First: The Theme.
Holy crap y’all, we’re a month away from Glassblade’s release! Accordingly, this past month has been a big scramble to make sure things were as ready as they could be for December, which means that the theme for this month is preparation. I have never felt less prepared for anything. Nonetheless, we’re forging ahead, and I’ve got some really cool stuff for you this month.
Let’s get to it.
Second: The Work
After Glassblade’s completion last month, I took a few days to crash and just kinda bask in the fact that I’d finally done it. That didn’t last too long, though, as there was a bunch of stuff to get done, among them a lot of figuring out back-end tech stuff for the community part of this project, which seeing as I am not a tech guy, was an interesting experience to say the least. More on that in a second, though, as the first thing I have to show you is the last piece of PoV art the awesome Nik has done for Glassblade.
Michael Schwan is not the linchpin character of Glassblade and its sequels, but Glassblade is in many ways Michael’s story. His actions drive the plot possibly more than anyone else’s. Michael has been in my head for a long time, and his story arc through the book is definitely the one that has changed the most over the course of its many drafts. In the first draft of Glassblade, Michael didn’t even have a PoV, being a person whose absence drives the story more than his presence, which was something that changed after one of the book’s earliest beta-readers told me very candidly that we needed to know what this hot mess of a character is doing, and boy howdy is Michael ever a hot mess.
Michael Schwan is a man of immense privilege, born to a family of ancient lineage and prestige, who has spent every day for the past thirteen years up until the start of the book having his pride repeatedly kicked in the teeth and being given every reason to second-guess himself. A weakness of mine is characters who strive constantly, often futilely, against expectations put on them either by others or themselves, and who never, ever feel as if they’re enough. For all that Michael does, this was his inception: a man who simultaneously feels a great empathy for social outcasts and the different because of the quirks of his own life, and who possesses incredible blind-spots as a consequence of his many privileges, and who acts at times like a raging dick because of it. He’s surprisingly hard to write, but that’s because I have hangups related to being misunderstood and behaving badly, and Michael is such a mess that those things happen with him a lot. Still, he’s constantly trying, which is one of the things that endears him to me most.
Okay, onto other things.
As I mentioned, a lot of the stuff this past month was back-end, and here’s where I get to announce the fun things. Paid tiers for those of you who would like to support this project directly have been officially set up, and can be found here. Here’s a basic breakdown:
Tier 1, Basic: $1/month - Discord access.
Tier 2, Traveler: $3/month - Tier 1 benefits plus early access to chapters.
Tier 3, Mender: $7/month - All Tier 2 benefits plus access to quarterly QnA.
Tier 4, Seer: $13/month - All Tier 3 benefits plus access to deleted scenes & snippets
Tier 5, Physic: $19/month - All Tier 4 benefits plus Author’s notes on each chapter.
As of now the author discord is set up and ready to receive people, assuming I’ve done everything right. All of the tiers are set up on the basis of how much extra work it is for me to accomplish everything each one requires, which is why Author’s Notes ended up at the top. It turns out when you’re dealing with a 40 chapter novel, writing more than skim-level notes on each of those chapters is like a whole other book. Some of that is because talking about the nuts and bolts of my writing process is one of the things I like to do and I get really caught up in it, but also it’s just that things like that take time to do, and time is at a premium. Also yes the tiers names have story-specific meaning. That should become clear over time.
Because of all this, I hope you’ll understand that I’ve basically gotten no reading or writing or game-playing done this past month, so that section of the newsletter is going to be more of a meditation than anything else. I’m really looking forward to getting back to doing all of those things this month and next month. With that in mind:
Third: On Craft.
The build-up to launching anything, whether it’s a trad-published or indie-published or any other sort of work, is a profoundly weird time. You’re in a constant state of tension between excitement over what’s to come, and a teeth-chattering nervousness about whether what you’re doing is going to flop like a fish. It’s easy in that period to vacillate between “this is amazing! It’s gonna be amazing!” and “crap I’ve wasted all this time on nothing and people are going to throw tomatoes at me from the audience!”
Nevermind that a format like this is not a stage, and you, dear-reader, cannot physically reach me with a tomato even if you wanted to, but tell that to my subconscious.
Such wonders I have to show you.
Back-end tech stuff is harder than writing. I’m convinced of this. The explosive flow-state of the creative process contrasted with “where do I stick that widget” and “which button do I press” and “which permissions do I activate” and “goddammit Stripe let me authenticate my account already” reaffirms my commitment to never doing into tech as a field. Also my deep appreciation for people who can make the technology we all use on function reliably. Even a small look “under the hood” like this was enough to send me into multiple stages of panic over the last month (seriously, ask my wife how frazzled I was if you meet her), and I humbly bow before all you IT folks out there. You mystify me.
Probably the hardest part about the discord, by the way, has been figuring out what the rules are going to be. I’ve done that, and they’re simplistic, and will evolve as people show up and conversation necessitates evolution, but man the process of deciding where the boundaries were going to be was a challenge. Much like the tension between freaking out and being excited, it’s a push and pull where you don’t want things to be too tight, but you also don’t want them to be so loose that problems arise. I struck a pretty good balance by the end, but you’ll have to let me know what you think, dear reader.
Ahem. Moving on.
Fourth: What I’m watching/Reading/Playing.
Ah hah, ahahahaha, haha, ha.
So this month was a bit rough on this front. I made some progress on Ninth House and kept reading several other books that I’ve been picking at for the better part of a year, but between gnawing my nails off over nervousness and the buildup to Thanksgiving, not a lot to got done. On the fun side of things, I’ve nearly got my painting station set up again with help from my father-in-law, and that means I’ll be able to continue assembling miniatures and painting miniatures which means you can expect a lot more pictures of those in future iterations of this newsletter.
Is it weird that I’ve started sleeping with RPG and war-game hardbacks beside my bed? Maybe it’s a comfort thing. Anyway that’s the other thing that’s been going on: I’ve figured out that I’m better at organizing cast lists and world bibles for ttrpg’s than I am for my own books. Maybe it’s the wiki-like format of RPOL.net’s gaming threads, or if it’s the instantaneous feedback of players saying “thankyousomuch!” when I do it, or if it’s even that RPG’s are collaborative creative work rather than solo creative work, but the dopamine hit from getting a good dramatic personae thread assembled is something I’m still working on translating to the work that actually earns my living. When I accomplish this I will become… okay maybe not all powerful, but certainly more organized. Having a list of the characters and their abilities and their names and the factions and all that other stuff is much easier than keeping it in my mind-palace. You would think that I would have internalized this by now. You would think.
And yet!
In Conclusion, or What’s Next?
Okay so, over this next month there will be more updates. I am going to drop a cover-reveal at some point, and there is going to probably be a count-down the week or two before release. I’m also hoping to actually get some more work done on Broken Vessels, Glassblade’s first sequel, which is at this point about halfway done. I might also try to put together a Youtube Music playlist for the book, since I’ve left Spotify, because screw Spotify. Keep your eyes on my various social media. I’m going to be trying to talk more about this outside of the Newsletter, and there may be some updates out there that could be missed here, because I am notoriously magpie-brained.
Until then, I’ll see you on the discord and wherever else I see you. I hope the Holidays are wonderful for you and your families—found or blood. At the very least I hope they’re not super stressful.
One month till Glassblade begins! Get hype.
Stay healthy, stay friendly, stay curious.
-Joe