I know you’re supposed to put hiatus messages before the hiatus rather than after; this way makes you look unprofessional, not very put together at all. So, you know, fair play to me for transparency.
Anyway, NONA THE NINTH has destroyed my sleep schedule for the last week. I finished it Friday while literally falling into microsleeps between the paragraphs. I’ve been writing in the notebook, but I’m probably four days behind on transcription, and obviously I’ve just left this thing to scratch in the gutters for rat bones to suck the marrow out of.
At some point I should write a thing on why Tamsyn Muir’s writing works so well for me. It’ll probably be wrong, but any progress in understanding it is going to be helpful.
One thing I’ve sometimes thought, and even said, about the success of the Locked Tomb trilogy is that it’s interesting to watch how Tor has approached marketing much more like an indie than a traditional publisher. It’s of course tough to apportion credit to marketing when GIDEON THE NINTH was a unicorn and Tamsyn Muir is a genius, but consider:
- GIDEON THE NINTH is free on Kindle Unlimited (although non-exclusive as far as I can tell, which isn’t an option for most indies);
- The first two chapters of GIDEON THE NINTH are free on tor.com;
- I’m old enough to remember when the first act of HARROW THE NINTH was released for free on Amazon, a few months in advance of the book;
- The first chapter of NONA THE NINTH is free on tor.com;
- Tor offered a free ebook of a short story, “The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex,” as some kind of reward for doing something in advance of HARROW THE NINTH, maybe pre-ordering; it’s now free on tor.com, and I still pore over it for clues;
- Tor emailed the poem that begins NONA THE NINTH out to their mailing list subscribers during, IIRC, National Poetry Month;
- And free, again, on tor.com, is “As Yet Unsent,” a short story released a couple months in advance of NONA THE NINTH.
This is in addition to the kind of stuff they do for a lot of their books, like author interviews and chapter-by-chapter rereads.
Tor is a well-resourced publisher with a massive mailing list, a huge blog, and a great reputation in science fiction. They are surely also using advertising and otherwise throwing money at promoting the Locked Tomb series; Tommy Arnold’s covers are also pulling at least their weight. But the content marketing that they are doing is (a) nearly free minus the costs of producting fiction, (b) deeply intertwined with the appeal of the books themselves, which are twisty mysteries as well as body-horror gorefests and hilarious meme vectors, (c) from the vantage of this reader, crushingly effective and massively appreciated.
For my own mental landmark, I should probably also write down that my first nephew was born two days ago! He is a very serious nugget with a very distinctive nose, or at least that’s how he looked right after he was born. My son was a little bummed because he was hoping they’d share a birthday, but he’s still happy to have another boy in his cohort of cousins. (We’re trying not to emphasize the fact that he will be 16 by the time the baby is his age. Oh well.)
Currently reading: Spook Street, Mick Herron
If you’re enjoying my writing, you can get some of my short fiction on your e-reader for the low, low cost of $0. Remembered Air is a collection of six poems and short stories not available anywhere else. Download it here.