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*Has been known to pass for human.
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The Origin of 12 for ’12
Back in October of 2011, I announced the 12 for ’12 project, in which I planned to attempt to write a short novel every month in 2012. It was a huge success. I broke the dozen books up into four trilogies and ran a Kickstarter drive to fund each. Those drives each smashed through their initial goals and brought in loads of backers. I set off to write them, starting in January.
You’re holding the sixth book in the series — End Times in Dragon City, the third and final book of the Shotguns & Sorcery trilogy — in your hands.
About These Novels
As I mentioned, these novels are a little short. For purposes of 12 for ’12, I defined “novel” as a work of fiction that’s at least 50,000 words. The Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards each define a novel as anything over 40,000 words, but I wanted to be a bit more ambitious.
Fifty thousand words may seem like a lot, but most of my previous novels ranged from 80–100,000 words, so that makes these substantially shorter, more in line with the size of novels that used to get published before the publishing industry made the push for doorstop-sized tomes we see on shelves now that take years to write and months to read.
That’s also, not coincidentally, the number of words writers shoot for during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which happens in November every year. Last year, over 340,000 people gave it a shot, and more than 38,000 actually crossed the finish line on time.
What’s Next?
It’s March of 2013, and I’m still writing the books. In the strictest sense, I missed my goal. As of December 31, 2012, I had managed to write ten novels, nine of which were part of the 12 for ’12 project. The extra one was Leverage: The Con Job, which hit stores at the very end of the year.
The Leverage book clocked in at 80,000 words, so that wound up taking a bit more time than the regular 12 for ’12 books. On top of those, I wrote nine comic book scripts for the Magic: The Gathering comics I write for IDW. I also:
Wrote an unannounced tie-in novelette (10k words)
Finished off a massive story bible for an unannounced game (30k words)
Wrote a short story for the Don’t Rest Your Head anthology Don’t Read This Book (3k words).
Wrote an even shorter story for The Lion and the Aardvark anthology (600 words)
Wrote pitches and samples for new books for which I’m waiting on imminent offers.
All told, that’s well over half a million words of fiction, plus the comic books. Beyond that, I produced and shipped the first four books in the 12 for ’12 series. As you might imagine, there was a bit of a learning curve there.
While I’ve published many books before, that was all in the days before ebooks, so that was a bit of a new world for me. A lot of the skills from the old ways carry over to the new, but I put a lot of trial and error time into getting things exactly right.
If anything, this is where the 12 for ’12 plan fell do
wn. I didn’t estimate the time that book revisions and productions would take very well, and that ate into my writing time. Between that and conventions and spending time with my kids while they were out of school, I didn’t write any books in the middle of the summer, which put me way behind come fall.
Plus, the one time sink I really forgot to think about was running the Kickstarters. They take a tremendous amount of time to do well and sucked up every available brainwave I had while they were going on.
Still, I made a game attempt to catch up, ending the year on a strong note. I stopped producing the books so I could write them, which allowed me to catch up a bit. As you can see by what you’re reading, I’ve started back up on that again now.
To reward my backers for their patience, I’ve been sending them PDFs of my first drafts, something that would normally be reserved for those who backed my Kickstarter drives at higher levels. So far, everyone’s been wonderfully understanding, despite the delays, and I’m grateful for that, as I want to make sure that the final books are as good as they can be. As my friend Mike Selinker says, “It’s late once, but it’s bad forever.”
It seems crazy to say I wrote that much in a year and strictly speaking failed to hit my goals, as insane as they might have been. As of this moment, I still have a book and a half left to write, plus six more (including those) to polish, produce, and release.
Wish me luck.
About the Author
Matt Forbeck has been a full-time creator of award-winning games and fiction since 1989. He has designed collectible card games, roleplaying games, miniatures games, board games, and toys, and has written novels, short fiction, comic books, motion comics, nonfiction, essays, and computer game scripts and stories for companies including Adams Media, Angry Robot, ArenaNet, Atari, Boom! Studios, Del Rey, Games Workshop, IDW, Image Comics, Marvel Comics, Mattel, Penguin, Playmates Toys, Simon & Schuster, Tor.com, Ubisoft, Wired.com, Wizards of the Coast, and WizKids.
Counting this book, he has twenty-three novels published to date, including the award-nominated Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon and the critically acclaimed Amortals and Vegas Knights. His latest work includes the Magic: The Gathering comic book and Leverage: The Con Job, a novel based on the hit TV show. He is currently working to wrap up his 12 for '12 project, in which he's used Kickstarter to help fund writing a dozen novels in 2012.
His projects have been nominated for 28 Origins Awards and won 15. He has also won five ENnies and a Scribe Award. He is a proud member of the Alliterates writers’ group, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, the International Thriller Writers, and the International Game Developers Association.
He lives in Beloit, Wisconsin, with his wife Ann and their children: Marty, Pat, Nick, Ken, and Helen.
And yes, the last four of those are quadruplets, but that’s a whole ’nother story.
For more about him and his work, visit Forbeck.com.
Table of Contents
Title Page
By the Same Author
Copyright page
Dedication
12 for '12 page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Backers
12 for 12
About the Author