Upgrade to 'paid' for awesome rewards
Upgrade to 'paid' for awesome rewards
I can't believe what-all I'm offering here. I must be nuts.
Time has come today
Until now, the only reward for being a paid monthly or annual subscriber to Sundman figures it out! has been whatever satisfaction you might get from helping me out financially. (Founding subscribers get a nice additional package.1)
That’s about to change.
The ‘regular’ Sundman figures it out! — my ongoing episodic autobiographical meditation — which I hope you’ve come to, or soon will, know and love — continues to be free for all subscribers, with no paywall on the archives.
BUT, henceforward, subscribers who support Sundman figures it out! at any rate (monthly, annual, founder) will receive additional rewards:
free, autographed copies of the first (totally awesome) print edition of my illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria The Pains;
eligibility to be selected to receive advance review copies (ARC’s) of new books, or to be a ‘beta’ reader of a work in progress;
ability to participate in members-only chats;
regularly scheduled twice-monthly posts that focus on my experiences and processes (so-called) as an ‘indie’ (self-publishing) novelist;
convenient access to archives of some of my other public writing from that last 25 years or so;
and more.
These features will be rolled out over the next few months, as described below. But the most tangible perk, a free copy of The Pains, autographed by me, is available starting today.
Painless Pains
NOTE: this offer of a zero-cost copy of The Pains applies to subscribers with a USA-based postal address. Other options are available outside USA. See below.2
I published my little dystopian phantasmagoria The Pains in 2008. It’s the story of a perfectly decent person upon whom God, or the Universe, or Random Chance, or Chaos, or Whatever, decides to dump unending physical and emotional misery (which includes persecution by religious fundamentalists) — and of how that perfectly decent person bears up with extraordinary grace under the onslaught. As such it’s variation on the biblical Book of Job — but it’s set in an an imagined universe that’s one part the ‘Oceania’ of George Orwell’s 1984, one part the USA of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 fever dream, and one part Fred only knows what — perhaps a flashback to that tumbler of sangria I drank at that party in 1973 with hippies in the woods without knowing that it had been laced with LSD.
The Pains has 12 stunning, full-page nightmare-inducing illustrations by Canadian author/illustrator M.F.D Hemming, and eerie yet beautiful page and cover designs by Gary Gray. It is printed on high quality glossy stock and it is, frankly, just freeking gorgeous. The cover price is $16.75. And yet you can have your own autographed copy, inscribed to your specification, just for signing up as a paid subscriber. No charge for the book, no charge for shipping and handling, no charge for nothin’.
British SF legend Ken MacLeod has called The Pains “1984 as told by Philip K. Dick”. You can read what others have to say about it on amzn and goodreads.
The new edition of The Pains will have the same design and illustrations as the current edition, and it will also have a new introduction by MacLeod, and a new afterword by me. This new edition of The Pains will be gorgeous too. But it will not be a first edition, and it will not be printed on glossy stock, and it will not have the same awesome cover design as the one I’m offering you here. And it will not be inscribed however you want and autographed by me. You really want to grab one of these while you can. Once I run out, that’ll be the end of them.
By the way, if you’re already a paying subscriber, be sure to send me a note to get your copy.
Be first in line for beta drafts and ARCs
Books that I have in the works include the new editions of Acts of the Apostles, Cheap Complex Devices, The Pains and Biodigital in both English and Spanish, the new novel Mountain of Devils, and, further down the road, the novel Creation Science. Readers of pre-publication manuscripts will be chosen from among paying subscribers to Sundman Figures it out!
Bi-monthly posts on the writer’s life
Starting on Friday, October 20th, 2023, I will publish, on the first and third Friday of each month, an issue of Sundman figures it out! for paid subscribers only. These issues will dive deep into topics related to writing and publishing, such as I recently wrote about in my guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog entitled “Lessons from 23 Years as a Self-Publishing Novelist.” Including:
A look at my notebooks: your guided tour through purgatory
I’ll take you through pages of some of my quite haphazardly kept notebooks and drafts to show how the various books evolved. Below, for example, see the notebook I purchased at the "$1 Store” at the now-defunct Taunton (MA) mall on the occasion of my younger daughter’s 16th birthday. The $100 my wife and I had scraped together to give our daughter for her birthday was less than the amounts that any of her friends had to spend.
As my daughter and her friends were on a mini-shopping spree, I sat on a bench in the mall, feeling sad and a bit guilty about all the cares that my daughter and her sister and brother had already had to deal with in their young lives; sad that a shopping trip to a run-down mall was all she could wish for. I opened to a page in the middle of the notebook, and wrote what became the (virtually unchanged) first two pages of The Pains. It began, “Norman Lux, sf, woke up with a pain in his body that felt as if it might be a soul gone bad.” It was February, 2004.
Over the four and a half years I jotted ideas in that notebook. I didn’t get serious about creating what finally became The Pains until sometime in 2008.
I’ll take you on a tour of this notebook and others like it. Will it be interesting? I hope so. But all I can guarantee is that it will be raw.
Denied! A Gallery of Rejection Letters
My novel Acts of the Apostles entered this world with the title The Book of Matthew. After working with me on it for more than a year and a half, my wonderful agent Joe Regal, then with Russell & Volkening, the venerable NYC literary agency, sent it out to twenty or so publishing houses. All of whom rejected it — some with encouraging words, others ‘not so much’. These letters where hard for me to take at the time, but in hindsight they were a blessing — because The Book of Matthew was merely a plausible first try by a newbie author, whereas Acts of the Apostles is much more than that. There’s a reason it has become a cult classic. We’ll take a look at these letters, and I’ll talk about how that first wave of rejections shaped my understanding of the novelistic project.
Traveling self-publishing geek novelist blues: makes Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ seem like ‘Goodnight Moon’
Shlepping my books to hacker meets, trade fairs, scientific conferences, university student centers all over the country. Sleeping on couches or in my car, dining from vending machines. Yes indeedy, I have some stories for you.
Watch me mud-bath wrestling in real time with my own brain-children!
The paid-members editions won’t only be about the books I’ve already written and published. I’ll also share with you some of the stuff I’m working on right now, including my way-behind-schedule-but-nevertheless-progressing novel Mountain of Devils, and the distant-yet-visible Creation Science. And other projects such as may arise.
Coming soon: archives from Salon, Wetmachine, Technopotheosis and elsewhere
I’ve written a ton of essays, diary posts, newsletters and suchlike. Over the next few months I’ll gather here as many as I can find & upload, along with some incidental commentary.
Annual subscribers: I’m yours for twenty minutes
For any annual subscribers (at the rate of $50 paid up front), I offer a one-time chat of twenty minute’s duration by phone or videoconference. I’ll give advice on your own publishing projects if you like, or I’ll answer questions about any topics I’ve discussed in my post, or we can talk about the Red Sox or any damn thing of your choosing.
Or alternatively I’ll give you a red-pen markup of up to ten pages of your written work.
Fair warning: I don’t promise that I’ll be all that scintillating. But this has been something some people have suggested to me, so I’m tossing it out there.
And more! You tell me!
What else do you want to see? Is there something I haven’t mentioned that would get you to ante up? Let me know!
All founding subscribers to Sundman figures it out! will received autographed print copies the forthcoming new editions of: Acts of the Apostles, with a new introduction by Cory Doctorow; Cheap Complex Devices, with a new introduction by David Weinberger; The Pains, with a new introduction by Ken MacLeod; and Biodigital, with a new introduction by John Biggs. Each of these books will also have a new afterword, by me. In addition, all founding subscribers will receive signed copies of the forthcoming novel Mountain of Devils, the prequel to both Acts of the Apostles and Biodigital.
If you’re outside of the USA, I offer the choice of (a) an autographed copy of the 1st edition of The Pains, with you covering some of the postage, or (b) a print-on-demand copy of The Pains, from Amazon.