|
Home Outlaw Galaxy Novels Outlaw Galaxy Stories The Tip Jar Order Books Bill's Bio Star Wars Books Newsletter FAQs Links Privacy Policy
A Dime for the Tip Jar!
Email: Bill
Smith Books BillSmithBooks, Outlaw Galaxy, Outlaw Galaxy Tales and Imagination Forge are trademarks of Bill Smith. © 2006 by Bill Smith.
|
Just the FAQs Why did you publish Trip and the Space Pirates yourself? What’s next for Outlaw Galaxy? Where can I buy Outlaw Galaxy books? What are your favorite Star Wars books? Can I send you my ideas for new Star Wars or Outlaw Galaxy books? Where can get my own Star Wars stories published? Will you read or critique my stories? Will you publish my books? Where do you get your story ideas? What does it take to be a successful writer? What are your greatest creative inspirations? What is Outlaw Galaxy? Outlaw Galaxy is swashbuckling space fantasy at its finest. It is a universe of larger-than-life heroes, starship battles, and fantastic adventure on distant worlds. A setting spanning millions of settled systems, this galaxy features a multitude of strange alien species, amazing technology, a history that stretches back thousands of years and just a hint of magic. The galaxy is a dangerous place, fragmented into thousands of interplanetary nation-states, each controlling a few worlds and often in conflict with nearby rivals. The Outlaw Galaxy universe is loosely united by the technology of lightspeed drives, which allow starships to fly to distant worlds in a few hours or days. It is a universe where action and adventure await in every starport. Why did you publish Trip and the Space Pirates yourself? I know you’re just being polite. You're really thinking, "If this book was any good, wouldn’t you have been able to get it published by a real publisher?" It’s a fair question. Mainstream book publishing is driven by "pump and dump" marketing. Unless you are an established, best-selling author, your book will be released with a minimum of promotion and given a couple of weeks to "make it." Lots of very good books end up in the trash before they have a chance to be discovered by readers. By publishing myself, I can write exactly the stories I want to write. My books will have a chance to find an audience. By doing it myself, I don't need to sell 100,000 copies of every book. It's a lot of work and a big challenge, but the creative freedom is worth the effort. Famous Self-Publishers. I’m not alone in publishing my own works. Here’s a short list of other do-it-yourselfers; perhaps you've heard of a few of them:
As you can see, I'm in good company. All I ask is that you read my stories and judge for yourself. Sit back, relax, and enjoy a space fantasy ride that will thrill the adventure-seeking twelve-year-old inside all of us. Look to see more Outlaw Galaxy stories added to the website in the coming weeks and months. I'm considering whether to release Outlaw Galaxy 2: Fugitive Among the Stars as a print or electronic book. The trilogy of Outlaw Galaxy 3-5 is in final editing. Sign up for the FREE Newsletter so I can let you know when new Outlaw Galaxy stories and books are posted. Where can I buy Outlaw Galaxy books?
Outlaw Galaxy 1: Trip and the Space Pirates is available through this website for just $4.00, including postage, handling, and sales tax. Mail checks or money orders to:
Bill Smith
Books
I take Visa, Mastercard and other credit cards through PayPal. What are your favorite Star Wars books? My favorites are the Brian Daley Han Solo novels, Mike Stackpole's phenomenal X-wing novels, Timothy Zahn's many Star Wars novels, James Luceno's fine adventures and A.C. Crispin's young Han Solo saga.
I've generally enjoyed the Clone Wars-era books and I'm looking forward to the Old Republic era novels and comics.
Dark Horse Comics is publishing some pretty good comics now that they've mercifully ended their experiment with "humorous" Star Wars comics. Still, the best of the old Marvel Star Wars comics--the Shira Brie storyline, the Tarkin, the Tagge saga--will forever be first in my heart. Can I send you my ideas for new Star Wars or Outlaw Galaxy books? No. Sorry, but I cannot read or accept original story ideas from readers. There are icky legal issues involved, but more importantly, it's your idea--you should be the one to bring it to life! You are the best and only person to put your creative vision on the printed page. It's not just having a good idea that's important, although that's a good place to start. No doubt, it's a challenge to take the germ of a good idea and flesh it out to be a suitable novel plot...but, true to the cliche, the idea really is the easy part. It's when you get twenty or thirty thousand words into a first draft and you hit "The Wall" that it gets to be work. Sitting down over the course of weeks, months, even years, and writing a one hundred thousand word manuscript--and then going back to edit and rewrite, and then edit and rewrite some more through second, third, fourth drafts--that's the hard part. (And don't get me started on actually trying to sell your manuscript to a publishing house.) That's where the discipline and dedication comes in. It's not easy, but it's well worth the effort. So sit down, create your own universe and start writing the story that you are bursting to share with the world. Where can I get my own Star Wars stories published? Del Rey Books is the official publisher of all Star Wars novels. Competition for those publishing slots is very keen and Del Rey works only with established, previously published authors. You have to prove yourself by selling original science fiction stories and novels to publishers before getting a crack at Star Wars. Another avenue is the world of fan fiction. Many Star Wars oriented websites publish original stories written by fans. While they don't offer payment, these sites offer new authors an outstanding opportunity to share their work with other fans. Will you read or critique my stories? Will you publish my books?
No. I cannot read or critique your stories for legal and professional reasons, nor do I plan to publish other writers' books.
There are some good ways to get feedback on your own stories. You could join a local writers' group, but be sure to find a group that suits your personality; there's nothing more tedious than being stuck in a room of elitist literistas who feel that science fiction is beneath them.
There are plenty of online writers' forums, especially if you write science fiction, fantasy or horror stories. You may want to submit your stories to fan fiction websites, magazines and publishers. Be sure to read and follow their guidelines before doing so.
Finally, you may want to set up your own personal website or blog to publish your stories. Domain names and website hosting are cheap and they give you the opportunity to establish an online presence and find an audience. Where do you get your story ideas? Just about everywhere. Whether the setting is a distant planet, Europe in the Middle Ages, or your "boring" hometown "where nothing ever happens," stories are still fundamentally about people and how they deal with the challenges in their lives. The same themes run throughout the history of storytelling. What separates a great story from a forgettable one is how the story is told. The author's job is to make the reader care about the characters. My best advice is to write what your heart calls you to do. I’m drawn to tales of high adventure and fantastic settings, so that’s what I write. If you want to learn about the craft of writing, here are some very helpful books on the subject:
Characters and Viewpoint Dare to be a Great Writer by Leonard Bishop The Right to Write by Julia Cameron. (A wonderful book on motivation. Also highly recommended is The Artist's Way and The Vein of Gold. She truly understands the creative process!) Three Rules for Publishing a Novel by William Noble There are also many books on how to write for specific genres like science fiction and fantasy. What does it take to be a successful writer? Persistence. If you're going to write, you have to believe in yourself. In my experience, persistence and determination are just as important as ability. Your favorite authors are famous because they were stubborn and dedicated in addition to being talented; most accrued a mountain of rejection slips before they made their first sales. They believed in themselves even when others didn’t. Writing is not a "special gift" that only a chosen few have. Most people are born with some degree of writing ability. Successful authors have actively worked to improve their skills and craft, just as professional athletes are always working to improve their game skills. Good Writing Habits. Write as often as possible. There is no way around putting in the "seat time." "Waiting for inspiration to strike" is an approach that will only waste an awful lot of precious writing time. Dedicated writers sit down and get the job done even when writing is the last thing they want to be doing. Read other authors with a critical eye to see how they do things and how you can improve your own skills; really examine their works to see how they handle scene transitions, plot, characterization, dialogue and all of the other elements of good storytelling. Silence The Inner Critic. Silence that "internal critic" who tries to stop you from being successful. That's the voice that says your writing is terrible, that you'll never be successful, that writing is a waste of time, etc. I've often had the experience of my own inner critic try to convince me that what I was working on at the moment was terrible...yet when I went back and read the story days or weeks later, I realized, "Hey, this isn't half bad." Believe in yourself. Relax. First drafts are supposed to be train wrecks. There's no other way to put it. A first draft should be a steam of conscious process; if you try to make it perfect on the first shot, you'll just tie yourself into knots and nothing will get written. Instead, as you're writing your first draft, remind yourself, "There's nothing in here that can't be fixed in editing." Just let the words flow, even if you think they're nothing but garbage. Feel free to write paragraphs overflowing with run-on sentences and jarringly bad dialogue. Overwrought cliches and awkward constructions will abound. All the while, your inner critic will be screaming, "This is crap!" That's normal. That's why they're first drafts. So relax and have some fun with it. Give yourself permission to be a bad, terrible, awful, hideous writer and just get the words out on the page. The important thing is to get the first draft down on the page. You Can Always Fix It in Editing. You never get it right the first time. No, you scribble out that awful first draft...and then you sit down and start editing and rewriting, making changes, adding details, deleting the fluff. In my fifteen years of doing this, I have found that it's a lot easier to revise a bad first draft than it is to put together something perfect from scratch. Think of the first draft as a skeleton--to add all of the other details that make a story work, you need a skeleton to hang them on. Eventually, over the course of several drafts, you should be able to revise your story until it is a solid manuscript. Most people are unaware of this process because they only see the finished product. Let me assure you, however, that every outstanding book involves a trail of flawed drafts, false starts and revisions. Enjoy the freedom of the creative writing process. Give yourself permission to be really, really bad at it...but have fun doing it. Then, go back and fix your stories. If you struggle with this, I'd strongly encourage you to read a book called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. It's a truly marvelous book for anyone who wants to create. Use the shortcuts that work for you. So many new authors obsess about "how it's supposed to be done," as if there's some magic formula that guarantees your story's success. Writing is an intensely individual process and everyone does it differently. The right technique is the one that works for you, regardless of what anyone else thinks or does. Some authors do incredibly detailed outlines while others don't even scribble a page of notes before they start writing. Some authors write only at a keyboard while others scribble out drafts by hand and then type them in (I do both, depending upon my mood). Some authors fixate on getting the first draft perfect while others, like me, just shrug and let the first draft be an unwieldy beast, figuring that it can be fixed in editing. Do what works for you. A couple of shortcuts I use: Parenthetical references: When I have a problem, I just put in a parenthetical reference along the lines of: (((FIX THIS--In this scene, the hero should do this.))) And then I skip on ahead to finish the section, knowing that I've told myself what's supposed to be here and I can come back to it later. See? Wasn't that a lot easier than spending hours stewing over something which invariably turns out to be pretty trivial? Now, go ahead and finish the other sections and then, when you have a clearer idea of how to resolve the problem in your note, come back to this section to finish it off. The Xs: When I write a first draft, rather than stopping every few lines to stew over a character or place name, I just put in X1, X2, etc. and keep a master list of "The Xs." At some point--normally after the first draft is done--I go back and devise these names and then just do a simple "search and replace." Often, actually having a name for character X4 will inspire a lot more detail, which I can just add in later drafts--but by using x1, x2, etc. my first draft writing can plow ahead at full speed instead of constantly hitting speed bumps. Now Get Writing! Writing is a lot of hard work and at times it can be terribly, terribly frustrating, but someone is going to write the next Harry Potter or Star Wars...it could be you. What are your greatest creative inspirations? A clear night sky full of stars. Every time I look up and see all of those stars, knowing that for every one I can see, there are thousands, millions--billions--more...and that's just in our galaxy. And on top of that, there are millions of other galaxies out there. Each one of those stars might have planets just like this blue-green globe we call home. That's what inspires me. Of course, there's also blasters and aliens and robots and starships and space battles and bounty hunters and...well, you get the idea. Sure, I may be in my thirties, but deep down inside, I'm still that little kid that fell in love with Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. My Mom got me hooked on Star Trek early in life (about 4-5 years old) and then I discovered Land of the Lost. A few years later, Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica captured my heart. I spent many, many afternoons in school drawing Vipers and X-wings and coming up with new adventures for Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. At that time, I also started creating my own characters, settings, and stories. I eventually discovered the works that were the ancestors of my favorites: things like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Forbidden Planet and John Carter's adventures on Barsoom. I plunged into the wonderful books of Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and E.E. "Doc" Smith. In eighth grade, I stumbled across role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, Star Frontiers, and Traveller, and soon started writing adventures for my friends. I fell in love with the Marvel Star Wars comics written by Archie Goodwin and David Micheline, and soon after that I started collecting Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman and all the rest--you know, back in the days when kids could still afford comics and comic book companies put making great comics their first priority instead of focusing on selling the licensing rights for action figures and movies. These works gave me hours of entertainment and led to a professional writing career. Every day I wake up and I am excited about what I'm going to work on. Today, my favorites don't stray far from my original interests. I still love science fiction and fantasy, whether its Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Babylon 5, Firefly, Smallville or Farscape. Outlaw Galaxy carries on a century-old tradition of fantastic space adventure. My goal is to write fast-paced adventure stories that span an entire galaxy and evoke the "Sense of Wonder" that, to me, is the essence of science fiction. I hope you enjoy reading the Outlaw Galaxy books as much as I enjoy writing them! On request, I will autograph any book ordered through this site. If you would like me to autograph your copy of any book I’ve written, you may send it but you MUST include RETURN POSTAGE. Bill Smith Books PO Box 124 Malone, NY 12953
|
