, www youtube
From near the beginning of Chapter 12 of Communion of Dreams:
“I found the reference that you asked me about regarding Mr. Sidwell and Wales.”
“Oh, really? That’s faster than I expected.”
“Well, as it turns out, there are quite a few scenic waterfalls in Wales, but only one that had an inn where someone lived during that time period. I’ve uploaded some images. Would you like to see them?”
“Sure.”
The first image that filled his sight was of a great waterfall, cascading over the top of a cliff in the middle of a shallow ‘V’ between two higher hills. The stream was narrow, white with spray around the edges. Oaks and pines grew on the sides of the hills near the falls, and there was some kind of archway of rock about two thirds of the way down. Near the foot was an old iron pedestrian bridge crossing the stream.
Seth’s voice narrated. “It’s called Pistyll Rheadr, one of the ‘seven wonders of Wales’. The drop you see there is about 75 meters.”
The next image was closer to the falls, taken, Jon guessed, from the bridge. Now he could clearly see the wonderful natural stone archway, and realized that the initial drop of the falls ended in a pool just behind that, then the water spilled out under the arch for another significant drop into the main pool below. From this vantage, the spray and splash of the water glimmered in the sunlight, coating nearby rocks, feeding the ancient moss that grew there. A path was clearly visible to the right-hand side of the falls, leading up the side of the mountain.
“This next image is taken from the top of the falls. The red structure you see below the falls on the left-hand side is the inn. I have more images, if you wish to see them.”
As Seth spoke, Jon saw the wide, ‘U’ shaped valley open out before him, the falls tumbling down and away in the right foreground. The hills on either side of the valley were lightly wooded here and there, but mostly given over to pasture. On the left-hand side of the image, a narrow blacktop road wound down the valley, echoing the stream’s flow. And there, as Seth said, was the inn.
“No, thanks, Seth, I think that’s enough. Pretty place.”
“So I understand.”
“I don’t see anything particularly noteworthy about it. But it sure seemed to make an impression on Darnell.”
Guess what chapter I’ve just started writing in St. Cybi’s Well. 😉
All water is graceful, be it a tear or a torrent.
Jim Downey
PS: new review up.
Communion Of Dreams 