A few folks have told me they’d like a blog post where I lay out how I make full time writing work finan­cially, and how I was able to make the leap from a “day-job” to my cur­rent half-bohemian/half-military exis­tence. That’s coming, honest. But, for now, I want to tip my hat to the now unde­ni­able for­ward move­ment of this machine I’ve been building over the past decade and a half.

The exact date may vary, but we’re pretty much 22 days away from CONTROL POINT hit­ting stores, and people are starting to talk about the book. It’s an anx­ious time for me. First week sales are impor­tant, and you have to remember that this isn’t just my hobby. My goal has always been to be a full-time pro­fes­sional writer (and serve part-time in the mil­i­tary reserve), so there’s a lot of hand-wringing and tea-leaf-reading as I try to see how things are shaking out.

Here’s what I can tell/control to date:

- 11 reviews have been pub­lished thus far, with more inbound. The gen­eral con­sensus is pretty damn positive.

- Fan­tasy Book Review listed CONTROL POINT as its most antic­i­pated read for 2012.

- A slew of guest posts and inter­views should be coming out in between the time you read this blog post and the time the book is released.

- 218 people have added it on goodreads. 19 people have rated and 12 have reviewed it. The average rating is 4.58 stars out of a pos­sible 5.

- Trying to read amazon​.com sales rank­ings is always a bit of alchemy, but a recent dis­cus­sion with my agent left me thinking that pro­vided your Kindle edi­tion sales ranking is staying con­sis­tently above 75,000, that means you’re moving copies fairly reg­u­larly. CONTROL POINT has been above that number steadily since the turn of the year. Near as I can tell, people are pre-ordering.

- I have booked myself for every con I can rea­son­ably afford. This weekend will see me at Arisia. The fol­lowing weekend, I’ll be at Con­fu­sion. In Feb­ruary I’ll be at Boskone. In May, I’ll be at Balticon (where I’m up for the Compton-Crook Award). I’m already booked for World Fan­tasy Con and am trying to decide on whether I’ll go to Worldcon or Drag­onCon. I’m strongly con­sid­ering going to San Diego Comic Con if I can pos­sibly afford it. Some of this is just plain fun. I’m a fanboy at heart and going to cons is a blast for me, but it’s also a chance for me to interact with fans and get the word out about my book.

- And *finally*, today, I got to hold the fin­ished, printed book in my hand. It was a pretty amazing moment. You have to remember that, since I was a kid, I have wanted to be a fan­tasy writer. This book rep­re­sents the cul­mi­na­tion of 15 years of serious adult labor, and over 30 years of child­hood dreams that never quit.

The real, no-joking, true-life, actual book

I am tweeting and posting to Face­book and blog­ging. I am doing every­thing I can to get the buzz going and keep it going. I am saying yes to every request to review, inter­view or guest blog. I am doing the best I can to con­nect with fans and get them inter­ested in what I have to say. I have written the best book I know how. I am con­tin­uing to hone my craft and try to make each sequel better than the book that came before.

I can’t pre­dict how it’ll all shake out. But if this book falls flat on its face, it won’t be because I didn’t give it every­thing I had.