[H]ow you come to terms with the Goddess is no concern of mine; I do not even know that you are serious in your poetic profession.
Robert Graves, The White Goddess
Today is day one of me as a full-time writer.
I will continue to offering corporate training and consulting services, as a member of the new firm, DJ Butler Consulting, LLC. This will likely continue to be a key component of my income portfolio for some time.
But it’s a new day, and exciting things are happening.
It turns out that if you get a starred review, PW offers you a nice price on an ad touting the fact. And here is the ad Baen is taking out in the 2/27 issue of PW.
I risk being premature if I tell stories about all the rejections WITCHY EYE got before becoming a huge success, because, you know, the huge success part isn’t there yet. But I’m getting great feedback from early readers and reviewers, and selling out everywhere the book goes on sale early, so . . . I’ll take a chance.
In some big ways, WITCHY EYE is the song of my heart. It’s the book in which I really unwind and pull no punches, to tell a fantasy story like I think fantasy stories should be told. It’s also my love poem to the old, weird America that still lies underneath all the plastic and the glitz. And it was hard to get it published.
My first agent dropped me because of WITCHY EYE. Emailed me a Dear John note, copying his lawyer, saying he just didn’t have the time to deal with this huge book. Another agent who had offered to represent me and Emily (my wife) both emailed and withdrew her offer after I showed her WITCHY EYE. So when I got on board with WordFire Press, and had a clear shot to publish it, I thought about it long and hard . . .
And chose not to. WordFire is great, and they publish several of my things, but in my gut, I knew it was not the right home for the series. So I held on to it, and worked with my agent (Deborah Warren of East / West Literary) to come up with a strategy to sell it.
That strategy involved me personally meeting editors at WorldCon, leveraging the WordFire platform and my existing small-press books as well as the then-forthcoming Knopf book (THE KIDNAP PLOT). That is to say, the plan was to leverage to six years of labor I’d already put into building a network and community and an asset consisting of an existing body of speculative fiction work.
So at WorldCon 2015 (Sasquan), I reconnected with Toni Weisskopf of Baen, whom I’d first met at WorldCon 2011 (Renovation). And she was on the list of editors Deborah submitted to. I had in fact already sent Toni the manuscript, in February 2012, but now we had been in contact for a few years, and she’d seen me in action and heard more about me second-hand from people in my network.
And in February 2016 — four years after my first agent dumped me over the book, and four years after I first showed it to Toni — she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.
So I am THRILLED to be with Baen. I am DELIGHTED that WITCHY EYE is getting the reviews and attention it’s getting so far, and I’m committed to continuing to push it.
And if you are carrying around a 200,000-word epic fantasy in your own soul, I have to tell you, tactically speaking, you are putting your feet on an uphill road. But my heart is with you; carry on!
I won’t make Life, the Universe, and Everything (LTUE) this year. I’ll be across the country, at Pensacon in Florida, selling WITCHY EYE for the first time, alongside THE KIDNAP PLOT and my WordFire Press books.
But I don’t want to leave out my Utah friends, so I have chibi stickers for you. These are Witchy Eye chibis, 2″ vinyl stickers of some of the main characters in my flintlock epic fantasy, created by David Young Art and Design. The picture to the right here is the chibi of Calvin Calhoun, cattle rustler, corn reader, brand new Freemason, would-be lover, and aspiring hell of a fellow. There are also chibis of Sarah Penn, Bad Bill, Thalanes, and Obadiah Dogsbody. And you can have them for free!
Here’s how you get the Witchy Eye chibis:
One chibi of each type per person.
If the Balrogs run out of chibis, don’t worry. I will offer an opportunity in the near future for you to complete your set.
Enjoy the con!
WITCHY EYE is available everywhere on March 7. In select places and times, it’ll be available even sooner!
Here are my upcoming appearances selling and talking about WITCHY EYE:
February 2-4 * SUPERSTARS OF WRITING * Colorado Springs
February 17-19 * PENSACON * Pensacola
March 2-5 * EMERALD CITY COMIC CON * Seattle
March 6 * AMA on reddit * /r/books
March 15 * Fantasy Author of the Day * /r/fantasy
March 17-18 * FANX * Salt Lake
April 11 * Author Link Series * Provo Public Library
“Think of it this way. For you, this animal is a horse.” Jake leaned forward to pat his mount’s shoulder. “When you say it, it’s like that, horse. When you write it, you write H-O-R-S-E.”
“You mean horsey, Jake. Horse does not need an E on the end of it. Too many letters in writing is an extravagance, especially in a military man.”
“A sedan.” Hop nodded again. “She does not touch the ground. And she has others with her, and they look harmless.”
“Call no man harmless until he is dead,” Bill said. “My education ended early, but I believe I remember that much of Aristotle.”
“Aristotle, or perhaps Attila the Hun.” Cathy smiled. She was too old for Calvin—who was in love with Sarah, anyway—but she wasn’t too old to notice, especially when she smiled.
“I’ll take good advice where I can get it,” Bill growled.
I’m neck-deep in the WITCHY EYE setting and stories, and wanted to share this quote from the book (it’s in the POV of Obadiah Dogsbody, rough English factotum to a Yankee wizard-priest):
The Tarock was a New World obsession, something the old Lightning Bishop had borrowed from the Florentines or the French (before Bonaparte imposed his Caliphate and ended such occult frivolities) and fiddled with to fit it to the land of the Chesapeake Bay and the Mississippi River. It was effeminate, the kind of thing women did for entertainment behind closed doors. No self-respecting Englishman could take seriously any purported attempt at divination that didn’t involve the death of at least one animal.
WITCHY EYE: coming in March.
Michael R. Collings is a gifted critic, academic, editor, novelist, and poet. In 2016, he’s really doubled down on poetry, producing multiple volumes of sonets (his word) on various subjects.
His most recent collection bears a title suggesting the poems are political in nature. This is partially true, in that many of the poems apparently contain his personal, real-time response to political issues raised or events that took place in the 2016 presidential campaign, such as “Real Men,” which I take as a kind of reaction to off-color comments made in the past by Donald Trump, and “On the Deplorable Word.” Others take aim at our political culture — e.g., “Celebrities” and “Religious Right.”
But the poems transcend the ephemeral events that have given rise to them. Especially in such sonets as “Math and Rulers,” we get the diamond-hard and sparkling reaction of the poet’s soul, the poet as Eternal Being, to the flotsam in the swirling eddies of time around him. So while THE STATE OF THE DISUNION chronicles the gaps between the poet and some of his fellow-citizens, in the end it creates a self-portrait, a unity out of a series of apparently granular and disparate but ultimately connected images, a collage of a man with a great heart, unafraid to call it as he sees it.
Writing is hard. You work alone in a closet, you struggle with doubt and fear, and then when you produce a book, no matter how good it is, someone feels obligated and entitled to beat you up for it.
And then once in a while, amazing things happen. Like you meet Luca Sabotino (and his dad, Eric), and Luca reads your book, and reaches out to tell you what he thought about it.
Luca, thank you. I’m thrilled to be your friend.
Follow
