The Anomaly Trilogy: Volume One, Final Chapter

So I guess I’m at the point I should make some kind of comment about the first volume of the Anomaly Trilogy.

Well, first of all, what happens next?

My intention is now to upload the first volume as an e-book (in various formats) and as a PDF file to my own website and also to Smashwords. I may even upload it to Lulu, although I may not be alone in getting a little frustrated by my attempts to navigate around the site. At that point, the novel will be available to a pretty wide audience in a wide range of formats.

Of course, being a trilogy there are two more volumes to come. I’m still unsure as to what titles to give them. The title “The Battle for the Known Unknown” wasn’t my first choice, but it’s no worse than my original ideas. If this novel should ever be published by a proper publisher, then I think I’d need a discussion about titles. (Although I suspect there’d also be discussion about having too many protagonists, about having a confusing narrative, and whether there wasn’t just a little too much explicit sex).

I think that the most likely outcome is that future titles will also be related to Donald Rumsfeld’s sole positive contribution to philosophy and culture. I sincerely hope that no one would believe that the reference to his press briefing of February 12, 2002 indicates that I have any affection for the man and his policies. In fact, his verbal contributions to world culture would be hilarious (at least in terms of their content) if so many Americans, British, Iraqis and Afghanis hadn’t perished in pursuit of his neocon fantasies.

And now it’s all done and dusted, how is the novel faring?

Well, it’s had different responses in the three places I’ve posted it.

ASSTR.ORG

I’ve had a lot of downloads from my website on asstr.org but no feedback. As I don’t believe that the number of downloads are at all related to the number of contented readers,  I’ll just have to hope that one or two readers did actually enjoy the novel.

Literotica 

This is a website that has given me the immense satisfaction of seeing various chapters rank very highly in their list of Top Lists, but admittedly from not very many votes. I imagine it will soon vanish from sight as it hasn’t gained the momentum to gain a lot more votes to keep it in the public eye for very much longer.

Stories OnLine

This is a website that doesn’t usually award my fiction very high marks, but as I’ve noticed that there’s almost an inverse relationship between quality and popularity on this site I’m not too downcast. However, I have gained a lot of downloads and nearly 300 entries in readers’ library lists, so perhaps I should be more generous to Stories OnLine readers than I generally tend to be. I’ve also got more feedback from them than I have from Literotica or ASSTR.ORG and (as usual) it’s very mixed but most of it is favourable and most of that is thoughtful and insightful.

So, now all that’s left is to see what results I get from Smashwords…

And for those readers who like pictures, here’s another fun one from DeviantArt that’s only tangentially related to my novel:

Sand Dunes by Azazel 1994 (Wu Shuang)