BookLife

Howard Andrew Jones’s debut historical fantasy novel, The Desert of Souls (Thomas Dunne Books 2011), was widely acclaimed by influential publications like Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publisher’s Weekly, where it was labeled “a splendid flying-carpet ride.” It made Kirkus’ New and Notable list for 2011, and was on both Locus’s Recommended Reading List and the Barnes and Noble Best Fantasy Releases list of 2011. Additionally, The Desert of Souls was a finalist for the prestigious Compton Crook Award, and a featured selection of The Science Fiction Book Club. Its sequel, The Bones of the Old Ones, is available now. He is hard at work on a third historical fantasy novel as well as a sequel to his Pathfinder Tales novel, Plague of Shadows.

I’d grown up loving books, and even though I’d outgrown the more romantic notions of what being an author was like, and understood that there’d be no limousines or chests or pirate gold short of the kind of immense success that never happens to the greatest percentage of writers, I still didn’t know quite what I was in for. It’s not just about the writing. When your book and career is launching, it’s about getting that writing into the hands of authors and reviewers who will help spread the word so that it gets into the hands of readers.

It wasn’t until I was in the middle of promotions that I understood that I had a product, and that I was marketing it. I’d briefly been in sales in my mid-twenties, and I hadn’t been very good at it. In those days my official title had been recycling consultant, and it had been my job to recruit local business to bring their used material – scrap metal, cardboard, plastic — to the salvage yard. I believed (and still believe) in the inherent good of recycling, but I’d still been a lousy sales guy. As a result, I was a little worried I’d be pretty bad about marketing my own work as well.

By marketing, I mean a whole lot of things. For instance, contacting other writers to ask for blurbs, some of whom you know, some of whom you’ve exchanged a hello with, and some of whom you admire so much you shake a little when you meet them. Even with a couple of books under my belt now, contacting other writers for blurbs remains one of my least favorite aspects of the whole writing business. I now understand just how busy a professional writer is. It’s all I can do to research and hit my deadlines, let alone read for fun, let alone read a book by someone I’ve never heard of before who’s asking me for a favor. Still, because we all have to do it, other writers don’t hold it against you. I just work really hard to be polite about it.

In addition to contacting other writers, you have to reach out to podcasts and web sites that cover the kind of thing you like to write, and try your darnedest to promote your work without sounding like a shill. Have you ever attended a convention panel and seen one of those authors who constantly punctuates everything they’re saying by lifting up a copy of their book, or referencing it? I don’t want to be that guy. I like talking about the writing process, and ancient history, and sword-and-sorcery, so I can talk about the things that interest me. If I wander too far out from those topics, then I don’t think I’m presenting the real me, and then I think I’d come off as a phony. I don’t like buying books from a phony, and I don’t imagine anyone else does either.

Eventually, though, you have to realize that despite all your promotional efforts, at some point things are out of your hands. There comes a time when you just have to let things ride. It’s the work that will rise or fall, and the work that will collect, or not collect, reviews and word of mouth. About all you can do is to point people out to the good reviews when they come in. That’s not to say that you should be sitting on your hands. The way things work for me, at least, is that while one is being marketed, the next one is under way.

And I suppose that’s what my friend Eric Knight was trying to tell me before I got my book deal when he said “beyond the mountains lie more mountains.” The book contract is the beginning of a new journey, not the end of the quest. The book contract means that you’re now fighting for shrinking shelf space, hoping you can reach an audience more compartmentalized and subdivided into different genres then ever before. How do you break through the white noise and reach enough different venues that enough people hear and try what you’re doing?

I’ll let you know if I figure it out. Right now, as I’m readying for the promotional push for my second historical fantasy, I am a little crunched for time, and wrestling with a family health emergency. It’s a little stressful, so I try to remind how lucky I am. I wanted to be an author for more than half of my life, and here I am, living the dream. Reviews have been good, and I’ve signed on for two more sequels after The Bones of the Old Ones. I have fingers crossed that more and more readers will find their way to my books, and that I’ll be able to tell stories about the characters I love for years to come.

Howard Andrew Jones’s debut historical fantasy novel, The Desert of Souls (Thomas Dunne Books 2011), was widely acclaimed by influential publications like Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publisher’s Weekly, where it was labeled “a splendid flying-carpet ride.” It made Kirkus’ New and Notable list for 2011, and was on both Locus’s Recommended Reading List and the Barnes and Noble Best Fantasy Releases list of 2011. Additionally, The Desert of Souls was a finalist for the prestigious Compton Crook Award, and a featured selection of The Science Fiction Book Club. Its sequel, The Bones of the Old Ones, is available now. He is hard at work on a third historical fantasy novel as well as a sequel to his Pathfinder Tales novel, Plague of Shadows.

Offer in hand, it was a little simpler to go looking for an agent, a search made even simpler because of friends I’d made over the years who already had agents themselves. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it once more, and I’ll say it again ‘til my sayer is sore — if you want to succeed in the industry you must become involved in the industry. Go to conventions. Write editors who publish work you like. Read fiction in the magazines where you’re published and reach out to writers whose work you’ve enjoyed. Read slush. Write reviews. Become part of the community.

I couldn’t help getting involved — I loved the fantasy genre and wanted to be a part of it. What I didn’t realize at first was that I was laying down lines of communication that would later serve me well. Friends I had made early on had agents, so that when I needed one I was quickly able to be introduced. I chose between two very fine fellows, and now work with the talented Bob Mecoy.

I’ve read a lot of advice about how writers don’t need agents. It could be that the advice is right if you already know what you’re doing and are good with business. Like much writer advice, though, mileage will vary. I’m a writer who needs an agent. I have my hands full writing and promoting, thanks. I like to be able to lean on someone to handle the other stuff, someone who is experienced with publishing and, someone who, frankly, is a helluva lot better at negotiating things.

A good agent is your business partner, not your new best friend, although after a few years together I consider Bob a friend of mine. A good agent not only can offer solid career advice, open doors, and negotiate contracts, they can offer plotting help when an editor’s shot down part of your story arc. Not every agent can do that, but mine can.

Once I was working with Bob, and the contract was signed, it was time to start on some revisions, and to start talking about promotions. St. Martin’s sent me a long questionnaire asking me what authors and editors I knew, whose writing I thought my book might be like, how I thought the text could be marketed, etcetera. It was pretty thorough, and I didn’t understand at first that this was the opening stage of the whole marketing process. A good publisher wants your take on things, though they will be using their own sources as well.

I suppose I should stop now and talk about traditional publishing over self publishing. You hear a whole lot about the benefits of self-publishing, and there are a myriad of them. But too often I see people talk those up and denigrate traditional publishing. My experience with the older method has been a good one. If I’m lucky in agents, I’m likewise fortunate in editors, because

Pete Wolverton is heavily invested in his books. He wants to bring out the best in the novels he edits His feedback is helpful, thoughtful, and in tune with the work. Sometimes it almost seems like he knows the characters better than I do (occasionally he’s sent me a note like “that doesn’t sound like Dabir,” then explains why, and he’s always right).

Granted, not all traditional publisher still employs editors like Pete. Mine does, and my work is better for it. It’s not just editing, though that should count for a lot. My publisher has an entire legal wing that shuts down e-pirates, who can, and do, pop up like whack-a-moles to give away free copies of the book I spent a year writing and a couple of decades honing my craft to be able to write. My publisher has a promotional team with vast connections and the ability to send a WHOLE LOT of copies out for review.

Anyway, back to the process. Before I knew it, the book was going to be printed in an advanced review copy, or ARC, and the marketing phase was about to start. I was to discover I had become a small business owner without even knowing it.

Howard Andrew Jones’s debut historical fantasy novel, The Desert of Souls (Thomas Dunne Books 2011), was widely acclaimed by influential publications like Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publisher’s Weekly, where it was labeled “a splendid flying-carpet ride.” It made Kirkus’ New and Notable list for 2011, and was on both Locus’s Recommended Reading List and the Barnes and Noble Best Fantasy Releases list of 2011. Additionally, The Desert of Souls was a finalist for the prestigious Compton Crook Award, and a featured selection of The Science Fiction Book Club. Its sequel, The Bones of the Old Ones, will be available tomorrow. He is hard at work on a third historical fantasy novel as well as a sequel to his Pathfinder Tales novel, Plague of Shadows.

I’d been writing short stories about my 8th century Arabian adventurers Dabir and Asim for ten years when I decided to take the plunge and write a novel about them. I’d been thinking about writing a novel centered around the characters for a long time, A.) because I really enjoyed writing their exploits and B.) because I’d consistently sold every story about them that I’d written, which was a significant improvement over my other writing efforts.

But I didn’t jump in without deliberation. I knew interest in historicals was said to be waning, and I wasn’t sure how a Dabir and Asim novel would be shelved. It would historical BUT contain fantastic elements. And it would have mystery, and horror. In this era of niche publishing, how on Earth would it be marketed, and what publisher would be interested in it? The more I thought about writing the novel, the worse the idea seemed, and so I put it off. In retrospect, maybe that was good, because it allowed me to continue my researches into ancient Arabia, which I was doing for fun. And it gave me more time to hone my craft.

Finally, after collecting another round of rejections for a secondary world fantasy I’d been shopping around, I took a good look in the mirror. I would be turning forty soon, and was wondering if I’d managed to delude myself. Maybe I was really only writing to please myself. And if I was doing that, why not draft the work I was really wanting to write? The one I was most inspired to write?

So I put an outline together, sat down, and got to work. I didn’t have a publisher or an agent in mind, I just worked on the book. It was a spectacularly bad plan in a lot of ways, except for three things. Because of my enthusiasm for the period and literature, I had already done a lot of the ground work as far as research. Because I’d been writing about the central characters for years, I already knew who they were. And because I wasn’t worried about the market or the audience, I was free to just sit back and write the kind of tale that would most please myself.

And boy, did I have fun. I firmly believe that if you’re not having fun writing it, people aren’t going to have fun reading it, because that’s surely been true in my own experience. Maybe one day I’ll hear that Fritz Leiber and Roger Zelazny hated writing of Lankhmar and Amber, but I doubt it.

I had one other thing going for me. Because I’d been working in the industry for a number of years, I had a lot of editor and writer friends. One of them is the gifted Scott Oden, who I’d met partly because of our shared interest in the historicals of Harold Lamb but mostly because his first book (Men of Bronze) had knocked me out. I wrote Scott to ask if he’d be interested in writing the introduction to one of the Harold Lamb collections I was editing for Bison Books, and we struck up a correspondence. As writers do, we occasionally exchanged manuscripts for feedback.

And one late night, when I meant to send him a short story I was struggling over, I accidentally sent him the first third of The Desert of Souls. You might be thinking, sure, wink wink, nudge nudge, but the truth is that I don’t share rough drafts. Ask my wife and my editors. I hate anyone seeing them. Scott was effusive about how much he enjoyed the wrong work I’d sent him. He told his editor about it, then told me that his editor wished to see the book as soon as I was done.

It was a nice shot in the arm, but when I finished the book and Scott dutifully sent it on to Peter Wolverton at Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin’s) I fully expected to get a rejection. That’s how things had worked so far. A rejection wasn’t what I wanted, but I was prepared.

About a month later I received an e-mail from Thomas Dunne Books. My pulse pounding despite myself, I opened it, and saw to my surprise that instead of a form rejection or a personal note explaining what the publisher had liked but why they had to pass, Pete provided me with a phone number and asked me to call that morning.

I got up, made myself a cup of tea, and drank it slowly. I figured this was a danged funny way to deliver a rejection, and that this was likely to be the kind of conversation I’d been longing to hear for a couple of decades. My tea finished, I punched in the numbers and made the call.

The next thing I knew, I’d been offered a book deal.