Pennsylvania

Author’s Note

***Author’s Note Update – May 2014***

Since I first published Pennsylvania, Part 1 back in April of ’13, the Pennsylvania world has become quite a phenomenon. When Pennsylvania 1 soft launched on April 4th 2013, I only put up one measly post about it, and then didn't mention the story again for a good while. I was busy promoting WICK and most of my readers missed that Pennsylvania was even out there. The little short story sold 147 copies in the first month, and though it got fantastic reviews, not many people paid much attention to it.

What happened with Pennsylvania over the next few months was a textbook example of the "slow burn." PA1 didn’t sell a ton of copies, only a little over 400 in the first 5 months, but fantastic reviews kept coming in, and then I started receiving emails and social media messages asking for a Pennsylvania 2. When I first wrote PA1 as a short story, I never knew whether there would ever be more of it. I figured I'd leave that up to the readers. I'd planted all of these nice mysteries and I had some awesome ideas for if the thing ever caught the imagination of readers, but I was also happy to move on if no one really cared about the story. It was Amish/Sci-Fi after all, and no one had ever heard of it.

By late summer I was getting a steady stream of DEMANDS for a Pennsylvania 2. I remember talking with Hugh Howey when we were both at WorldCon in San Antonio in August and telling him that this little Amish/Sci-Fi story was really starting to resonate with people. When Hugh introduced me to people, he kept calling me "an Amish/Sci-Fi writer" and it was funny to see how people reacted to that.

When I got home from Worldcon, I knew I had to write the next part of the story, so in late September, when I had a short break between other projects, I sat down and began writing PA2 and launched it in November. Again, I had no idea how it would play out there, but if Pennsylvania 1 had created a dribble of interest, PA2 started the drumbeat.

I'd sent Pennsylvania 1 to Hugh to read, but I knew how busy he was and I figured he'd never read it. Then the drumbeat grew louder. When Pennsylvania 2 was done, I emailed Hugh and told him to delete PA1 and to read the new document (which cleverly had PA1 and PA2 in it.) Hugh was traveling on tours and going overseas, and one thing was happening after another for him, so I was pretty sure he would never read it… and I didn't blame him. I imagine he has a thousand requests from authors to read their silly books. When the reviews started coming in for Pennsylvania 2 I was astonished. Almost every reader who contacted me about the story said that it was better than Pennsylvania 1, which at that time had a 5.0 star average rating on Amazon.com.

After the first of the year in 2014, the drumbeat had grown… sounded more like hoofbeats now. I started writing on Pennsylvania 3 and at that point I knew that the story couldn't be a trilogy. I had too much story to tell. I floated the idea of just writing a huge, novel-length Part 3, but that didn't go over very well with Pennsylvania fans. People were liking the episodic/serial release plan, so I decided that I'd do my best to conclude the Pennsylvania portion of the story in five parts. I knew there would be a sequel too, but for the PA portion, I was going to try to get it all out in five episodes.

When Pennsylvania 3 launched in early February (ten months to the day after PA1 launched) the thing was really turning into a phenomenon. Then one day I received an email from someone and they included a link to an Amazon run Kindle blog. In that blog, Amazon had asked some famous authors to name the most underrated Sci-Fi authors working out there.

I was shocked to see that Hugh Howey had named me! And he'd added a blurb about Pennsylvania, which at that time I still didn't know he'd even read…

Hugh Howey (author of Wool and Peace in Amber): “Pennsylvania by Michael Bunker. Pennsylvania is a brilliant tale of extra-planetary colonization. With parallels to the European settlement of the Americas, Michael Bunker draws on his Amish roots and lifestyle to portray that tenuous balance between mankind and its machines. He also knows better than most the difficulty of surviving on civilization's frontier. I daresay the wait for the next great Amish science fiction author may be finally at an end.”

All of a sudden, interest in Pennsylvania really accelerated. Sales were not on a rocket-like trajectory, but were building day by day. Within a week I'd had about ten requests for interviews, and I was finding little snippets and bits of information all over the Internet about Pennsylvania.

One of the things that really struck me about the reviews coming in was that almost everyone who read the series was saying that each episode was getting better and better.

That's when the anxiety started :)

And then there was this. I emailed Hugh to thank him for the mention in the Kindle blog and he replied with this about Pennsylvania…

"It's brilliant. Don't #*@% it up."

(He didn't say #*@%.)

So now I was really sweating it. I'd created something people really wanted to read, and now I still had two parts left to go. What if the rest of it sucked?

Listen, I don't know how this story ends…. the Pennsylvania publishing story that is, not the Pennsylvania Amish/Sci-Fi story… I know how the book ends. But I don't know how the story of the publication of this story will end. Maybe it'll be just another interesting anecdote. Right now, things are looking very interesting. It could be much more. But from the beginning, this story has been about the fans and the readers. They've made this happen, and with not much help from me.

May 2014 Update - **The Pennsylvania Omnibus is now out and doing very well. For those readers who do not like getting their story episodically, please get the Omnibus edition which is now available everywhere! I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride, because I sure have. There is now a fan started and fan run Michael Bunker fan page here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1398447123744997/

…and there is a Pennsylvania Fanfic Anthology in the works that will include a new canonical Pennsylvania novella by me, and a dozen or more short stories written by the top Indie authors out there. In addition to that, I know of at least ten more authors who are currently penning stand-alone Pennsylvania fanfic stories. This is all very exciting, and I hope you will join me in celebrating all of this art set in a world I dearly love.

Michael Bunker

Pennsylvania is a story I’ve wanted to write for a long time. Amish sci-fi, because it seems so contradictory, is the perfect mechanism for telling a great story about the decisions we make about how we live, and the ramifications of those decisions. In my mind, Pennsylvania is the beginning of a longer tale that needs telling, but, as I was writing it, I had no idea if anyone would even be interested in an Amish sci-fi series. I’d love to tell more of the story, so I’ll wait and see what you readers think about it; if you like Pennsylvania as much as I do, then I’ll dive into it and give you more of the Pennsylvania tale.

Please follow me on Facebook so you can keep in touch with me and receive updates on the Pennsylvania idea.

It has become obvious in the publishing arena that people are looking for episodic stories that are inexpensive and that tell a great tale. Part of this revolution in publishing means that readers have more options in what kind of stories they buy—and in what format they receive them. The flipside to that reality is that authors—especially authors that serve as publishers as well—need the readers who love their stories to become teammates in the process. Pennsylvania is a self-published story, and I hope that it will be the first in a line of Pennsylvania stories that will eventually make up a larger work. That, of course, is up to you. Readers have more power than ever in determining what succeeds, what sells, and what stories are expanded.

As I’ve said before, the single most helpful thing that you can do to help me get the word out about Pennsylvania, other than get all of your friends and family members to read it, is to review the book on Amazon. It’s free for you to do so, and if you enjoyed it, it’s an excellent way to let other people know what you thought. You may not think a single review carries much weight, but in the new publishing world, reviews are critical to any work’s success. So, I am asking you to PLEASE, while it is still fresh in your thoughts, go to Amazon.com, or wherever you purchased the book, and write a review for it. Your review doesn’t need to be long; just a paragraph will do. It is a fact of the modern market that books with more reviews will sell more copies, get more attention, and have more credibility.

Again, I’d love to share more of the Pennsylvania story with you. I’ll wait to hear from you all so I’ll know that the story has an audience.

I would also be very pleased if you would share links to Pennsylvania on Facebook, Twitter, and everywhere else on the Internet where such things are shared and discussed.

And I’ve set up a Facebook page so you can keep up with news on the series:

https://www.facebook.com/PennsylvaniaBook

Thank you so much for all of your help and support.