StarDoc Turns Ten

In January 2000 my first published novel, StarDoc, was released. Naturally people made a lot of predictions about the book; none of them were particularly optimistic. I was informed upfront that StarDoc would never make a bestseller list, or turn a profit, or stay in print; I would be phenomenally fortunate if I earned back half my advance. I don't think I've ever had my hopes so repeatedly or thoroughly stomped by others as I did that last six months before the book hit the shelves. It was so dreadful that by the time the release date came I wanted to call the whole thing off.

Understandably I was confused when StarDoc made runner-up (#11) on the Locus bestseller list. This was not supposed to be happening, I'd been told, by very experienced people. So I thought it was a fluke until the sequel, Beyond Varallan, did a little better.

Today StarDoc turns ten years old, and despite all the predictions of failure and doom, is still in print and is still selling (the last new copy I saw for sale was a tenth printing.) Whatever other people think of it, this novel is the only book I display like a trophy, in a little case on my wall. It reminds me of what's important, and what isn't. More than anything, this one novel is an ongoing tribute to my StarDoc readership, most of whom have been with me since the beginning. You guys are the reason this book and the series is still around; for that I am astounded and deeply grateful.

In keeping with the anniversary, I have ten copies of StarDoc to give away today. If you'd like a chance to win one, in comments to this post tell me about a memory you have of reading StarDoc, or about an author you've been reading for ten years or more (or if you can't think of anyone, just toss your name in the hat) by midnight EST on Friday, January 8, 2010. I'll draw ten names at random from everyone who participates and send the winners a signed copy of StarDoc with a tenth anniversary notation. This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.

PBW2K Ten

Remember back in April when I talked about PBW hitting the 2000th post mark? Today it officially does, just thirteen days short of the blog's five-year anniversary. The math says I've written on average 400 posts per year since I started this thing.

So now I'm going to shut it down and go live on an island without internet service. It's been fun. Bye!

No, no, just kidding. I won't leave you guys in the forest of Twitterfeeds and static excuse blogs. Besides, deserted islands are overrated. With my luck I'd probably end up on the one from Lost and figure it all out a just few seconds before the black smoke monster gets me.

Seriously: I am very grateful to all of you for keeping me online, and for making PBW so much fun for me and everyone who stops in.

I did want to do something to mark the occasion, so I put together a ten list of posts from the last five years that I think are pretty memorable:

Ten Things from PBW's 2K Archives

Antho'd

Burgers and Birds (and most of them made it.)

Courage

The Devil's Publishing Dictionary, Part I and Part II

All of the Dilemma posts, including the very first one)

John and Marcia, my novel crash test dummies

The Last Samurai Agent

Left Behind & Loving It X 4 years

Novel I: Imagine

Publishing 911

Now, a question for you all: Because the blog is getting so large, and Google has never been very forthcoming on how much space we're allowed to use for our freebie blogs, I'm thinking about converting part of the archives into e-book form and posting them on Scribd.* What do you guys think? Good idea, bad idea, other? Let me know in comments when you have a chance.

**Note 9/3/10: Since Scribd.com instituted an access fee scam to charge people for downloading e-books, including those I have provided for free for the last ten years, I no longer use or recommend using their service. See my post about this scam here.