News For Nevermind - And The Omniverse!

So, this update was to have been written over the weekend...unfortunately, owing to circumstances beyond my control it's being written now.

That being said, I met with the artists' program coordinator over at YES Montreal the other day, to discuss my plans for Nevermind.

Granted, that's not always gone according to plan. The Unearthing, the first volume of The Omniverse was successfully published back in 2006 (Ironically almost a year to the day since I started this blog) I still blame the fact that I was laid off from Bell Canada so Michael Sabia could take a five hundred per cent pay rise on Unearthing's commercial failure.

See, I would have had a minor fortune in stocks and options by the end of the year if my employment hadn't been terminated when it was (those stocks, of course, very conveniently reverted back to Bell upon my being declared "surplus"), and I had hoped to use those stocks to finance Unerthing's promotion.

Anyway...moving on.

They say God never closes a door without opening a window...I say that means God's got some really bad obsessive compulsive disorder issues to work out. In any case, after wallowing for longer than I should have, I decided to release Unearthing and later her followup Through Darkness and Stars electronically, and for free. With nearly 20 000 total downloads of the two novels, I'd say I found some of the success I've been looking for.

Remuneration, however, has evaded thusfar me.

Which brings us to Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind.

When I started writing Nevermind, back in 2002, it was an experiment; an exercise in which I just kept asking myself "I wonder if..."; questions included: "I wonder if I can write a non-genre story?" "I wonder if I can write a book without any actual plot?""I wonder if I can convincingly write a gay sex scene?" "I wonder if I can tell one story from six different points of view?" "I wonder if I can let these characters tell THEIR OWN story?" "I wonder if?" "I wonder if?"

I also thought the "I wonder ifs?" were done when the writing of the story was done, as well. When the initial couple of drafts were done, I put the story aside to write the first and second drafts of Through Darkness and Stars, as well as outline the final three stories of The Omniverse. When I turned my attention back to Nevermind, it was to put the first dozen chapters up on the now-closed PHYTE Magazine website. Nevermind quickly became the second-most popular feature on the site, after the still-going-strong feature, Anterockstar.

Who am I to complain about being #2?

But...where Nevermind had never been intended to be more than an elaborate writing exercise to improve my characterizations and individual character "voices", I realized I had something else on my hands. Suddenly, new "I wonder ifs" came up: "I wonder if I can accomplish something ELSE with this?" and so I started thinking things through.

Come 2008, I decided to launch The Unearthing as a free downloadable novel. When it was launched and gaining steam, I completed work on Through Darkness and Stars, and, figuring I would eventually launch Nevermind as an eBook. To that end, I decided to take Nevermind and Darkness for a spin through the fabulous rewrite machine.

Somewhere between launching the eBook versions of The Unearthing in 2008 and Through Darkness and Stars in 2010, it occurred to me to ask another "I wonder if": this time, it was I wonder if Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind could actually SELL?

Well last week I had my first meeting at YES Montreal to see about doing just that. I'm now looking into compiling a list of publishers and agents to whom I would like to pitch Nevermind, and my councilor is also having me brainstorm about what I want to accomplish/what I need to do to accomplish it...eww...homework.

But, I'm on track right now to eventually sell this puppy!

...and if it doesn't sell? Well then I'll release it as a free eBook just the same!

Some of you might wonder what me publishing a book will mean for The Omniverse and any future free eBook prospects. Well, I intend to keep releasing the novels of The Omniverse as free eBooks...you people, my readers, have made them a success; as much as I wish SOME of you would have donated a little something to my PayPal account, I'll let that slide. While I might, when the five novels are done, decide to release a print edition of the quintology, the eBooks for The Omniverse series themselves will always remain free.

As to my other writing? As much as I would like to make a living as an author, I see no reason not to at least release SOME work as free downloadables, though for obvious reasons the stuff I publish will likely not see the light of day as freebies...unless I can REALLY negotiate the fuck out of a publishing contract.