First Novels and Hard Lessons Learned

My first published book was a Science Fiction novel called Aeroquest.  It was a story that came about because as a young teacher I liked to play pencil and paper role-playing games with kids.  It started with Dungeons and Dragons in 1981, but because I was in South Texas at the time, Baptist and fundamentalist Texas, I had to change away from any game associated with dragons and demons.  I turned instead to the RPG called Traveller, a space game inspired by Star Wars and other Sci-Fi of the time.  Most of the characters in the book, especially the Mutant Ninja Space Babies, were actually the kids I played the games with.  They are characters that were created by them and given life by me.

So, I sent this book to a new publishing company in 2007 called Publish America.  They seemed excited to publish my work.  They paid me an advance of one dollar.  They whipped me through a publishing process whereby I had to do all my own editing, proofreading, and supervising.  They provided no aid with anything.  They only tried to sell the book (for a grossly inflated price) to my friends and relatives.  Through this whole process, I made a total of twelve dollars.  Well, that didn’t seem like such a bad deal, except for the way mistakes were created in my story that were not there before.  They copyrighted my work and told me that they owned the rights for the next seven years.  I was originally supposed to include illustrations like I posted here, but decided to hang on to those when it became clear that I might lose ownership of them.  So, all in all, I got two free copies of the book, a chance to annoy all my friends and relatives, and twelve dollars cash.  That in exchange for two years’ work.

Aeroquest is the story of the Aero brothers, Ged and Ham.  They start out as hunters, travelling space in a safari ship that belongs to Ham Aero.  The third member of their crew is the super-goofy engineer, pirate, and fool named Trav Dalgoda.  They elude pirates, conquer a couple of planets, make enemies of the entire Imperium, and Ged becomes the teacher of a ninja school on one of the planets they conquer, the planet Gaijin.  I like this story.  It’s full of ridiculous and off-the-wall humor, adventure, and some of the weirdest characters I could possibly put together.  But, truth be told, it is not very good.  I did a much better job on my second novel.

It was a learning experience.  I learned that you do need to work with an editor to help you craft and polish the work.  You do need to work with publicists and social media experts to promote the book and sell it.  None of what I really needed to be an author rather than just a writer came through the PA experience.  I didn’t get soaked for a lot of bucks, but they cheated me never-the-less.  In another year I can have the novel rights back and I can try again with that story and related tales.  I got cheated, but I learned valuable lessons that I hope will serve me well as I continue to destroy my own life with the desire to be a story-teller.