Future Shock

[faustfatale]

A reader just asked me if I would update the technology in my first novel CONTROL FREAK if I were to release it as an eBook. I’ve given this a lot of thought. I thought about it back when the second edition was released in 2002. (Fuck me, was that really almost 10 years ago?) I went around and around with myself about it but ultimately decided not

Comments

Re: your last questions

[vkeenan]

Yes. Warts and all.

[ext_164950]

I'll go with the warts.

Once it's out there I want to leave it alone. I figure it's a picture of a particular time and if I fuck with it I'll just make a mess of it.

[octoberland]

Funny. I was just thinking about this earlier this evening while rereading an old story of mine. In it the character is writing on a typewriter. Not because she's trying to be nostalgic or old school but because when I wrote it there weren't laptops and home computers weren't yet commonplace. I was rereading the story because I was double checking it before sending it off to an editor and briefly considered changing the typewriter but in the end I decided not to. I figured ultimately that it didn't impact the story negatively and I wanted to be true to what I had originally written

I'm re-editing!

[ext_654039]

Hi, I've got a mystery that got some attention, but no agent. "Not enthusiatic enough." (Them, not me.) I went back to put in a subplot, hoping to add 15,000 words, because I decided it's too short. Now I can see that it can be really dramatically improved, as well. I learned more in the meantime and I still really like the book, so I'm enthusiastic to improve it.

Still I think that for Control Freak, you should just release it as is. Ten years is too long, unless you really really think you can do something superior with it, in which case perhaps you should take that energy and put it into a new book. I vote do it. As is.

[nathan_long]

All I would do is fix typos and editorial mistakes. I would resist the temptation to rewrite.

[mb2u]

This. I am actually rereading Control Freak (found my copy in a box I got from storage). You may think cringe at the thought of your early work being out there again, but if it wasn't for Control Freak, could you have done your later, more improved work?

[faustfatale]

Exactly. Just like I wouldn't be who I am now if I hadn't been that tomboy with the bad, self-inflicted mohawk.