Does anyone know where Scott Pigg went?

I hope I end up deleting this post later, but my friends are worried, so here goes.

Some of you may not know that I am heavily involved in the podcasting community. I trade voice work with a number of fiction podcasts, and I podcast my own novels (you can find them in iTunes).

Scott Pigg is a contributor to many episodes of one of my favorite short fiction podcasts, the Dunesteef. He's a foley artist and frequent collaborator with Bryan on HG world. He accepted the Parsec for HG world along with Bryan last year at Dragon Con.

Scott was in the midst of working on a project with Bryan, when he just disappeared. He said he would send in lines the next day, and then 6 weeks passed without a word. He does not respond to email or Facebook messages, including the "Are you alive?" kind of messages. This is not like him. Bryan has taken to scanning the obituaries daily. Folks are really worried. Has birthday came up recently, and lots of people wished him happy birthday on Facebook, but he did not say a thing. If anyone knows where he's gone, please say so.

We're really hopping that there's a logical explanation and perhaps a funny story behind this. Please tell us if you know he's OK. If there's some reason he needed to be gone for a while, we understand; we just want to know he's alright.

Email Alerts for New Books

Whenever I release something new, I send out an alert on twitter and facebook. I'll eventually talk about it on the podcast, and I usually make an announcement here as well. However, I know that sometimes, people who'd like to hear about my stories don't see those announcements. They fly by on a busy day, drop off people's walls or twitter streams, and people just don't notice.

So, I'm compiling a mailing list. I've been resistant to this idea in the past, because direct email seems spammy to me. However, I personally subscribe to email updates for a number of my favorite authors, and I never feel spammed when they tell me about a new book, so I guess it can be a good thing.

The only time I'll use this list is when I release something new. Whether the new content is text or audio, free or paid, adult, young adult, or children’s stories, you’ll get an email about it if you stay subscribed. I doubt you'll get more than a few emails per year, and it's easy to unsubscribe.

The subscription sign up is on the right. Thanks so much for supporting my work!

Good-bye, 2011

So, this year… It’s been a strange one for me. Some once-in-lifetime awesome stuff has happened, and some (one would hope) once-in-a-lifetime awful stuff has happened.

The awful stuff included leaving my first anesthesia job unexpectedly amid a sea of nasty politics, teaching myself a new practice style (travel work) under great financial pressure, working a lot of 16-hour days in Portland, and somehow hurting my back such that I haven’t been able to sit comfortably for 4 months and may have to have surgery this year. I haven’t been home in 6 months and spent the holidays alone in a hotel. I haven’t seen 2 of my cats since I left, and I feel like I don’t have a home anymore.

The awesome stuff included being on hand for the birth of my nephew, Morgan (first child of my only sibling), still loving the actual practice of anesthesia (even if politics and hours sometimes suck), getting to live in Portland again—hiking its woods, seeing my friends there, eating the wonderful food—even if I was living out of a suitcase, attending a fantastic first Balticon where I spent time with some of my favorite creative people and felt like a rock star for a few days, winning a Parsec with Bryan Lincoln for Fullcast, and having a successful first year in eBooks.

There was other stuff, but those were the highlights. I’m hoping for a less bumpy 2012, but right now, it looks uncertain.

In creative accomplishments, I produced Book 3 of Cowry Catchers in audio (and dealt with the backlash). I also put together the audio for the various Crossroads stories and released that collection on Podiobooks.com near the end of the year. Starting in Dec of 2010 and over the course of 2011, I put out 10 eBooks. I made 2 of them free (the first books in 2 series) and the rest are for sale. If you look to the right on this blog, you will see them. Four of those books are illustrated, and this involved special challenges. I’ve gotten about a third of the illustrations for Book 4 of Cowry Catchers and they are *awesome.* :D

In actual writing, starting in November, I got through about 35,500 words of the rewrite for Hunters Unlucky. I finished Part 2 (of the 6 Part story), and I’m pleased with how that’s going. It’s shaping up to be a book that I think a lot of people will enjoy.

I also wrote the most icky short story I’ve ever produced (where do these things come from??)—“Kittens: Free to Good Home”—which has yet to find a buyer.

In the interests of helping other self-publishers, I provide numbers. These are my sales so far. This includes only books sold, no freebies. It includes sales on Amazon, BN, SW, and (a very few) on CreateSpace.

• Dec: 36
• Jan: 31
• Feb: 88
• March: 271
• April: 180
• May: 352
• June: 359
• July: 363
• August: 296
• Sept: 208
• Oct: 184
• Nov: 205
• Dec: 359

Total = 2932

For the money, I track only what has actually dropped into my bank account. All distributors pay 2 months behind. Consequently, the payments I’ve received represent only books sold through Oct. Nov and Dec are not included. With that in mind, my overall expenses for publishing (in text and audio) since 2007 when I started commissioning illustrations have been $13,021.68. My gross income has been $5,051.16. About $1,000 of that came from sales of audio short stories, donations on my site and on Podiobooks.com, and other little stuff. The other $4,000 came from eBooks.

Included in that 13K is almost $500 in royalties paid to artists this year. That was above and beyond their upfront asking price for their art, which I also paid. No artist asks for or expects royalties, but it was something I wanted to do for the illustrators of the Cowry Catchers books. I volunteered to pay them 25% of what the distributor gave me for the first 3 years the book is available, split between them according to the number of illustrations they did (calculated for each book). Stupid of me? Maybe a little. I doubt I will break even on those books before the 3 years are up, but I don’t think artists get paid enough, and I wanted people working on the books to have a vested interest in them after the work was over.

Through Oct, my average income per book sold was $1.70 (and really somewhat less, because that doesn’t take into account the royalties I pay my artists). I was making $300-$600 per month. However, towards the end of Oct, the Cowry Catchers Complete 5-Book Series hit the virtual shelves, and that had a pretty big impact on the money. It’s a $10 book. I get about $6.60 per book sold, and it’s not illustrated, so I’m not paying royalties to artists.

In addition, sales picked up towards Christmas. Although they didn’t top the summer numbers, I was making a lot more per book. I estimate I made something over $1500 in Nov and Dec, so total income through 2011 will look something more like $6500—right at half of my total expenditures since 2007. Most of that money was made in a single year of eBooks, while the expenditures were gradual over 5 years.

Is this success? Well, I think so! I’m not sure that I’ll be in the black by the end of 2012. I still have to pay for the illustrations for Book 5 and half of those for Book 4. However, I would be very surprised if I’m not in the black by 2013. I will then have the dubious distinction of paying taxes on this little venture.

Will I achieve my ultimate goal of working 20-30 hours a week in the OR and spending the rest of my time writing for a solid part-time income? For the first time in my life, I see how to do it. Might take 5 years. Might take 10. I’d be 44 by then. Still young enough to be an anomaly. :)

Like all creative people, I’ve got a shopping list of goals for 2012. Whether I accomplish them depends on what kind of curve balls life throws me. Here’s what I’d like to do:

Finish 3 novels – Hunters Unlucky, The Scarlet Albatross, and the Holovarus book (not it’s real name, also probably a novella). I’d like to get 2 of these polished and released as ebooks. The third could be written, but I don’t think it’ll get edited until next year.

I’d like to write 4 short stories in the Panamindorah universe, produce them in audio, and put them up quarterly as paid content. I wanted to do this last year, but then life happened.

I’d like to write at least 2 short stories that are either not Panamindorah-related or are very different from what I’ve done previously, for a total of 6 shorts.

I’d also like to produce Book 4 of Cowry Catchers in audio. Possibly start on Book 5, but I’d be happy if I got Book 4 out the door.

A big thank you to all of you folks who bought my work, listened to the podcasts, left reviews, posted on the forums, volunteered your voices, sent encouraging emails, tweeted and retweeted, favorited and friended and shared. You are the reason these projects are successful, the reason I keep throwing myself at those goals even when life gets in the way. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your enthusiasm and support. Have a wonderful 2012!

Hunters, Crossroads, and Sketches for Cowry Catchers Book 4

Well, November is over, and I didn’t get through 50,000 words of Hunters. I got through 25,900, and I shortened the manuscript by about 3,000.

I can see why people usually do first drafts for NaNo. In that case, just laying down words is a useful activity. When you’re working on a near-final draft, they have to be the right words or it’s counter-productive. Still, I got back into the habit of writing everyday, which I haven’t done since anesthesia school. 1,000 words a day is a good speed for me and not stressful. I had a lot of stuff going on this month as I deal with an unexpected health problem, have early holidays with my family, try to help my brother and sister-in-law with a new baby, prepare to transition to a new travel assignment in Maryland, and try to spend time with my friends in Portland before I leave. I didn’t put too much priority on NaNo, and I’m happy with what I still managed to get done. You will continue to see updates to Hunters on this site until it’s finished.

Over the last few days, I stopped working on Hunters to focus on something that I’ve been trying to get off my plate all year—the audio version of Crossroads, the Panamindorah short story collection. I *finally* got it done. This will be a Podiobooks.com exclusive. It includes 2 stories that have only ever been paid content until now (Night in the Crystal City and Professionals). The version of Professionals in the free audiobook will be my solo read. The fullcast version is still in my online store, but I’ve lowered the price to $2. The audio for Crystal City has not been available anywhere since Feb. All the files have been uploaded to Libsyn, and all related info is with Evo. He’ll schedule the book whenever he gets time, probably in the next couple of weeks.

You’d think that Crossroads would not be a big project, since all the stories were already recorded. And it wasn’t a *big* project, but it did require about 10 hours of focused attention. It needed overall book-ends of audio from me, and the individual stories needed intros and outros with an author’s note, giving some context and background. I want people unfamiliar with my books to be able to enjoy them. Most of the stories were also tangled up with other audio, which had to be clipped and spliced. The overall sound quality varies a lot, but I think they’re still enjoyable. I’ll make another announcement when the book is actually up at Podiobooks.com.

In addition, I spent several days this week with Rah Cloutier (who lives in Portland), working on sketches for Cowry Catchers Book 4. They go a lot faster when I’m there in person to throw out ideas and say “this and not that.” CC4 is going to have some beautiful artwork! Here’s a teaser:

How to get an exact word count for highlights in Word

Here's a tidbit that may be useful to some of my fellow podcasters. I was talking to Bryan Lincoln about it recently on Fullcast Podcast. Occasionally, you may need to get a word-count for a voice actor's lines. This happens most often when you are paying them, either per word or as a percent of the total lines. Or maybe you're just curious about who has more lines. ;)

My method only works if you've got a separte file for each voice actor. If you highlight all the lines in a single file using different colors, then I don't know how to help you. If someone else knows how to get a word-count in such a document, I'm all ears. Word can search for hilights, but as far as I know, it can't search for specific colors.

Assuming you've only hilighted the lines of a single voice actor within the document, do the following:

1. Save a new copy (or just make sure you don’t overwrite your file).

2. Go to “Find and Replace” (Control+H in Word 2010. I think it might be Control+F in older versions).

3. Open the "More" Dropdown menu.

4. Put your curser in the “Find What” box (but don't write anything), and click “Format.”

5. Select “Highlight" once, then select it AGAIN. Under “Find what,” it will then say “Format: “Not Highlight.”

6. Do not write anything in the “Replace with” box.

7. Hit “Replace All.” You are replacing all non-highlighted text with nothing.

8. Do a word count, and you’re done. Remember not to overwrite your original file!

Update 12/17/11 - Bryan Lincoln sent me this, which might also be helpful to anyone using Open Office:

I was playing around with this a little in Open Office (no Word on this computer) and I found I could do specific colors. I didn't find a "Not Highlight" anywhere, but I could do the following:

Edit: Select all (might not be needed but I did it anyway)

Edit: Find and replace

Under More Options, select Format

Under the background tab, choose the highlight color

Don't put anything into the "Search For" field, and select "Find all"

Hit close (the find/replace menu is now gone...all the highlighted text of the chosen color is now selected. Very Useful!)

Edit:Copy

File:New Document

Paste into the new document and do a word count.

Alternatively, with all the highlighted text selected, you can remove the highlights of a single color all at once. So if you highlight each character with a different color, you could turn off the colors one at a time. Would be nice if I could remove all highlights EXCEPT for one color, but I don't see a way to do that.

Not sure if this help you with Word at all, but I thought I'd share what I found.