Getting back into the saddle

As a lot of you know I have been blocked lately. Having trouble writing is nothing new. Everything author goes through times like that. I have gone from writing pages and pages a day down to years between. This time it was not so much life and kids blocking me but a lack of drive for a lot of things. Yesterday I sat down and I am happy to say Loralil has finally started talking to me again.

As my oldest character there are so many tales that she has to tell but she gets a wee bit stubborn from time to time about the details of these tales. Well yesterday I managed to get almost up to 11K words in her newest tale.

This picks up just months after the end of Revenge and as I have said before it is not as action heavy (so far) as it was before. I am at the moment trying to decide if I will stop this story when she reaches the Grey elven city or if I will just keep going. I have two parts. A Fragile Peace is the story and the first part is Found…the second is Broken and it takes place fifteen years later. So most likely this will be two stories, either novella length or novel, we will see.

Now one of the things that is helping is I finally did a rough map of Loralil’s world. Okay really just of the Kingdom that she is currently in. Based very roughly on my old home state I have three mountain ranges, Three rivers, a massive forest, A inland sea, a fen, a swamp and various town and cities. I haven’t detailed things like the grasslands and plains between the other places. The fun part is after the research I did on how fast you normally travel via horseback or with a pony cart I can estimate how long travel will take from place to place.

This is important folks. Even when you write fantasy like I do, you need to do your research. Writing stories set in the horse and buggy times travel will take so much longer than you realize. Never mind fun things like what type of horse could carry a Minotaur! (Yes in my fantasy world Minotaurs and intelligent farmers who rider horseback…on those huge draft horses that are practically extinct in our modern world.

Also one of the things I will be working on today is a cover for an erotic fantasy that I will be releasing. Now this is not light on the erotic side. There is a lot of steamy sex before I even introduce the true fantasy elements in this tale. I do plan on doing a bunch of these, not a tale type for the general reader of my work. I have written a lot of erotica that is either sweet or very wild. I have a very small following for those tales and I will be putting them out as I get them edited to completion. If you are looking for something hot and steamy with a touch of fantasy elements, then this will be for you. The title is “It was a Dark and Stormy night”” Yes a cliche but it works in the story.

Another thing I am looking at doing is some free complete stories over on either my website or on Wattpad. I have not seen a lot of attention over there, so I am hoping to get some attention for my work.

Revenge..or a dish best self served

Yup I have finished the rewrite/re edit of book two.  The cover is done adn it is now working its way through the posting process on Amazon, Kobo and Smashwords.  I set the price at $3.99 which is pretty good for a novel.  It totals out to 53K words…which is small compared to some authors but a long book for me.

Dark, filled with a lot of things that will probably brother readers who are more into light fantasy, I think this is a great effort on my part.  I go into more of how Loralil thinks in her and why she is doing this quest.  Yes it is dark, especially near the end but I am not a Gene Wolfe.  The story has light moments, moments of beauty and of course moments of pain.  This is the middle book in this trilogy.  Now Yes I plan on more than three books for Loralil but as the middle book of her early years We do a lot.  The third book will set her up for….oh wait I can’t tell you that now can I?

Those of you who were waiting to get the first book Endings, you better get it soon.  The free offer is almost over.  Same with the first of the Chaos Wars books, Fall Into Nightmares.  Both of them are dark fantasy novels but they come from different places.

Yes i am taking today off of writing.  I spent all day yesterday..and I mean all day working on Revenge.  From 6am till 9pm so I deserve a little time off.  I do plan to dive back into Traveler and see where I can take those characters.  That story is definitely lighter than the last few I have done.  No torture, not deaths (so far) just good old fashioned fantasy with a twist.  I hope to finish that by Easter.  And I will if Harry doesn’t raise his head and demand a new story or my friend at the space station wanting to tell a few more tales…something about matre gras in space…

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.

 

Harder than you think

Working on Traveler for the nanowriter November contest.  When given a set amount of words a day I find myself going..umm…errrr.  Yeah well I can write, that is obvious but writing to an arbitrary schedule in a way I don’t normally write is weird.  My words are getting stuck at the moment.  I will just have to change how it works.

I have written almost 16K so far on Traveler and I am not sure it will reach 50K by the end.  I don’t want to pad it but this feels like it is galloping toward its finale faster than expected.  Well if it does finish before I reach 50K I can always restart work on Destiny.  After all that story has 22K in the box all ready.

I need to let things perk in my mind and then read over what I did all ready.  Maybe something will shake loose.

Now an interesting thing is a discussion that sorta revolved around what is considered novel length.  There is one writer/reader who is looking for 90K in a manuscript.  Now I have written only one thing that topped 50K and that was Shadows.  That actually came up to a total of 111K.   That is a lot of words for a a fan fiction.  I have read longer of course but maybe I should do like EL James and rework it to make it a stand alone novel?  Taking out the elements of Sailor Moon and Ranma would be weird I think.  After all it explains the powers that Suteko has and why she became who she is.  But well that is a thought and task for another day.

I have started the process of putting together a book trailer for Endings finally.  Finding images is the hard part really.  After all you won’t find elves wandering around at the nearby creek.  Most of my trailers and book covers have been done with images of my photography.  Now I can work some of them and the image that I made of Loralil could be used but I need more than one picture of an elf to do a trailer right?   I can hope that once it is done that people might get interested in reading that work of mine.

free downloads and new covers

Well as of 8:30am EST Partings has had just over 100 downloads.  Not too bad.  Actually had one woman tell me that it made her cry.  She was nice enough to recommend some other tags for it too.  Now to just wait for her review to show up on amazon.  I swear reviews take forever to show up.  I like that she said she gave me a 5 star review.  Just a fun little story, one that worked out to four pages on the kindle.If I can keep getting people to read who knows right?  I have anther 15 stories not counting the Loralil books that I can post up for readers.  Course they all need covers and trailers.

I have been working on a cover for Ice, a Echoes of Elder Times short story.  It is actually a simple pleasure to just take my photos and make them into a cover and trailers for my work.  They come out rather simple and nice.  I know people have really liked the cover for Partings and Hope Everlasting.

Well I will finish up Ice and then sit down and do some actual writing on A Watery Grave.  The Mari-morgens are being difficult.  They want to have the take down before I planned on it.  This one may end up shorter than Hope.  We will see.

As for the for real world..OMG a 3 month old baby!  How could that madman shot a little baby in a movie theatre?  That is soooo wrong.  The heat needs to break down south.  So many crazy people doing things that maybe they would not have if it wasn’t for the heat.

I’m back!

Okay I never really left but I have a working desktop with word and other stuff on it now.  Which is important.  I didn’t waste time while was down either.  I have pages of notes to type into the computer and edit.  The new Guardian of the City story is really moving along.  Harry is going to have to deal with a wet and angry pair of sisters.  Should be interesting they let me know their story.

Now I don’t have Adobe quite ready for me to make covers yet.  Should have it by Tuesday or Wednesday and then I can make covers for the stories I need to post.  I have enough that I think I may just go ahead and post them one story at a time.  Of course they are all parts of series.  And we have the name of the series worked out.  They are of course, Guardians of the City, those are Harry’s stories.  Then there will be Death Walks Through.  Death’s stories.  Those are a little darker, more of light horror or ghost stories really.  Thirdly there will be Worlds Apart.  My more science fiction stories.  And then there is Echoes of Elder Times.  Stories that have a more mythic feel to them.  Be they retold myths or something I came up on my own they will have a theme.  Just like Gates did.

Now I added up the downloads so far.  With only three downloaded sales and one paperback sale I guess I should look at how well the free downloads went.

Night and Day 179 downloads

Passing the Torch 137 downloads

One More All Hallows Eve 116 downloads

I could look at those numbers and whimper, after all each consecutive story had less downloads than the one before BUT Hallows actually got four reviews versus the one each of the other two.  And well Gates just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere at all.  With it being all over and the ebook being only 99 cents you would think it would do better.  Six collected stories, which the people who have read my copy loved…who knows?

I will just have to keep plugging along.  I have plans to put more poetry to photo and music, and once photoshop is up and running I can make covers for Sins and Shadows and Loralil.  Get the two fanfics up over on wattpad and Goodreads, give people a taste of my style.  Hopefully hook them in for the original stuff.  Loralil will see the light of day finally.  After all two complete books of work and at least three more in the works?  I have to publish her somehow.

Okay I have babbled enough over here.  Tomorrow I will go over to my other blogs and do reviews of games and movies and tv show.  Stuff I haven’t been up to date on.  At least while the machines were down I got some book reviewing done.  All I can hope is after all the reviewing I did for the past week that the karma faerie gives me some reviews back.  Who knows, they could be good.  Anyone think I should offer more freebees?

Some days

Well yesterday was almost a total waste of time.  All day headache and queasiness made working on my books hard.  I managed to do some editing and rewriting on Partings, so that it flows better.  Thanks to Chuck and Larry and David for their comments  on how to make that shortie short better.  Need to make a cover,e etc before I post it.

Managed to get Hope Everlasting posted up on Kindle.  I figured since it was done and ready I would put One More All Hallows Eve up for free for the next four days.  Did that just before I went to bed and crashed.  Got up this morning and I can tell the boards are slow.  Only seven downloads as of 8am and no comments on the discussion boards.  But then there were hardly any after I went to bed.  Guess everyone is enjoying their weekend.  Good thing to do.

It is Canada day here and there were lots of fireworks going off last night.  While I am glad they were celebrating oh my did that make my head worse. Still touchy this morning.  Something around here is making my allergies go into overdrive.  Not sure what though.

Well today I have the goal of writing at least ten pages.  Not necessarily on one piece but that would be nice.  Just gotta see which one hits my up side the head and says work on me.  Yeah I should do more editing on Star Beast…or maybe I could pull out my really awful stuff and see if I can save it in any way.  After all even as a teen I had great ideas, just didn’t have the ability to tell them well.

It’s funny I am putting up short stories and even shorter stories but I am almost afraid to put up Loralil.  The two books are longer than my shorts, three to four times longer but I am just not ready to let that baby go I guess.  Maybe when I finally get some idea what i want for the covers.  It is hard because I don’t want something too cheesy but I don’t have the funds to get something really good made up for me.  She is close to my heart, after all I have been writing her longer than I have had kids and my kids are my center.

okay enough on this blog.  I should go to the other page I set up on wordpress and put up the other covers I have.  That is what that is for.  Covers and book trailers and series trailers.  Fun stuff that needs a place.  I will probably even put up the threatened poetry videos.  If I can decide what poems from ages ago I feel worth the effort.  Most of those are DEPRESSING but heck I was pretty depressed 10 to 15 years ago.  Now I am just silly and tired and cooking stuff way too much.  Yeah someday I will do that threatened cook book and photography book too!  Okay time to work.

Frogs, Faeries and Loralil Greyfox

Now I was sitting here in my office (okay my living room) thinking about adding other creatures to my story.  I have trolls, okay they are modified, after all city trolls can’t be big monsters like cave trolls or mountain trolls right?  Got a crow shape shifter, one of the good guys, got a version of a banshee.  and have brought in some low level demonoids.  Okay not strong master things.  Just something called up to mess up things.  I have this squirrel like faerie, she was fun to right.  There are a ton of squirrels around my house so they had to be put in.

Now onto frogs.  Thanks to Kaylan’s fascination with the little guys I have taken photos and posted them around.  They are all over in the muddy waters that June makes of streams.  Nashua has a ton of venal pond areas and I could see a sorta frog like faerie living with them.  Especially in places where you would swear that the pond should have dried up because of the heat but hasn’t.  They could have some information like the Squirrelkin did.  Hmmmm…now should i do that?  Yeah we have a stream of consciousness thing going here.

BTW I finally got the Smashwords dashboard to accept the book trailer for The Knight Protector, so you should be able to go see it over there soon.  People are downloading the free chapters but no one is buying.  Why is it that when I charge for my work no one wants to pay for it?  Other than one very good friend that is!  I try to make sure everything is edited properly and that it isn’t too expensive.  Okay I couldn’t help how expensive Gates is but that is the publisher, not me.  But the other stuff goes from 99 cents to $2.99.  That isn’t expensive.  I want to post up Loralil but if nothing sells it would be a waste of effort.

What do you guys think?  If I put together a cover, book trailer and than posted the first Loralil book up do you think it would sell?  After all I have two completed books for the Saga of Loralil Greyfox.    It is pure fantasy, not urban like Night and Day.  Or even Harry’s stories.  What to do, what to do.

So many completed stories.  Yeah I have the five or six over on Fanfiction.net that are still getting readers after many many years.  I have all the smut over on literotica that has way too many readers but I want my good stuff read.  Stuff that takes time and effort to produce and is a part of me.  Well, maybe I will just keep writing stuff and reading it myself, if no one else wants it.

writing in a mood

Yesterday wasn’t a good day.  Should have been writing and working on my novella right?  Well just didn’t couldn’t get into Harry’s mindset.  Was just too positive.  So I sat down with a notebook and a pen and did the whole flow of consciousness thing.  Now reading back on it it is obvious that I am missing my daughters.  When your children grow up and don’t need you anymore you go through stages of grief just like any other loss in your life.  I miss my girls.  Now I might someday write it all down and even more possible I just might publish it.  Books written about actual life to sell but in a way it feels like pandering to my own insecurities to do that.  And yeah I have a ton of those.

Like any writer I crave some feedback, some prove that my words are reaching someone.  I know that the erotic stuff I wrote has found an audience.  Heck a few of those stories have been downloaded over 100,000 times.  And my fanfiction seems popular.  I am still getting people liking Sins of the Father.  I wrote that 15 odd years ago.  Why is it that my totally original stuff seems to get ignored?  Well gets ignored if I charge for it?  I know people downloaded my freebies but did they read them?  Almost 200 downloads on the first book and around 150 on the second.  Which is nice.  But the only review I have had so far is Kaylan’s teacher telling me she wanted more when she borrowed my copy of my paperback.

So the question is should I write nonfiction?  I have had a life that would probably make good reading for some but well…doesn’t feel right.  I could fictionalize it but we all know how hard relieving memories can be.  I have a good life now, even with my occasional deep blue days.  I swear if my head would stop the aching I would have an almost perfect life.  Okay enough crazy babbling.  Anyone know an artist who would like to take my image of Loralil and make it cover worthy?