Another snowy afternoon and a day late

Okay  I had planned on working on my blogs every Monday but well see…okay I admit it.  I stayed up way too late watching the Oscars and then dragged my butt around yesterday in a haze and fog.  I should have taken a nap but well…I was stubborn!  So instead you get me babbling on a Tuesday.

Usually I just go on about what I am working on currently but well while I am working on a new Sheldon story I will babble about that over on my Books blog.  Here I thought I would go on about the Smashwords Book Read an Ebook week long sale.  Like the last time I have put a bunch of titles either on discount or for free!  While it doesn’t help my bottom line I am hoping I will get more reviews out of this process.

Thanks to another author over on the Amazon discussion boards I went through my Amazon book pages and did a major over haul.  Two days of adding a LOT of information to all my individual titles.  Giving a little extra information on my other series and hopefully nice little bits to attract attention to my work.  I still need to do a lot more of course.  The second half of the major overhaul will involve spending a ton of time on Shelfari putting in all kinds of little things that tease and entice readers.

Also I am doing a read and review over on Goodreads for The Traveler.  I was hoping for more than the handful of requests that I got but if i get reviews how can I be upset right?

Now back to Smashwords.  Any of you who are interested you will need to go to Smashwords to get these little treats.

Distance Means Little to love is currently up for $1.50 till the end of hte week

All four of my poetry books are on sale for 99 cents each

And the following short stories are free for this week only

Under the Black Bridge

The Words that Bring Peace

Reality is a Dream

Not to the Grave Go I

oh yeah and my novella, Endings is also free for this week.  If any of you wanted to try out the first Loralil story this is the time to try it.

Also I thought I would do a shot in the dark.  If any of you reader s have seen reviews of my work, places other than Amazon, let me know.  I like to keep track of the reviews and I can’t always find them.  Thanks

Jesume really now?

Just got an email from Draft2Digital that Kobo is pulling all their titles because of an issue with erotic titles put in places they should not be.  For those of you not up on the discussions on the writers boards it seems some crazy indie writers who write, get this, dinosaur porno, have placed said stories up in the children’s book category.  Now while I can see this needing to be address and those stories being removed from where they are removing all self published work is a crock and we all know it.

I have been using D2D for a few months now and I totally have enjoyed the experience.  They are prompt with help when you need it and they post your work to the four major retailers quickly.  They are easy to work through and you can edit as you need to.

The backlash that has been building from the big publishers is IMO what is driving this.  They don’t like the growing influence of the self published movement.  It was fine for them when the little guys posted up stuff because it wasn’t effecting their bottom line but now that big name authors have jumped ship so to speak they have decided to attack the competition.

A big ebook retailer in Britain was the first to decide they would remove all self published titles from their pages.  This is just wrong.  With the Big five deciding who and what will be published and not doing the job that those established authors pay them for the self publishing market grew.  We authors needed places to put our work.  Yes some of it needs major work but there are so very many highly talented writers who never got past the so called slush pile because the big name publishing companies would rather publish the next Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian book versus something from an unknown yet talented writer.
Talking with a few writers who have actual contracts with houses you find that unless you are famous you are not getting any of the services you should be.  The publishers are expecting manuscripts to come in totally print ready and that the writers will do all the marketing for said work.  This is wrong.  Twenty years ago there were editors, proof readers, marketing gurus and more to help those that made it through the slush pile, now you can pick up a big name author’s book and you will find grammar and spelling errors, proof reading mistakes and all kinds of other issues.  It isn’t the author that I blame but the so called engine of business that expects profits and not a quality piece of work.

Now so far I am lucky.  Out of my titles there are still 34 showing on Kobo.  Yes 24 of them were put up there in their Writing Life system but that means that there are still ten titles that I did not post there myself showing.  If you go to Barnes and Noble you will find 51 titles including my two small publisher collections.  On Amazon I have 69 titles up for sale and Smashwords has 56.  So there are a lot of titles out there.  (Okay Amazon has the anthologies i am part of that dont show on the other sites and Smashwords has two free stories that aren’t on other sites)

But really this backlash is crazy.  Yes they need to police things better.  Not so much for good or bad writing but to make sure that books end up in the right place.  I would never want any of my erotic tales to show up near a children’s book.  Yes i plan to write a children’s book or three in the future but I don’t plan on having ANYTHING vaguely sexual near it.  This backlash is an over reaction that is going to harm the people who provide the product these places sell.

I really hope that other retailers don’t go the way of Kobo in this.  For some of the very best books i have read this past year have come from self published or small press publshed authors.  With the demise of print magazines we need the avenue of ebook sellers to put out work worth reading.  Kobo may find that what it is doing will cost them even more in the long run than leaving them out there would have.

So gentle readers, keep reading.  Go to whatever sites you need to to find good work.  If Kobo won’t handle us self published authors then go to Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, ITunes, Sony or any of the other fine retailers out there.  Show those fat cats that you will take your business to those who will provide what you want to read.

Trying to get everything everywhere

With the newest update to Smashwords I decided to take a look over there again.  Now they have a series manager, which with my work is a great idea.  Most of what I write is of course in series and getting them together can be hard for the purchaser.

Now I have posted stuff all over as you readers know.  Between Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords and D2D I have a lot of work to sort hrough.  While I adore D2D they only post to four of the major retailers right now.  Smashwords has a good six or eight they don’t.  So should i go through and post all my missing stories over there?  Am I up to the mess that Smashwords can be?  Is it worth the effort?  Well when I looked at the list of retailers and saw that I had sold two copies over on Sony.  So while the numbers aren’t big it is worth trying to do this.

The first hurdle is that two of the stories I have yet to put over there are some of the very first tales I published.  Before I learned much about making covers I had put up Night and Day, Passing the Torch and One More All Hallows Eve.  Now the latter has had a new cover made up but I never got to making the cover for the first two.

Working on those covers is a part of my game plan for the next few days.  They need updating anyways so why not?  Once I get those done I have to go back over all my tales and make a smashwords version of the file.  The reason I say this is smashwords is specific on where and how the copyright page is set and the links at the end of the story have to be a certain way.  This won’t be hard to do as I made a templet when I was posting there last year.  I can copy and paste it into the files I have but as I have around 60 titles and only 20 odd of them are on smashwords this will take time.

Of course I am still working on stories and other projects at the same time.  With subimissions for the next Writer’s stuff anthology not needed till November I have a little bit of time there and the third Author’s Choice Select anthology has no due date yet.  Both the stories for these collections have only been partially written.

I have been asked to write the forward for Behind the Door, the second ACS anthology and I need to get a bit more information from the authors before I do that plus we need to update the website for the group with the newer additions to the group.

All this along with blogging six blogs, raising a kid and feeding a family.  I am a busy busy writer…guess I really am the mad writer?

What to work on now

Yeah I should be writing.  Typing up my notes, coming up with new stuff and just being a writer but….I don’t wanna!  Course that might be because nothing is moving in the sales end of things.  Thanks to the summer slow down a lot of writers are seeing a lack of sales.  It does bring up anxiety to all of us who hope to make a living this way.

On one hand you want to put out great project and do the best you can for the reader.  On the other hand you are waiting for that little payment that can make or break your month and your mood.  Course there is a minefield on what company pays how.  And I mean that.  As you readers know I work with Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords, Draft2Digital, Juicy Erotica and Just Fiction.  Now on the payment front they all do thing different.

Amazon and Kobo  pay directly to your bank account but in different ways.  Amazon does an EBT and Kobo does a Western Union wire transfer.  These all take time to process.  Anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.  So even if you get an email with your payment info you won’t see it in the bank for a while.

Smashwords, Just Fiction  and Draft2Digital pay into paypal but you have to reach a certain amount to see a payment.  Just Fiction pays once a year and hopefully you see a good payment but maybe not.  After all you don’t get a monthly statement like you do with the others.  Smashwords you need ten dollars in your part of the sales to get a payment.  Which can take time since they don’t get reports more than quarterly from some of the retailers.  This makes me a bit annoyed but understanding it I don’t get that annoyed.

I haven’t gotten paid by Draft2Digital yet but I should see something next month as I have had some sales.  My portion isn’t the best but that is what happens as a writer.

Now Juicy Erotica I have no idea what will happen.  I have gotten one report which was a bit confusing showing my sales.  As we know I don’t sell a lot of any one title yet but I was hoping to see even a tiny payment for the copies that did sell.  I have a feeling like Just Fiction it will be sometime after the year is up that I will see payment.

So far as a professional author I have made less than 100 dollars in the year of publishing.  So kiddies as you can see it is not a get rich quick thing.  I have lots more to offer for readers and I can just hope that I find a solid audience who wants to read my stuff.  After all right now I have four new titles that could go up but I am holding them for a bit.  I need to see a bit more movement.  I am 15 sales from making 200 total.  I think I will wait till I either get those fifteen sales or till Labor day weekend.  Hopefully I will see more sales this month.  I have seven so far.

Now I have done a cover for Blackbird over my lazy weekend.  Came out rather nice with using one of my photographs for the image.  Not sure what I will do for the other titles I have in the works.  Here is hoping I can find something good.  I need a gremlin but not a Speilberg gremlin.  Something nasty but closer to the Japanese take on them than the American.

I am hoping one of my friends back home will take a photo of the Black Bridge for me for another title.  Who knows?

OH joy now I remember

Okay I now remember what the problem with doing a poetry book is.  Getting your formatting to carry over into the publication software the way you want!.  I have the documents on the two finished books all nicely set up, the cover done, the images sized correctly but when I went to publish them…oh my god all the formatting went POOF!…now the last time I fought my way through Amazon and through Smashwords, so this time I thought I would use draft2digital.  I have had very little trouble with the books I put up there all ready.  Just little niggling things that were easily fixed.  I have had a very nice experience there and I do plan on continuing to use them…but DAMN.  Poetry by its very style needs to be done a certain way.  Other than the first poem, all of the titles got mushed into their poem and all the spacing…gone!  My poems are usually three groups of four lines..just how i write…having them show up at a long list with no spacing between stanzas..not right.  And on the second book all the page breaks disappeared.  I went from 32 pages to four!…yeah no.  Hopefully the tech guys can tell me what happened.  They arent on till Monday but like all authors I am crazy about wanting it fixed NOW….okay I am not that bad but damn I had hoped to have them released this weekend.

As for Guardians…cover is being worked on today.  Once it is done I will set up that file and we should have a nice collection…I hope.  I really hope people decide to buy this one.  Sudden Disappearances is the longest of the Harry stories and has all kinds of surprises!

Today if I am a good doobie I should get some writing finished.  I have a lot of partial poems for the Generations of Love collection to complete, I have the wip short stories to do and then I really should find out if the two shorts i wrote for the magazine will see the light of day before the end of summer.

What happened to spring? Well back to work

I know that St Patty’s is Sunday and next week spring officially starts but you can’t tell looking out my window.  There is snow coming down yet again.   I had hoped to get my camera back out and be taking some photos of the world around me but nope.  Now i could take snow shots but I have done the whole snow thing enough lately.

Been a good month so far for me though.  I have another author interview up   Rather fun doing those via emails.  not sure how well I would do face to face but give me a list of questions and I will answer them.  Sales are up this month, thank goodness.  It really is a rollercoaster when you are a writer.  There is only so much you can do by yourself for sure.  No I haven’t hit the top of the charts, no I don’t expect to but it is nice to have people buying my work, reading it too!

It is fun to go look at my rankings but confusing.  One minute I have numbers in the high six to low seven digits.  Now if that was sales it would be tremendous, as ranks it is not great.  But make one sale and you jump up to the five digits.  That is the only way I know I have sold copies of Naughty Interludes or Gates in fact.  It is fun to watch and depressing at times.

Okay I should be writing, yes I know this.  I just have not been inspired at all this week.  Now this happens sometimes.  You shouldn’t force yourself to write, no matter what so many so called experts say.  I have noticed that if I force myself to work on something the story does not flow right.  I end up having to rewrite the whole scene.

Now a lot of writers do just that.  They force themselves to write, write, write and then they go back and tear out huge chunks of their book because it just didn’t work.  There is nothing wrong with pondering what you are writing.  Writers write not just on the computer or paper but in their heads too.  You need to work out the scene, the character and the story somehow.  If you are not anal retentive enough to have to use an outline and force your characters to be this way or that you might find yourself writing something amazing.

This is why I have so titles and so many works in progress.  I go where the story takes me when the story takes me.  This of course would drive the big publishers nuts but it has worked fine for me as a self published author.  I always have something to work with and something to put up.  To be honest I have four things out to people for anthologies and have put up some finished work for free on places like storyenet and wattpad.  Plus I have put a lot of my stuff from amazon over on smashwords.

Speaking of smashwords amazingly enough I have gotten sales there for the first time this month.  A handful of them in fact.  I believe their free days is what helped.  Seeing sales anywhere is always a great thing for me.  The fact that between Amazon, Kobo and Smashwords I currently have 21 sales so far this month is amazing.

And yes I am a tad scattered today.  Must be the snow?  All I know is that the seeds in my kitchen are sprouting and bringing a bit of green to my snowy white world.  Hmmm…maybe I should work on another poetry collection?  Who knows.

Writing something for a magazine…or I think it is that is

Yup doing a short story instead of my novel but I needed a little break from the longer work.  I updated my website with the new releases, did a few things over on Goodreads and I have about half of the story written for the magazine.

Now since the request is for any genre and just wants a story that has something to do with social networking I thought hey Sheldon deserves his own story.  Sheldon is the dragon from Christmas Snow.  He was just too good a character to leave in a one shot.  He will return in other Harry stories but for now he is having a little trouble with a client who wont leave him alone.  Having fun coming up with names for the different message boards that a dragon sage would be on.  I am enjoying this one.  The next story, since I was asked for two, will be about why you need to make sure all your devices are properly charging when you go to sleep.  Gremlins and social networking!

Picked up two reviews for Red Ghost Rides yesterday.  I was amazed to get them so fast and whoa.  Two five star reviews.  People seem to love my ghost stories.  Here is hoping when I put up Not to the Grave Go I they will like that one too.  You never know in this business.

I have put four of my titles on Goodreads into the free read an ebook giveaway.  Had three takers so far.  Not too bad, if I get reviews out of this.  Something I hope for.

My goal for this coming year is to have at least one sale and one review of each title I have out.  Might be asking for a lot but while I got my other goal down so well.

Over on my new platform, Wattpad, I have four titles up.  Now this is a free site so I won’t have my for sale works really.  I put up a chapter out of Fall Into Nightmares as a teaser but really what I plan is to put my shorty shorts over there.  I put up In Space No One Can Hear You Scream and Twas the Night so far.  29 and 24 reads respectively on those two titles.  No comments but well I don’t know how to expect comments over there.  It does seem to be mostly younger readers so I may not have something they like yet.

Got contacted by a website requesting I submit a story of about 2000 words to them for their main page.  I don’t currently have something that length but once they get back to me on what they want for a theme I can try and toss something off for them.

 

Just one more please!

Okay I know but really I set myself a goal of 100 sales of all of my titles combined by the end of my first year as a published for sale author.  As far as I can see from my numbers I need just one more sale and I will make my goal!  That is cool.  I was not expecting my newest release to get two sales in the first two hours of being up and ready.  This is wonderful and putting me in a much happier mood.

I do have a lot of work to do today while I can.  I need to make a bunch of covers, book trailers and of course WRITE.  Traveler has moved on quickly over the past week and I am happy at the flow.  If I keep up with it I should have it written for my next personal goal of the end of this month.

A lot happened in my dive into writing yesterday.  A lot of stuff came out of Ronald and we will be finding that he is not the light rakehell that everyone though he was.  He has a long history and things that his sons did not know came out yesterday.  I have a bit more to finish on that chapter before I can move on to the next chapter which will have a lot more to do with the mysterious dwarven metal shaper.  I will be dealing with her back story a bit and how she was blinded.  I hope this novel finds an audience when it is done.  I have a cover all ready which is a good thing.

This morning I posted up my first book trailer on a new site.  Vimeo is supposed to have more people viewing than youtube but I am pretty sure that isn’t true.  I decided to start with Endings since it had such a good response on facebook.  I should get the rest of the trailers and poem videos up there by the end of the week, I hope.

In other news I am now going to post up free short shorts on Wattpad, hopefully I will find an audience there and I have posted up Sins of the Father over on Goodreads.  Another free read for anyone interested.

To do a giveway or not do one, that is the question

With the news that Amazon is finally thinking about reining in all the free books on their site I find myself with a bit of a quantry.  While i pulled myself out of the KDP select program I still want to be able to give a free book or three out to potential readers.  Now Smashwords luckily allows you to do coupons for one day or more of your titles for things like giveaways.

Now this is a useful thing yes, but I don’t have all my titles over there yet.  This means I have to start moving my tush and getting all my published (self published that is) work into shape for the confusing process of smashwords.  This can be both good and bad.  They do put your stuff out to a lot of places but to be honest I have only seen one real sale over there.  One…I have ten times as many on Kobo!  Should i do it or not is the question.

Never mind that I am hip deep in Traveler right now.  I have done some nice progress and have come up with the next sequence in my head so I will hopefully keep banging out the chapters.  I am doing my best to keep this a lighter fantasy, less violence to bother the younger readers and a bit more romance to fill the gap.  Romance not sex…this will be a clean tale but not a kiddie book.

And btw just what qualifies as a YA book?  Does it have to have teens as the main character?  Or just young seeming characters.  Reece and Edana are young…just how old I never say.  Hell Edana is a lot older than she expects.  But can I say this is a YA fantasy novel?  I have no idea.  Anyone want to help me with that?

Hopefully if I keep up on the roll I will have it ready for a prereader by the end of next month.  Another hard thing, finding a prereader!  I know a number of people who like my work but they are all either busy parents or busy authors.  Makes it hard to find someone who will read my stuff and let me know if the story is plausible or needs major fixing.

Well on the news front I have sent off a copy of One More All Hallows Eve to a reviewer and did an author interview for Endings/Revenge.  Just more ways of getting the brand of me out to the reading public.  Another brillant writer type recommended having a tshirt or two made with my book cover on it and having someone wear it around a convention.  Now I hadn’t thought of  that as a marketing technique.  Just finding someone who could afford a con and was willing to wear the shirt just might find my some readers!  Course the people i know who go to cons tend to hit transformer and anime cons but I can work around that right?

Still toying with the bookmarks snuck into books at stores and the local library.  While I don’t have the funds to do this yet I think it would work.  What do you think?  One suggestion would have worked if I hadn’t sold my car but that is okay.

I need more ideas that I can do for no money.  The only way to get people to notice me I can’t afford right now but some day.  Yes someday I will be a known voice in the fantasy genre, not huge but known.  All I can ask right?

Back to work or where did that blind dwarf come from!

I have seriously padded my thumb so I can type and not feel like I am being jabbed each time I hit the space bar.  Managed to do a chapter on Traveler last night and another so far today.  Yes the chapters are short, only a few pages but I do this when I change viewpoint from heroes to villain.  Only makes sense to me.

A new character (or two) decided to pop their head into the story.  Since I am one of those weird writers who don’t use outlines and cue cards and all that stuff to do my stories it is expected.  You need your muse to toss in these voices to move the story in the direction it is supposed to go.

The villain is turning into one hell of a nasty little creature.  Any creature who wants to commit genocide is going to be of course but you don’t expect someone who was once a beautiful Elf woman to turn into one do you?  I am having fun writing the arrogance of the two who are battling over our main character.  Parents…sometimes you just don’t need them right?

Looks like this will be lighter in tone than my last few.  I don’t want to become known for just dark fantasy right?  I am hoping I can get through this whole book with something that would be good for a younger audience.  Say that big youth market?  Would be nice.  The love story is soft and tentative so far.  I won’t take it too adult, after all I have a few others in the wings for adult fantasy romance type things.

Edana is strong willed for sure.  But a woman who grew up not knowing who she is and even what she is, who is the best in a field generally male dominated, she is going to be strong willed.  Now i just need to come up with the Elder Gods.  Yes I said Elder gods.  Creatures who took a hand in events that they never do…or rarely do.  Should be fun.

Still crossing everything I have that the review of Fall Into Nightmares will be a good one from PRG.  They have liked books I have read and reviewed, some more than I have and others less.  Sometimes I am surprised at the things they give 5 stars to.  I don’t expect something that good but I would gladly take it.

Endings is getting a small handful of reviews, which is good since Revenge is out now.  And now I am going to hold off on working on the third book in that trilogy till I see some good sales on both books.  Endings is neck and neck with Ice right now.  While neither is a best seller by any stretch of the imagination they are doing good for me.

Speaking of Ice.  I am thinking that soon I should put together those collections.  March should hold a number of releases of my work.  While I may just be taking up virtual space someone will find me someday and rad everything.  That is my hope after all.