I’ve come up with a (likely imperfect and non-universal) set of stages in the development of an indie author. Here it is:
I’ve been at this five years, and I think I’m probably at the Crossroads stage. A lot of activity under my belt, consistent page reads, nine books out, but not yet making a profit at this (not nearly so).
To celebrate the tenth running of the SPFBO, in which my own The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar is entered, I decided to read the first bits of each of the 300 entries and celebrate them in a silly way. Using the samples provided by Amazon (or any reasonable substitute I can find) I picked (based solely on my stupid opinions) the best name and the best word I found in the opening parts, and I composed a dreadful, inexpert haiku about what I read.
I randomized the order I did them, but they are listed in reverse order here because I was updating as I went, and because it’s far too much work to change that now. One author whose book didn’t make it past the SPFBOX participant lottery was sad to have missed out on this silly project, so I went ahead and haikued their book as well as a special guest stupid haiku.
Thanks so much to Mark Lawrence for running the SPFBO all these years and also to the judges whose hard, selfless work makes the competition possible.
Heartfelt gratitude also to the wonderful authors whose works I enjoyed reducing to seventeen syllables. I so enjoyed spending time in your worlds with your characters and savoring how you told their stories.
I’ve been fiddling around with the very cool MidJourney AI graphics creation program, which lets you order up an original picture based on a phrase. You can add “in the style of” also, which often influences the image. For example, here’s Henry VIII in the style of Gary Larson.
And here’s one my wife tried: Art Deco Forbidden City
The AI gives you four initial options, and then you can choose to enhance one of them or do variations on them or just go for an entirely new set of four.
I thought I’d try my book titles just to see what it did – obviously there’s more to go on with some of them than others, particularly Daros, which is just a word that’s often a surname. Here’s what it made for me:
Flames Over Frosthelm
The Outcast Crown
The Woeling Lass
Traitors Unseen
Daros
This is really fun. I paid up for a month’s subscription to give myself a chance to play more, and I’ve already made up some trivia questions for my monthly-ish Zoom trivia game based on it.