LoisBujold

Hi there...

Lois McMaster Bujold here. I have a newish blog at Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16094.Lois_McMaster_Bujold/blog

This is my first time on Reddit, so it will be learn-as-I-go, much like the rest of my career. I shall try popping down to the first question I see, and find out what happens...

Ta, L.

Hi Schlitzi --

Might as well take these in order...

1. In general, my habit of contracting books one at a time allows me not to be trapped; when I wanted a change, I took it. (Hence The Spirit Ring, The Curse of Chalion and so on.) All my books are miserable in the middle for me, so that part of the writing process doesn't count.

2. I do not find writing fantasy to be different than writing SF, in terms of my process -- though I do more research for the fantasy, curiously enough. I originally bought the rumor that fantasy sold better than SF, but experiment has shown that all Bujold books sell pretty much the same.

3. I don't know where the Vorkosiverse is going from here. I don't have anything in process, but I try not to rule anything out. Right now I want something fresh, but I've been able to get a lot of variety into my series work. It will just depend on finding an idea that really excites me, and following it where it leads.

My frontbrain responds eagerly to bribes, but my backbrain, where the books actually come from, does not seem to. So I need to be cautious there.

Right now, I'm in input-and-cultural-filter-feeding mode. Also being-distracted-by-the-internet mode, which I am not quite sure should count.

1. Apparently, Baen's cover arts sells, at least to some people. Not being an art person, still less a sales person, I doubt I could do better. One benefit is that it assures that my audience consists primarily of readers who think for themselves and do not judge a book by its cover, so.

That said, my last two covers were quite extraordinary paintings by David Seeley -- if you go to his website, you can see the originals before all the best details were all covered up by my Big Name lettering. http://www.daveseeley.com/

1. Not really for most of them, although Aral's physical type was partly inspired by the late British actor Oliver Reed. And the actor who played Avon in the old Blakes' 7 -- ah, Paul Darrow, that was it -- provided a physical model for Duv Galeni. But that's all what they call fantasy casting, now. Real casting would require a whole new generation of actors, with whom I am mostly not familiar.

Ta, L.

Your last clause nailed it; it's always over after every book until there is another. There has never been a plan, not least because no one can even count on being alive next year, and I've almost always written with that thought in the back of my mind.

Right now I am at a curious confluence of tiredness and choice paralysis; I could write anything I wanted to, but I have to want to. We'll just have to see where that goes.

Meanwhile, I'm doing a lot of reading, watching, and surfing (net, not water.) Something may yet come of this accumulation, who knows?

Ta, L.

Combining both the above questions...

When a batch of my older books at Baen came to the end of their term of license last year, I looked very carefully over the exploratory experiences I'd acquired in direct-placement e-books, in the UK and with some shorter works (and with The Spirit Ring, which was free because I'd held back from the prior relicensing to try it on the YA market -- didn't fly, they didn't want a singleton, I didn't want to write six more). Also, at the time, Baen was closed out of the larger e-book marketplace, a problem that has recently been partially corrected -- I'm going to be very interested to see what that does to my frontlist book royalties when they come through next spring. I also did some hard arithmetic and accounting, comparing my early direct-placement results, Eos, and Baen. The upshot was that I decided to keep my e-rights and market my older backlist myself as direct-placements. So Baen no longer has the e-license to a lot of my early single titles.

So far, this seems to have been very much the right decision for me, although I've always counted all writing income as fairy gold.

As a general observation, while giving away stuff for free may be a good promotional ploy for a young, fast writer at the dawn of his/her career, it does not seem to work so well for an old, slow writer at the sunset of hers. This is data, not theory, by the way.

Ta, L.

Thank you, all above!

Word-of-mouth has always been the lifeblood of my career, right from the beginning when there wasn't even an internet to speed it up. Folks like you matter tremendously to every writer you support.

Ta, L.