Category: Official They Came in Peace News

  • EMILY JACKSON: DIGITAL ARTIST FOR HIRE

    Well, after a lot of back and forth and fine-tuning the concept art because of how finnicky I am and how my mind kept coming up with new ideas based on different concepts that she was demonstrating, my cover artist Emily Jackson came up with fantastic cover art for They Came in Peace; the book is now available on preorder wherever books or ebooks are sold.

    This post is all about Emily; she’s dedicated and hardworking, very creative, and I just can’t cheer her on, enough.

    The cover art for this edition is inspired by the idea I’d had for the cover art for the first print run, which showed the Earth behind an occulting shadow; I was never 100% happy with how the original cover art turned out, and so I asked Emily to put her own spin on it. She was the one who came up with the idea of showing the ship…and it blew me away. Originally she’d sketched a silhouette that looked like a Klingon battle cruiser and I was just mind-blown. We’ve refined it to the image we’re colloquially calling the “Space Thumbtack” and I think it’s awesome AF.

    Emily is, like me, an indie artist. Unlike me, a writer, her illustration turnaround time is a lot faster. I worked with her for months, thinking she was doing all the sketches with one of those computer pad and pen thingies…No…SHE DOES HER CONCEPT ART ON PAPER AND GRAPHITE – like the Old Masters before her!

    Which means she cut me a deal as far as her costs go while hand-drawing each sketch she showed me. This is the HAND-DRAWN SKETCH that ultimately became the book’s cover:

    They Came in Peace Cover Concept

    And this is the finished cover:

    Emily is also open to new contracts, and so I would be remiss if I didn’t leave her contact details, below. In fact, I asked her permission to write up this post, because the creator comes first. And she’s more than willing to take up any traffic this meager blog and its following might generate.

    You can find samples of her work at:
    https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rlJyWJ
    And contact her here:
    artworkbyemily1@gmail.com

  • We Now Return You to Our Regularly Scheduled Weblog, Currently in Progress

    Okay, bear with me; there’s a lot of information to get through, since the blog’s been frozen for 5 months.

    So, in December I finally got the court judgement – The exceptional thing about that is just how much time the judge took, in rendering their decision.

    It meant she had to take my arguments about being mistreated, about the discrimination I was facing, and how the DPJ weaponized my mental illness against me.

    The judgement actually erased entire paragraphs of the DPJ’s charged testimony against me, and established a mechanism to allow me to return to some degree of normalcy with my children.

    I’ve been back in touch with the DPJ since then, with the help of a social worker of my own to bear witness, keep them honest. Progress is…well, umm…progressing:

    So far, Leia is very much interested in reaching out to me, and I her, while Obi-Wan and Luke remain on the fence, which is their right after everything that’s happened. The DPJ is setting the stage for me to reach out to my kids, and, hopefully, soon be reunited with them.

    Also in December, I slipped and fell on a Montreal sidewalk, and severed the quadriceps tendon from my left knee. I’ve been spending much of that time since then recovering from emergency knee surgery and trying to figure out why my blog had suddenly decided it was locking itself down.

    Thanks to the dedicated help of Tom from Darner Media, I’ve gotten the blog back up and running…ish. WordPress is problematic and user hostile, and I’m Generation-X so we like our tech to hand everything to us on a silver platter.

    As I will soon be posting, I had to take down my book Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind, because under the current American regime, self-publishing presses are afraid to publish “explicit content;” in this case, the image of one man getting sucked off by the other. It is interesting to note that I was deplatformed from Apple, Kindle, Kobo, everywhere, really, because of that image.

    An image of lesbian sex, and an image of male-on-female sex, also in the gallery as part of the book, were not highlighted for removal.

    Queerphobia in American Publishing; whoda thunk?

    I’ve also finished work on They Came in Peace, paid off the cover art, and I’m now planning strategy for its soft relaunch, later this summer (See: Douglas Adams, re: Deadlines.)

    Okay…that’s a wrap on the wrap up of what you’ve missed; more details to follow in more detailed posts…coming soon.

  • I Have No Answer to Your General Except from the Mouths of My Cannons

    The title of this blog post comes from Louis de Buade, Compte de Frontenac et de Palluau, governor of the Quebec region of the New France colony in the late 1600’s; He famously made that statement during one of the many incessant France VS Great Britain proxy-wars of French Quebec history, when told by a messenger from Sir William Phips, Commander of British Naval Forces surrounding the besieged city, that Phips was demanding Frontenac’s surrender, and the messenger requested his answer.

    You don’t need the full historical context of the 1690 Siege of Quebec by British Colonial forces trying to seize territory from French Colonial forces; all you need to know is the overconfident British general was humiliated, and that quote by le Compte de Frontenac et de Palluau became a statement of defiance quite literally embedded into both “Quebecois” and Canadian culture and history.

    But, what’s all this about? Why this quote? Why now? What’s going on?

    Sit back and let me tell you.

    This afternoon a bailiff dropped the following cease and desist letter, which was NOT in my Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms- guaranteed Official Language of Choice, namely English, but instead was in Quebec “French;” a bastardized patois of French, Algonquin, Mohawk, Mi’kmaq, Scot’s Gaelic and English, called Joual.

    SIDEBAR
    Quebec “French” is the LAUGHINGSTOCK of the Francophonie, the regroupment of French-speaking countries and Canadian provincial territories. MOST ESPECIALLY in France: Joual is the language of the low class, the criminals, prostitutes and paupers sent over by France to colonize land they had no hope of holding onto without the help of the very First Nations people they eventually fucked over.

    Never mind that “French” Quebec only exists today because of the mercy of Carleton, the First Baron of Dorchester and British Governor of Quebec after the conquest and obliteration of New France. Baron Dorchester convinced the British Crown to let the settlers of “New France” keep their language and culture. Perhaps one of the most egregious cases of averted genocide in history.

    The Quebec identity is built around it being a fragile bastion of French: French Quebec likes to claim their culture is under attack, under threat from outside forces of THE ENGLISH MENACE, not to mention Muslims, BIPoC, Sikhs, Hindus and literally anyone who is not a White French Quebecer. The thing is, if your culture cannot exist without the erasure of other cultures, then your culture is one of bigotry and intolerance.

    SIDEBAR ENDS. WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED WEBLOG POST
    Right now, I am here to focus on another ongoing attempts by the DPJ under directrix Marianne Sylvain to violate my rights under Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Section 47 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and to report on that malfeasance.

    Translated from that French sublanguage of Joual, is the text of the vile, rights-abusing harassment letter that I mentioned I received today, and below that, is first my personal reaction to that letter, and then my on reply, from the mouth of MY Cannons: the words I wield as weapons.

    Montreal, November 13th 2025

    UNDER ALL RESERVATIONS
    BY BAILIFF

    Mister Steven Karmazenuk,

    By virtue of the Loi sur la protection de la jeunesse (L.R.Q. c. P-34.1,) all information collected in the case are under application of the law confidential.

    It was brought to our attention that you have published on a weblog information concerning the procedures at Youth Protection and the names of certain caseworkers. Despite your intention of protecting the identity of your children, as your name is published, it is easy to deduce the identity of your children.

    “9.2 The children and their parents have the right that the information concerning them and permitting their identification, when they are grouped in the cadre of the application of the present law are to be treated in a confidential matter, and can only be divulged in conforming to the law and its dispositions
    2022, c. 11, a. 11.

    “9.3 In the cadre of the present law, no one can publish or transmit information that could permit the identification of a child, children or their parents unless the Tribunal orders or authorized conditions determined that said publication or diffusion are necessary to apply the present law or a ruling edict in virtue of the above. In noncompliance, the Tribunal can, in particular cases, forbid or restrain, according to conditions fixed by the Tribunal, the publication or transmission of information relative to a tribunal audience

    “134. No one can: (g) knowingly or deliberately provide confidential information contrary to the dispositions of the present law, or the dispositions of the Civil Code relating to the confidentiality to adoption dossiers.

    “135. Anyone in violation of the first paragraph of Article 3 or omit, refuse or neglect to protect a child in their care or commits acts that compromise the security or development of a child is committing an infraction and can be fined between $625 and $5000.”

    Equally, the posts contain the names of caseworkers, contravening clauses of the Charter of Rights and Liberty and the Civil Code. Civil and criminal recourse could be applied.

    As such, you are formally notified that you are to remove all publication on your weblog, or to remove any names appearing within, including your own.

    BE ADVISED that failure to comply with this request the Direction of Youth Protection has judicial recourse against you.

    PLEASE ACT ACCORDINGLY

    Contentious cases for the CIUSS Centre-Sud-de-L’Ile-de-Montreal

    (signed)

    Me Marie-Aimee Beaulac, lawer.

    This letter is nothing but a sad and pathetic attempt to intimidate me with legal jargon; it doesn’t hold a fucking DROP of water. Based on my previous VERY long post about Section 2 (b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the post with the big red text block disclaimer about how my Canadian Charter rights supersede any attempt by the Direction de Protection de Jeunesse to silence me, as I am expressing myself via journalistic reporting on the malfeasance and malignant anti-male culture at the Direction de Protection de la Jeunesse.

    I don’t have to remove SHIT, because I’m neither violating section 134 or 135, and any imagined liability I might have is nullified by language that puts the onus on the custodial parent.

    And the fines they’re threatening to impose are CARTOONISHLY LOWER than what it would cost them to litigate this – in small claims court, because nothing under $15 000 will be accepted in civil court, which would make it even more expensive to prosecute. A conservative estimate is that the cost per Quebec government-owned lawyer working on such a case upwards of $10 000 to $12 000 to collect on a $5000 dollar fine; and that’s a conservative estimate of the minimum amount it would cost these fools to come at me.

    As to threatening me with yet another malicious prosecution in criminal court? I’d rather go to jail than let the Radfem fascists of the DPJ silence me.

    I’ve already stated, repeatedly, that I will die on this hill; this is about my right to FREE EXPRESSION according to the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms; I am an author and a free speech absolutist: I AM WILLING TO GO TO JAIL IN ORDER TO MAKE THIS INTO A CHARTER CASE.

    As promised, I reply below, from the mouth of my cannons:

    Montreal, CANADA, November 19th, 2025 CE

    UNDER ALL RESERVATIONS, EXCEPT DURING OFF-SEASON AND HOLIDAY PERIODS (TERMS AND CONDITIONS MAY APPLY. OFFER VOID IN WISCONSIN AND ILLINOIS)

    DELIVERED BY PUBLIC WEBLOG POST

    Me Marie-Anne Beaulac, (lawyer) et al,

    I wholeheartedly and without concession reject your attempt to intimidate me into silence with unsubstantiated claims, accusations and threats of legal action. Regarding any alleged violation of my children’s rights to privacy with regards to specific information in my file, there has never been, nor will there ever be any such violation on my weblog:

    1 – AT ABSOLUTELY NO TIME in any of the posts on this weblog do I violate my children’s right to privacy. The claim that their names are easily deduced because my “unique” name appears on the weblog is ridiculous: WHO WOULD EVEN WANT TO GO TO ALL THAT TROUBLE? There are already published books in private hands with my children’s names in the dedication; are you going to order me to take these books back from their legal owners and change the dedication? Good luck.

    Section 134 DOES NOT APPLY:
    I absolutely NEVER divulge on this weblog, or any other public forum where I am legally allowed to discuss my grievance with the DPJ, ANY specific private information that would be in any way, shape or form discoverable to anyone without pre-existing personal, familiar knowledge of my children, or or access to my children’s files. I DON’T EVEN HAVE ACCESS TO THEIR FILES, DESPITE MY RIGHT TO HAVE ACCESS TO THEM; WHICH IS PART OF THE FUCKING PROBLEM.

    Section 135 DOES NOT APPLY:
    I am not the custodial parent, upon whom the sole burden of keeping the children’s privacy is explicitly spelled out by its wording.

    Especially since you’d be coming for my rights under Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which absolutely overrides any Quebec law to the contrary, I’d like to know: do you really wanna make this into a Charter case?

    On my weblog I am free to and so I do talk about how much I miss my children, how much I love them; I discuss how I hope I can reestablish ties with my daughter, and how I hope that I can earn back my sons’ respect, trust, and love, regardless of whether I once more have the privilege to become a part of their lives.

    At no time do I go into any details about the ongoing case, other than to demonstrate acts of deliberate malfeasance and violations of my rights under Section 47 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms by the Direction de Protection de Jeunesse in general, and Marianne Sylvain and Helene Savard in particular.

    I NEVER REVEAL MY CHILDREN’S NAMES, Despite the inalienable fact that their names are already part of the public record through birth registration, baptismal certificates, and legal and school records; it is neither my fault nor my responsibility that the government of Quebec has failed in their duty to protect from public access any and all personal revelatory information about Quebec’s minors; anyone with a moderate level of computer and internet savvy would be able to discover the names of any children in Quebec, whether or not they even know someone had children, but did not know the identities of those children. Identity theft has also always been a thing. Would you prohibit all parents from even discussing the fact that they have children? How dare you demand that of me! Am I supposed to publicly deny being a father?

    WOULD YOU HAVE ME DENY MY CHILDREN?

    Subsequently, highlighting that MY NAME appears in both the domain name and name of MY WEBLOG is completely irrelevant: I am an author; I publish under my own name. I am re-releasing my novel, They Came in Peace, in 2026. I cannot be compelled do so under a nom de plume, nor not name the children whom I love in the book’s dedication, nor would there be any legal justification to block the book’s publication because of the Dedication Page.

    And after nearly three decades of owning the karmazenuk.com domain name and using the weblog to talk about my writing, if irregularly, throughout that time, and also using the domain for all email communication via the email handle “steve@karmazenuk.com,” FOR THE PURPOSES OF PERSONAL BRANDING as well as personal email communication, demanding that I change it or take it would not only be unreasonable, it would put an unfair burden on me, as I continue to legitimately pursue the republication of my novel, They Came in Peace, and my ongoing investigation into the violation of and fight for my rights under Section 47 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

    And implying that my distinct name makes their “discovery” all the more likely borders on absolute racism; is my name not assez quebecois for you?

    The fact is that I am a father of three children, and the names of those children are already in the public domain; I sold numerous copies of They Came in Peace with that dedication when the book was originally in circulation, from 2020 to 2024; well before and after the DPJ opened a file and elected to weaponize access to my children against me.

    2 – On my weblog, I only discuss matters related to the ongoing violations of my rights as a Quebec Citizen under Section 47 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees, “Every person has a right to full and equal recognition and exercise of their human rights and freedoms, without distinction, exclusion or preference, and to fair and reasonable treatment by the agencies of the State and members of the personnel.” and I could unequivocally demonstrate that deliberate malfeasance toward me, IF I WAS ALLOWED ACCESS TO MY FILE AND CASE NOTES, AS IS MY RIGHT UNDER YOUR AFOREMENTIONED SECTION OF THE LOI SUR LA PROTECTION DE LA JEUNESSE ET BLABLABLA. And I quote:

    “9.2 The children and their parents have the right that the information concerning them and permitting their identification, when they are grouped in the cadre of the application of the present law are to be treated in a confidential matter, and can only be divulged in conforming to the law and its dispositions
    2022, c. 11, a. 11.    “

    Well, guess what, sunshine? AT NO TIME DO I VIOLATE THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF MY CHILDREN ON THIS WEBLOG OR IN ANY OF ITS POSTS. I AM IN NO WAY IN NONCOMPLIANCE OF THE LAW AND ITS DISPOSITIONS.

    I am reporting, as I have previously and repeatedly stated, on the deliberate malfeasance that is taking place under the direction Helene Savard and her lackey Marianne Sylvain, who are currently primarily responsible for my deliberate and malignant mistreatment despite the rights and freedoms afforded to me under Section 2 (b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and Section 47 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

    I will remind you that under Section 2 (b) even slander is considered protected speech: (R. v. Keegstra, [1990] 3 S.C.R. 697; Thomson Newspapers Co. v. Canada (A.G.), [1998] 1 S.C.R. 877; Harper v. Canada (Attorney General), [2004] 1 S.C.R. 827).

    And under Section 47 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms, I should not have been treated in the biased and unethical manner as Madame Savard directed, at all: Nothing I said to any DPJ caseworker was given any credence, and they took what I told them in confidence deliberately out of context to defame my character, and have taken actions and made statements designed to alienate me from my children. Likewise, I should have never been subjected to the emotional blackmail they used against me.

    Likewise, the filings made by the DPJ to Family Court contain DEMONSTRABLE FALSEHOODS that should at the very least resort in Bar hearings about legal misconduct, including fabricating demonstrable lies about how my psychiatric health issues affect me.

    The DPJ has DISCRIMINATED AGAINST ME ON THE BASIS OF MY GENDER AND BOTH MY PHYSICAL AND MENTAL ILLNESS, which once again contravenes my rights under both the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms

    As such, BE FORMALLY ADVISED of what I have already told a sitting judge in Family court: I will not be silenced, and if you want me to take down my blog, you’d best slap me in irons, as I am willing to go to jail and fight for and protect my Quebec and Canadian Charter rights.

    BE LIKEWISE FORMALLY ADVISED that boilerplate legal mumbo-jumbo that holds absolutely no water in the given circumstance will not intimidate me, nor will the threat of fines or even jail time; I am no longer going to allow the DPJ or any of its co-conspirators continue to defame me with impunity, or to attempt to intimidate me into silence. I am going to take control of the narrative about who I am; about what kind of person I am; about what I have survived.

    YOU HAD BEST ACT ACCORDINGLY:

    I have a legitimate case against you right now to take to the Bar Association, for:

    -Acting with dishonesty and a lack of integrity by abusing the law to harass, intimidate, and mislead me about my rights under the Law.

    -Threatening litigation to intimidate me when there is no legitimate legal claim.

    Relevant sections, since you don’t seem up to date on the Code of Professional Conduct of Lawyers (Barreau du Quebec) include:

    3.02 – A lawyer must not misuse the legal system to intimidate, pressure or coerce.

    3.03 – A lawyer must not pursue or threaten legal proceedings without a reasonable basis.

    I AM STANDING FIRM IN MY RESOLVE AND WILL NOT COOPERATE WITH YOU REGARDING THIS MATTER.

    (signed with a big, fat middle finger)

    Doctor of Writing Lord Steven Karmazenuk, author, journalist, free speech absolutist

    Stay tuned, dear readers and followers! Because whatever happens next, THIS IS WHERE YOU WILL HEAR ABOUT IT.

  • WRITING LESSON: A Starving Artist is ALWAYS Hungry

    WRITING LESSON: A Starving Artist is ALWAYS Hungry

    Hello, Acolytes and welcome back to another one of our irregular classes on How to Get an Indie Book Published (We’ve finally gotten a course title workshopped – goes in for market testing next week!)

    This week I teach you what I learned, this week, about cover art. Without further Ado, let’s jump in:

    The above block was written over two weeks ago. That’s just how hungry starving artists are. Allow me now to explain:

    If you are thinking about self-publishing (or Indie Publishing as it’s called now – and a better name it is,) which is probably the best way to go unless you have a nepotism entry into publishing.

    If you do have a nepo entry into publishing, fuck off; this guide on How to get an Indie Book Published (It cleared market testing and drop-testing before I got back to writing this post) is for Indie Writers: the anonymous many, who don’t use a journalism major as a slow-track into ghostwriting for Simon and Schuster’s author stable.

    Now, where was I? Oh yes: You know how I keep saying it’s about having a holistic presence on social media, and that it’s all who you know? Nepos already know who they need to; the rest of us have to try and get over our crippling social anxiety and go out and interact with human people.

    Well a couple of weeks back, over on BlueSky, I posted to #BookSky that I was looking for a cover illustrator. I had interested parties DM me with their emails, then sent out my query: I showed them the old cover art, as well as the Generative AI “mock-up” I made to give the cover artist to give them an idea of what I wanted.

    I wanted to give the artist I hired an idea of what I envisioned (An updated/alternate version of the original cover, more in line with what I’d pictured) I used the mock up concept cover art I’d made for my own motivation and told them that was what I was looking for, in terms of art.

    ALERT! INCOMING TANGENTIAL TIRADE ALERT!

    Wait; why didn’t I just use a Gen AI cover? Because I’m opposed to plagiarism, and the way LLMs connected to creative tools work is that it copies from other artists, specifically by reproducing images according to scores given to the words you used to describe your project. Gen AI sucks, Gen AI is painfully obvious, and Gen AI is plagiarism.

    The ONLY proper use of Generative AI in the creation of a cover for your book is to use it to create a concept mock-up for an artist YOU FUCKING PAY MONEY TO CREATE. Indie Artists support Indie Artists; we’re all partners, not competitors.

    Now, as to writing, the only use Generative AI has in the writing process is if everyone you know is dead and you need someone to spitball your ideas to – not to SUGGEST ideas to you, but to help you clarify your thoughts. REMEMBER: EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND LOVE MUST BE DEAD BEFORE RESORTING TO THIS OPTION.

    Likewise, using LLM/GenAI to “write” your book is not only lazy, it is an irrefutable demonstration that you lack talent and imagination. All you have is an idea, and, honestly, ideas are a dime a fucking dozen. If you don’t have the talent to turn that idea into a story, either learn the fuck to write, or get the fuck outta the way of those of us who know how.

    TANGENTIAL RANT ENDS! TANGENTIAL RANT ENDS!

    So, what happened?

    I got a shit-ton of offers. All of them were great, and a couple of them had the kind of style I wanted for the cover, and ultimately I went with the person whose art style I preferred most. But I had to reply to a fuckton of emails, look at a metric fuckton of artistic portfolios, and sift through all of it to find the artist who was right for me.

    It was Administrative Hell, because it took several hours over several days to get through, and no matter how awesome pictures are, spend the day looking at them eventually you get bored. But one artist’s portfolio stuck out, and I decided to hire them.

    I had a price range in mind, based on my budget. Astonishingly, what I thought would be too little money wound up being the average asking price.

    So if you can only scrape together $150-$200 you can get an amazing artist to do fantastic work.

    And the bigger your budget, the more Indie Artists become available to you: I had offers asking $300, $500, someone even wanted $800, and their work was great, but way outside my price range – I didn’t waste their time other than to tell them they were out of my price range and they’re best sticking with the clientele they were making bank on.

    Why the cost? Because you’re paying them for all the YEARS they have invested, both learning and doing, to hone their craft to the point that they make work WORTH that money. That is not to besmirch lower-costing artists; I was fucking relieved to find such talent in my price range. Some Indie Artists are still in school, others, this IS their only gig; they charge based on their rep, so lift them up and they will lift you up in return.

    Indie Artists jump at tenders; remember the title of this Blog Post/Online Class Session, dear Acolytes.

    Now that you’ve scrolled up and back down, note that while I’ve touched on my plans for a fundraising campaign, I am not fundraising to pay the artist; I’m paying them out of pocket. Their work will be the first thing people see, when they see any visuals for the Author’s Edition of They Came in Peace. It’s literally the book’s ambassador. And the cover is probably the most important investment in your book you make, because people DO judge books by the cover, no matter the aphorism.

    The cover will be front and center of the fundraising campaign, and, if the campaign is successful, it will be front and center of the marketing campaign, launch, etc. It’s very important to carefully pick the cover artist – and for the love of your book, DO NOT DO IT YOURSELF NO MATTER HOW GOOD YOU THINK YOU ARE.

    Unless you are a professional, leave it to the pros.

    And having a trusting relationship, an honest relationship even if it’s only over email/text/chat/videoconference. The more you can tell your artist, the better.

    Okay; keep an eye for new posts; they’re announced on my BlueSky whenever they infrequently go up, but they are here.

  • WRITING LESSON: Executive Dysfunction

    WRITING LESSON: Executive Dysfunction

    Okay; so here I am, galley finally put together and done…I wanna make a final pass before I get it printed, but in the meantime, I am coming up with a fundraising campaign, prior to the book’s launch.

    I’ve already got stretch goals set up; well, written down on a list…and I’ve even got targets and an ultimate goal; but now, dear Acolytes, you accompany me into my first foray into the unknown territory of crowdsourcing and fundraising.

    This is one that I didn’t expect to be on the lesson plan; because the first thing I have, is a bunch of fucking questions I don’t know how to answer. Well, more precisely, questions whose answers I will have to research.

    QUESTION ONE: Okay…how do I create buzz around this book?

    Doesn’t that look all fancy and official?

    Okay; so driving buzz does require having some form of social media presence; like I said, I’ve migrated to BlueSky, and I cannot endorse such flaming piles of shit like the Website Formerly Known as Twitter, or the Facebook. However, I can’t recommend Tumblr enough for aspiring writers and artists. I used to be on there, but there was drama and well…you young’uns probably know more social media sites than I’ve listed; like Discord, Reddit, Threads, Oingo-Boingo, Talking Heads…oh wait; those last two are bands from the 1980s New Wave era.

    So if you have an established SM presence, you simply join the groups/chats/whatever about writing, or creativity in general, and then you post there and to your own followers about your work. That’s the first stage.

    Second stage buzz-creating: Drive them from your Social Media to your weblog, by having a link in your bio, and dropping the occasional post to your followers and mutuals to get them to go have a look.

    It also helps if you play with the #WritingPrompts hashtag on those sites, to create quick and clever microstories (Character-Limit long.)

    Put some content on your social media; put the same content on your blog. Now you’re cooking. You should, once you’ve made friends with readers, writers and other creatives start seeing more aggregation of like-minded people following you; follow back! Initiate follows.

    Don’t go looking for free advice from big authors like Stephen King or…you know, I don’t know of any other big authors on social media that I follow. I mean, they MUST be out there…but anyway, they’ve been exhausted by advice-seekers their whole career. At best, you’ll get ignored. The best people to talk to are your fellow indies; we, like you, have had to do the whole thing ourselves – and now you can benefit by avoiding the mistakes WE made and make entirely new and original mistakes all your own! As you well know, there’s nothing a writer loves more than talking about their work and themselves. Writing is a very narcissistic process, and indies are hungry for coverage and sales. We’ll talk your ear off, blog your eyes dry, etc.

    But yeah, indie writers? We’re a dime a dozen, yeah, but the Indie Publishing industry is actually fairly solid, and hungry; as long as your books are properly edited (don’t do it yourself) and formatted (Submission guidelines are HOLY SCRIPTURE,) you’re bound to make connections. Don’t half-ass it by trying to edit and design your cover yourself; I’ve done that, and it ends up making something you love into an embarrassment.

    Places like Fiverr and other Gig Posters are a great place to find people who are studying editing and writing to work on your book – and there are countless illustrators online; even if it means you have to wait and put money aside to pay for proper editing and a proper book cover, you want to use their help, and give them credit in your book’s acknowledgements and make sure to include “Cover Art copyright [NAME] used with permission” line, because it IS their work and you paid for permission to use it, and, they want to make money off their work so if you give them credit, somebody else might use them for their book jacket. Same thing goes for reviews, but you DON’T EVER NOT EVEN ONCE pay for a review: there are people who will review your work – FOR FREE – because they can actually MAKE A LIVING reviewing indie books for their webpages or something.

    But, I’m getting ahead of myself; you’re not looking for reviews – yet – your book isn’t even ready to roll.

    You’ve got the galley edited and ready, cover art is commissioned (Best let them design it, although you can have input; the cover of They Came in Peace was inspired by a view of the occultation line between night and day taken from the International Space Station, and the artist liked my idea and ran with it) you already know that Draft to Digital is the best game in town for self-publishing, and you’re nearly ready to roll. You’ve got your followers, mutuals, and you’ve got people who will occasionally see your posts in your feed. Okay. Level One-A accomplished.

    Thing is, if you publish your book now? Chances are good it’s gonna fail. Pimping a book out requires a minimum amount of marketing money. Oh, fuck; you’re broke as hell and it already hurt to save up and take time to pay for editing and a cover! Now you have to pay for MARKETING?

    Yup!

    And THAT’S why you don’t want to publish, yet. I mean yes, it’s always a good idea to have the .epub ready to go, but you can generate a book on D2D without “launching” it right away.

    QUESTION TWO: So how the fuck do I pay for marketing?

    You don’t: You get other people to pay for it, for you.

    Wait; what?

    Did I stutter? Your first marketing campaign is to FUNDRAISE for your book launch. There’s Kickstarter, Gofundme, Co-fee or something…there are many available options. All you need to do is come up with some reasonable push-goals; for example, a digitally signed copy of the ebook, early edition or pr eorders, or if they donate enough an autographed physical copy of the book, online meet and greets, etc. The goal of each goal of your fundraising campaign is to pay for the NEXT goal, and the next, and then, when you’ve hit your final target, you have the money to pay for marketing.

    Okay, so where do I go to pay for marketing?

    Wow; you want everything on a silver platter, don’t you?

    Hey, this post was your idea, not mine; you took my nickel, I paid for the ride.

    You realize you’re just talking to yourself right now, right?

    Do you?

    Okay, so there are myriad online publicity agencies. An ad run or marketing run could cost you a few hundred or a few thousand dollars; how much money you raise will determine how big your campaign will be.

    So you start looking at marketing before you start fundraising. You’ll want to check out as many online marketing agencies as you can. You’ll want to filter out anyone who isn’t specialized in books or other creative endeavors. You’ll want to talk to people who will know where your ads are going to be the most effective. You’ll want to avoid being put in a pop-up, and you’ll want your ad to be tailored to a specific client, namely, people who would be interested in reading your book.

    Next you gotta check and see if these agencies are actually worth the money, who’s used them, what they’re known for…and you might want to filter it down to the genre or even subgenre if they specialize in that sort of thing. You want the ad campaign to be tailored to you as much as possible; a preplanned package might not be what you’re looking for, so don’t be afraid to express that; right now you’re just trying to test the waters, so you can answer my questions three:

    1-How much money do you think you can reasonably fundraise?

    2-How much money do you want to spend on advertising?

    3-How much do money you want to keep for yourself, up-front?

    The first two questions are simple arithmetic. The third one depends on how much you think your time is worth given everything you’ve done up to this point, from coming up with the idea, to writing, rewriting, beta-reading, editing, etc. The Rule of Thirds works well: Two thirds of what you raise should be for your campaign. The last third is yours.

    A lot to take in, right? Because now we have to talk about SCHEDULING. Because, you don’t want to make your book available until it’s been hyped and buzzed, right?

    Timetables are going to be based on how long it takes you to fundraise, how much you fundraise, and how big your campaign is.

    Patience is the key; your book’s ready. It’s not going anywhere. There’s no expiry date on when it can launch.

    And, guess what else:

    You’re going to want to research book launch dates.

    You guessed! Yep; you’re going to want to have a look at what books released when, going back a couple of years, just to see what time the tide comes in for your genre.

    Yeah, you might have wanted to launch sooner rather than later – believe me, I know the feeling. Had my book been launched six months to a year earlier, it would have had a better chance, given I was at the time with a small press. But right after it launched, we went into lockdown. COViD killed They Came in Peace.

    So, I’ve taken the intervening time to rest, recuperate, and try writing other things. But, I’ve kept getting drawn back here, to this book; and honestly, given the times we’re currently living through? I’d rather put it out there yesterday.

    But without the right hype, it won’t have the legs to run.

    Tune in next time for an exciting new episode!

  • Ten Years…

    Ten Years…

    It’s actually been a little longer than 10 years, but, I have been working on They Came in Peace, in one form or another, for most of the last decade.

    It was a difficult ten years: after I separated from her, I struggled with PTSD from living with a controlling, emotionally and psychologically abusive ex-wife; self-medicating with alcohol, dealing with an undiagnosed behavioral disorder I was desperately trying to get help for…and my world continued getting worse as I struggled with myself, with nightmares and with behaviors I couldn’t control.

    I watched as the people I love left me: friends, one by one, either ghosting me or getting fed up of my shit. I ended up alienated from so many people; but honestly, but for a small few, the only people I miss are my children. The only relationships I long to rebuild are the ones I had with my children. My ex-wife did all she could to keep them from me, but she wasn’t doing this to protect them; just to hurt me, because she knew that the greatest joy and privilege of my life is being a father. And in those dark years, the only thing that ever brought me a sense of joy, a sense of peace, was when I could see my children. I was always loving, nurturing positive and happy when I was with them. I only ever tried to be the best person I could when they were in my life.

    In the end, all I had left were my nightmares and my solitude. In those early years, those nightmares were tamed when I put them to page in cogent form, creating They Came in Peace: I’ve written about how that book is the only thing that stopped my nightmares; it’s also the only thing that kept me going, when I wasn’t allowed to see my children, when I didn’t even have a friend in the world to talk to.

    Writing is cold comfort compared to the loving warmth of family and friends, but this book is important to me, and I think the messages within, both implicit and explicit, are timely and, frighteningly, urgently need to be expressed.

    I’m down to the last twenty or so chapters of the trade galley rebuild, then I’m going to take one more pass – just to make sure I didn’t miss anything, and then it’s going to print; well, eprint, I guess. Twenty chapters is a LOT fewer than it sounds; I’ll have this thing ready to download by spring.

    [the sound of the universe laughing at me.]

    I’ve gotten more and more reflective of the past ten years as I’ve been finishing up the galley. I often find myself wishing that it were as easy to rebuild my life as it was rebuilding They Came in Peace. I went through ego death therapy; not the kind with mushrooms, but the kind where my psychotherapist literally prosecuted every thought and idea that I had, everything I had to say, and made me examine myself and see just how much vile, ugly shit I had encased myself in.

    I wanted to destroy, or at least confine the identity of the man I was; a cruel and vindictive bastard so similar to my father…by all accounts I’ve succeeded, and expect to soon have the legal documentation to prove it, though I still have some things to answer for.

    But even with the factory reset on my personality and identity, because I truly am a different person now than I was then, there are some things that I cannot change, some things I cannot fix.

    I have so many regrets. So many things I wish I could do over. So many people that I’ve lost.

    I can’t let go of this book; it may be the one good thing I’ve done with the last ten miserable years of my life.