Bill (William Gibson) shared insights and perspective on building a writing career, working with literary agents, and finding a place in the publishing industry. He passed on two tips that he had received as a young writer:

Never do a multibook deal.

Don't buy the big house!

He also said that many of his most successful writer friends are distinguished by the fact that they KEEP WRITING, rather than getting distracted by side projects or celebrity. He's an incredibly sweet and brilliant human being and I was humbled and honored to talk to him.

Here's some details about the inspirations behind Cumulus that I shared in the afterward:

I’m really proud of how Cumulus came together. I moved back to Oakland in 2013. It was the city of my birth and where I grew up. Seeing how Oakland has evolved since the ’80s is at once inspiring and harrowing. Cumulus is a kind of twisted love letter to my favorite city in the Bay Area.

Over the course of the past few years, we’ve bonded with many of our incredible neighbors, sated our appetites at countless ethnic food joints, had a triple homicide on our block, installed a free little library for our community, hiked in beautiful Redwood Park, and watched a protest with thousands of people and hundreds trailing police vehicles terminate at the end of our street. We love the birdsong but hate the gunshots. Oakland feels like a special point of confluence for so many critical social issues: the implications of the growing wealth gap in American society, the extraordinary promise of new technologies and diverse world views, our failure to solve persistent social problems like poverty, racism, and homelessness, and the power of fierce, pragmatic optimism.

Writing Cumulus allowed me to explore my enthusiasm for my hometown and my fascination with how new tools like the internet are reshaping our lives in so many ways, big and small. Through years of working with startups and venture capital investors, I’ve had the privilege of seeing how some new technologies come to be and getting to know a few of the people who build and popularize them. I’ve never been more excited about the promise of human ingenuity and there’s no other time in history when I’d rather live. That said, these new developments are changing our social fabric, the texture of our personal lives, and even our geopolitics. Such change is always painful. Times like these require open-mindedness, compassion, critical thinking, resourcefulness, and creativity. I don’t have the answers but I hope that this story might contribute a few questions.

Cumulus is my 4th novel. My first three constitute the Uncommon Series, a trilogy about two college students who found a tech startup and take it from garage to IPO, but get caught up in an international financial conspiracy along the way (think Panama Papers).

I started writing that story because I had spent years working in startups and venture capital and realized there was so much inherent human drama that would be a rich canvas for a novel. But most business books are dry, sterilized nonfiction. I couldn't find that story to read, so I decided to try my hand at writing it. I just opened up Word and started typing.

I wrote the first draft of Cumulus over the course of ~4 months. Revisions and edits took another 3 months or so.

I've found that if I write everyday, and make sure that everything I write advances the story, I can keep momentum through the creative process more effectively. The hardest part about writing is actually getting yourself to write!

It went straight to #1 in its category, which blew my mind. First six months of proceeds go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Chapter 510, and it's raised thousands of $ for both organizations over the past 5 days.

This was 100% organic, I didn't even post it to Reddit. Friends started texting me screenshots of Reddit front page with the book sitting right up there. Then literary/film/tv agencies and production companies started reaching out about rights and adaptations. All in <24 hours. It was nuts. It was completely unexpected and I'm totally out of my depth.

My perspective on "harnessing the power" of any community is simply to (1) participate (not just about your stuff), (2) find ways to help people (that's what communities do for each other), and (3) make awesome things that you're proud of (why do anything else?). Rinse, repeat. With a little luck, the rest takes care of itself.

I wrote up an article on building an organic fanbase for fiction that you might find useful:

https://writingcooperative.com/how-to-build-an-organic-fanbase-if-you-write-novels-db0f37ec5aa4#.yr3a3x3zw

All thanks for the awesome cover go to Kevin Barrett Kane at The Frontispiece: http://www.thefrontispiece.com/

He did an incredible job with it and I use him for all of my books. If you can believe it, that was the first design idea for Cumulus! The minute I saw it, I know it was perfect.

Yes, I am self-published. I used to be published by a small press and then the rights reverted so now all my books are indie. I love the creative control and the direct interaction with readers. But there's not right or wrong path, only the one that works best for you. From my perspective, there's never been a better time to be a writer. Now we have options!

Digital versions of Cumulus are also available on iBooks:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/cumulus/id1108626825?ls=1&mt=11

It might be surprising, but as an indie author, Amazon actually shares as much or more of the royalty share with me than most other retailers. The only way to do better would be to distribute the digital versions directly from my own website, which I don't have the backend for (although I'd be interested in exploring it in future.

I very much appreciate the sentiment. Making a living with fiction is tough. What really gets me excited to get up and write in the morning is reader enthusiasm for the stories :).

Here's some more context about the book if you're interested in the backstory:

https://medium.com/@eliotpeper/economic-inequality-and-persistent-surveillance-push-oakland-to-the-brink-of-civil-war-a93036f5b0d3#.cc0avjrpe

[Excerpts compile from conversation created by /u/eliotpeper]