If I post a novel here, would any of you read it?
After years of rejection letters, not having any family or friends in the publishing business, seeing the faltering of Print, hoping to entice prospective readers, having a desire to control things I know I would not likely be able to control if I had to deal with professionals (cover design and illustrations and so forth)… I am thinking of posting one of my currently completed and recently re-edited novels on this blog.
It would be a weekly thing, “Free Novel Friday” or something. I am thinking of posting one of two works.
I’d really like to post “Malarkey and Belinda” because it’s been in the works/on the back-burner/edited and re-edited for years. It’s a story about a genetically-engineered gryphon raised by a lady-slave on a planet with creatures of fantasy as part of its ecology and human life built upon the remains of lost technology. What may put a damper on posting this is my “bestiary.” I did illustrations in the form of a bestiary of creatures and the scanned, sized complete versions with informative text are apparently all on my main graphics computer, which is having problems (dying hard drive, we think). I looked through my backup disks and flash drives and have the text chapters of the novel okay, but none of my illustrations. I’d re-scan my basic paintings and spiff them up *again,* but the scanner is also attached to that same graphics-computer. If I get this computer fixed anytime soon and get my illustrations back, this is the novel I’d like to post – it would be a nice, long, read, too – Twenty chapters with once a week posting is twenty-weeks of blog-content.
I might decide to post a twelve-chapter piece of mine over twelve weeks: “A World of Rusted Dreams.” A more recent novel of mine with themes I feel are “more important,” I’m still a little shy about it, thinking it may need yet another read-through / re-edit. It’s the story of two young people traveling to a great city in a post-apocalyptic world (but a century after the depopulation event, it’s a largely-recovered world). The protagonists were raised in a place that believes in personal guardian creatures appointed to people from “the Heavens” and said creatures are things that only people who believe in them can see and feel. The city they and their personal guardians travel to is one where belief in such things is rare. All my text and illustrations files were backed up and are intact on disks/drives I can currently access.
A friend suggested that I just post sample chapters and go e-book. I’m not sure on going e-book yet. All my experience in posting sample-chapters while trying to get published and advertising said sample-chapters has never turned out favorably. I’m thinking of just going ahead and posting a whole book here just to make it *exist* in some public form.
So… votes? Opinions?
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