Sunday, August 7, 2005
Not-So-Gloomy Sunday

It's a rainy, lazy day, and I'm just puttering around the apartment getting the last of my errands done before I start on my day's writing. This has in all been a very productive week. Got a lot of promotion for Storms done, and tomorrow I'm going to call a local bookstore owner about doing a booksigning. I've never done one before and if she agrees it will be very exciting. I've been working hard, but it has beengratifying too, even if I am a little tired right now. But it's a good tired. :)

Posted by Robert Williams 2005-08-07 20:38:17

Thursday, August 4, 2005
The Marketing Factor

Getting the word out isa lot harder for us self-published authors. Print houses have trade magazines, newspaper reviews, marketing plans with brick and mortar bookstores, Publishers weekly and so on and so on. Self-published authorson a limited income basically have the internet and word of mouth, and that's about it. Print-on-demand authors like me are even more limited, since our books are not usually kept in regular stock at bookstores, although they can order them for you if you ask for them. The question that makes it all worthwhile is: Do people buy books without being able to pick them up and look through them first, like they can in a brick-and-mortar bookstore?

Of course, I think they do, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this. (Well, I would still be writing, just not self-publishing. Must write to live, but I got to think about $$$ to live as well.) People can read an excerpt online, as long as it's short and not too hard on the eyes, and they'll buy it as long as they get a good description of it. It willbecome easier as word gets around and an author develops name recognition. Perseverance is the key.

More later. Cheers all.

Posted by Robert Williams 2005-08-04 21:06:18

Sunday, July 31, 2005
Time Travel on Travel Time

My book has a lot of time travel in it. It's just something that fascinates me, and I write about it quite a bit.

An editor brought up a good point when evaluating one of my stories. She asked, if a time traveler alters the past and makes a new timeline where things happened differently, does the original timeline still exist?

Who cares, you ask? It's been changed, it's going to be very difficult to change it back (whole new argument, just bear with me), that original timeline has just become virtually inaccessible, so it doesn't matter if it still exists.

But actually it does, since the time traveler would have come from this original timeline. If he goes into the past to change something and does it, then he risks creating a paradox. It's the old, what happens if you go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby? Then you would grow up in a world where Hitler never came to power, you would have never heard of him, so why go back in time and kill him as a baby? The timeline idea resolves this, saying a causal paradox cannot exist, and time travelers aren't so much changing history as they are creating alternate timelines. This way the time traveler can still exist, unchanged, but he can't go back to his original timeline. If he goes into the future, it will be the future he created by changing the past. Then he could reap all the benefits of his changes and become an almost godlike being with the power to alter reality any way he sees fit... maybe.

For one thing, I happen to think it is impossible to see all the loose ends to the changes a time traveler could make. He (or she, I suppose) could never be entirely sure the changes they make would produce the outcomes they desire. How would they know killing Hitler wouldn't make someone even worse (if that's possible) rise to power in his place?

Just some of the ideas I toss around in the book. Not all, since if I make this entry any longer it will becomea book all by itself. If you have anything to add, feel free to post a comment.

Posted by Robert Williams 2005-07-31 18:17:18

Friday, July 29, 2005
So Gone for So Long

Been awhile since my last entry.I've hada busy time promoting the book. Just had a new batch of bookmarks made with my book's cover on them made; they look so cool. I was very pleased.Submitted a new story to an ezine, still waiting for a response, and mysales rank went up on Amazon,so I'm having a pretty good day. I decided to put up a direct link to my book's prologue here on SFF, just to let people take a look at my writing style. I'll have more thoughts & musings soon. Take care, all.

Posted by Robert Williams 2005-07-29 20:08:51

Friday, July 22, 2005
Can'tNeverDidNothin'

Been offline for a while, due to technical difficulties.Now I'm sitting here listening to Nikka Costa (hence 'can'tneverdidnothin') and thinking of something to write about in my blog so everyone doesn't forget I exist. This is fairly important, since I am doing this to spread the word about my book (see opposite link) and as a writer I feel I should have something important to say.

In Storms, in between all the action sequencesyou'll find some discussion about whether or not fate and time travel are compatible concepts. (Don't worry, it's not that deep. If it's one thing I can't stand, it's writers who think they're smarter than they really are. Just tossing some ideas around.)

Science fiction is where all the big ideas should be. It's not all ray guns and bug-eyed monsters. Look at Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. Many people think the tale of Earthmen wiping out the peaceful, dark-skinned Martian race is a metaphor for what European settlers did to Native Americans. Asimov's Foundation is a retelling of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empirein an sf setting. I can go on and on (War of the Worlds, anyone?) but you get the idea. I think science fictioncan be just as socially relevant as any other genre. Anybody else out there got some favorite books-with-higher-themes?

Posted by Robert Williams 2005-07-22 20:37:42