30,000 Word Challenge – Day 2

Tonight, I only worked on the Scifi thriller.  And that’s ok, because I primarily meant the 30,000 word challenge to go toward that book when I came up with the idea.

That said, I think I’m going to crank out another short story either tomorrow afternoon/evening, or over the weekend.  The reason being is that I’d really like to put up some companions to the two short stories for sale on the e-shelves.  There are a couple reasons for that:

1. I’m releasing Masters later this month.  Having a bunch of other, cheaper, titles out there in addition to it might be helpful.  So if I get three more shorts up for $.99, a collection of 5 for $2.99, and Masters for either $3.99 or $4.99 (I keep going back and forth over which price point to use), I’ll have seven titles, over a range of prices, that people could potentially find.  Seems like a decent plan.
2. Smashwords is having its July sale, and I put coupons out making Damsel and Falling Softly free on that site.  Since I did that a couple days ago, people have “bought” fourteen copies.  I was thinking today that it stinks there’s nothing else on Smashwords for them to buy for money, assuming they like what they got from those two.  So putting out three more shorts quickly, and the collection of 5, could be helpful in that sense.
3. I can make hyperlinked tables of contents easily for KDP and Pubit! using Scrivener.  But for Smashwords, I have to upload a .doc file, which means I have to learn how to create a hyperlinked TOC in a word document.  I’d rather learn on a book with 5 “chapters” than on Masters, which has many more.
4. Finally, I want more practice making covers, now that I’ve found a number of stock photo sites.

So, if all goes according to plan, I’ll have three more shorts, and a collection of 5, uploaded by the end of the weekend.  I guess we’ll see.

Next order of business is to give a little more link love to Kristine Kathryn Rusch.  She wrote a brilliant essay today demolishing the silly meme that somehow having more books available to the public is bad, because those books haven’t been vetted, and the poor readers will have to wade through the slush pile.  How can the poor helpless readers deal with it?  What will they do?

This is the sort of idiocy that could only come from an arrogant, condescending, and (dare I say it…yes I do) Liberal mind, and I don’t mean a classical liberal.  Call me a Libertarian (oh wait, I am!), but people, readers included, are more than capable of figuring out for themselves what they like or what they don’t, what’s good for them and what isn’t.  They don’t need some holier than thou douchebags dictating to them.

I talked about this a while back, in a post I did in response to something Lee Goldberg wrote on his blog that pretty much repeated the same meme.  I won’t repeat myself here; I guess if any of y’all in internet land are interested in more of my thoughts, hit the link.  I’ll summarize though: the sort of paternalistic, condescending mindset that shines through in this meme just pisses me off, both as a writer and as a reader.  As a writer because it’s all subjective, and what gives someone the right to decide for someone else whether something is good enough for that someone else to read?  As a reader because, dude, I don’t want to give my business to a condescending schmuck.

I guess that’s all I have to say about that.  I’m hitting the sack now.

Oh, I almost forget.  My word count for the night: 2,356.  That brings my total so far for this challenge to 5,889 words.  I’m a little below where I should be: at 3,000 words per day I should be at 6,000 now.  But I’m not that far off.  I’m sure I’ll be able to make up some “time” over the weekend.

Right.  Good night, then.