Here’s my schedule for the panels I’m on:

Friday 7 pm Cascade 6
Changing Star Wars
Do creators have the right to change their work after it has been released into the wild? Why is “pulling a Lucas” so upsetting to so many people?
J.C. Gordon Granger (M), Ken McConnell, Amber Clark, Jack Skillingstead, David Nasset, Sr.

Sunday 10 am Evergreen 1&2
Should You Publish an E-Book First?
The publishing landscape is changing rapidly. Now anybody can e-publish a manuscript and even sell it on Amazon.  But just because you can, should you?
Leah Cutter (M), Mike Shepherd Moscoe, Matt Youngmark, Ken McConnell

Sunday 11am Evergreen 3&4
New Media DIY: Self Publishing
Webcomics, e-books, as well as physical media.  What are your options to get your ideas out there?
Julie Hoverson (M), C.A. Scott, Ken McConnell, David A. Page

Looks like a bunch of really fine folks talking about some interesting topics. I hope to see some readers and lots of fellow writers at this huge, regional convention. I might have a few paperback copies of Starforgers and Starstrikers – fingers crossed!

Anyway, I enjoyed the show – A Clean Escape, based on the short story by John Kessel. The story had a strong Twilight Zone feel to it, but I enjoyed the performances by the two leads. I’ll tune in again to see how this series does with other classic short stories.

I don’t watch too many things on TV these days. I’d like to blame the poor quality of the shows, but the truth is, I wouldn’t know if they are bad or good. I just don’t have time to watch them. I spend what is normally prime time, being with my kids. Either I’m helping them with homework or ensuring that they are practicing their instrument or learning math facts. Most of the shows on TV now days are not kid oriented, so I’d have to time shift them and watch them after the kids go to bed. Lately, that’s just too close to my own bed time.

When it comes down to it, I chose being with my family and reading, over much of what is on TV. So you won’t find me commenting on the social networks about how cool the latest episode of whatever-hot-new-SFF-TV show was. Maybe when the kids are gone and I get my evenings back I can watch more TV. But then I’d probably rather read a good book or go to a baseball game, or go to my favorite bookstore, or take in a concert. You get the idea.

We are by no means done yet. But we made decent headway. The wheels and axils are ground and smooth and our car bodies are shaped. I pushed the wheels in for weighing purposes and for this quick picture.

Almost the entire inside of the firetruck is hollowed out to make it lighter. Lego’s are freaking heavy! Meanwhile, my carrier will require a bunch of weight to get it to spec. The deck is made from bass wood and balsa wood.

More pictures as we get closer to finished.

The Kindle Select program is by far the most effective advertising I’ve ever done for my ebooks. Getting a novel on the free best seller list leads to many downloads as you can see, but it also leads to a fair chunk of paid customers after the free period ends. My four books were averaging about 10 sales per month last year. So that’s a huge increase for me in a single month. In fact, I earned more in January than I did all year last year.

I’m not seeing out of this world numbers like some authors have, but I’m also an unknown genre writer who writes Science Fiction. That’s the worst possible genre to be in if you  want to make money. I’ve never had huge numbers. January’s numbers are not huge either, but they are decent for me. The trick will be to see if I can maintain this level of sales and maybe grow it.

Already this month, I’m averaging about 5 books a day. So half-way through February, it looks like I’ve managed to maintain last month’s numbers. Keeping my fingers crossed that it continues.

So how do I propose to keep this good fortune going? By moving my entire short story inventory to Kindle Select and offering a free ebook every weekend. If you do this right and you have a large enough inventory of ebooks, you can keep offering free books all month long for the entire three months of the Kindle Select program.

I have two ebooks left to move over to Kindle Select, Starstrikers and Tales From Ocherva, Vol 1 anthology. I’ll work these two books into the rotation soon, giving each book two days only over a weekend to be free. Hopefully after a month or two of this Free Weekend strategy, people will catch on and begin looking for them.

Now if you were particularly cheap and patient, you could obtain my entire inventory for free. Does this concern me? Nope. Because far more people will not be able to wait and will be willing to spend $2.99 to read another book.

I’ve also started advertising the free weekend sales on this blog over in the right hand column. This makes it easy for a blog reader to obtain the sample when it becomes free. I Tweet about the sale on Friday and mention it on Google +. That’s about as far as my publicity efforts are going to go for now.

Stay tuned next month to see if my numbers go up, stay about the same or tumble back down again.

The theme of Starveyors is Reconciliation. The story itself is in a way, reconciling all the plot points explored so far because this is the final book. I think the reader will be surprised at how things get wrapped up. I take some familiar tropes in the genre and give them my own spin.

Working the theme into each of the main character’s story arc is also something I’m trying to accomplish this time around. So far I think that is working quite nicely. It helps give the book a subtext that I find particularly satisfying. I hope the read does too.

If you have read the first two books of the series, you will have already met the hero of Starveyors. So right away the reader is drawn into this book perhaps quicker than the other two books. I also have several Silicant characters from the first book return, albeit slightly changed by time and technology.

I plan to write other books set in this universe to help fill in the gaps between these three books. So if you enjoyed the trilogy, you will also want to check them out. If you have read Starforgers, you will surely enjoy the short stories in Tales From Ocherva, Volume One. If you have read Starstrikers, there is a short story set in that time frame called The Renoke. To get a preview of the time period for Starveyors, you can read Tyrmia.

I wrote a SF book and a Mystery book. The Mystery has a strong following with the ten or so people who have read it. But to this day, it has a very small audience. The SF book is quite good and many people have it on their Kindles. Not sure how many have actually read it, but those that do seem to agree it’s pretty good.

I keep writing novels at a pace of about one per year and putting them on Amazon as ebooks. I’ve had some success but mostly my sales have been pretty low. My books are decent reads at decent prices. Those that actually take a chance on them are rarely disappointed. I also shop my books around to the various remaining agents out there. So far nobody has had more than a passing interest in my work.

If you are going the self publishing route you need to be following the lessons of those who have had success and keep plugging away at it. Not everyone who does it will be successful. I’ve been doing it for four years now and I still have not had much success with it. I use Twitter, Google + and I write blog posts like this one but truthfully, the social media thing does not really work for getting readers.

The most successful way I’ve found to get readers is to use the Kindle Select program. It gets unknown writers in front of Kindle readers and the residual effects of the free sales do in fact lead to real sales if you have more than a couple of books for sale. I don’t have much time to do effective marketing for my books. Heck, I don’t have much time to write them. I work 40 hours a week, and I’m very involved in my kid’s activities from Scouts to Sports.

I’ve found that if you really like to write novels, write them. Don’t talk about it, do it. Put them on the Kindle Select store and then keep writing the next one. Once you have a body of work that people can discover, you will see increased sales. You will not be able to make a living as a writer. Unless you write Thrillers or Romances and one takes off. Sci-Fi novels are incredibly niche and readers are slow to adopt new writers. Especially ones who are not blessed by the Big 6 publishers. So if you are a small press author or a self published author you probably won’t get the respect you crave, so just forget about it.

If you want to be published traditionally, then write your books and send out your queries to agents and play the game. There’s nothing wrong with that. Otherwise, you just have realize that you are fringe and be happy with it. My books will never win awards and I will never be considered a “real writer” by others, so I don’t even seek that kind of validation anymore. Steady, rising sales are my only form of validation. If one day I’m able to write full time, it will be because lots of readers are buying my books. And that’s okay by me.

Until then, I get to keep writing and getting better.

This is also the kick off of my FREE WEEKEND series. You can get this fine short story free all weekend. Next weekend I will be offering up another short story and so on and so forth all through March. If the program is successful in bringing exposure to my novels and short stories, I’ll of course keep it going after this two month trial period.

Also of note, my Mystery novel – Null Pointer is also back on sale for this weekend. It’s about a programmer who must find a killer who strikes his victims over the internet. This one is not SF, it’s just a regular Mystery with a programmer as an amateur detective.

There is a good possibility that if you enjoy Science Fiction, you might be in the computer science field or Information Technology. Every single programmer who has read Null Pointer has enjoyed it. Some programmers say it’s one of their favorite books because it portrays them in a realistic manner. If you are a programmer, you should really check it out. How can you miss when it’s free?

If you read and enjoy Null Pointer, come back and read the short story – The Safe Cracker, featuring Detective Plait.

These models were built from carpet roll tubes and store bought poster board. They were decorated with bits of model parts. Do you like that Luke Skywalker hair I was rocking in 1978? The flannel shirt was from the designer George Lucas collection. No, not really. You can’t see it very good but that is a digital watch on my left wrist. The kind you had to push a button to see the time in glowing LEDs. That bed spread? NFL teams, dude! Yeah, I had to knock the girls off me with a baseball bat. Good times.

Models from Left to Right: GCU Sokol, Sarco-T Tanker, GCU Chariot and GCU Constellation.