Author's Notes
Heyyyyyyy! You made it to the end. Congrats!
Um… so this is the part where I assure you that I’ll be writing a sequel and that I’ll get it done within bla bla months. Except… you know that’s never gonna happen. You know me, heh, I can’t meet a deadline even if the fate of the world depended on it. I perform so bad under pressure. Sometimes I think I subconsciously desire failure, or fear success.
But um… maybe if this book sells really well, I’d do it? Like, if I make $10,000 off it (which equates to 60+ reviews under normal circumstances), I might do it? I dunno. But honestly, I don’t think it’s going to make 10k. I think it’s gonna make around 2,000 to 4,000, cause the opening is not as ‘pulling’. But who really knows? Maybe it will gain a lot of good reviews and then that’ll help pull the reader through a semi-decent opening?
But, first, I have to ask you this: do you think that this novel needs a sequel? Haven’t all the questions been answered? Isn’t it obvious that Yamato is going to defeat the Argonans and win the war, with all the tech that he obtained during the marine assault and how overpowered mobile-pulsars and fighters are? Well… I suppose if I wrote a sequel, I’d make Argonans equally adaptive and as resourceful with the tech they obtained (like having fighters themselves). It really can go both ways.
xxx
This novel was meant to be a standalone. Actually, it wasn’t meant to be a novel at all, but a short story. Actually, now that I think of it, it might be entertaining to you if I told you how this story came to be.
The roots of this story started around 8 years ago, in the 2008-2009 era, when I was a 20-some-old fiction writer just beginning to dabble in the thought of writing books professionally. Back then, the Argonans were called Arconans, and Yamato was Yamata, and he had no first name. The whole story was about 5,000 words and ended abruptly in the same manner I ended all stories at the time, which is that somehow, someway (that has nothing to do with the protagonist’s actions) the good guys win after suffering a blackhole (at least I understood the concept of a black hole or climax at the time — but I didn’t understand how to solve the climax in an entertaining/satisfying way).
Well, around january 2017, I suddenly got the idea that I would rewrite that short story and make it an even better short story. And then I’d publish it on the same website (fictionpress) and it would get loads of reviews saying how much better it was bla bla and I would feel good and have an ego thrill knowing that I had improved since the 8 years in which I wrote the original.
So I wrote a short story… except, at some point, I got greedy and decided I wanted to publish it on amazon. I finished it to a point 25% of this novel (the point where Yamato returns to Sol through the wormhole) and everything looked good. I had a plan to resolve the conflict in another 20k words and then I’d upload it on amazon and it’s over… except I had a sudden impulse to turn this short story into the novel. The main motivation was that:
1) I didn’t know why (and I still don’t) why my short stories (20k words) don’t sell but my novels (60k+ words) do. I have published 1 short story so far on amazon and it booombed so hard and that the incident gave me quite a writer’s block that I couldn’t write consistently. Maybe that short story had a really boring beginning, but I began to think that short stories don’t sell well in general, and that’s partially why I decided to turn Battle of Sol Version 2 (the version you’re reading now) into a novel.
2) The second reason is that I knew I would make a lot more money by charging $2.99 instead of $0.99, and of course there’s the kindle unlimited factor, which pays by pages read.
So I got greedy again, in other words.
… So I began to think about how I could write a novel out of this short story. I planned and planned and plotted and finally got a good idea as to how the novel might go from there (25% done) and how it might end. I knew the ending had to be satisfying to readers so I came up with a really cool ending that changed into another cool ending and then finally another (that I stole from chris nuttall, which was basically using marine landers to take over enemy warships), and for an entire year, that was the ending I set my eyes on and worked towards.
Except when I got there, I suddenly realized that my characters could naturally resolve the main climax (of the titans getting to earth) by simply stabbing at the titan’s drive rings with fighters. So I got really puzzled, because my supercool marine ending was made redundant because if my character don’t take the fighter ending, they’d look stupid… eventually, I decided that the fighter ending wasn’t that bad and so I went with it.
Luckily, I was able to insert the marine boarding party part in the novel still, and honestly, I don’t think it turned out that bad.
xxx
I wrote this novel in a year and a quarter.
One other thing I like to mention is that around the time I migrated all my writing to scrivener (which is at the 33% of this novel mark), my average output per day actually decreased. I guess it’s because I could see how much words I wrote. I have this really poor habit of stopping my writing process when I see 1000 words written. I get all giddy and satisfied that I already wrote 1000 words and then decide I don’t need to write any more for the day. This, combined with the fact that I get a lot of writer’s block to the point where I stop writing for 9-12 days consistently, and that’s why this novel took so long.
Anyway, now you know everything. Well, not everything, that would take pages. But safe to say, I wrote sooo many notes in scrivener (scrivener does help with the note taking and organizing everything) that it would take eons for me to transcribe it here.
One other thing. I have given up the idea of creating a loyal reader base. I know that’s a huge mistake financially, cause I remember seeing somewhere that if you want to succeed as a professional writer, you have to be able to maintain a decent reader base, but it’s so hard to write if I think about outcomes (will my readers like this? How will this book be received? Will it do well financially) that I get blocked (as in writer’s block), so I started thinking only in terms of “I’m just gonna write for fun… for myself”, so that’s my plan.
I hope you read my next novel.
(but you don’t have to)
Lol!
Lee Guo
March 2018
PS: Wouldn’t it be funny if the novel ends and Yamato wakes up and it turns out that it was all a dream all along? (maybe yamato is still sleeping in his quarters?)
Well, in a way, it was my dream, too.
Heyyyyyyy! You made it to the end. Congrats!
Um… so this is the part where I assure you that I’ll be writing a sequel and that I’ll get it done within bla bla months. Except… you know that’s never gonna happen. You know me, heh, I can’t meet a deadline even if the fate of the world depended on it. I perform so bad under pressure. Sometimes I think I subconsciously desire failure, or fear success.
But um… maybe if this book sells really well, I’d do it? Like, if I make $10,000 off it (which equates to 60+ reviews under normal circumstances), I might do it? I dunno. But honestly, I don’t think it’s going to make 10k. I think it’s gonna make around 2,000 to 4,000, cause the opening is not as ‘pulling’. But who really knows? Maybe it will gain a lot of good reviews and then that’ll help pull the reader through a semi-decent opening?
But, first, I have to ask you this: do you think that this novel needs a sequel? Haven’t all the questions been answered? Isn’t it obvious that Yamato is going to defeat the Argonans and win the war, with all the tech that he obtained during the marine assault and how overpowered mobile-pulsars and fighters are? Well… I suppose if I wrote a sequel, I’d make Argonans equally adaptive and as resourceful with the tech they obtained (like having fighters themselves). It really can go both ways.
xxx
This novel was meant to be a standalone. Actually, it wasn’t meant to be a novel at all, but a short story. Actually, now that I think of it, it might be entertaining to you if I told you how this story came to be.
The roots of this story started around 8 years ago, in the 2008-2009 era, when I was a 20-some-old fiction writer just beginning to dabble in the thought of writing books professionally. Back then, the Argonans were called Arconans, and Yamato was Yamata, and he had no first name. The whole story was about 5,000 words and ended abruptly in the same manner I ended all stories at the time, which is that somehow, someway (that has nothing to do with the protagonist’s actions) the good guys win after suffering a blackhole (at least I understood the concept of a black hole or climax at the time — but I didn’t understand how to solve the climax in an entertaining/satisfying way).
Well, around january 2017, I suddenly got the idea that I would rewrite that short story and make it an even better short story. And then I’d publish it on the same website (fictionpress) and it would get loads of reviews saying how much better it was bla bla and I would feel good and have an ego thrill knowing that I had improved since the 8 years in which I wrote the original.
So I wrote a short story… except, at some point, I got greedy and decided I wanted to publish it on amazon. I finished it to a point 25% of this novel (the point where Yamato returns to Sol through the wormhole) and everything looked good. I had a plan to resolve the conflict in another 20k words and then I’d upload it on amazon and it’s over… except I had a sudden impulse to turn this short story into the novel. The main motivation was that:
1) I didn’t know why (and I still don’t) why my short stories (20k words) don’t sell but my novels (60k+ words) do. I have published 1 short story so far on amazon and it booombed so hard and that the incident gave me quite a writer’s block that I couldn’t write consistently. Maybe that short story had a really boring beginning, but I began to think that short stories don’t sell well in general, and that’s partially why I decided to turn Battle of Sol Version 2 (the version you’re reading now) into a novel.
2) The second reason is that I knew I would make a lot more money by charging $2.99 instead of $0.99, and of course there’s the kindle unlimited factor, which pays by pages read.
So I got greedy again, in other words.
… So I began to think about how I could write a novel out of this short story. I planned and planned and plotted and finally got a good idea as to how the novel might go from there (25% done) and how it might end. I knew the ending had to be satisfying to readers so I came up with a really cool ending that changed into another cool ending and then finally another (that I stole from chris nuttall, which was basically using marine landers to take over enemy warships), and for an entire year, that was the ending I set my eyes on and worked towards.
Except when I got there, I suddenly realized that my characters could naturally resolve the main climax (of the titans getting to earth) by simply stabbing at the titan’s drive rings with fighters. So I got really puzzled, because my supercool marine ending was made redundant because if my character don’t take the fighter ending, they’d look stupid… eventually, I decided that the fighter ending wasn’t that bad and so I went with it.
Luckily, I was able to insert the marine boarding party part in the novel still, and honestly, I don’t think it turned out that bad.
xxx
I wrote this novel in a year and a quarter.
One other thing I like to mention is that around the time I migrated all my writing to scrivener (which is at the 33% of this novel mark), my average output per day actually decreased. I guess it’s because I could see how much words I wrote. I have this really poor habit of stopping my writing process when I see 1000 words written. I get all giddy and satisfied that I already wrote 1000 words and then decide I don’t need to write any more for the day. This, combined with the fact that I get a lot of writer’s block to the point where I stop writing for 9-12 days consistently, and that’s why this novel took so long.
Anyway, now you know everything. Well, not everything, that would take pages. But safe to say, I wrote sooo many notes in scrivener (scrivener does help with the note taking and organizing everything) that it would take eons for me to transcribe it here.
One other thing. I have given up the idea of creating a loyal reader base. I know that’s a huge mistake financially, cause I remember seeing somewhere that if you want to succeed as a professional writer, you have to be able to maintain a decent reader base, but it’s so hard to write if I think about outcomes (will my readers like this? How will this book be received? Will it do well financially) that I get blocked (as in writer’s block), so I started thinking only in terms of “I’m just gonna write for fun… for myself”, so that’s my plan.
I hope you read my next novel.
(but you don’t have to)
Lol!
Lee Guo
March 2018
PS: Wouldn’t it be funny if the novel ends and Yamato wakes up and it turns out that it was all a dream all along? (maybe yamato is still sleeping in his quarters?)
Well, in a way, it was my dream, too.