Title: Glynn Stewart on Science Fiction Fantasy
Source: This content originally appeared in audio format on the Creative Writing Career Podcast, available on Player.FM and on iTunes.
Interviewer: Justin Sloan
Summary: “Author Glynn Stewart discusses his science fiction / fantasy series. Glynn Stewart is the author of the Castle Federation and Starship’s Mage space opera series. Writing managed to liberate him from being an accountant before he lost all personality, and he now lives in Kitchener, Ontario with his wife and their demanding cats.
“Check out his recent book with Terry Mixon – HEART OF VENGEANCE. And one of my new favorite books, STARSHIP’S MAGE, with over 300 amazing reviews.”
Length: 6,100 words (transcript); 33 minutes (podcast)
TRANSCRIPT:
Narrator: Welcome to the Creative Writing Career podcast where you learn how to make writing more than a hobby. Make it a career. And here are your hosts, Stephan Bugaj, Justin Sloan, and Kevin Tumlinson.
Justin: Hello everybody, Justin here. Kevin and Stephan are not available today. Sometimes they join us on the show but today they’re off saving the world, but we have a special guest to fill their shoes and moreso. So today we have Glynn Stewart who’s a writer of a lot of awesome kinds of science fiction/fantasy, also just science fiction, I believe, and he can tell us more about that.
Justin: I’ve only read your science fiction/fantasy, the Starship’s Mage book so far, and have loved it. So I wanted to make sure we chat about that and everything, but go ahead and introduce yourself Glynn, and tell us some more about yourself.
Glynn: Okay, this is the fun question of “what do you want to know?” Currently, as of today, I’m the author or co-author of five ongoing series, the Starship’s Mage series that you mentioned, the Castle Federation space opera military series, the Duchy of Terra space opera military series, the ONSET urban fantasy series, and, now, the Vigilante space adventure series with Terry Mixon.
Justin: Nice.
Glynn: And with the launch of the first Vigilante’s book, I think I’m now at 18 novels out.
Justin: Pretty sweet.
Glynn: Including two fantasies. I launched my first book, the first novella of what became the Starship’s Mage novel, on December 15, 2013.
Justin: I was going to ask about that, because you have it still as episodes in there. So it came out as episodes first, and then you later decided to repackage it as one book?
Glynn: It came out as episodes, one every three months for a year, and then when I released the fifth one I also released an omnibus of all five. And then, as time went on, there was actually a book two and book three. There started to be some confusion between people who read, somehow, episode one, book two, then episode three. And they were complaining in reviews that things didn’t make sense and I just went, whatever, and took down the episodes eventually.
Justin: But were they selling well enough on their own? So it wasn’t like a rebranding strategy or anything?
Glynn: No. Basically, it was primarily around the royalty difference on Amazon, between a $0.99 book and a $2.99 book.
Justin: And you were doing $0.99 before?
Glynn: All the novellas were $0.99 cents, and the compilation was $3.99. I actually made significantly more money if someone bought the compilation, while they were actually spending less money.
Justin: I think it’s five dollars, and then you’d get, like, $0.30 cents on the dollar or something like that.
Glynn: Exactly.
Justin: So it’s not a huge difference, but it’s better for the reader and then it’s a little difference.
Glynn: Exactly.
Justin: That’s cool.
Glynn: Yeah, it was better for everybody involved to have it as a omnibus.
Justin: I’d love to hear from the author’s side. I have a buddy who has some episodes out, kind of like this. They’re amazing, I love them, and he’s been debating whether he should repackage it. He does not have a book two and three like you talked about. Do you have any thoughts on that? Like, advising somebody else on the value of one versus the other?
Glynn: My suggestion would be to, at least for a while, have both. I always knew with Starship’s Mage it was going to be five episodes and that was going to be a book. So I knew exactly the point at which it was going to be bundled up, so that made that part of it easier.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: But I would say that once you’ve completed, say, an arc of episodes, however many that happens to be, you probably want to have both the episodes and the bundle available in parallel for about a year.
Justin: Yours follows a complete arc like you said. What if two of them are an arc, one’s kind of by itself, two are another kind of mini-arc. Do you think that would confuse people?
Glynn: Yeah, that is a harder choice to say as far as what to bundle.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: Really, the question there isn’t so much, “Do you want to bundle?” Because there’s a lot of advantage both to the author and the reader for bundling it. It’s a question of, “What do you bundle?” Do you bundle all five and present it as, “This is an entire series in one book,” so to speak, or do you bundle the individual arcs together? That’s a difficult one and that’s not one where someone who hasn’t read the books really should be making a recommendation.
Justin: Yeah, I actually did the same thing with my first fantasy books. I released them as episodes, and I even talk about it in my non-fiction book, about why I did that. And then later, after the fact, changed it and it came back out. And that’s Land of Gods now, and book two. It was this weird thing where the first five episodes were like Land of Gods plus a little bit of book two. So it completely changed in my case.
Glynn: Yeah.
Justin: And then book 3, and now book 4 soon, and all that stuff. So, I feel you.
Glynn: That’s how it goes.
Justin: So, are any of your series complete? As in, you’re in the final book in any of the series and you’ll never have another one?
Glynn: Technically, the Starship’s Mage series is complete.
Justin: Okay.
Glynn: Technically. But it’s complicated.
Justin: Yeah, like if we bribed you enough money right now, you might consider …
Glynn: Well, no, the original Starship’s Mage arc covers a specific series of events from, basically, Damien Montgomery getting dragged into galactic politics to galactic politics exploding in everybody’s face.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: The aftermath of galactic politics exploding in everybody’s face is a different series. But it’s still continuing Damien Montgomery’s story. So there will be a Starship’s Mage: UnArcana Rebellions series, which is a sequel series to the Starship’s Mage series.
Justin: But you’re not gonna list them on Amazon in the same series page?
Glynn: Probably not, no, because they’re intended to be… someone should be able to pick up the first book of that series and not need to have read Starship’s Mage.
Justin: Yeah, that’s cool. I like this. This is something I play with a lot, too.
Glynn: And there’s a side series I’m writing right now based on some of the characters from the first book that is the same: someone should be able to pick Interstellar Mage, book one of the Red Falcon series, and not need to have read the Starship’s Mage series for it to make sense.
Justin: Yeah. So I wanted to look at this also from the fan perspective. I always try to do that, too, because a lot of us are fans first, authors or whatever second. OR maybe vice-versa, but either way we’re strong fans. And so, looking back at those books, and then we’ll look at some of your newer ones, too, I wanted to talk about the idea of science fiction/fantasy. I think I came across you first in one of these Facebook groups, and we had talked briefly about it, like just a comment, you know.
Glynn: Yeah.
Justin: And talking about, like, Star Wars is popular, and that’s kind of science fiction and fantasy, or science fiction with a little bit of magic thrown in.
Glynn: Yes.
Justin: So I wanted to chat about your inspiration and why you started with that as a concept.
Glynn: It’s always hard, coming back from four years later, to go, “Where did this concept come from?” Because it started as a short story I wrote, and I think it was in response to the page on TV tropes on A Wizard Did It, where you’re basically hand-waving so much stuff it may as well just be magic.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: So I wrote a short story where a ship was propelled through space by magic. And my agent at the time asked me to see if I could expand it and I kind of waffled on it because I really didn’t have, at that point, any faith in doing anything, really, in terms of publishing. And then my wife, who offered to do cover art for it, talked me into doing the series of novellas that became Starship’s Mage. She would do the cover art for them, and we could self-publish them. It seems to have worked now.
Justin: Yeah. Going back to that a second, you had an agent. Are you traditionally published as well?
Glynn: I’m traditionally published in audio.
Justin: Oh, okay.
Glynn: But not in paper or eBooks.
Justin: But you had an agent before you published anything?
Glynn: I did, yes.
Justin: Okay. And how did you go about it? Did you do the general query thing, or …?
Glynn: The agent was a friend of mine.
Justin: Nice. Do you still have that agent, or an agent?
Glynn: I still have that agent, but I’m no longer really pursuing traditional publishing. He’s kind of just chasing down the last few contacts he still has on a couple of books.
Justin: Okay. So for listeners who don’t write, who are wondering, like, “Why would this guy self-publish instead of traditionally publish?” What is your response to that as an author talking to your readers?
Glynn: I’m a control freak.
Justin: Okay.
Glynn: By self-publishing I control everything. Like, my wife actually runs the publishing company side of things at this point. She’s the CEO of Faolan’s Pen Publishing, Inc. The titles are kind of in flux right now, ’cause we just made that change relatively recently, but she runs the actual company. And the company buys the books from me. And they do the eBooks and the texts. I write the books, and then there is a corporation that actually has the interface with Amazon. I own half that corporation, my wife owns half that corporation. She does most of the actual administration, etc., of that company, and that company has a license to publish the books that I write.
Justin: Yeah. How about like marketing and doing Facebook ads? Is that her then, or are you pretty much doing it all?
Glynn: That’s a mix between us.
Justin: Okay, yeah. I keep trying to get my wife to do all that for me, but she’s not all about it yet. One of these days.
Glynn: My wife’s background is public relations and marketing, so …
Justin: Nice. That’s good.
Glynn: And art.
Justin: Yeah, that works out well. I think my wife has an MBA, but I keep trying to convince her that this is a real business, but she’s like, “I wanna start my businesses.” I’m like, “This is … I have a business.” But, yeah.
Glynn: My writing paid for our house, so it’s a lot easier to sell this as being a real business.
Justin: Yeah. We’re on our way there, but not quite yet, especially in San Francisco area. If you’re writing pays for your house, you’re doing damn good.
Glynn: Yeah. My writing wouldn’t pay for a house in San Francisco.
Justin: Maybe soon. Or at this point, maybe, three years later.
Glynn: Yeah.
Justin: It’s crazy here. That would be a whole podcast of me just whining and swearing.
Glynn: Whole podcast, all on its own, complaining about real estate. Yeah, I used to work in real estate, so …
Justin: Let’s not go there then. You probably have plenty to say on that. So, for tax purposes, you live in Canada, is that correct?
Glynn: Yep.
Justin: So it’s probably a little different [from the US], but do you do something where you then pay yourself a salary from that business for tax purposes?
Glynn: We own the corporation, 100%, 50/50 between us, as I said, and the corporation pays dividends to us. It’s pretty straightforward up here in Canada.
Justin: Yeah, I’ve been told to do stuff like that here, too, it’s something to think about that—again, probably another podcast on that.
Glynn: Yeah, it’s one of those things where the recommendation is always talk to a specialist who knows your personal situation. I am a specialist in that, or I was, so it’s a lot easier for me to do it because I know what I need to do myself.
Justin: Yeah. So, I have a cover artist who has done some of your work as well, and I’d like to know if he’s done others. Jeff Brown did your cool cover for Heart of Vengeance that came out today.
Glynn: Yes.
Justin: I’d love to hear about Heart of Vengeance and how this collaboration started. I could check real quick and see if you’ve done other collaborations, but I’d love to hear if you have.
Glynn: No, Heart of Vengeance is the first time I’ve ever collaborated with anybody. So basically, Heart of Vengeance is the first half of a novel I wrote when I was 20. It was a book that always needed to be two novels, and that was basically the issue with it in its original state. So I spent years planning to go back and rewrite it into two novels, realized I was never actually going to get around to it. I’d done some rewriting of pieces of it and it was no longer the book I’d written when I was 19. But still, it really needed to be two books.
Glynn: I reached out to Terry Mixon and asked him if he wanted to take on the task of taking this book and turning it into two books. And he and I bounced an outline back and forth for several weeks while we kind of nailed down what we wanted to do. And then he took off, starting from the first thirty [to] forty thousand words that I had written and revised, and rewritten, and then he wrote the rest of what became Heart of Vengeance. And then we bounced that back and forth for a series of revisions and ended up with the final product, which I’m actually really pleased with. I think it is a distinctly different book than either of us would have written on our own.
Justin: Yeah. Yeah, if you’ve ever heard of me at all you’ll know that I’m obsessed with collaboration. It’s like, in my DNA. So I like seeing other people doing it, and doing it well, successfully, which I’m sure this will do.
Glynn: Yeah.
Justin: The cover’s awesome, like I said.
Glynn: I love the cover. I have to tell everybody: I know what the cover for the second one looks like, too, and that’s also awesome.
Justin: I’m gonna write Jeff Brown and pay him some money to show me. Bribe him. “You gotta tell me.” Nah, don’t worry. I’m not gonna copy it or anything.
Justin: So, how did you get in touch with Terry Mixon? How did that relationship start?
Glynn: I bounced across Terry Mixon’s Empire of Bones books on Facebook, and I’d never read any of them because, and I’ve teased him about this, the blurb for the first one originally read like a sci-fi romance.
Justin: Okay.
Glynn: The blurb was quite bad. He’s fixed it since. I haven’t actually read the new one, but I understand it’s much better now. I’d bounced across his books, and he was reading mine. He ended up following me on Facebook, and I saw the name and went, “I know that name!” And I ended up, mostly from the fact that he was following me on Facebook, going and reading one of his books, and really liking it. So we ended up chatting back and forth of various things for writing, and when I came to realizing that I needed a co-author for this project, I had a very short list of names. And Terry ended up being the one who I asked first, and he basically leaped up and down, going, “Yes, yes, please, please, me, me.”
Justin: That’s great.
Glynn: I didn’t have any problems finding a co-author.
Justin: How about lessons learned from the co-author process? It seems like, from your brief description it went fairly smoothly. But anything you’d think about changing next time, or advice if people are considering it?
Glynn: For me, because what Terry was working from was something I’d already done, my involvement in the process was more of an editorial involvement, at this point. So it’s hard for me to take that and say what a more regular collaboration process would be.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: So, I probably would end up doing more regular collaborations as time goes on, but right now this is the only one I’ve done, and it’s very “odd duck” in many senses.
Justin: Yeah, they always are. I’ve done like every single process there probably is, when it comes to collaboration, and I feel like it’s always a new journey and a totally new experience. With different people, of course. Sometimes I collaborate with P.T. Hilton, and for that it’s just smooth every single time. He just does it, and kicks butt, you know?
Glynn: Yeah, Terry did a great job with his side of this, and was fantastic the work with, to be honest.
Justin: I also see a theme of pirates in your books.
Glynn: There’s a theme of pirates in my books, I suppose. Yeah, pirates are in Starship’s Mage, pirates show up several times in Castle Federation, The Terran Privateer is relatively self-evident.
Justin: Does that tie back into anything? Like I could tie mine back to basically loving Disneyland, and I always loved that ride, Pirates of the Caribbean, so I always integrate pirates, but …
Glynn: Honestly, it ties back to a fascination with the age of wooden ships and iron men, I think is what they call it. The age of sail, and the ships of the line, and the Caribbean, and just the ships and the people who sailed them, and the stuff they did. That era of merchant travel is what I draw a lot of historical parallels and inspiration for the stuff I write. And piracy was a big problem in that time.
Justin: For sure. Did you watch Black Sails?
Glynn: I did not, actually.
Justin: It’s so good.
Glynn: I don’t watch TV at all at this point.
Justin: Oh, man. TV is no longer TV, it’s movies that are really long, for certain shows anyways. Game of Thrones, Black Sails, a few others. Anyways, just throwing that out there, ’cause it’s one of these ones that I kind of avoided for a little while, and just totally got me into the pirate thing again.
Justin (con’t): So, you never tried to write like pirates in that age, though, right? Was there a market reason for that?
Glynn: No. Just never really something that occurred to me. Historical fiction doesn’t appeal to me, for whatever reason, too many constraints.
Justin: I agree with you.
Glynn: I’m getting yelled at in my urban fantasy series for stretching belief too far, so trying to work within constraints doesn’t seem to work for me.
Justin: Well, let’s go there, since you brought it up. Urban fantasy, what kind of setting is it that one and how does the restraints butt heads with what you’re doing?
Glynn: So, it’s an urban fantasy thriller, basically. So, to a large extent, “Tom Clancy through the veneer of The Dresden Files” is a description of it that I’m coming to like. And it is basically about an elite supernatural task force whose job it is to keep the peace in the United States against supernatural terrorism threats, and the third book basically is one of those threats spilling over into an outright civil war.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: Which really, really strains the whole concept of the masquerade, and that’s going to be a good chunk of at least the background of some of the future books. But a lot of readers find just the degree of combat that’s gone on in the books, and of open conflict between the factions, doesn’t jive in their minds with magic still being secret. And part of it is that it’s not really our earth, there has been a lot more of the internal violence and so forth in that setting then there has been in reality.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: But, it’s something that bothers people, and, you know, the reader’s always right.
Justin: Yeah, well just go the Marvel route. It starts with now Earth-616 and Earth-919. I don’t know what the other ones are.
Glynn: I haven’t [read them], but yeah.
Justin: That’s cool. So urban fantasy, though, why did you market it that way? ‘Cause the covers don’t really scream typical urban fantasy, like Rebecca Frank-style.
Glynn: We couldn’t book with Rebecca Frank, she was too far out. She was on the list of people we tried to hire for it.
Justin: Oh yeah? But it’s a different style, right? Like it sounds more like it’s more supernatural-thriller-slash-urban-fantasy.
Glynn: Yeah. And that’s always a balance to walk. It ends up getting classed in superhero, to my amusement, because the parallels to the modern, gritty MCU are definitely there, so … It’s a different take on urban fantasy than what I’ve usually seen, and that’s part of why I wrote it, because it was a take I thought needed to be done.
Justin: Yeah, but it seems to be doing well. Like there’s not been a lot of pushback in that sense.
Glynn: No, there hasn’t. The first two books did well, the third one is not being great, unfortunately.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: I don’t know.
Justin: There was a discussion lately about that topic, like books two and three not doing well in certain series. And so I’m wondering is that just a thing that is happening? Or would you say there’s a specific reason for it with your books?
Glynn: Generally, I have found that book three is usually where the series takes off. So I am quite disappointed, actually, with where three has ended up landing. And that series may not continue as long as I was planning. We’ll see how the next books does, I suppose.
Justin: That’s always a sad moment.
Glynn: But one always has to be aware, if a series is going to make me X, but this other series is going to make me twenty times X, well … I can’t really justify this series. Like, I need something in play that not just space opera, but I don’t know if urban fantasy is going to remain being that “something in play.”
Justin: Yeah. And when did book 3 come out?
Glynn: Beginning of this month.
Justin: Okay. So hasn’t been a long time.
Glynn: It’s been out for about a month.
Justin: Yeah. So, for people who don’t know, usually, at least in my experience, with self-published books, it kicks off in like the first week or so, and then does really well, and then maybe eighteen days to thirty days it peters off, right? A little bit?
Glynn: Exactly. And then, you know, there’s a long tail to everything, but …
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: If a book isn’t a blow-away hit in the first thirty days, you’ve got what you’re gonna get from it.
Justin: Yeah, unless lightning strikes. Something weird happens.
Glynn: The first thirty days is where you judge whether or not a book succeeded or not.
Justin: Interesting. I know some people are like, “Oh, if I get book four out there, then it’ll pick back up.” Do you have any hope of that?
Glynn: It’s quite possible. And that’s why I will definitely do a book four, and see what happens. But that’s about as far as I’m really prepared to push it at that point. If it doesn’t, I’ll give it one more. Like, the first two books did quite well, so the third book doing significantly worse was a surprise.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: So I’ll give it one more book to see what happens.
Justin: Yeah. And it’s not just about the money, either, right? It’s because if that book does make ten times more money than that, it probably means there are probably ten times more fans out there waiting for those books.
Glynn: Exactly.
Justin: You’re just making more people happy.
Glynn: Exactly.
Justin: But I always feel bad about that, you know? There’s these people who love that book, you know they love those books ….
Glynn: Oh, yeah. I have one of those. One of my fantasy books, I get about one email or Facebook message or something a month asking if I’m ever doing a sequel to one of my two fantasy books. And the answer at this point is just, “No.”
Justin: Yeah. Unless …
Glynn: Nope.
Justin: Maybe someday you wanna get a co-writer to do it for you.
Glynn: Yeah, I suppose I could do that. I have an outline for it somewhere.
Justin: Oh, okay. What’s the name of your fantasy ones again?
Glynn: City in the Sky, and Children of Prophecy.
Justin: Okay. And those are older ones?
Glynn: Those are older ones, yeah.
Justin: Oh, I see.
Glynn: They were both at least in 2015, I believe.
Justin: Okay.
Glynn: Children of Prophecy might be 2014.
Justin: Cool. Yeah, City in the Sky has a little less of a fantasy cover to it, so when I was scanning through I just kind of assumed it was scifi again.
Glynn: No, that one is fantasy. It’s an odd fantasy. It’s more of a renaissance fantasy world than anything else.
Justin: Okay, cool. Yeah, you kind of like to take these ideas and not just follow the tropes. Am I wrong in saying that?
Glynn: No. Not at all. Tropes have their purpose. They’re useful tools, but you don’t want to build an entire … You don’t want to build a house out of LEGO. LEGO might make a useful accent feature over here, but you don’t want to build your house out of LEGO.
Justin: Yeah. I see a lot of these people who are trying to just jump on board with these series, these genres that are doing well.
Glynn: Yeah.
Justin: But then it does seem like they are, like you said, building a house out of the LEGOs. I was just looking at your sci-fi covers that are like the spaceship ones. So like on your [series] Duchy of Terra, would you say those are pretty stereotypical, like standard sci-fi? Or is there something weird about those that kind of separates them like the mages in Starship’s Mage?
Glynn: Duchy of Terra and Castle Federation are significantly more regular sci-fi. There’s definitely things going on in both that are non-standard, that are different takes on the universe, and so on and so forth, but they’re definitely a bit closer to the mainstream of space opera than Starship’s Mage is.
Justin: If I was to ask you what the hook is of Space Carrier Avalon …
Glynn: Space Carrier Avalon was an attempt to do hard-science fiction space fighters, basically.
Justin: Space fighters? What does that mean, space fighters?
Glynn: So, like the starfighters in Star Wars, the X-wings and that kind of thing, it was an attempt to actually build a setting where, from an economic perspective, something that doesn’t necessarily make sense from a pure physics or technological perspective, made sense.
Justin: Oh, okay.
Glynn: So a lot of the parameters of the setting are structured around it being logically and necessary for them to have carriers swanning around, launching hundreds of starfighters at each other.
Justin: Okay.
Glynn: And then it’s also, I jokingly call it, “Manifest Destiny Was Bad, Okay?: The Novel.”
Justin: Cool.
Glynn: Because it’s about expansionism and politics and all of that sort of fun stuff.
Justin: Yeah. Do you have one book of yours, or series, that you think is like the one? You know what I mean? Like the one that you just kicked butt on, and you’re just trying to do as well [as] every time, or anything like that? I imagine that’s not the case, but …
Glynn: All of them?
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: It’s not every book I finish and say, “That was the best book I ever wrote.” But I am definitely improving my craft as I go. Like, the Duchy of Terra series, I think, has been my best work to date. Like, each of those I’ve finished and gone, “That’s my best, or one of my best books to date.” For that trilogy.
Justin: Do you feel that fans have resonated in the same way?
Glynn: Mostly. Like, there’s always the ones where you’re like, “I don’t know if this one’s okay, but I’m just gonna put it out because I said there’d be a book out that the fans have adored.” So …
Justin: Yeah. It’s funny how that works sometimes. You’re like, “I’m just gonna write one for me this time,” and you put it out there and it’s like the best one.
Glynn: Yeah. Well, I wrote this one because the events needed to happen. Like I finished the book and I’m like, “I don’t actually know if this is a good book.” Everything that happened in it needed to happen, but I’m not confident in this one.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: But the fans loved it, and so obviously my lack of confidence wasn’t justified.
Justin: Yeah. It never is, we’re amazing authors. We gotta tell ourselves that sometimes.
Justin: For people like me who have checked out one book … Like I’m reading Starship’s Mage, like I mentioned, and then of course it makes sense to read two and three, and keep going on that. But let’s say that someone had just picked one of your books and skimmed it, and hadn’t decided where to start yet. Where would you advise people start, and where would you advise they go next?
Glynn: I would say, if you want something unique, go to Starship’s Mage, but understand that it is my first published novel and it does have a bit of the issue with serialization. If you want to see my craft at its best, and the story I love the most, start with The Terran Privateer and go through that trilogy. Third book will be out at the end of the month. And I think all three of those books are just some of the best work I’ve ever done.
Justin: Nice. You have audio books. Are those on your own, or did you do one of these companies that like puts them out …
Glynn: ONSET and Duchy of Terra are with Podium.
Justin: Okay.
Glynn: Castle Federation and Starship’s Mage are with Tantor [Media]. And it looks like Vigilante is going to be done through ACX, because ACX only just opened up Canada.
Justin: Oh, interesting. I did not know that.
Glynn: I’m also not an audiobook listener, so I hesitate to leap into the, “Yes, I’ll do all the editing and so forth on this myself.” I’m like, I have no idea. I have never listened to an audiobook from beginning to end.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: I’m about three quarters of the way through The Terran Privateer audiobook. I’ve been listening to it in bits and pieces for a year.
Justin: Yeah. I’m not quite there with you. If I find a narrator that I love, like Kate Rudd who we used for some of our books… The reason we used her was because I was listening to an audiobook [narrated by her] and couldn’t stop listening. You know, those ones. Or Nick Podehl, however you say his name; he did Patrick Rothfuss’s books. Really great job. I’m up to like four in the morning listening. But those are like two out of all the audiobooks that I can listen to.
Glynn: Yeah, I’m not a big fan of audiobooks myself unfortunately.
Justin: It’s tough.
Glynn: But people are, and I can understand the appeal of them, so they get done. And, like I said, we will almost certainly do one for Heart of Vengeance.
Justin: Yeah.
Glynn: Unless, you know, it completely flops within the next week.
Justin: I’m sure it will not.
Glynn: I’m not really expecting that, but I’m kind of giving it a week to see if things explode before I put more money into it.
Justin: I see. I mean, yeah. With that cover, and with your background, I’m gonna tell people they’re stupid if they don’t buy it, so. There you go.
Glynn: I have a certain degree of confidence in it.
Justin: Yeah. That’s cool.
Glynn: Terry did good work on his half, and I’m pretty happy with my half of it, so.
Justin: Right, great. Awesome. So, we always do a book of the week for audio, for like an Audible, if you wanna go grab it on Audible at the try-out things, so I’m gonna tell people that they should grab Starship’s Mage, and you can tell them to grab something else, if you want.
Glynn: I think Starship’s Mage is a good one.
Justin: Okay. And it looks like you have the omnibus on there, so that’s good.
Glynn: Yep.
Justin: How many books are in that omnibus then? Do you know?
Glynn: That’s the five episodes.
Justin: Oh, okay.
Glynn: So that’s just the novellas.
Justin: So it’s the Starship’s Mage omnibus, so that means the five novellas.
Glynn: Yep.
Justin: Cool. Yeah, and that’s free if you get a trial, listeners. Go to AudibleTrial.com/CreativeWritingCareer, and the narrator is, I’ll probably say this wrong, Jeffrey Kafer. So, listener, if you want to grab that for free. Also, I recommend reading it. It’s on Kindle Unlimited, so if you have a Kindle Unlimited, $10 a month that you can read the books as part of your plan, and that’s what I always do because I’m cheap. But what I like to do is, if I love them, which this is one I do love, I go out and buy it afterwards. And I’ve learned this from fans, which really made me appreciate fans. Like they’ll read it on Kindle Unlimited, and then like, “Well, that’s an author I like, so I’m gonna buy it, too, to support the author.”
Glynn: Which is always nice to hear. Even if I have occasional moments of, “You don’t need to do that, you know.”
Justin: Yeah, yeah. You don’t need to, but, hey, I’ll take it. Whatever.
Glynn: Yeah, pretty much.
Justin: But then they can also lend it to people, too. I don’t know how many people do that, but.
Glynn: Yeah.
Justin: So we’re coming up towards the end of our time, and I know you’re a busy man. Do you have anything coming out soon that we should be aware of?
Glynn: So, I have, like I said, the third Duchy of Terra book, which is the kind of the third of the trilogy, so that’s Terra and Imperium, and that will launch on August 31st. And obviously we just launched Heart of Vengeance.
Justin: Yeah. Awesome. So people will go check those out. I’ll make sure to put links in the show notes to where people can grab those. And where can people find you? Do you have like Twitter or Facebook?
Glynn: I have a Facebook page at Glynn Stewart Author, and I can be found on the internet at www.glynnstewart.com. That currently redirects to the Faolan’s Pen publishing website, but there will be a new site up there sometime in the next month or so, I believe.
Justin: Wonderful. All right, well thank you so much for coming on the show. I definitely appreciate it.
Glynn: Thank you for having me.