My guest in this blog interview is Canadian author and poet, Samuel Peralta, the driving force behind The Future Chronicles—an entire series of anthologies exploring different aspects of science fiction and fantasy literature.

Sam, where did you come up with the idea for The Future Chronicles? What was your motivation behind this series?

I never meant to create The Future Chronicles. The plan was to write a grand SF novel series, beginning with a book called Labyrinth Man.

My dilemma was, how do I create a readership for Labyrinth Man – which was based on a world where telepaths and robots existed – when my readership was geared towards poetry? My idea was that I would write strong short stories based in that universe, and submit them to anthologies or magazines, and that the readers who discovered me there would find their way to Labyrinth Man.

As you may remember, I am putting the finishing touches to Infinite Waters; my upcoming second collection of short stories (the first one being The Power of Six, of course). Most of them have a touch of science fiction; all of them have a lovely twist.

However, I have also kept a couple of stories out of it, as I have submitted them or am about to submit them to magazines specializing in short stories. I thought I’d let you know which ones those are, in case you, too, are interested in submitting to those.

Non Local Magazine

You may remember my ongoing collaboration with Dan Dombrowsky of the  33rd Street Press. Dan has kindly already included one of my short stories, Shoot the Devil, in his excellent Non Local Magazine. As he’s now preparing the next issues, he’s always on the lookout for sci-fi shorts.

You…

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BOOK PROMOTION OPPORTUNITIES

Marketing books is hard. I will try to help.

I have a few book promotion opportunities for authors.

Participation is FREE.

(1) Meet the Characters

I have a page on my Read Tuesday website called Meet the Characters.

On this page, readers find short creative pieces featuring one of the characters from various books.

The idea is that readers can learn about books without first seeing the cover or price.

Their first taste of the book is a character’s personality and the author’s writing style.

Many authors and readers have expressed positive feedback about this idea.

(If you like the idea, please tell a friend.)

But we need more authors to participate. Signing up is free.

The earlier you participate, the better the reader-to-book ratio works in your favor.

Once submissions grow enough, Meet the Characters will grow onto multiple pages, different pages…

First of all, congratulations! You’re now a published author – and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Second, you’d be amazed how often I hear that question in LinkedIn’s author groups. With some 3,000 new books published every day, I have serious doubts that you can just sit back and wait for readers to stumble on your book, or for word of mouth to work its magic. The chances of that happening are probably similar to that of winning the lottery, in which case you don’t even need the long hours and hard work that goes hand-in-hand with a career as an author (if you don’t believe me, you may want to check out this post by Pedro Barrento on Indies Unlimited).

So, what are the next steps after publication? Before I can answer that, I need to ask one question of my own first: is this your first book? You see…