Description

What This Book Is and Isn’t: An Introduction

Let me stress this at the outset: Loose Threads isn’t a book.

That it exists is the result of confluence, and three important things occurring in January 2024 which planted the seeds for this volume.

This exists, first and foremost, I submitted my doctoral thesis on the poetics of writing series fiction at the end of 2023. After seven years of thinking about writing, talking about writing, and researching writing, I suddenly had no immediate outlet for all my theories about the relationship between the publishing landscape and how we write stories.

I like to think out loud, and over the years an archive where I’ve captured thoughts and ideas has helped a lot when pulling together workshops or speeches on short notice.

Second, my small publishing enterprise received thirty times our normal number of submissions. For two weeks, the bulk of my time went to clearing the submission queue, and some of my frustrations leaked out in the form of advice for writers.

Finally, Meta’s Threads platform—which I’d largely ignored for months—send a whole lot of people towards an advice thread I wrote and gave me a 600% boost in the number of readers I there.

It reminded me of the old days, when I used to blog about writing and publishing a lot.

I’ll admit, I didn’t really “get” Threads when it started. It felt like Twitter, but didn’t behave like Twitter, and I’d largely burnt out on the format anyway. I took an interest in it the way most writers and publishers take interest in social media—prodding it to see whether it could be used to sell books—then promptly fell into a routine of showing up to make the occasional joke and check in on a handful of friends.

But blogging? I used to love blogging, back in the day. I’ve spent a huge chunk of my life helping emerging writers to get where they want to go, whether it’s through teaching in university classrooms, working with non-profit writing centers here in Australia, or my stints managing The Australian Writers Marketplace or GenreCon.

I’ve got a lot of hard-won experience, a network I freely tap for advice, and some very firm ideas about the ways writing and publishing could be changed for the better.

The moment I realized Threads was a blogging platform I was off to the races. My RescueTime set-up informs me I spent 40+ hours on the platform across January, writing posts and responding to comments. Part of me lamented the fact I’d “wasted” that writing time—all those ideas could have been a book.

They probably should have been, all things considered, because Threads is great at driving people towards an active conversation but lousy at archiving content. If you wanted to revisit an idea, it’s a pain in the ass to go back and search for an old thread.

Which brings us here. Loose Threads isn’t a book, because I’d write about book very differently. I’d curate ideas and shape the flow of information, make sure I build upon concepts in a logical way. I’d lay out themes and arguments, and set out ways of resolving problems.

Loose Threads does none of that. It merely gathers all the writing-related threads I pulled together in January of 2024, adds in a few pieces I wrote for other platforms such as Patreon, and presents it as an easy-to-revisit archive for folks who wanted something more convenient to revisit.

I’ve corrected typos and fleshed out ideas when my language was curbed by the character limits of Threads Posts or I had a better way to explain things. I’ve re-arranged things so certain ideas appear as a run, rather than presenting it chronologically, but even so my curation is minimal. Odds are I’ll repeat some ideas, or digress from my original point.

This may be the first of a series of releases, or it might be a stand-alone. It largely depends on whether my interest in threads was a temporary situation, and how much use folks get out of this archive, and whether I keep finding stuff to talk about. This is very much a project of opportunity, rather than something I’m doing with a plan.

I’m releasing the book under a pay-what-you-want model where possible, and chap as I can where it’s not, because I’d rather writers have these ideas to ponder than charge for ‘em. I do coaching and workshops aimed at writers, but I prefer to make my living off fiction where I can.

That said, if you grabbed this for free but got some use out of it and would like to support me doing more, here are some options:

• Throw some coffee money into my tip jar.
• Pick up some of my books, merch, and coaching options aimed at writers.
• Buy a Writer Chap from Brain Jar Press.
• Sign up for my Patreon, where I write books in real-time and happily answer questions about craft and business.

Of course, I’m a writer and I make the bulk of my income through selling books. Some of these threads are sideways promos for new releases or books I’ve written and/or published. In those cases I’ve left the links for those in place, largely because it’s easier than rewriting the threads around it.

Odds are, ideas written about here already exist in a book I’ve already released, or will find their way into one I release down the line. They’re presented in their random, raw form because I’m interested in the effect of changing format and the increased transparency around my thinking and processes.1

If you’d prefer to wait for something more polished, I would not hold it against you.

The Quick Bio

Since there’s a chance you might be coming to this cold, with no knowledge of me or my background, here’s what you need to know.

• I publish other people through Brain Jar Press, an Australian-based micropublisher of crime and speculative fiction whose list includes New York Times Best-Sellers, Huge Award Winners, World Fantasy Award Winners, and more.
• I publish my own writing through Eclectic Projects, an imprint of Brain Jar Press that is effectively a separate company. This keeps my weird publishing experiments (like this one) from distracting folks from buying other people’s work.
• Over the last two decades I’ve worked for three separate university Creative Writing programs, two writers centres, and one writers festival. I also launched Australia’s GenreCon writing conference and spent six years managing the Australian Writers Marketplace during the rise of self-publishing.
• I first published an ebook in 2005, two years before the Kindle existed, and worked for an ebook publisher as early as 2002.
• At time of writing, I just submitted my PhD thesis which delves into the relationship between writing process and the marketplace in which we sell our work. You may notice this colors my opinions somewhat.

Right, then. I think we’re all up to speed.