I announced a little while ago that starting this month, Fridays on the blog are going to be Sentient Domain Fridays. It’s the second phase of the Query Game, and as such, there’s more game-ish-ness involved. Here’s the deal.
Sentient Domain has 28 chapters and an Epilogue. I will be putting up a chapter every Friday until I run out of content. If that’s all I do, then the serialization should wrap up in July. This is neat timing, since the story Apex bought features characters from Sentient Domain, after the events of the novel. So you’ll get to read that when it comes out without being super spoiled for the ending.
But that’s routine and boring. All sorts of people serialize novels on their blogs. Hey, it was even trendy for a while, before ebooks took off. I’m not just being unoriginal, I’m being old school. Let’s make it more exciting.
I could put out a tip jar with incentives for giving me money, but that sounds like something that will leave me with complicated accounting and maybe enough cash for a trip to Jade Mountain. Meh. What I’m after is adoration and praise, hordes of fans willing to do my bidding, maybe a tearful confession that I made somebody cry. I want you to press my like button.
Here’s the deal: I get about ten “Likes” when I post food or travel blogs, so we’ll start that as our baseline. The first time a chapter of Sentient Domain gets 10 Likes, the following week will include a bonus chapter (probably on a Wednesday). After that, the goal goes up to 25. The scale works like this:
Bonus 1: 10 likes
Bonus 2: 25 likes
Bonus 3: 50 likes
Bonus 4: 75 likes
Bonus 5: 100 likes
Bonus 6: 150 likes
Bonus 7: 200 likes
Bonus 8: 300 likes
Bonus 9: 500 likes
If we hit Bonus 8, the audience wins, and I’ll put the whole thing up, for free, for a minimum of 1 month. If we hit Bonus 9, I’ll go to all the effort of making a quality ebook for Sentient Domain. (By which I mean I’ll probably do a Kickstarter for commissioning cover art, hiring a copy editor, etc.)
Needless to say, if Giant Publishing Company comes to me and says, “Hey, we want to buy that book for Substantial Money, stop serializing it/yank it down,” I will, unless we’ve triggered bonus 8. If we trigger bonus 8, I will honor the terms of the game, and Giant Publishing Company will have to cope. I’m cavalier that way.
Some of you have already read Sentient Domain. Some of you have heard me read excerpts of it at conventions. There’s one individual out there who tried to buy it until reality thwarted him. But the bulk of you have no idea what this book is. You’ll get a pretty good idea tomorrow, but just to whet your appetite let me tell you this: Space Opera full of pirates, spies, and snarky computers. Also, I have blurbage.
John O’Neil (Editor of Blackgate and groovy dude) described Sentient Domain like this on the BG blog after hearing a chunk of the first chapter at WisCon:
…an unpublished novel set in a gorgeously baroque far future where a woman who is not what she seems visits a sleepy space port… and quickly runs afoul of a subtle trap for careless spies.
Vylar Kaftan (Widely published, Nebula Nominee, FogCon creator and chair) said this:
These are some of the finest characters I’ve seen in a long time. Witty, fun, likeable, full of personality. I want them to be larger than life heroes who are brilliant, and that’s what they are!
Jake Kerr (Multiply published, Nebula Nominee with his first story) says this:
Sentient Domain is that kind of rollicking science fiction adventure where each character is such a blast that you want to root for everyone. Heck, I’ve read the thing twice, and I’m still not sure who my favorite is. All I know is it’s one great read.
And that, my pretties, shall be that. Let the game begin!
Anaea Lay 