Tuesday Kuykendall

I’ve hit a rhythm. This will be the third month in a row that I remembered I have a blog that humans read. It helps if I have something to share.

Most important—for those who only have time for a glance. I have the artwork for the cover of one of my books, The End Of Species 499. I’m not sure how to convey my excitement without clichés, so I’ll refrain (but I’m stoked!). I had hoped to have the book ready to give to friends and family for Christmas, but it’s too late now, so I’ll have to make bread and cookies.

So, in other news:

November is a special time for writers—when thousands of us all over the world sit at our respective mediums and strive to put 50,000 words on the page by the end of the month (as of this writing I have 26K). I thought I wrote a lot before this. I need to do about 2000 words per day on a specific project. Blogging and editing don’t count, and since I’m still blogging and editing, I’m experiencing a new level.

My project is a fun story—silly, unlikely, but fun. It’s about a young dragon named Eirjin who works as a grad student/technician at his university’s physics lab. He’s always getting into trouble for something, not because he’s a troublemaker, but he doesn’t have a sense of the physical space he occupies and he’s single mindedly eager, so his lack of awareness means he’s knocking over and breaking things.

He finally lands a spot with a professor he admires, doing research he cares most about. And Eirjin, being Eirjin, accidentally creates a wormhole that lands him in our universe. He’s seen first by a physicist who’s out for a walk on the outskirts of the CERN campus. She notices a hole in the sky and a large, colorful creature falling from it. She’s having a stroll because her boss accused her of a mistake she didn’t make and, instead of hearing her out, he’s put her on temporary leave to ‘rest’. He has ulterior motives, of course.

Lise-Marie, the physicist, is my age, and she lives in Wallingford and teaches at UW; but she’s not me, though she’s me-adjacent, which makes her easier to write. I might change her later.

It’s a subgenre called Urban Science Fantasy. My working title is, “There’s No Such Thing As Humans”. Because in Eirjin’s world, humans are the mythical and terrifying monsters.

What else?

I have a couple of projects that earn income, (so far just pennies but I have to try, right?) I’m on a platform called “Medium”. People go there to read and write articles on everything from dad-jokes to deep dives on writing advice to political commentary and self-help. I’ve been a subscriber since March but only started writing my own essays. I’m going to try writing book and movie reviews. We’ll see. I’m also thinking about writing a column about how to use materials science in fiction. Hopefully, other writers will find it useful.

Warning: Medium is a storytelling, essay-writing platform anyone can use. There isn’t fact-checking that I can determine, so beware.

It’s behind a paywall, so if you don’t have a membership and you want to read my essays, I’ll be including links on my blog. I made $0.020 on my first article—one person looked at it. They didn’t comment; it wasn’t really a comment-type of article. But it’s a start, right?

The other thing I set up is an affiliate with Bookshop.org. It’s a way to buy books that benefit independent bookstores and people like me. When you buy from my ‘shop’ I get a commission. I have a list of my favorites posted on the page, but you can buy anything you want, and they sell eBooks and audio when available. I like the idea of it. They promote writers, independent booksellers, and reading.

And finally.

Last time I explained why I wouldn’t have a book to sell this month—because an editor I met at a conference suggested I wasn’t being true to myself if I didn’t at least try to find an agent and go the traditional publishing path. I’m still giving it a go, but it’s taking a long time, and with each iteration of my synopsis (that I’ve paid her to edit) I feel more and more like this will not work.

Traditional publishing takes a long time. Even if I get an agent and the agent sells me to a publisher and the publisher signs me up, the earliest any of my books would be on the shelves would be sometime in 2027; here’s the thing—I’m over sixty. I don’t want to wait that long.

So, starting in January, I’m going to have that Kickstarter campaign I keep talking about to pay for editing and art and formatting and then I’m self publishing my books because I don’t have the same amount of time as a thirty-year-old and I will not give up. This writing thing is awesome, and I need to see it bear fruit. That’s when I’ll have the cover reveal for The End of Species 499. I’m thinking of having a contest to pick the font for the title.

Thanks for reading and Happy Thanksgiving!

The links to my Medium articles are on my ‘Essays’ page.

My BookShop page is here.