aprilwitching replied to your post: I’m not far into Floornight but I’m impressed by…

i think it could work if you found an editor who was very keen on the story, and on championing & preserving a lot of the stuff thats unusual about it. but you would still, probably, have to change a lot– not just bc marketing, but for various rsns

i mean, frankly, i have read weirder and more experimental sci-fi/fantasy novels than floornight– debut novels by p obscure authors, even– that managed to get published. like, recently. so it might be difficult, but i think if you wanted to go that route, then probably you could! ok i admit partly i just like imagining the awful stock photography/papyrus font cover you might end up with. :3

Huh, yeah, it’s possible that I’m underestimating what range of stuff they are willing to publish?  The issue I’m worried about isn’t so much the weirdness, it’s mainly the length, and the amount of stuff packed into that short length.  It’s just really different pacing than I’ve ever seen in traditionally published, novel-length SF.

(ETA: self-publishing is a whole different story.  There is one person who is working on making a physical copy of Floornight for their personal use, so we may get the chance to see an awful stock photography/papyrus font cover in any event)

ogingat replied to your post: I’m not far into Floornight but I’m impressed by…

I haven’t read enough of your writing to know if it would qualify, but you understand there is a name for non-ordinary novels, right? To wit, “literature”?

Ha!  I get what you’re saying, but even among publishers that like to publish unconventional stuff, there are certain kinds of deviations that are considered more fit for the market than others.

I’m not saying my writing is just ~too radical~ or something – more that it falls into the gaps between existing marketing categories.  Floornight, for instance, is a roughly 225-page sci-fi novel that constantly introduces new concepts, plot twists, characters, and tone changes at a fast pace.  A science fiction publisher would probably say “this is a mess – way too much material for such a short book, and really people aren’t that into short books anymore, they’re into 500+ page books and especially series of them.”  A typical literary or experimental publisher would probably say “this is way, way too dorky for us – why aren’t you talking to the science fiction publishers?”  Not that any of this is inevitable, but it feels like it’d be a hard sell.

prophecyformula:

nostalgebraist:

luminousalicorn

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Should I read Floornight before TNC? Does it…

I keep wondering if everyone else has read another ten chapters of TNC I have overlooked because there doesn’t seem to be that much *there* there. Like, I like it, but people are SO excited? Floornight has more stuff.

TBH, I agree.  The asymmetric response has been surprising to me.  I think some of it is that TNC immediately draws the reader in with the first chapter and has elements with obvious novelty appeal (the forum threads), while the neologisms and constant perspective shifts in Floornight probably push some readers away early on.

(It’s also superficially odd to me because I found Floornight much more fun to write – it was more playful and freewheeling, I was less worried about getting a bunch of fiddly stuff just right to avoid uncanny valleys.  But fun to write isn’t perfectly correlated with fun to read.)

Selection bias? Given that TNC (so far) is a story about internet communities and sort-of-obsessive fandom, I think it’s largely that it’s attractive to the kind of personality which gets a little bit overwrought about cultural works. It’s certainly flipped a switch in me in that regard. I’m not, like, a “fandom guy,” but I can get really really into a book (Infinite Jest) or a TV show (Community) or a webcomic (Achewood) and while away the hours arguing about it with the Internet. Add a reptile-brain-level appreciation for all things meta, and also my deep and abiding interest in “moral concerns,” and TNC hits my sweet spot.

Sure, that makes sense.  Although I think Floornight is something that would really appeal to a largely overlapping set of people, but it’s less immediately obvious about it.  (If you want to make a very loose analogy you could say that if TNC is about people talking about Chesscourt, then Floornight is Chesscourt.)

(via epistemic-horror)

I keep wondering if everyone else has read another ten chapters of TNC I have overlooked because there doesn’t seem to be that much *there* there. Like, I like it, but people are SO excited? Floornight has more stuff.

TBH, I agree.  The asymmetric response has been surprising to me.  I think some of it is that TNC immediately draws the reader in with the first chapter and has elements with obvious novelty appeal (the forum threads), while the neologisms and constant perspective shifts in Floornight probably push some readers away early on.

(It’s also superficially odd to me because I found Floornight much more fun to write – it was more playful and freewheeling, I was less worried about getting a bunch of fiddly stuff just right to avoid uncanny valleys.  But fun to write isn’t perfectly correlated with fun to read.)