Carnelian stands up for publishing freedom

Ricardo on 6th April 2020

I’ve changed the cover of The Chosen, volume two of The Stone Dance of the Chameleon. I was working on the cover for volume six, when I noticed that the cover for volume 2 didn’t sit comfortably with the others: the image sat too low on the page. I experimented a bit, and created the new cover you see here. Comparing the new with the old, I hope that you will agree that the new cover is a great improvement. It is as if Carnelian, who was crouching, decided to stand up.

This seems to me a good example of how profoundly different the brave new world of self-publishing is; there is no way you could have made this change in traditional publishing. For one thing, you would have a large number of books already printed sitting in a warehouse somewhere. In such a scenario, it would be utter madness to change the cover—you would have to pulp all the existing print run and go through the vast expense of doing a new one.

What this demonstrates is that self-publishing has transformed books from being static entities, to being dynamic and fluid ones. For a digital book, this is unsurprising—even though most ebooks are still produced according to the logic of traditional publishing—but for a paper book this is a game-changing consequence of the near-miraculous technological leap that is print on demand.

The various technologies enabling self-publishing, have moved the book from being a bespoke ‘construction’—whose economic logic depends on mass production—to being something more akin to a software application—and this can even be true for the modern paper book. You may not have noticed, but my Second Edition Stone Dance books have already been updated several times—The Masters is currently at version 2.0g. The corrections I’ve made are subtle, but I am gradually perfecting each book, the way software developers do their apps.

There is an interesting coda to this little tale, and that concerns the value of books. Previously, when we bought a book, it would be one of a print run of thousands. With the process I’m describing, each edition may have several ‘versions’; so that the copy of a paper book that you own is likely to be one of a far smaller number of identical artefacts. Those of you who have a copy of The Chosen with the previous cover, now own a rare edition of which there were only a relatively few ever printed—there will never be any more books identical to the one you hold in your hand.

Continuing this theme of rarity, I have selected seven names, from a hat, from the people on my mailing list, to send one of seven proofs of The Chosen as a keepsake. These seven books are rare enough in themselves—each is one of eight (I’m keeping one for myself)—but four of them are even more unique, in that the colours on their covers are substantially different. If you want to see if you have won one of these proofs, please watch the video below.

I hope the winners will understand that, given the current lockdown with the Covid-19 virus, I’m not sure when I will be able to post them to you.

Keep safe.

Phamie Gow releases her Stone Dance music

Ricardo on 13th March 2020

In 2003, I had only known Phamie for a year, but she had already become a cherished friend. She was only 22 years old then, but had already recorded two CDs of her own compositions; in the intervening years, she has gone on to release many more albums of her own music and to build a successful touring career. She sings and plays the piano, but it was her mastery of the clarsach—the Celtic harp—that caught my ear.

At some point I got the crazed idea of asking her to write a piece for what was my first website. My initial notion was that I wanted something like the court music that the sybling Quenthas play in The Chosen. Being conjoined twins, the Quenthas played with four hands; to emulate their playing, Phamie would have had to overlay two separate tracks.

Fortunately, when I actually came to make the commission, I had the sense to let her do her own thing. I merely asked her to listen to some virginal pieces by William Byrd, some Bach and some Toumani Diabate; a genius of the kora—a now world-famous, traditional harp from Mali.

When Phamie invited me to spend a couple of days with her at a cottage she was looking after in Galloway, I arrived to find that she had composed her first impression of what she chose to name Stone Dance of the Chameleon. Though beautiful, I saw this as only a beginning. I revealed to her some of the deeper themes underlying the Stone Dance, particularly the centrality of the number ‘three’. I went off to cook dinner; when I returned she had already—miraculously—magicked up two more themes to add to the first—each having at its core a triple of notes, in which either the first, second or third are stressed.

Through several more collaborative meetings, the piece evolved to match, somewhat, the structure of my story. One day, she came to see me and played the finished work.

Now, for the first time, she has recorded Stone Dance of the Chameleon and released it across all digital platforms.

I have to confess that, early on, I lost hold of my original goal. The delight, that I derived from collaborating with such a talented musician, became an end in itself. The result is far grander than anything I could have envisaged. It was even played at a recital given for the Dalai Lama.

The single is available on all digital platforms including iTunes and Spotify. Give it a listen and, if you enjoy it, please give it a like and share it to support Phamie.

the second book of the Second Edition released

Ricardo on 2nd March 2020

I’m pleased to announce the release of the second volume of the Second Edition of the Stone Dance, The Chosen (I hope people aren’t confused by my recycling of the First Edition titles—it’ll all make sense in the end!). I published the book on Saturday because I wanted to give it a leap year publication date. My previous experience taught me that it takes time for a new book to propagate through the Amazon ecosystem. The ebook is now available from all amazon stores, and the paperback from the majority of them. I commend the new edition of The Chosen to you. Happy reading 🙂

the Second Edition adventure begins

Ricardo on 31st January 2020

I am happy to announce that The Masters, the first volume of the seven that will constitute the Second Edition of The Stone Dance of the Chameleon, is now live as an ebook on all Amazon stores, and as a paperback on Amazon in the USA, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan and Canada.

The First Edition took me at least ten years to write, and the Second Edition a further two—the traditional publishing industry will consider this madness—and it certainly has not made the slightest financial sense—but it is a labour of love and, constitutionally, I seem to be incapable of doing things half-heartedly. So, from my heart, I hope that you will join me on this journey. I intend to publish all seven books throughout 2020 and have some notions for little extras that I will release here as we go along.

a special offer on signed Matryoshka hardbacks

Ricardo on 27th January 2020

As part of the process of ‘clearing the decks’—in the run up to the publication of The Masters—I want to pay a little attention to my novella, Matryoshka—with a special offer over the next two days on the limited edition hardback (see below).

After ten years working on the Stone Dance, I set out to write something considerably more modest, and Matryoshka was the result. To be honest, I overshot: it was supposed to be a novel but ended up being a novella. Don’t let its shortness fool you: it required a serious effort of world creation.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, Matryoshka was to be the stepping stone between the two editions of the Stone Dance. Through countless rewrites, I developed a leaner, terser style that was a reaction against—what I came to feel was—the verbosity of the First Edition Stone Dance. I applied this new style to produce a vastly leaner and reworked Second Edition.

Matryoshka is a response to Robert Holdstock’s wonderful Mythago Wood in which, like Narnia, there is a hidden world in which time passes more slowly; so that visitors to that world from ours experience adventures that last years—decades even—and still return to our world only a short time after they left. I wondered what would happen if time in the hidden world, instead of slowing down, were to speed up: so that, like a spacefarer, returning from a long journey close to the speed of light, the traveller would find that an immense span of time has elapsed on Earth. I suppose that such a story is more Rip Van Winkle than it is Mythago Wood.

Another inspiration for Matryoshka is Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers—from which Tarkovsky made the film Stalker—where ‘rubbish’ discarded by alien picnickers has startling and terrible effects on the physical world. Such a device lies at the centre of Matryoshka—vibrating at relativistic speeds that distort time ever more violently the closer you get to it. Thus, though it appears to be a tale of fantasy, underlying it is a series of fairly ‘hard science’ conceits; those interested in puzzles may seek to decrypt the references in the story. In short, Matryoshka is science fiction. Alas, I did not make this clear to Ian Whates, my editor and publisher at Newcon, and when I received a hard copy of the book, I discovered Matryoshka had been labelled as fantasy. In truth, I may have made the sci-fi underpinnings a tad too subtle…

raffling off proofs

Ricardo on 14th January 2020

Following your feedback, I decided that I would simply raffle off the proofs. One of you, Tooru, suggested that I video the process and so I did—you will find it below.

If you recognise your name being called out, please send me an email with your snail address so that I can post you the book. Do let me know if you would like me to write anything in it. I will try and contact the ‘winners’… but if I don’t get a response in a reasonable time, I will get out my trusty tartan hat and pick another name as a replacement…

giveaway proofs

Ricardo on 6th January 2020

Happy Twenties! Let’s hope they’re cheerier than the Tens or Noughties.

As I run up to the release of the first volume of the Second Edition of The Stone Dance of the Chameleon, I have a stack of proofs to giveaway. They sat by my stove for a while, but I couldn’t bring myself to burn or recycle them, and a friend suggested I give them away. They are from different phases of the proofing process, and one or two may be covered in corrections. These unique if flawed versions of the new text might be fun to own.

We need to work out who gets them. A competition of some kind has been suggested, and so I am asking you to please write any ideas you may have for one, below . . .

(only people on my mailing list are eligible for this giveaway)

towards 2020

Ricardo on 20th December 2019

City living eclipses solstices. Their significance is more obvious in the countryside. Cresting the summer solstice could be sad—starting the toboggan slide down into winter darkness—but the ease and glory of midsummer makes it hard to be glum. Besides, here in Scotland, with sea to west and north and east, our summer only peaks in August.

The winter solstice is a more ravenous beast. At this darkest time—here the sun sets before 4pm—our bodies do not make vitamin D, and so we fall prey to colds and flus, and are more prone to the blues. On our bellies, we squeeze under the heavy dip of the year and begin the climb to summer.

Events have cast shadows over 2019, but the birth of a new year brings hope, and I am looking forward to re-engaging with you in 2020. Until then, happy solstice!

Stone Dance Second Edition release schedule

Ricardo on 6th November 2019

Before writing this, I read my last post on this issue and discovered that I’d claimed that the new Second Edition Stone Dance books were going to start coming out in weeks… and that was weeks ago. Oops! I thought that plan had only been in my head, and had forgotten I’d ‘said it out loud’. Oh dear. My apologies. If you read the First Edition, you will know that I missed my delivery times by years. I have put a lot of work into this new edition, and I want to ensure that, once I start releasing the books, everything goes smoothly. Another issue with my proposed launch in November was that it would have meant a second book in December—I felt it better to avoid all the carnage of the festive period.

So, my plan is to release the first book, The Masters, on the 31st of January, 2020; the second book will come out in February, and the rest will follow every two months after that. I am hoping to launch the third book, the Second Edition of The Standing Dead, at Eastercon in Birmingham in April. The last book is slated for November, a month after the sixth book is released, so as to avoid more December confusion. By stretching the whole launch process, I hope to make absolutely certain that none of the books will be late. The proofing process—among others—has turned out to be more involved than I expected. To be honest, everything about this process has turned out to be more involved than I expected! As an example, The Masters is on its eighth proof! I will get better at this…

self-publishing

Ricardo on 14th October 2019

In response to an email from Ryan Calvey about my instagram post I wrote a few things that it seems to me worth sharing here.

Ryan wrote: “I don’t know much about book promotion, but I imagine doing it in the current environment must be quite a challenge! Though I’m guessing it might also feel good to be in control of the process yourself rather than hoping a publisher makes the right choices.”

This was my reply:

Book promotion is nothing more than just finding ways to get people, who may be interested, to hear about your work. In my experience, it has rarely been about my Publishers making the right choices: their choice was not to bother promoting my books almost at all. When I launched The Third God—the culmination of ten years work—they got me to go down to London, I did two signings, that had been so poorly publicised that not a single person turned up at either. (Admittedly my dropping off the radar for years might have had something to do with that.) I signed a few books in a couple of book shops… and that was that. I don’t blame them really, they were just doing what they needed to do to survive. The internet has joined up myriads of smaller markets into a single enormous one in which the winner takes all and everyone else gets almost nothing. The publishers have to push their bestsellers… and there’s little incentive to support anyone else. Sad, but there it is.

When you has been ‘cradled’ by a publisher, the move to self-publishing is psychologically arduous. But the notion that there was any actual ‘cradling’ was an illusion that I—and many other ‘published writers’—clung/cling to. When the market changed, I, with many others, was thrown out with the bath water.

A turn to self-publishing requires the climbing of many steep learning curves. However, by far the most difficult barrier to break through is the grieving over the fantasy of having a publisher that does everything for you; that enables you to write your books in a cocoon. And you have to overcome the perceived diminishment of status of falling from the dizzy heights of having a ‘proper’ publisher. This is an ego problem. As I make this transition, with every step I take, I am feeling more confident and energised, and I realize that being ‘cradled’ robbed me of agency.

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