12 for ’12

Back in October of 2011, I announced the 12 for ’12 project, in which I attempt to write a short novel every month in 2012. (Yes, it’s insane. Yes, I think I can do it. Yes, you can help out.)

So far, it’s been a huge success. I ran a Kickstarter drive to fund the first trilogy of books, and we raised over $13,000 in pledges, well over four times the original goal. That unlocked all three books, and I set off to write them, starting January 1.

I finished the first novel on schedule, and it’s currently in editing and revisions. I’m already at work on the second. The clock is ticking, though, and it’s already time to start in on the second Kickstarter drive. It launched on February 14 and runs through March 11, which should give me a little time to gear up before starting on Book 4 in April.

About These Novels

By novel, I mean a work of fiction that’s at least 50,000 words. The Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards each define a novel as anything over 40,000 words, but I want to be a bit more ambitious.

Fifty thousand words may seem like a lot, but most of my novels range from 80–100,000 words, so that makes these substantially shorter, more in line with the size of novels that used to get published before the publishing industry made the push for doorstop-sized tomes we see on shelves now that take years to write and months to read.

That’s also, not coincidentally, the number of words writers shoot for during National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo happens in November every year. Last year, over 200,000 people gave it a shot, and 37,500 actually crossed the finish line on time. Of course, I’m hoping to take on not a month-long sprint but a year-long marathon.

I’m a full-time writer — this is my day job — and disasters aside, I write fast, often between 3,000 to 5,000 words per day. That makes 50,000 per month eminently doable. Toss in the other freelance gigs I don’t plan to give up, though, like writing the Magic: The Gathering comic for IDW, and that makes it a bit more of a press.

Kickstarting the Project

No matter what angle I attack this from, though, 12 for ’12 is going to consume a lot of time. Much as I’d love to, I can’t feed my kids if I take the better part of my year off to write a dozen novels entirely on spec. That’s where you can help.

I plan to launch a series of Kickstarter projects to line up preorders for the books. This is a crowd funding system in which you can pledge a certain amount of money toward a goal that I establish. If we meet the goal, your credit card gets charged, and I get to work. If it falls short, you don’t get charged, and I go on my merry way.

The first one was a huge success. Now we get to see if we can do it again.

The Year-Long Plan

I’ve decided to break 12 for ’12 up into four (or so) Kickstarter projects. I launched with a trilogy of books set in the world of my Brave New World Roleplaying Game. The second trilogy is set in the Shotguns & Sorcery setting I created for my story in one of Robin Laws’s The New Hero series of anthologies, which should appear sometime in 2012. I’ll tell you about the third and fourth when we get a bit closer to them.

As I complete the novels, I’m going to publish them as ebooks and as print-on-demand books. Those of you who join in on the Kickstarters will get the books before anyone else, hopefully within just a few months of when I complete them. I want to make sure the books get properly edited and have great covers in addition to fantastic stories.

With luck, I’ll have the books out within a couple months of finishing them. That means less waiting — and more reading — for you.

Shotguns & Sorcery

To give you a taste of the Shotguns & Sorcery trilogy, I recently released “Goblintown Justice,” the first short story I wrote in that setting. You can get it for free right here (ePub and Kindle/Mobi), or through DriveThruFiction (ePub and Kindle/Mobi) and Smashwords (just about every known format).

The story is also available for 99¢ the Kindle through Amazon, and for the Nook through Barnes & Noble. (I’d post it there for free too, but neither store allows me to list it for less than 99¢.) Smashwords should hopefully have it for iBooks and other online stores within a few days.

Join me on this wild ride, and help me spread the word. Thanks for your support!