The year 2012 is just dawning on the horizon filled for Laura and I with new and, in may ways, life changing possibilities. In the past I have contented myself with ‘resolutions’ but given the scope of the changes in my life and the new directions that writing is taking, I think ‘New Years Revolutions’ is more appropriate of an approach to this upcoming year.

So, for all of our friends out there looking toward what this new year will bring, here are a few of the ‘revolutions’ which we will be engaging in over the next year.

Knights of the Red Band:

This is our most exciting news for the new year. Laura and I are pleased to announce an agreement with DAW books regarding a new fantasy series we will be developing and writing called ‘Knights of the Red Band.’ This is the story of a world of eternal daylight and eternal night, where humanity lives on the dusky ‘red band’ separating the two. When an ancient evil rises to retake the world it once enslaved, a group of young, idealistic warriors is recruited into a revered and legendary order of Knighthood. But they soon discover that the reality of war is very different from the stories they were raised on … and that the question of right and wrong may be more difficult to answer than they believe. The great thing about this new trilogy is that YOU will be able to follow its development from the very beginning through its completion. We already have a website and facebook page set up for the project and will be posting to both at each stage of the novels development. From initial concept through final release, you’ll have a ringside seat at our creative process.

Lakota Dragon’s War:

Laura and I are also excited to be launching this new online series this summer. In addition to our Dragons Bard series of fantasy subscription novels, we will be opening our new series of steam-punk novels set in the American West exclusively in ebook format. You can read more about the history and background of this new series … and even build your own life-sized  replica ‘Lightening Gun’ at our exclusive Lakota Dragons Website.

Scribe’s Forge Changes:

We will be making some important changes to our Scribe’s Forge Online Writing Seminars.

• SEMINARS PRICE INCREASE: The one you need to be most aware of is that there will be a MAJOR price increase coming on January 6th. If you have been contemplating getting into the seminars, I would highly recommend doing so before the increase — which will be tripling our current prices for a years access to our seminars.
•  WORKSHOPS DISCONTINUED: The Writing Workshops will also be discontinued at that time to allow me time to address my very heavy writing schedule next year. We will be reworking our workshop system through the coming year.
• SCRIBES FORGE PUBLISHING CHANGES: We will also be changing our Scribe’s Forge Publishing program; instead of advising you on how to set up your website, we have determined it is more time and cost effective for us to set up the website for you as a turn-key system. Yes, this means that you can have your own web-publishing website, fully functional, designed and implemented by us that allows you to publish your own serial novels online in the same way as our Dragonsbard series. Additionally, we will be offering Scribe’s Forge Ebook Translation services that will take your text and will not only convert it into the most popular of ebook formats, but do so with advanced layout styling that sets your book professionally above the crowd.

 Visit our Scribe’s Forge website for details of these changes.

But Wait, There’s More Revolution to come:

Don’t forget the following FANTASTIC events we are anticipating this year:

• DRAKIS III: BLOOD OF THE EMPEROR will be released this summer.
• “WAYNE OF GOTHAM”, my upcoming Batman novel is scheduled for release this May.
• DRAGONSBARD: BLACKSHORE will be released this spring to our subscribers AND we will be taking subscriptions for our final Dragonsbard novel: Moredale later this year.
• DRAGONSBARD: EVENTIDE is scheduled for its first mass-market release this summer as well.

We have our conventions, our newsletter and will be looking at introducing our own ‘video channel’ of quick writing advice in the coming months.

So join us in our New Years Revolution! We look forward to quite an exciting year.

Join the forum discussion on this post

Traditionally, by the time a book or service gets from the writer or producer into the hands of the audience … well, it goes through a lot of other hands in between. Each one of those hands takes a little bit of profit from of the top. Which generally means that things end up costing about five to six times what the writer or producer actually gets for creating the thing in the first place.

So, we figure that we would rather YOU and I split that money rather than give it to all those guys in the middle.

We want you to get HAPPI … that is join our Hickman Affiliate Publishing Promotion Incentive program. We gave it that long name because we like the sound of HAPPI. We need to get the word out about our writing seminars and in the coming spring about our new direct to the reader book series. I could either pay a lot of money for worthless advertising … or I can get your help and give you the money instead.

Now before you get the wrong idea with visions of having to invite your neighbors over and pushing writing seminars on them instead of time shares, just finish reading this. I write long books and you read them, too. This little article is nothing compared to slugging down the ‘Deathgate Cycle’…

• Someone is going to get this money … either you or the legions of wholesalers, retailers, advertisers and middlemen. I’d rather you got it than them.
• It costs you absolutely NOTHING to join. You have to provide enough information for us to pay you but it isn’t any more than you would give to any other online retailer with Paypal. The only difference is that we’re sending you money instead of the other way around.
• You can quit at any time without any problem or penalty: if you don’t like it five minutes after you sign up then quit. We’ll still be friends.
• Your data is secure: We don’t sell your name or information to anybody. You should have known better than to even think we would do something nasty with your data.

So all we are looking to do is get your help in finding a few great writers looking for that edge that will get their words both read and sold in the age of New Media publishing … and we need your help to do it.

We are offering this affiliate program to you so you will help spread the word about our online writing seminars and workshops … and we’ll pay you a commission for every new author who signs up. That’s right, by joining our affiliate program we will pay you a 30% commission on our online seminars … it’s easy and it’s free.

All you have to do is sign up for our program. You’ll need a Paypal account (we pay out commissions on the 15th of each month), a valid website and the desire to spread the word about our seminars. Once you sign up you’ll receive an email tell you what you need to do to sign into your new Affiliate control panel … and from there you can get the referral links, banners and items you need to start earning your commissions through your website, blog Facebook or Twitter pages.

That’s all you have to do … share those links … and anyone who signs up gets credited to you.

The system is entirely automated and administered by me (that’s Tracy Hickman) personally.

Become a Scribe’s Forge Affiliate … because we would rather pay YOU to help us find the next generation of writers!

As we are gearing up for the launch of our Scribe’s Forge Online Writing Seminars and Workshops, we wanted to share a small piece of the first video seminar in our six-week series. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into our seminars, where you create the next great story … and we provide the tools to forge it’s reality.

Join us at Scribesforge.com!

As we’ve been working on the Dragonsbard project, we’ve been acquiring quite a bit of experience (actual experience rather than those meaningless points one acquires in so many games) in this new field of Serial Publishing.

Serial Publishing sounds like a crime but is actually the revolutionary concept on which Dragonsbard was built: publish like the Dickens — literally and literarily — so a group of elite subscribers and provide them with the book at the end of their subscription. It is a concept pioneered by Laura and me (which has meant that we have taken our share of the arrows, as they say) and which has many people in the literary publishing field very interested. Taking on traditional publishing has been daunting but our growing success (modest though it is right now) is turning heads.

But for us the most exciting part is that we can teach other writers how to not only duplicate the system that drives dragonsbard.com … but how to make it work for their books as well. An author experienced with our system can actually have a new novel distribution system set up and operating in a single day … but the most important part – promotion – takes much longer.

That’s why I’m announcing our Scribe’s Forge Publisher Workshop. I’m in the process of writing a workbook for Scribe’s Forge Publisher which I hope to have ready for the fall. In the meantime, however, as I am developing the workbook, I’m willing to share all I have learned about online Serial Publishing with you at a 1/3 discount to our anticipated Workshop price. If you’re curious, you can read more about it on the Scribe’s Forge website.

Believe me … this is NOT a ‘get-rich-overnight-tell-your-boss-off-and-buy-an-island-somewhere’ program. However, if you’re a writer who would like to find a way to get your work not only in print but being READ while making money commensurate with your success, you may want to make the investment. Check it out!

We’re coming into a new year and, as you can see, there are many changes coming!

Perhaps most exciting of all will be our implementation of an on-line Speculative Fiction Writing Seminar and Workshop program. We’ve been offering our writing workshops for several years now and will be making this curriculum available to you later this year.

We also have a number of new projects which we will be announcing right here over the next few months … many of which will open up new horizons for all of us and explore new directions in the telling and experiencing of epic fantasy.

As you can see, we have a great deal going on! So join us for our most exciting year ever. Register in the right column and I’ll keep you informed every step of the way.