Happy Holidays!

All right, it's Christmastime, y'all, and I'm sleeping in!  Not gonna say much on my blog today except Merry Christmas, and may next year be fun, productive, and lucrative.

Happy holidays, everyone!

RPG Storytime: Star Wars!

Last week I wrote about my Star Wars fan fiction.  This week I'm writing about a different sort of fan fiction that I'm writing and producing.  It's the Star Wars role playing game which I'm playing, then making into videos in which I use miniatures to tell the stories.  I'm doing this with several different RPG games where I play it out with a group of people,then make the stories into little videos.  Over the next year I hope to do these games:

Star Wars
Star Trek
Dungeons & Dragons
Deadlands
Top Secret
Gang Busters
Pirates!
Outbreak: Undead

It's a lot, and I probably won't get them all made, but I'd like to do a lot of those.  RPG games are becoming the new staged readings, which excites me because I've always loved the idea of this sort of community storytelling.

Also, I use these as a way to bring in new readers.  People are more likely to watch something new than to read something new, so the idea here is to make videos that appeal to something a lot of people already enjoy, then gain their trust and being them into my own books.  It's been useful for me in the gaming world as I've gotten a number of gamers as readers over the past year.

My show is called RPG Storytime, and you can see it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGdeEs8YJtA&t=1s

Star Wars 2.0

I've been putting together a fan fiction version of Star Wars over the past year or so.  It went very slowly for a while because it's low on the priority list.  However, lately I've determined that if I'm going to do this, I need to freakin' do it.  So I'm getting it finished and set up.

The reason I'm writing fan fiction is because it's very difficult to get readers to look at something new, especially those who are into sci fi and fantasy.  South Park has parodied this behavior very well with their "member berries" where they keep remembering old things rather than appreciating something new.

Well, Relic Worlds benefits from being similar to two old, popular brands, Indiana Jones and Star Wars.  So, since people really like to read things about Star Wars, I figured I'd do my take on how the prequels should be done.

In fact, I've really enjoyed this because, like most people, I was disappointed by the prequels, and feel they could have been so much more.  So I've created this story about the two brothers, Anikan and Owen, both of whom have the force, but Owen has turned away from it, recognizing the hatred and fear that exists inside him.  Anakin has embraced it and become a Jedi, something that Owen, who has become a smuggler, thinks is a bad idea.

The story is continuing on fanfiction.net, and you can find it here: https://www.fanfiction.net/story/story_edit_property.php?storyid=11228268

Sweepstakes Results

Over the past year I've learned the importance of a mailing list, and probably the most effective means of building that list is through having a sweepstakes giveaway.  So I've done three sweepstakes over the past few months to build up those subscription numbers.

Each one has generated about 250 new emails.  It's important to note that when I initially put up the sweepstakes, I only get a couple dozen entries.  But when I do a little paid advertising, about $20 worth, the number jumps and I get many, many more.  So it's worth it to do that little extra.

I ran the giveaway on Shortstack, then made a post on Facebook and boosted it, and did a Google search on sweepstakes promotions where I found several sites that show ongoing sweepstakes and I simply found the button for entering my giveaway.

I lose about five subscribers every month due to attrition.  Therefore, it's good to do a new giveaway about every season.  This way the numbers grow faster than the attrition, and I'm not spending too much by having it every month.

The most important thing that I find in holding these giveaways is to have the prize be something that's relevant to my series.  This decreases the decaying numbers from the list because they're getting things in their email that they want.  The first giveaway I did was a Kindle Fire, and even though what I have to offer is book related, it's a specific niche.  Therefore, people were entering the sweepstakes who like different types of books and wanted a Kindle Fire for them.  Then, when they saw what I had to offer, they were less interested.  However, when the prize was a book about a fan film of Indiana Jones, they were more interested in sticking around to read adventures of an Indiana Jones-like character.

My next giveaway will likely be in the spring since I've had one for the summer, autumn, and winter now.

Still Promoting at Conventions I Can't Make

The main reason I went to the Alamo City Comic Convention was because someone I met told me that you can make more money at conventions in Texas than anywhere else.  "Texans will buy anything," he said.  I needed that sort of a break, so I looked into getting a booth at the Alamo City Comic Con.  I chose that one because it's near Austin where my uncle lives, and I've been wanting to show Austin to my girlfriend Jamie for a while now.

When I saw the price of the booths, I was taken aback.  $600.  I looked for a small press area, and there was none.  I looked around at other conventions and it was the same story.  It seems Wondercon is unique in having a small press section for independent artists.  It's really a pity because I can't see us independent authors making back $600 plus all the other expenses.

I tried to get a list of vendors who would be at the event, but the website was never updated with their names.  (It said 'vendor list coming soon' all the way up to two weeks before the event, at which point I stopped looking.)  By this time I already had a plane ticket to Austin and Rotary club talks scheduled for another one of my books, so I just went and got a badge to the convention.

I met several vendors, all of whom said they maybe just barely make their money back, and that it's really about exposure.  I suggested the idea of renting table space from them next year, and a couple of them seemed to like the idea.  One of them called it "sublet renting."  I'm going to try it at that convention.  I'm also going to see about hiring a model to cosplay at the front and hand out flyers, and also offer a giveaway to attendees if they write down their email addresses.  This might be a good way to proxy myself into these conventions that are too expensive for me to go to.

Before I left the convention, I set out a bunch of flyers in the common area.  This only worked slightly as I got five new views the day I put them out, all of them around 7 pm, soon after the convention ended.  So the tiny spike was probably from that, but it wasn't enough to justify going out of my way for it.  I'm really coming to believe that the best solution is anything that involves building the mailing list where I can be certain to personally send people things rather than counting on them to check out my projects.

My Book About the Vietnam War is Getting Delayed

I'm putting together a book about stories of individuals during the Vietnam War.  The original focus of the book was supposed to be South Vietnamese soldiers.  I then started learning the stories of some American soldiers and went those have to be reported.  And more recently I've learned of stories of civilians, in particular the boat people who tried to escape after the North Vietnamese took over.

As I've been learning these stories I've begun feeling a responsibility as an American and as a human being to put together this book.  It's not a book about the politics or whether or not the war was right or wrong, it's about the lives involved in the conflict, what they experienced, and how it affected them.  I really think people need to read about these things.

It's been hard for me to continue sometimes, however.  While I had great hopes for writing nonfiction and getting it out there to the public, after Two Gun's poor sales, my confidence has waned considerably.  It's not the story or the writing; everyone who talks about it loves it.  But despite their enthusiasm for the book, it's barely made any money.  I literally have to go out to Rotary Clubs and tell everyone the story before people buy it.

Added to this is the fact that I've learned over the past year or so that series are what bring in readers to independent books.  You give them the first one for free, get them on a mailing list, then sell them the rest.  You also get it into a niche audience toward which you can direct all your energy.

So I just don't have a huge amount of hope for the success of this book, or any other book that isn't part of a series.  I feel like I need to put more of my time and energy into Relic Worlds.  But this one is too important.

The reason for the Vietnam book's delay is not because of this discouragement.  I am doing it.  However, while I was in Lincoln, I made a bunch more connections, and I want to make sure to collect as many stories and do as much research as I can before putting it together.  When I do, I'll be going through InkShares.  I'll be very interested to see how that goes.

This Year for NanWrimo - Miscellaneous Stuff!

I really like the spirit of NanoWrimo.  Even though it does encourage quantity over quality, it does push a lot of people to get their writing done.  I don't so much need that push, but I know a lot of people do, so it has a good effect.

My intention this NanoWrimo was going to be to write the fifth and final Relic Worlds Pick Your Path book.  It needs to be done by next March, and last year's NanoWrimo book was supposed to be the fourth Pick Your Path book.  But just like last year, things got in the way.  At least it's writing related, though.

Right now I have a whole host of things that need to get written.  I have to prepare the Relic Worlds short stories that are coming out each month.  I had one prepared for this month, but my external hard drive crashed, so I have to write a new one.  I also want to finally get a good chunk my Star Wars fan fiction done before the next Star Wars movie comes out.  Speaking of Star Wars, I also have webisodes of my series RPG Storytime to do, which I'm trying to release the day before Rogue One comes out, so that has to be written as well.  And on top of all that, there is the Pick Your Path book which does need to at least get started.

So this year's NanoWrimo is just all the different writing I need to do.  I'm keeping count of my words and posting them on the NanoWrimo site, but it's really writing from a bunch of different projects.