September's FEATURED AUTHOR: The Future of a Franchise?

Today, our Featured Author--C.E. Murphy--shares some thoughts on the Old Races stories and characters... And what may be a way for us to get more of our favorites!

Once upon a time, a young writer named C.E. Murphy wrote some books called The Negotiator trilogy, which were stories of the Old Races. They were the most difficult books she ever wrote, requiring a total of about eleven total rewrites for the three books, and fortunately, after all that work, people liked them quite a lot.

So much, in fact, that they often ask when C.E. will be writing more of them.

The answer is "Eventually, probably," but the truth is, after the massive, massive amount of work that went into those books, I'm still not ready to face novel-length fiction in the Old Races universe.

I have, however, been writing short stories and novellas. There's Five Card Draw, a freebie short story at my website, and "Perchance to Dream", a post-trilogy Janx story, has been published in Dragon's Lure. Those are readily available.

Less available are the novellas I'm writing, and I'm telling you this not to tease you, but so that you'll sign up for my newsletter, which is where first and most blatant news about the novellas tends to turn up.

I've been writing those on commission. Basically, you the reader have the opportunity to buy in to a novella which wouldn't be written at *all* without your patronage. The two that have been commissioned so far are stories about Janx and Daisani, and one of these days I'll write one about Grace O'Malley.

The whole process is a pretty cool and exciting one for a writer. It's a patronage system like in the days of yore, made possible by the internet, and it's most often called "crowdfunding". It's a way for me to reach a direct market of readers, and to write things I wouldn't otherwise write. There's more detail about my experiences with crowdfunding at my blog, but overall I have to say it's a lot of fun and fascinating to me. So if you'd like a chance to buy in to the next Old Races novella, please do sign up for my newsletter and keep an eye on CE Murphy.net, where I post details when the commissions come open!

I personally think crowdfunding is an excellent way for us readers to get more of what we want... And I want Grace. *grin*

Thank you for being such a sport and visiting us this month! I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed having you here.