I'm No Ninja

I read a post this morning that said something to the effect of 'Ninja writers pre-sell books'.  Umm... yeah... about that...

I don't pre-sell books.

I had my first book up for pre-order.  For like ten days.  It was finished and could've gone live as soon as I uploaded it.  But I'd heard pre-orders were a thing, so I tried it.  I didn't like it.  I got a few orders that way, but not enough to warrant the waiting.  This post was talking about putting it up for pre-order before you even have the cover or the book finished.  

Wha?

Just the thought of doing that sends me into paroxysms of fear and doubt.  What if I don't get the book finished?  What if I have to delay the release due to reasons and because of stuffs?  What if I do get a bunch of pre-orders and I have to let those readers down?  

The author of the post even went so far as to suggest taking money for books that haven't been printed and offering a discount to those people.  Actual cash in hand for a product that doesn't exist.  :panics at the thought:

Nope, nope, nope.  If you lay down money for one of my books, you will have the book in your hot little hands, inside whatever time it takes to deliver the book to you - immediate for ebooks and however long ship times are for print.  

Perhaps if I was the kind of author who planned her books, this would be closer to possible.  I'd have a general idea of how long a book was and when I'd get the damn thing done, so I could maybe put up a pre-order.  Even then, I'd still be all spastic about it.  What if I break an arm?  What if my arthritic wrists decide not to comply?  Hell, what if my beta-readers/editors are jammed up and can't work me into their schedules?  Or they break an arm?  There are too many variables.  I don't like variables.

Now, if the post-author had been talking about pre-selling in terms of marketing before the book is ready to go, that I can do.  To a certain extent.  I mean, I have a cover.  And I have a general idea of what the book is about now that it's finished (not edited, but written), so I can talk about it.  But to take actual orders?  Ut-uh.  I can whet your appetite with snips and stuff, and let you hunger to buy it when it's available.  But that's it.  

I can hardly even give you a firm date for release until I am way closer to finished than I am now.  I'm shooting for before April Fool's Day, but I'm not promising anything.  I don't like making promises I'm not certain I can keep.  And a pre-sale is a promise.  

So if that means I'm not a Ninja Writer, well, I guess I'm okay with that.  I hope you are, too.

What about you?  Do you pre-sell your books?  If you're a reader, do you do pre-orders?  (I don't do those either, but that's me and a whole 'nother post.)

Coming Soon!

Okay, so for the past couple weeks, you've been seeing a coming soon thing over on the right there.  It's brown and it's boring, but it got the job done until I had a cover to show you.

Well, I have a cover to show you now!

And back cover copy! 

Looks aren’t everything…  And curses aren’t real… Yeah, right. 

Burgeoning supermodel, Jeni Braxxon is all about fun parties, cold drinks, and hot guys. But when she wakes up one morning as ugly as an infectious baboon’s butt, she understands how real this curse business can be. Too bad for Jeni, uncovering the existence of magic in her mundane world won’t uncover who cast this heinous spell or why. With the list of people she could’ve pissed off lately, the possibilities seem endless.

And as if she wasn’t already up shit’s creek, bigger worries keep slapping her upside her ugly head. Like her jerkstick brother’s disappearance, and why the police are trying to lay the blame at her pretty, pink feet. This is all way too much for a gal who lives by her looks, but she doesn’t really have any other choice. Higher stakes are on the line and, pretty damned cursed or not, she’s got to make it right.

Even if it kills her.
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I'm still on track to have this out on August 29th.  I'm hoping to get the edits completed in time to put it up for pre-order on the 18th, but that's iffy.  We'll see.

And I'll have a Goodreads listing up shortly.  Stop back later for a link so you can Want to Read it.  Here's the Goodreads link.

I really hope you guys like this one.  It's definitely snarky and fun. 

Stuffs

Hey All.

I'm hip deep in a project for the other job, so pretty much everything else is on hold until this is done.  Which is kind of good since nothing else is expected of me for a little while yet.  Early Grave isn't due back from the editor until the 12th and release day isn't until probably the 23rd.  (Shooting for the 20th, but we'll see how it goes, ya know?) 

I got the proof copy for the printed version of Project Hermes (formerly Blood Flow) back from Createspace.  It isn't perfect, but it's pretty good, so I approved it for sale.  It'll be $12.99.  I'll work on getting the old print version of BF to go away, but right now, it's not for sale anywhere (I deselected all the sales channels), so it's not that big a deal.

I redid the blurb for Fertile Ground and put that on sale for the month of April because April is National Sexual Abuse Awareness and Prevention Month.  If you've read FG, you'll understand why it's on sale now.  If you know me, you know the bad guy gets what's coming to him. 

Once I release EG, Dying Embers will go on the Free bandwagon for 5 days. 

Well, that's about it for the stuffs right now.  Time to get back to the spreadsheets.  After some more coffee.  Loads more coffee.  With extra coffee added. 

-B.E.

And Now, the Blurb

Coming soon to an Amazon near you, I give you the blurb for Blink of an I...

Raised by the Union to believe she’s worthless, declared incompetent by a system she doesn’t understand, Mary Jones wants nothing more than to run away and hide. When an underground society known as The Order chooses Mary for a mission to escape the city, she’ll discover she’s more than she was ever allowed to believe. 

Accompanied by a man she’s not sure she can trust, Mary travels through lands ravaged by a long-forgotten war, discovering a past the Union wants everyone to forget and an idea worth risking everything for. She never promised the Order she’d come home, but after experiencing a world without Union control, she’ll return to see them stopped, even if it means risking her life and her liberty in the process.

And if you missed the cover, here it is again...

Links and junk to come later.   And even with the angst, I'm still on track for a release date on or before February 21st.  I can't wait.

SQUEE!

Update: I created a Goodreads page for it today.  Go here to add it to your Want to Read list.

WISH HITS THE FAN is Available for Pre-order!

Wish Hits the Fan is now available for pre-order! Yay!  And Whew!

I'm so excited to finally be able to make this available for all y'all.  I know it's been a long time coming - a year since Up Wish Creek came out - and I thank you all for your patience.  But it's finally going to be here.  On the 15th!

I would've put it in your hands today, but I wanted to set up marketing to surround the big day.  And sales for the other books.  And junk.

But it's done.  The Amazon pre-order email says something about 'estimated release date'.  If it isn't on your ereader on that day, it's nothing I've done, because I won't be messing with this sucker at all again.  (Well, unless after it's release someone comes to me with a typo to correct or something.)

I'd say that now I can relax, but today I have to format for the print release and get a page count over to my cover artist so she can build me a print cover.  Once I get that, I'll be getting that ready to release, too.  (Hopefully, not too much past the release of the ebook.  :fingers crossed:)

Then I can relax.  Except I have to finish Early Grave.  And then I have to edit Sleeping Ugly.  And then...

Never mind.  No rest for the writer.  Ain't it awesome?  =oD

Updates and Advertising Stuff

Okay, so I got the edits for Wish Hits the Fan yesterday afternoon - well ahead of the expected date of 9/4, so yay.  (I was thinking 3 weeks, she was thinking 2 weeks, so it went quicker than I thought.)  This, of course, means I have to figure out if I'm going to 1) work exclusively on that, or 2) work on that and Early Grave at the same time. 

I hadn't decided by last night, so I took the night off.  (Which is fine.  I have until next Tuesday to clean up WHTF, format it and get it loaded for pre-order.  Easy-peasy.)

Today, I'm still not sure what I'll do.  All I know right now is that I have to get some advertising in place for the series in the general timeframe of my release on 9/15.  I've got the first book set up as Free from 9/14-9/18, and the next two as 99c from 9/14-9/21.  This morning I sent an ad request* to Paranormal & Urban Fantasy Bargains for all three of those.  (They're running a special right now, 2 days for $3.)

I've also made a spreadsheet of all the advertising venues I'm aware of and their costs, so I can figure out where to best spend my money.  Go for the high dollar ads and hope they accept my submission?  Stick with the lower cost ones that are more likely to accept my books?  Try both and hope I don't over extend myself?  Did I leave all this to too late again?  Gah.

This might be why I get burned out...  Hmmm...

Anyway, I'll get 'er done.  Wish Hits the Fan will be live on September 15th, and the other books will be on sale then, too.  WHTF will be $2.99, so you could conceivably get the whole series for under $5.  (free+.99+.99+2.99 = 4.97...Yep. It's early yet and the coffee hasn't kicked in.)

So, spread the word.  Buy the books.  Leave reviews.  I'll be eternally grateful.  I'll even send out some swag if you let me know you've been talking up my books...

Oh, crap.  I have to make bookmarks and postcards... 

:runs screaming into the dawn:

* Do not do work before the coffee has kicked in.  I sent the wrong dates on the request for Wish in One Hand.  But the gal there is nice, so she should be okay when I tell her I fucked up.

The Editing Never Stops Until You Stop It

So, anyway, as you all know, I'm in the final stages of getting Natural Causes ready to launch into the world.  In fact, I'm doing the final read-through for typos and gaffs.  Or what I thought was the final read-through.  I'm finding too many irritating things that I need to go back and fix.  Once I fix these, I'll have to do another read-through to make sure I didn't insert any typos again. 

Ugh.

This is not my editor, btw.  She's awesome.  These are things I'm finding personally irritating.  A word here, a phrase there.  It all has to be changed before I can let this out into the world. 

It's entirely possible that any given reader wouldn't notice.  But I would. 

And I was thinking about it yesterday.  When is editing actually finished?  Well, never, I guess.  Or rather, it is never finished until the writer says 'enough is enough'.  I made my peace a long time ago with the idea that I will never produce a perfect manuscript.  Every read-through will offer up some little thing I would rather have this way than that.  (Sometimes taking something I already changed and changing it back.) 

I think this is the whirlpool some writers get themselves into.  Everything has to be perfect before they publish (or attempt to get an agent or whatever), and thus, they never do get it into the hands of readers.  Which is sad. 

Don't get me wrong.  A manuscript should be as error free as possible before someone slaps down their hard-earned cash.  That's proofreading.  (And even then, it isn't foolproofreading.)  I'm talking about wording and style and all the little things that make a manuscript a book.  Larry walked across the room versus Larry sauntered across the foyer versus Larry skittered across the brightly-lit entryway like a cockroach. 

At some point, though, a writer has to say 'enough'.  The writer has to stop the editing and make the decision to send their book out into the world. 

For me, that will be either this week or next.  Definitely by the 13th, as promised.  Exactly when depends on how long these last 70 pages take to read-through and then how long it takes for another proofreading.  (One where I actually proofread and don't edit.) 

Meanwhile, I'm busting my hump to make sure that exact release date is as soon as possible. 

While you're waiting, go 'want to read' it on Goodreads.  And if you haven't read Accidental Death yet, now might be a good time to do so.  Or, if you want to wait, I have plans to do something salesy with AD around the time I release Natural Causes, so you might save a couple bucks. 

Executive Decision Time

First, I received my final round of edits from my awesome wonderful editor last night.  The edit letter started with the following:  "Awesome!! NATURAL CAUSES is a winner - and I know it's early, but I can't wait for another Dennis Haggarty Mystery! Well done, you!!"

The email carrying that awesomeness also contained a bit about scheduling for Wish Hits the Fan.  If I can have WHTF to her by the 17th of April, she can get it done before she gets tied up.  Otherwise, she can't start working on it until May 29th.

Panic ensued.

It didn't last long.  I thought about what I had left to do on WHTF and what I still need to do on Natural Causes to get it publishable by the 13th.  Then I made the Executive Decision that I would not be sending her WHTF until 5/29.  

No worries for those expecting this book to be out in August, like I promised.  I will still meet that deadline.

If I send it to her on 5/29, she'll have those edits to me on 6/29. Two weeks on my end to input those edits, send it back to her on 7/13.  Three weeks to get the second round back from her on 8/3.  Two more weeks for final edits and polishing and formatting will put the release day at 8/17.  Tada.

And my stress level dropped precipitously.  I can now focus on finishing Natural Causes and getting that out to y'all on or before 4/13.  Then I can take my time and do WHTF right.  Whew.

Leaving me free to stress about other things.  LOL

Any questions?

Officially Official Natural Causes Cover and Blurb

Okay, so yesterday I finalized both the cover and the blurb for Natural Causes.

Murder is never natural...

As the new police chief in the mountain town of Last Ditch, Colorado, the worst case Dennis Haggarty has investigated dealt with vandalized decorations. Life is slow and laid back, exactly what he and his new bride, Jillian, need after the debacle in Serenity. But when a hiker stumbles onto a gruesome scene in a secluded ravine, the calm world he’s trying to build for them fractures. Now he’s faced with determining whether a cougar attack is actually man-made mayhem in disguise, who’s lying to him, and how to take down another killer with no regard for human life. 

Tough luck for him, he’s not certain he could pull the trigger again—not even to save his new life.

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And I created a listing for it on Goodreads this morning.  So y'all can go forth and 'Want to Read' it now.

If you go there, you'll see I set am O-fficial release date for it, too - April 15th.  Tax Day.  Yay.  I might have it out sooner, but definitely no later.  If I have to stay up all night for days, it will be done.

Special thanks to Silver James for helping me tweak my blurb.

I'll add the new book to all my blogs sometime soon.  Maybe this morning.  If I can muster the gumption.  It's hard to muster gumption so early in the morning.  Need more coffee...

Natural Causes - Cover Art and Blurb Draft

Good morning, All!

I'm kinda brain fried after all that editing, so I thought I'd just share the cover art this morning, along with the initial blurb I've come up with.

As the new police chief in the mountain town of Last Ditch, Colorado, the worse case Dennis Haggarty has investigated dealt with vandalized decorations.  Life is slow and laid back, exactly what he and his new bride, Jillian, need after the debacle in Serenity.  But when a hiker stumbles onto a gruesome sight in a mountain ravine, the calm life he wished for becomes more about uncovering the truth, discovering identities, and tracking a killer. Before they find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun.  Again.  

Okay, it's not the best blurb I've ever written (fine, it sucks), but it'll give you an idea of what the book's about in advance of the release.

The release date?  I'm looking at April 14th.  Earlier if I can manage it, but no later than that.