Thinking books

Just got word! Twenty patrons now and $122 a month in pledges. Second goal met.

So it’s official. I really am going to have to get on with writing that story. Soon. (And get on with writing several more thank you notes! As well as one more Patreon goal.)

Even if the promised story is exclusive to the patrons for now, this whole thing has got me stirred into into thinking in a way I haven’t in years. Thinking books. Old books. Books to be revised. New ways to get those old books back out there. And (could it be?) maybe even new books.

I spent much of today hunting for physical copies and electronic files of my books. RebelFire and Hardyville Tales were easy; I have boxes of them, as well as all their files. On some other titles I have nothing. No physical copy. No files. Paladin very kindly sent pdfs of The Freedom Outlaws Handbook, The Bad Attitude Guide to Good Citizenship (which I’ll put back into print and kindle when Paladin closes), and I Am Not a Number (which I probably won’t).

I’m also sorting out the question of which rights I own on these books — which in most cases blessedly turns out to be “all rights.” A few exceptions need to be worked out or worked around. (It must seem funny to non-writers that we authors don’t routinely own the rights to our own books. Oh well, that’s the old way things were done. The ways are changing rapidly, but there were advantages to the old methods, too, and those are being lost.)

I spent the afternoon organizing, planning what to do with them, and getting excited about the whole project. Felt good. Felt exciting. Felt like a train that’s been on a siding too long, making the effort to chug out of the train yard.