Well, Wouldja Look at That

So, I've been trying to get Amazon to put the books for A Model Curse into a frickin' series, like they have with all my other books. Cuz, ya know, it's nice for readers to see that a book is part of a series and what order the books are in and junk.  Three days later, Amazon in its infinite wisdom presented me with this whole new thing they're doing.

Now, writers can manage their own series with this nifty new thingie-bob:

Umm... yeah.

Anyway, it was kinda buggy at first, but after several tries, I managed to create A Model Curse and add the three books to it.  It should be visible on the site within 72 hrs.  

Thank goodness all my other series books are still where they're supposed to be and I don't have to go through the trouble of creating and adding for them.  Whew.

One benefit I see is that this allows the author to come up with verbiage for the series, so when a reader goes to the series page, they can read about the series instead of getting the blurb for the first book in the series.  Unfortunately, this means some extra work for us - coming up with series blurbs and all that junk.  Goodreads had this ability for years, but I haven't really taken advantage of it.  Shame on me.  

I'll be working on this stuff over the next week or so.  Right now, I have four series available:

Serial Crimes Investigation Unit (Dying Embers, Fertile Ground, Early Grave)
A Dennis Haggarty Mystery (Accidental Death, Natural Causes)
Once Upon a Djinn (Wish in One Hand, In Deep Wish, Up Wish Creek, Wish Hits the Fan)
A Model Curse (Sleeping Ugly, Ugly and the Beast, Cinder Ugly)

Anyway, if you're writing in series and you need help with how to make those books be part of a series on Amazon, here's the linkie-loo to those instructions.

Good luck.  And may the sales be ever in your favor.  Or something. 

Yep, Slight Delay

Okay, so the possible delay has turned into a definite delay.  Sorry about that, folks.  My grasp exceeded my reach this time.  Don't despair, though.  It'll be done by Monday at the latest.

It's a good thing I'm doing this.  Man, am I finding a lot of typos that I unintentionally inserted as I was fixing other things.  Blerg.  On the bright side, they're getting gone, bit by bit.  As of last night, I had done through pg 146 of 231 pages.  And I'm fixing the errors in batches along the way, so I won't have to do them all when I finish reading, which will save time. 

I'd be further along if I didn't blow Wednesday all to hell by going grocery shopping.  I was wiped out for the rest of the day there.  One thing I did get done Wednesday was the blurb - pre-shopping, of course. 

Jeni Braxxon’s life as a up-and-coming supermodel hit the skids when she found herself cursed.  The asshole who did this to her is rotting in jail, but the curse remains, leaving her as ugly as the north end of a southbound warthog.  Every damn night.  

As if this case of the gruesomes and her impending unemployment wasn’t enough for a gal with serious esteem issues, someone snatches her nephew.  The fight is on to find the boy before something seriously heinous happens.  With the help of her friends and a bit of beastly assistance, Jeni will face down anything this plane or the next throws at her.  If she’s lucky, she might just make it out alive.

And another thing I did was add a series title to the book covers.  I'm going with... drumroll... A Model Curse.  It was the only one I wrote down during brainstorming that didn't suck mightily and was short enough to fit on the covers without being super small.

Succinct and cute.  At least, I think so.  It's pretty much set in stone now, so if you think it's lame, keep it to yourself, k?  (Set in stone because I'm tired of thinking about it and I don't want to have to redo the covers again.)

Right now, it's sitting at about 65K words.  That'll expand some as I put in front and back matter during formatting, but that's the meat of the story without the sauce. 

Again, sorry about the delay.  I'd blame the chaos, but this last delay is on me.  I'll let y'all know when it goes live.  Until then, have a great day and an awesome weekend.  =o)

Thinking of Series Titles

I am not good with series titles.  I mean, SCIU kind of lent itself a title, as did the Dennis Haggarty Mysteries, but let's face it Once Upon a Djinn is kind of lame.

So, here I am working on the sequel to Sleeping Ugly and it occurred to me that I have no series title.  I had thought 'Pretty Damned Ugly' would be a cool series title, but now I'm all like meh.  Jeni's pretty and she's ugly, but she's not damned.

The 'Pretty Ugly Series'?  Might work, but it's just not blowing my skirt up.

'Ugly Tales'?  You know, since the titles riff off classic fairytale titles?

'Pretty Ugly Tales'...


Ugh, it all sounds lame to me.  But we're our worst critics, aren't we?

'The Magical Mystery Tour' just occurred to me, but it's too Beatle-y.  And, frankly, I hate the Beatles.  (Okay, Ringo was cool.  And George was okay.  Can't stand Paul or John.  Or their music as a group.)  But these are 'magical mysteries' of a sort.

Argh. 

If I can't think of anything better by the time Ugly and the Beast gets close enough to start marketing efforts, I'm going with 'Pretty Ugly Tales'.  :shrug:

Any thoughts?  Suggestions?  How are you with series titles?  Do they make any difference when you're buying books?

And before I totally forget, Unequal is free today.  If you haven't already grabbed a copy, this would be the time to do it.

Maybe It's Just Me

I have a thing about series.  As a reader, I can't seem to continue to read about the same characters for overly long.  Without fail, the quirks I thought were cute in the first books steadily become annoying.  I think it's a case of 'familiarity breeds contempt'.

One series I was reading... Well, the last book I picked up in it, all of the characters were irritating the hell out of me in the first few chapters. I closed the book with a heavy sigh and swore off any others that may come out.  I'd rather remember the joy I felt reading those earlier books.

I managed to make it all the way through the StarDoc series, but that was probably because I read them out of order and because the author threw a wrench into the middle and made the MC into a totally different person.  (Seriously damaged brain that takes even a super-healing person several books to get over.)  I stopped reading the Dresden Files at book 11 (meant 12... shoulda looked it up).  Don't look at me.  He's the one who wrote it the way he did - like he was sick to death of writing Dresden and wanted it all to be over.  Except it wasn't.  I think I went a bit farther with the The Cat Who books, but I'd bought a collection of them and was determined to read all the ones I had, even though those last few were meh for me.

Oh, it's not that I don't like series.  Usually, I want to know more about the characters after the first book.  Up to a certain point.  Once I pass that point?  Meh. 

As a writer, I find myself getting to a point where I just don't care enough to continue to write in the same world with the same characters over and over.  Which is why Once Upon a Djinn stopped at four.  I was done with that world.  And it's also why the SCIU series is only a series because of the organization and some mentions of characters or events in other books.  I was done with the Jace and Ben storyline.  Moved on to the Teri story and was done with that.  And Ned.  I'm almost kind of done with the whole SCIU organization.  Maybe one more book.  I'm still planning at least one more book in the Dennis Haggarty mysteries, but who knows when that'll happen.

You see, I get bored.  Probably why I can't seem to want to write anymore Sleeping Ugly books.  SU was loads of fun to write, but carrying that idea further?  :yawn:  This may change once I've put some more distance between me and the characters, but I'm not promising anything at this moment.

I know the readers aren't bored with my series.  They've told me.  And they seem to be clamoring for more.  And as I said the other day, I don't want to disappoint them.  But I think writing in a world that's no longer that interesting to me would be doing them a disservice. 

Except readers like series.  Series sell books.  It's a quandary.

I have absolutely no intention of making Evil Space Bunnies a book 1.  When I'm done with it, I'll be done. :Fingers crossed:

How about you?  Do you have the same problem with series that I do?  I guess a lot of people don't because series are so popular.  So maybe it's just me.

The Book Two Blues

First off, I didn't intend for any of my stories to turn into series books when I first wrote them.  Not the initial ones anyway.  Dying Embers?  Nope.  Wish in One Hand?  Nope.  Definitely not Accidental Death.  But I had such a wonderful reaction to all three of those that I found a way to make a series out of them. 

And without fail, the second book's sales tanked.  The 'Once Upon a Djinn' series as a whole did better once I finished the series, but In Deep Wish still runs behind.  Fertile Ground (SCIU) has only sold in the double digits.  And in the year since it's publication, Natural Causes (A Dennis Haggarty Mystery) has sold exactly 14.65 copies.  And that includes the one I sold during this sale I have going on. 

Not sure what the dealie-bob is.  Part of it is marketing, I guess.  I have no clue how to market a second book.  Do I pay for ads for the second book when I have no way of knowing whether any of those ads will have touched the people who bought the first book?  And I really have no clue how to get the second book out there in front of all the people who bought the first book, so they'll buy it, too. 

Part of it, also, is probably that these are the second books with no third book out there.  For the SCIU series, the wait for a third book will be over shortly when Early Grave hits the market.  The Dennis Haggarty series?  I have to write the third book before I can give anyone a firm date on when it'll be released. 

Thinking about it now, it's probably mostly the fact that I didn't intend for any of those initial stories to becomes series.  The people who read book 1 didn't have a clue I'd be putting out subsequent books, so they don't know to look for them.  Maybe if I'd been more on the ball back then, I'd have a better reception now. 

Oh, hell, it could be any number of things.  I have no clue.  But that doesn't stop me from running on the hamster wheel trying to figure out the answer.  The Book Two Blues... It's a thing.

And now, back to book three.  Early Grave only needs one last crutch word scoured out - JUST - and then I can send it to AWE.  Today.  Good lord willin' and the crick don't rise.