A good friend is someone who isn’t afraid to tell you what you need to know. I’m thinking about this today because, for the past week, I’ve been working diligently preparing material to support my next Kickstarter, which will be a totally amazing 10th-anniversary edition of Saga of the God-Touched Mage. This is my (currently) 8-volume epic dark fantasy work. Each volume was a bestseller on initial publication and has gone on to continue to sell ever since.
Thank goodness for the long tail, my friends.
Anyway, with that track record, and seeing some of the beautiful books we can release as independent publishers now, I felt the need to celebrate. So I’ve worked for some time to reconfigure them into four books this time—gently rewriting transitions to fit that packaging. I’ve also commissioned some amazing cover work, a new map, new internal art, and all sorts of other stuff.
I am totally gobsmacked by how great these books are.
I can’t wait for you to see them.
That said, I worked my tail off to put together a draft of my Kickstarter page and then worked even harder on it. Once I had the basics done it was time to get some feedback. For those who have not run such a project, Kickstarter provides features to let others into the backstage area and check things out. So I asked a handful of people to review and comment on my work, then sat back and anticipated all the kudos that would come with it. “Great job!” I imagined folks saying. “Wouldn’t touch a thing!”
This was fanciful of me, I knew even then.
And each of my reviewers had good thoughts that I could bake into the story. Which I did.
And then there was Lisa Silverthorne, who has been a great friend of mine since the days we were both baby writers. She is also turning into someone who has quite an eye for Kickstarter presentations. (Disclosure, Lisa, as her Lost Souls Studio, has done the book covers and artwork I just gushed about). Lisa could have just scanned a few things and made a handwavium comment or two. But that is not what she did.
No, Lisa did not just give me suggestions.
She took her time to cleanly break down what I needed to do and how I should look at doing it. Then she gave examples from her own work and sent a link or two to let me see how other people had been attacking the problems. Did I mention how good she’s getting at this game?
She was apologetic about it because of course she was. She’s Lisa Silverthorne. To offend is to be mortified.
But she needn’t have worried.
Her thoughts were completely justified, and presented in a way that said that (1) she felt strongly about her opinions, but (2) in a non-personal way that focused on the problem rather than the guy who had created the problems (me!). After a big sigh (one of those lung clearers you take when you know you’ve got more work to do), I went back to the salt mines and did more work.
I suspect I’ll be tweaking the thing endlessly until the project launches (and beyond!), but when I was done, I looked at it again and realized how much more amazing the thing looked now.
The details matter.
Here’s to hoping that you have friends who are good enough to not let you slide on half-measures, and strong enough to be able to share their expertise in such a great way.
Thanks, Lisa.
I owe you one.
Again.