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.

Finished the writing on Sudden Disappearances

Yup finished it up just now.  Yes it is rough, yes it will need editing and yes it leaves things open at the end but that was the idea.  I mean you can’t do a sequel without an opening right?  Harry has taken some nasty punches and will have to learn to ask for help.

Now the next stories in this cycle will be a bit of a back step.  Filling in the back stories for major characters so that the other guardians are better know is a good thing.  Jackson, Daniel, Maeve and even Sheldon will get their own tales.  In fact one story for Sheldon is done and will be out next month.  Of course I will need to come up with a back story for that little surprise that Harry was given.  That will be a lot of fun to write for sure.

I am going to let this marinate for a few days before I go back and work on the editing.  I need to obviously go through and make sure it is spelled right, that I didn’t mix up names or change important info by accident.  Spell check seems to shut itself off when I am writing some days and that annoys me.  Plus I need to make sure the grammar is as good as i can and hopefully find a beta reader to catch anything I miss.  Once it is cleaned up then I get to put all the shorts together with the now just shy of 40K word novella.  As this is a longer piece it will make selling it as only available in the collection a good deal.  My readers wont feel rooked by getting only one new story in the book.

As I let that sit I will move back to the Death Walks Through stories.  I have three more of those and once they are done I can combine them together for a collection also.  Hopefully the collections will move better than the stand alones have.  Now I know that the market is tight and sales are slow but this month I can honestly and truthfully say that almost every sale has been of my erotica.  Yes I am proud of most of those tales but I would rather see sales of my nonerotic work do better.

In other writing news both charity anthologies from the Independent Poets group on facebook are now live!  I am rather proud that we managed to get them together and out.  All the money raised goes to charities helping the victims.  I am proud that I helped get these out there and moving.  You can purchase a copy right now of both of these on Smashwords.  Here are the links

April Rains https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/318496  For the victims of the West, Texas plant explosion

United We Stand https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/321005 is for the victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing

also of course if you are still interested there is Angels Cried https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/268589 which is for the victims families of the Newtown shooting.

Work is progressing on another anthology called Twist of Fate, which will raise money to help those effected by the Moore, Okalhoma twisters.  Expect to see something next month.

And lastly Reflections of the End will be out soon.  That is a non charity anthology that has one of my stories in it.  As will Dark Minds, another anthology.

Once i have links for those two anthologies and one other I will put them up on my blog

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.

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…

Poetry can be harder than short fiction

Yes I know poetry is hard for many.  Heck some writers take a year to write one decent poem but well that isn’t how mine come out.  Generally when I am in an emotional overload I will sit down with pen and paper and let it flow out of me.  That was how Love, Loss and Loneliness came about.  A lot of emotional bursts in free verse style.

But the people doing the Apocalypse anthology wanted to have some poetry to go with the short stories.  Now I had submitted a short story and offered to do one for them.  Took me a week to write it!  No really a week for me is a long time in poetry.  I’m not sure of it of course.  I am never sure of my poetry but I sent it over.  Hopefully it makes it into the anthology which submissions for is closing on Thursday.

The Fae poetry contest ended and I was not in the top three.  Course again my poetry is short and to the point.  The ones that one were more epic in style.  Nothing wrong with that and people did like my little ode to the Fae.

Other contests I have entered seemed to have folded up.  Which is too bad really.  This is why I tend to put out my work on my own.  While getting into a collection is supposed to help with your over all noticeability it seems that these stories get lost in the shuffle.  I like being parts of writing groups since it helps with the creative process and you all know dear readers that I adore a good anthology.  but if they never get put out who will read these children of my mind?

The past few days I have been doing a major edit/rewrite to Revenge.  While it is much better than Endings was it needs the work.  some of the sentences just do not flow the way I feel they should.  I am hoping to get it done this coming week.  With my hubby’s hours being shifted I will be doing a lot of writing in the evening.  Now that doesn’t always work for me.  I tend to write in the morning while he is working and the kid is at school.  We will see what happens.

The free offer on Smashwords for both Endings and Fall Into Nightmares is still going.  Nightmares freebie will expire on Valentines day.  Endings goes on till the 25th.  I haven’t decided if I will do a one day free offer on Love, Loss and loneliness on Valentine’s day yet.  I have made a single sale on that poetry collection and I hope to see a few more.  While it may not be all sweetness and light it is definitely a look into a heart and good for that day.

In other works I have a good idea how to finish up If Shadows Could Speak.  That tale is I would say three quarters finished.  That will be either number six or seven in the Death Walks Through series.  I have gotten a bit stuck on Death Comes Softly, which is the piece I had planned as the sixth story.  The either will be No More the Smiles.  After that I will probably take them all and put them together in a paperback.  Not sure how many pages it will be but if it isn’t enough I will have to dig around for new ideas.

The other series are on hold for a little bit.  I have ideas waiting to be sprung out of my folder of starts but I really need to work on the longer stories.  The sequel to Nightmares, Destiny’s tale and Traveler all need to be worked on and hopefully completed by the end of this year.  If I keep up a steady pace of writing I should get them all done.  Too bad I have a number of books to read and review. They are so very distracting..and worth it!

Whoops I thought I edited this!

Yeah opened up Revenge to see if it was ready and oh my….NOPE.  Needs work.  so I have gotten through the reformatting, the spell check, the grammar check and now it is the re read….and yes the rewrite.  Okay I admit that I wrote most of Revenge about 8 years ago, so yes it needs work.  And yes I am working on it.  I have gotta a whole five pages done right as I type this.  The story will stay the same but I needed to fill in better on things like inner dialog.  Loralil is a very flawed young elf right now.  There  is a lot she need to process as she works toward her revenge.  The end will be the same but the trip will be a bit different.  Which is a good thing.

When i went back to look at the stuff that will come after this book I realized that a bit more lyrical style was needed.  A better understanding of why she goes a wee bit over the edge in this book and the journey she would need to find a balance…a peace to take her to the next stage of her life.  When writing a character that you know will go on to do much more it is actually hard work to do the dark parts that made them who you know they will be.

And on a side note one of my dear writer friends is going over Endings for me.  I knew that book needed work.  I have reviews that are quiet good in that they are four stars but the book needs work.  As long as the wonderful editor doesn’t try to convince me that killing off characters was wrong I will take most of what I am given and fix it.  But those deaths, while harsh, are important.  This is a dark fantasy world, a harsh place where even the best of characters can die suddenly and  in cruel ways.  It helped set the tone for the rest of the stories that will come in this world.  Revenge has less loss of good guys but it will have tragedy because it is out of tragedy that Loralil will become a great bard someday.  That is the goal.

Now I am doing a quick little promotion for Fall Into Nightmares on Smashwords.  Anyone who contacts me in the next week can get a free copy of the novel if they will promise to review it, good or bad.  I like real reviews, ones that tell me what is right and what is wrong in my work.  That novel is another dark fantasy but of course it is…after all we are talking the end of the world.  While I have read many books lately where things have ended but the stories are light I feel that we need some darker fiction too.  Not dark zombie OMG we all die but dark in that the world is no longer the easy place we thought it was.  Hopefully I get a few bites and a few reviews.  Nightmares is a good story and I have the sequel half written.  I need some one to read that book!