Not All Who Wander Are Lost

So, I'm attempting something this summer that I've never before thought I'd attempt. I'm going to try to publish a couple of smaller pieces myself instead of going through my publisher. Now, that doesn't mean that I have anything against my publisher. I don't. I love my editor and I've had nothing but a positive experience with them. However, I've been hearing over and over at the various conventions I've gone to this year that indie, what used to be called self, publishing is the way to go to really earn money. Here's a fact of life in publishing, no matter the means....you need to spend money to make money. That doesn't mean that you pay a vanity press to publish your manuscript. No, a publisher should always pay you and not the other way around. What I mean is that the publisher or the author, depending on who is putting out the book, is going to need to pony up some cash for marketing. Now, unless you're Stephen King or your publish...

So, the title of this post isn't all that surprising. I'm certain there are a lot of things that I'm missing, but I'm speaking of marketing tactics in particular. I was at Capricon last weekend, a local science fiction/fantasy and writing/gaming convention. I love it. It was a great Con. There was a wonderfully positive vibe this year. I also got to sit next to Timothy Zahn on a Star Wars panel for an hour and a half and completely geek out. So, that was good. There was a panel on marketing your book. Unfortunately, I was moderating a panel on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at 200 years old at the same time. So, I send my husband to the marketing panel armed with a pen and paper. He can back with a ton of scribbled notes. One of those notes, one of those things that everyone mentioned was BookBub. Now, I've heard of BookBub. I get emails from them all the time. I don't know why it never dawned on me to look at them from an author's perspective instead of ...

So, I've been really crabby this past week or so. We decked the halls, I've been baking, wrapping and shopping. I've watched all the Christmas movies that make me sniffle and laugh and I've tipped back a couple of glasses. To no avail. I'm still crabby and I cannot seem to get into the holiday spirit this year. I finished another book, had a release and even gave a release party. Which reminds me, I have to send out messages to my winners tonight. And still... What do you do when you just can't count your blessings? I know they're there. I can list them for you if you'd like me to, but I won't. It just all seems too much like bragging. There are reasons I don't really want to get into at the moment since they don't completely concern me and I've never been one to air anyone else's business, but it's bringing me down. And if it's bringing me down, I can only imagine what it's doing to the principals involved. It reminds...

So, Flames of the Fallen, my next fallen angel story is off to the proofreaders, where they'll find all the typos my eyes skimmed over because after three edits with an editor is still after three edits on my own. After a while your brain sort of shuts off and you don't even see the issues. Then you have good old Word, which decides to change a character's name EVERY time you type it. I'm pretty certain that I missed at least one of them. Flames is the third novel in the series. I have seven novels planned. There are also two completed novellas and a third one I'm currently writing. The hope is that I'll be getting that one done by the end of the year and off to Solstice. It's the last novella I have planned right now. Of course, Flames was supposed to be the last novella and it turned into a full-blown novel. It's the same old story with me....get to a certain point in the story and have to make a decision. Do I go where I'd originally planned on ...

So, I've been a very neglectful blogger this year. I was so good for the first couple of years, but sort of tapered off this past year. It's not a bad thing, though. It just means that life has gotten a lot fuller and left me less time to spend spilling my thoughts out into the internet ether. I have been writing. In fact, I just finished a new Fallen book. Initially Flames of the Fallen was supposed to be a novella for last summer's Solstice anthology. I also auctioned off the ability to name/create a character for this book at my daughter's school auction last May. Thought it was a cool idea. Thought it would be unique enough to get some bids. Added signed copies of the other Fallen books, a bottle of wine and some chocolate to the basket. Got a total of 2 bids and one of them was a pity bid from a member of the family. Ouch. Yeah, so I learned my lesson about trying to be clever. Just donated wine this year. That one went much better. Tells you the priorities of the ...

Ever written yourself into a bit of a corner? I have. I changed something in my latest WIP (work in progress) and it opened up so much in terms of the story. It'll honestly be a much better and much stronger story at the end. It's just going back and unravelling that wearies me. I know what I need to do. I know what I need to write. It's a little like weaving. I'd gotten so far in the scarf and then realized that if I went back and changed the pattern a little bit here it would turn out so much cooler than I'd originally intended. It's just going back, picking out the stitches and restarting. I just have to get going and plow through. I'm looking forward to parts that come later, the neat plot twists this change opened up. I've done this before. These angel stories have a tendency to warp on me. They start off as one thing and something else occurs to me about eighty pages in and it sends the story off the rails. It turns out to be a stronger story in ...