Cover is nearly done and I am still editing!

Here I thought I would have Revenge done editing before my hubby made the cover.  Well I guess not.  I have only edited five chapters so far.  Now that might not seem like much but in this book the chapters are longer than they were in Endings.  The edit is making the story longer.  Yes I know most editing is removing but as i tend to be short I actually am writing in things.  Filling out the fragments that I have a bad tendency to write.

As I go through this I realize that while Endings had some intense drama with some character lose Revenge is darker.  This book goes more into Loralil’s mind and her journey through the darkness in there.  As one seeks revenge it is expected.  She needs to work out this stuff so she can go on to become what her parents wanted for her.

The advantage and disadvantage of being an elf is the years they live.  As they live so much longer than the mayfly humans it takes them longer to work through things but it gives them a chance to work through what would stop a human.  I have ten other tales that I could write for her.  Now some of them will probably never see the light of day and others will be combined but it shows how deep a character she is.

And yes I plan on each book getting longer.  No I probably won’t charge more for each.  After all this is a series.  Pricing is something I struggle with.  There is a lot of discussion on the boards that this or that amount is the kiss of death on a book.  Most of my stories are 99 cents but that is because they are just that.  Short stories should not cost the reader too much IMO.  Yes once I combine the collections together into one book that book will cost probably $5.99 each.  When it will be a minimum of six stories and more likely eight each it is a good price.  And of course they will be paperback.

Now why did I decide that you ask?  (okay probably not) Well I have yet to sell a paperback and this might not be a good idea but I want to see them in that format.  So I will yes put them out that way first.  And then maybe go the ebook collection route.  Okay yes I will and I will decide the price then.  So many stories!

Snow is gone

Okay I was doing okay writing a Christmasy story while there was snow on the ground.  I could put on the carols and sing along as I wrote happily my odd little tale but it rained all day today.  Yes I got some writing done. but the rain has put a damper on it.  I should settle down and scribble more notes, really I should.  Not sure if it is the wetness or the ache that it brings that is making it hard to write.  I have ideas and heck a new character added to Harry’s world.  Yeah I know I am slowly filling in this world which makes it a bit more interesting I hope to my readers.  When I get this and hopefully a sixth story done they will have a full world to read in a paperback form.  Yes I said paperback!  I figure if you want them as ebooks you can keep getting them as they come out but as a complete collection paperback will be the way to go.  Interconnected shorts are probably the best way to read my work.  After all I am a short story writing.  I don’t see any reason I should be ashamed of my worlds and how they connect.

I have had some movement on Endings since it went up as the BOTM.  Not huge but heck four copies in about three days is good movement for a book that had no notice over on Amazon before.  With the 9 copies sold on Kobo, it is quickly catching up to Ice as my best selling story.  What surprised me is people have started actually noticing Naughty interludes!  I have no idea how many but it has a nice relatively low number.  Now the lower the number the better it is doing.  Right as I type this is it listed as 234,291 on paid kindle and Endings is 295,785.  Not too bad for me really.  Gates is at 511,594.  Now yes i know not the highest numbers but we are talking at out of I believe 7 million books on amazon.  That isn’t too bad for a totally unknown author right?  Heck even Distance is holding at 763,488.  I hope someday to have better rankings but right now I just want to see sales and reviews.

I did get asked to be part of a blog thingie.  Basically I join their group and give them access to review copies and they will read, review and discuss.  Now that is something to think about.  After all a few copies of my ebook out there and maybe they can get others to read and pay for it.  Not sure at the moment but today I am not sure about a lot of things.  So I will think about it over night.

 

Fresh and brisk morning

Okay taking off yesterday to read and play games was a good down time.  Needed it.  I was getting way to wrapped up in my storyline for comfort.  Yeah it is a good idea to enjoy what you are writing but you need time to do other things and relax.  Pushing to get your characters through something can make the seem like they are being pushed.  I have the beginnings of a section with Avendale, a bit into her motivations and a bit into why she is so focused on controlling Jeffery.  Plus a few more hints about his mysterious background from before  she found him.  I know having a character who only remembers bits and pieces can be annoying to some but it will work out.  Probably should add a bit here and there about Jessica and Gregory but this is really Jeffery’s story.  There came into being in this paradigm, until Jeffery.
Realized after I had fiished up my spoiled time that I am behind on book trailers.  I mean five whole finished books, not counting A Water Grave which I am holding off for those pics from my daughter.  I need to do them for The Words That Bring Peace, Distance Means Little to Love, The Dream Wish, Endings and All That There Was.  Now four out of the five wont be an issue.  Distance…well that depends on if I go romancy or raunchy.  I dont know but I guess I will get them sorted out in the next few days.  Then a few more covers to do for the finished stories and oh yeah get the paperback cover to work for Endings so I can get that out.

So much to do, so little time till school starts.  Well back to work for me.

Sacrific is free for two days and moving into the next chapter

Well yesterday wasn’t as productive as it should have been.  Stupid allergies making my head stop working.  Not sure what i will get done today but I need to do some writing before my head gets bad today.  It is worrisome that I get a busted blood vessel in my eye when they get bad.  Makes the eye hurt of course but drier too.  Just means i spend a lot of time wearing dark glasses and not focusing on much.

Now I plan on at least typing up the bits I write yesterday.  If I can get through the scene/chapter that i have down I wont feel like I did nothing today.  I do love having the words flow out.  This story was in limbo for so long and it shouldn’t have been.  I have got so many to finish.  Will definitely finish the first book, hopefully this month.

Trying to decide also if i should put up the rest of my finished works this week.  I have a number of course.  But I want sales, not just downloads.  Though downloads are good.  If moving a little slow.  Yes August is not the best month for selling things according to the other authors on my discussion groups.

The smut book, Distance mean little to love, will be free from the 20th through the 24th.  Yeah it isn’t as smutty as some but I can just hope people with download and then buy stuff.  really anything would be good in the sales category.

Okay enough whining.  It is time to type up my notes and feed the kid and then hopefully finish up the scene.

Thursday thursday

Okay so that doesn’t work as well as Monday Monday but hey I never said I was a song writer.

Last day of the free promo for Hope Everlasting.  I am hoping it will top 200 downloads which would be cool.  That and hoping for a few reviews.  Haven’t gotten any new ones in a while.   It would be nice to have a couple on each of my books.  After all there are readers who actually read reviews before they buy the books, so having a review or ten would help right?  So far on Hallows has five reviews.  Everything else is in the one or four.  Well those that have reviews.   Tomorrow Partings will start a two day promo that will finish up its five days.  KDP does 5 days of promo for a 90 day period, if you enroll the work in KDP.  I obviously have two books that can’t be exclusive to KDP.  The Knight Protector is Smashwords and I think the coupon on that one is over and of Course Endings is over on Kobo..but I am thinking of delisting it over there since it isn’t really coming up in the searches over there.  I will have to think about it for a while.

I have quite a bit of notes to type up on Chaos War and more bouncing around my head.  Be good to get them all typed up and maybe get to the needed step to rounding up that section of the story.  Where it is going will make me have to do a bit of rewriting on the second book, No Matter the Distance.  I am trying to decide whether or not to change the actual timeline a bit.  I started this story at the end of the 90s so the millennium had not taken off.  Now 12 years later I am not sure referring to the end of the millennium is a good idea.  Dates the story but it is also part of it.  I will decide sometime this month obviously. It would be a really good thing to actually put this story to bed by the long holiday weekend.  And I mean Labor day.  I still haven’t remembered the Canadian version name.

Doing a read through what I have and I realized that I haven’t really described my three main characters.  The villain, Avendale I have pretty much covered but I have only lightly alluded to my three heroes.  I will have to expand that in the story I think.  Just so people have a visual idea the differences in them.  Once the first book is done and we move to the new one that is set 15 years later it helps to understand the changes in the characters.  The second book is darker with the coming final battle and all.  But the things that are coming out about Jeffery has changed a few things.  Getting him to tell me his back story is hard.  A very difficult thing with a man who doesn’t know his true self.  A very deep character I think.  And yes by the end of the series he will remember who he really is.  Not who Avendale told him he was but who he was before she found him.

Okay time to type, to take pics of the birds in the backyard and feed the brat

Okay that was interesting

Just looking at all the nice posts I have been getting from readers and was surprised that most of them came off of one post.  About Goodreads and Fanfiction.  Interesting that that one short blog post gets the attention.

Well almost to the point where I wanted to be in Chaos war.  Have Jessica in the hands of the vampires and the guys running to the rescue.  Yeah it is a little cliche to have the woman being kidnapped but well she hasn’t had any fighting skills as of yet.  And to be honest if you were the big nasty evil sorceress and there was to you a basic simple woman in the way of your all consuming desire wouldn’t you go after her over and over?  Avendale, the official total evil be acht really thinks if she takes out Jessica she will have Jeffery has her play toy and tool again.  Yeah right..not gonna happen.  At least if the characters let me write that is.

Introduced a new fun gay character.  The gayness is only a factor in how it throws Gregory for a loop.  He is a good third to the chosen ones but Gregory needs seasoning and to grow up a wee bit.  And Michael will help with that.  Being a good solid man who just happens to love to pretend to be a flamboyant gay man.

On the cover front Meggy has the photos I need for A Watery Grave.  Just has to get them from her phone to me.  Doesn’t sound too hard but Meggy isn’t that tech savvie.  That is what she has Paul for.  Here is hoping I get them before the weekend so I can get that story up.

I am thinking that if I don’t crash again I can do some other covers and get more work up on Amazon and ready for sale.  Had a nice bit of time with a non argument discussion on the boards about people who don’t like to work and stuff like that there.  Chiming in as a no longer working outside the home felt only slightly wrong.  But I have had my years of working in many many jobs where I seemed to be the one who was working hard and others weren’t so I chimed in.

okay time to get the food on the table for the family and then clean up and type up what I managed to write before i passed into the snoozefest

Endings are us…or justa few more pages

Yup got through the battle now to wrap up the story and start the final edits.  I know a lot of writers do all the writing and then edit but I tend to edit every time I open up the file.  Yeah I do miss a thing here or there but I find if I over edit I screw something up and then it is annoying.  Staying in the right tense and person is what i do when I write my way.  too many cooks really do spoil the soup in my way of writing.

I put Sacrifice up for free for today and tomorrow and before I even let people know there were some downloads.  That is nice.  Hopefully I will get some reviews.  Seems like these free downloads get me about 150 downloads on average, which is pretty good.  Yeah I am still struggling on the actual paid for downloads but they will come.  After all gotta get my name out there right?

It is too bad in a way that I can’t do a free download on Knight Protector, Endings and Gates but those are real books.  Getting them read is what I am hoping for.  Knight Protector has been downloaded at least once as has Gates.  Yeah I don’t make a ton of money but a reader is a reader.

I put up the trailer for Sacrifice which I will add under the other page of my blogs.  I like the way it came out, definitely more a teaser than anything else, which is what you want right?  It is hard to not give anything away when you do shorts but i think I pulled it off.

Now I have figured out the first batch of erotica that I will release for publication.  Playing with a title, something like “Distance doesn’t matter” though that doesn’t sound quite right.  Guess I will have to play with it more.  I will have to do little bits to connect the stories of Anne and Charlie to each other and well edit them so they are less porny and more erotica.

But that will have to wait till after I finish the writing and editing of A Watery Grave.  Nice to have Harry’s third story almost finished.  It does pick up nicely after Hope Everlasting, okay a few months after but that is how these things work.  Get that finished up, do up a cover and a trailer and post it up..hopefully by the middle of this week…or beginning of next week.  I hope I am not flooding the market with stuff really.

I could so easily put up the two other Death Walks Through stories and then the six Echoes of Elder Times and five more Worlds Apart, never mind the second of the Saga of Loralil Greyfox books.  I have a lot finished and ready to go…well story wise.  They all need covers and trailers but what can I say right?

Okay back to work.

Start of summer vacation or MOM I’m hungry!

Well Kaylan is home for the next 8 weeks so writing will be interesting.  So far I have played Minecraft with her, fended off requests for food she doesn’t really need, had to look up stuff that will keep her from bugging me and I can’t wait till she goes out to play.

Last night I had a little writers conversation with two other writers.  Got some pointers on what they think one of my stories needs.  Part I will definitely work on, part um…no.  A short short short piece is meant to be that way.  A bit more detail I can add.  Changing it from two ghosts on the windswept moors to two ghosts in windswept Harlem…no…not what these two are about.  After all a collection of ghosts stories from Death’s point of view… you are going to have ghosts from all time periods right?  I have the two in this tale from 500 years ago.  I have another set around the 50s, then the 80s and another that will be current to date…and a few others.  The important part is how they deal with and understand they are dead and how death helps them move forward.  Should be a fun if niche title.  But then everything I write is a niche title huh?

Started on the heavy editing needed to make Star Beast work.  Lots of errors in flow.  The spelling was not as bad as I expected.  The grammar…well we know that needs help.  Pacing will work out once I get the wording fixed.  Once I do that I can move it on to the actual conflicts and well bring in the battles.  But it will be a long haul on that one I think.

Plan on the read through of Hope Everlasting.  Making sure it is ready for the next step.   If I spend today and tomorrow getting it tightened and cleaned up then I can work Sunday on a cover and trailer for it before I put it up live to be read.  I plan on putting One More All Hallows Eve up for free download from Canada day to Independence day…for the uninformed that is July 1st through July 4th.  Get some traffic on my stuff I hope.

Well time to think about lunch.  The only problem eating breakfast before 6am is that you are starving long before noon.