Buying Time to Write a Novel
Donation protected
Women spies! Genderbent playwrights! An alternate/secret history novel in progress!
The What (The Short Version):
I'm raising funds (up two months worth of expenses to buy time away from the necessity of taking on freelance gigs for the next litle while) toward having time to finish writing the book I'm working on. As well as have time to do more research for the book in question. This book (by virtue of somewhat raw workup jacket copy):
"It’s the year 1600, the twilight of Elizabeth I’s reign and the dawn of a new century.
Seven years since Kit (Katharine) Marlowe left her former masquerade as Christopher Marlowe behind to continue her service as agent to the Queen under royal spymaster Lord Robert Cecil. While Anne Shakespeare is just trying to live her life as the playwright her husband, William, pretends to be at her request; keep alive her closest friend Kit’s legacy along with her own career; raise her surviving children; and forget how much she misses the spy’s life she left behind to have them.
That is, until Kit calls on Anne to recruit her for one last job: to stop The Zealot, once in the service of Mary, Queen of Scots; a Catholic fanatic both playwrights thought two decades dead. A fanatic who seeks to call up forsaken powers to put an end not just to the crown, but to the nation itself; for if a royal of the true faith cannot lead them, then there shall be no nation left to rule."
The Expanded What:
I'm writing a queer, bi-racial Kit Marlowe -- who lived her life as a man until she faked her own death (after an injury that left her unable to create new work and made the persona of "Christopher" a constant, painful reminder thereof). And then kept on working as a spy in service to Queen and country, and went on to aid her best friend and former colleague, Anne Shakespeare, in bettering her own craft. Alongside a positive portrayal of Anne Shakespeare -- as the best portrayals in past have been; a portrayal of Anne as the one who wrote the plays while Will fronted. An Anne who retired from her life as a spy when she became pregnant. And misses it horribly.
The story casting the two principal characters as best friends, formerly partnered spies, exceptionally intelligent playwrights, and the public rivalry of their work an orchestrated show to keep Kit's legacy alive. All set in the London of the turn of the 17th century, while a fanatical Catholic spy who's been building her own network of women spies for twenty years returns to make England pay for its rejection of the true faith. Via supernatural chaos and calamity.
The book's an alt history cum spy thriller cum secret history (as in the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. use of the term, so we're discussing active supernatural elements). Had originally planned a stand alone novel. Turned into the first book of a series. As books sometimes do.
I'm reasonably well versed with the (actual) history of the characters, as well as the period's racial and social demographics (which I'm modifying -- London of 1600 is more diverse than it's usually depicted, but I'm writing a book/series primarily focused on women and people of colour, so I'm upping those historically statistical representations), and the period's religious and political realities, but I've not been reading deeply around any of this for ten years. So I'm catching up on a decade's worth of scholarship, across the board. Hence the mention of this campaign as buying time needed to research as well as write.
The Who and the Why:
I'm a genderfluid graduate of Clarion West (around which I did some previous fundraising on GoFundMe), have fiction published or forthcoming in venues like Nightmare, Grendelsong, Ideomancer, Stone Telling, and a small host of anthologies. My own first anthology as editor, The Humanity of Monsters, came out in autumn of 2015. I work as a professional reviewer, mostly for Publishers Weekly these days. I've been a managing editor, a submissions editor, and more frequently a consulting editor on and off over the years.
But I work primarily as a freelance editor and writer. I spend a fair amount of my time either looking for work or working. And I write around the freelance gigs, by necessity. Not always an ideal arrangement, since I frequently work 12-18 hour days when on deadline. And writing a book around that is decidedly a less than ideal situation. So I'm trying to clear a bit of work off my plate for long enough to pull this book together.
Largely because this project has colonized my headspace. (Been working on it just over two weeks around the freelancing, and as of making this campaign live I've amassed about 14,000 words of writing, scene blocking, plot outlining, and other notes.) I'm primarily a short story writer, so when a project comes up I can take a day or two or three and just go at it hammer and tongs and get the preliminary version done around the freelancing. Not so much with a novel. Balancing the time between writing this book and attending to the current slate of freelancing projects is proving difficult. So we're going to try this experiment as a possible answer to that problem.
Some Additional Whys, and Some How:
That goal number is an ideal. ($3,500 is two months of my rent/expenses + GoFundMe's 8% cut, rounded up.) If we hit it, great. If not, whatever does get raised still allows me to take at least some time away from freelancing gigs to work more intently on the book. And if more than that goal line gets raised, then that's still more time for me to work on this book and start making some headway with the others. Ultimately, one of the reasons I really like using GoFundMe is that you can withdraw available funds at any time, making crowdfunding this way highly flexible, and access to those funds can be immediately beneficial.
Now, because this is a project I aim to start trying to sell somewhere once finished, I can't excerpt from it here. So I can't offer that in exchange for any donations toward doing this. But since I do want to thank people for helping get me the time to do this, here's what I can offer instead:
1. Everyone who donates any amount will get an acknowledgement in the published book. (Yes, I am choosing to be optimistic.)
2. For a $50 donation I'm offering to have a conversation (via whatever method works best for all concerned) about any aspect of the publishing industry you want.
3. For a $100 donation I'll provide a substantive/line edit & critique of a short story or excerpt of a longer work (up to 10,000 words).
Scheduling for options 2 and 3 will be arranged on a case by case basis. And to take advantage of either of those, you can use the buttons in the "Select a Reward Level" widget.
Every donation helps, so you can contribute whatever you want. Doesn't have to be those options; do what works for you.
I'm already writing the book, so anything that comes in helps immediately. And, mostly, I'm just grateful for any help people are willing and able to provide. As well as any instance of people feeling free to spread the word about this project.
The What (The Short Version):
I'm raising funds (up two months worth of expenses to buy time away from the necessity of taking on freelance gigs for the next litle while) toward having time to finish writing the book I'm working on. As well as have time to do more research for the book in question. This book (by virtue of somewhat raw workup jacket copy):
"It’s the year 1600, the twilight of Elizabeth I’s reign and the dawn of a new century.
Seven years since Kit (Katharine) Marlowe left her former masquerade as Christopher Marlowe behind to continue her service as agent to the Queen under royal spymaster Lord Robert Cecil. While Anne Shakespeare is just trying to live her life as the playwright her husband, William, pretends to be at her request; keep alive her closest friend Kit’s legacy along with her own career; raise her surviving children; and forget how much she misses the spy’s life she left behind to have them.
That is, until Kit calls on Anne to recruit her for one last job: to stop The Zealot, once in the service of Mary, Queen of Scots; a Catholic fanatic both playwrights thought two decades dead. A fanatic who seeks to call up forsaken powers to put an end not just to the crown, but to the nation itself; for if a royal of the true faith cannot lead them, then there shall be no nation left to rule."
The Expanded What:
I'm writing a queer, bi-racial Kit Marlowe -- who lived her life as a man until she faked her own death (after an injury that left her unable to create new work and made the persona of "Christopher" a constant, painful reminder thereof). And then kept on working as a spy in service to Queen and country, and went on to aid her best friend and former colleague, Anne Shakespeare, in bettering her own craft. Alongside a positive portrayal of Anne Shakespeare -- as the best portrayals in past have been; a portrayal of Anne as the one who wrote the plays while Will fronted. An Anne who retired from her life as a spy when she became pregnant. And misses it horribly.
The story casting the two principal characters as best friends, formerly partnered spies, exceptionally intelligent playwrights, and the public rivalry of their work an orchestrated show to keep Kit's legacy alive. All set in the London of the turn of the 17th century, while a fanatical Catholic spy who's been building her own network of women spies for twenty years returns to make England pay for its rejection of the true faith. Via supernatural chaos and calamity.
The book's an alt history cum spy thriller cum secret history (as in the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. use of the term, so we're discussing active supernatural elements). Had originally planned a stand alone novel. Turned into the first book of a series. As books sometimes do.
I'm reasonably well versed with the (actual) history of the characters, as well as the period's racial and social demographics (which I'm modifying -- London of 1600 is more diverse than it's usually depicted, but I'm writing a book/series primarily focused on women and people of colour, so I'm upping those historically statistical representations), and the period's religious and political realities, but I've not been reading deeply around any of this for ten years. So I'm catching up on a decade's worth of scholarship, across the board. Hence the mention of this campaign as buying time needed to research as well as write.
The Who and the Why:
I'm a genderfluid graduate of Clarion West (around which I did some previous fundraising on GoFundMe), have fiction published or forthcoming in venues like Nightmare, Grendelsong, Ideomancer, Stone Telling, and a small host of anthologies. My own first anthology as editor, The Humanity of Monsters, came out in autumn of 2015. I work as a professional reviewer, mostly for Publishers Weekly these days. I've been a managing editor, a submissions editor, and more frequently a consulting editor on and off over the years.
But I work primarily as a freelance editor and writer. I spend a fair amount of my time either looking for work or working. And I write around the freelance gigs, by necessity. Not always an ideal arrangement, since I frequently work 12-18 hour days when on deadline. And writing a book around that is decidedly a less than ideal situation. So I'm trying to clear a bit of work off my plate for long enough to pull this book together.
Largely because this project has colonized my headspace. (Been working on it just over two weeks around the freelancing, and as of making this campaign live I've amassed about 14,000 words of writing, scene blocking, plot outlining, and other notes.) I'm primarily a short story writer, so when a project comes up I can take a day or two or three and just go at it hammer and tongs and get the preliminary version done around the freelancing. Not so much with a novel. Balancing the time between writing this book and attending to the current slate of freelancing projects is proving difficult. So we're going to try this experiment as a possible answer to that problem.
Some Additional Whys, and Some How:
That goal number is an ideal. ($3,500 is two months of my rent/expenses + GoFundMe's 8% cut, rounded up.) If we hit it, great. If not, whatever does get raised still allows me to take at least some time away from freelancing gigs to work more intently on the book. And if more than that goal line gets raised, then that's still more time for me to work on this book and start making some headway with the others. Ultimately, one of the reasons I really like using GoFundMe is that you can withdraw available funds at any time, making crowdfunding this way highly flexible, and access to those funds can be immediately beneficial.
Now, because this is a project I aim to start trying to sell somewhere once finished, I can't excerpt from it here. So I can't offer that in exchange for any donations toward doing this. But since I do want to thank people for helping get me the time to do this, here's what I can offer instead:
1. Everyone who donates any amount will get an acknowledgement in the published book. (Yes, I am choosing to be optimistic.)
2. For a $50 donation I'm offering to have a conversation (via whatever method works best for all concerned) about any aspect of the publishing industry you want.
3. For a $100 donation I'll provide a substantive/line edit & critique of a short story or excerpt of a longer work (up to 10,000 words).
Scheduling for options 2 and 3 will be arranged on a case by case basis. And to take advantage of either of those, you can use the buttons in the "Select a Reward Level" widget.
Every donation helps, so you can contribute whatever you want. Doesn't have to be those options; do what works for you.
I'm already writing the book, so anything that comes in helps immediately. And, mostly, I'm just grateful for any help people are willing and able to provide. As well as any instance of people feeling free to spread the word about this project.
Organizer
Michael Matheson
Organizer
Toronto, ON
