{"id":4742,"date":"2013-06-20T12:02:04","date_gmt":"2013-06-20T20:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=4742"},"modified":"2013-06-20T12:02:04","modified_gmt":"2013-06-20T20:02:04","slug":"kickstarter-for-the-big-aha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/20\/kickstarter-for-the-big-aha\/","title":{"rendered":"Kickstarter For THE BIG AHA"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The big news today is that I\u2019ve launched a Kickstarter project <\/a>to fund the publication of The Big Aha<\/em>, the novel I\u2019ve been working on for roughly a year. I\u2019m already getting a good response\u2014and thank you for that, dear backers\u2014so I\u2019m optimistic that the project will be funded. Thanks also to Mark Frauenfelder for mentioning the project on BoingBoing<\/a>, which is a huge help.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I plan to publish The Big Aha <\/em>with my own Transreal Books<\/a>. I\u2019ll probably use one of my paintings on the cover, maybe the one above, which I call The Lovers<\/em>, and which depicts the notion of telepathy. I\u2019m still doing some more paintings relating to the book, so it\u2019s not certain I\u2019ll use this one.<\/p>\n

Now, I probably could have placed The Big Aha <\/em>with a commercial publisher\u2014but that\u2019s been getting harder over the last few years, with longer waits, more anxiety, less promotion, less actual editing, less proofreading and smaller advances. Less fun. We\u2019re in a phase shift time, a transition from one era to another. From thuddy dinosaurs to nibbling mammals, maybe.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Going totally indie like this, I feel like I\u2019m escaping into a promised land. Doing the Kickstarter move gives me renewed enthusiasm about making a final push to finish The Big Aha<\/em>. I\u2019ve been working on it off and on for over a year. I wrote the first two chapters early in 2012, and then spent seven months learning how to self-publish, then I got back into The Big Aha <\/em>in the fall of 2012. And now I\u2019m pretty near the end. I\u2019ve been really pushing on the book all spring, and it\u2019s been a little draining.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Something else I want to mention today is that I had a big interview in this month\u2019s issue of Locus<\/em>, the magazine of the SF & fantasy field. I\u2019ve reprinted the story\u2019s lead pages above, and you can read some excerpts free online<\/a>. As it happens, some of the things I talked about in the interview were The Big Aha <\/em>, self-publishing, and the option of using Kickstarter to raise funds for a book launch.<\/p>\n

The interview is by Liza Groen Trombi, who also took the photo of me. Francesca Myman designed the illo, putting one of my paintings in the background. Thanks, guys! And thanks to the younger writer Tim Pratt, also of Locus<\/em>, who gave me some much-needed encouragement about attempting a Kickstarter.<\/p>\n


\n \u201cAnt and UFO,\u201d\u009d oil on canvas, May, 2013, 20\u201d\u009d x 16\u201d\u009d. Click for a larger version of the image.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

One last thing. Near the end of May, I took a couple of days off from the writing and did a quick little painting Ant and UFO<\/em>\u2014the usual suspects. To start with, I searched the web for good images of ants and I found a nice clear drawing in an exterminator\u2019s ad. After I\u2019d painted the ant, I wasn\u2019t sure at first about what else to put in, and then I had the idea of having a tiny UFO\u2014I love paintings UFOs, they\u2019re easy to paint, and they carry a lot of symbolic weight. The ant\u2019s body was at an odd angle, and I had the idea of having her standing on three blades of grass, which made for a nice composition.<\/p>\n

The last few weeks I\u2019ve been planning the final chapters of The Big Aha<\/em>, and gearing up for the Kickstarter launch. Feeling like a chicken with his head cut off, a little bit. Maybe I\u2019ll take a break and do another painting today. I\u2019ve got these meddling semi-divine beings called \u201cgubs\u201d\u009d in The Big Aha<\/em>, and I\u2019d like to paint one of them who\u2019s sitting on a bed in the apartment of my characters Zad and Jane\u2019s apartment, and they kind of wish he\u2019d leave, as he\u2019s a fairly grungy gub, a little like a dappled Gloucestershire pig with a pointed anteater nose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big news today is that I\u2019ve launched a Kickstarter project to fund the publication of The Big Aha, the novel I\u2019ve been working on for roughly a year. I\u2019m already getting a good response\u2014and thank you for that, dear backers\u2014so I\u2019m optimistic that the project will be funded. Thanks also to Mark Frauenfelder for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-the-big-aha"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4742"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4747,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742\/revisions\/4747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}