Notice of Error in Wish Hits the Fan

If you didn't see this on Facebook, yesterday I was notified of a problem with WISH HITS THE FAN.  (If you already saw it, here it is again.)

This is the verbiage I posted to FB pasted here so I didn't have to type it again... 

I was just contacted by a reader who informed me of a major error in WISH HITS THE FAN. It has been corrected with Amazon and will be live within 72 hrs, but if you downloaded the book recently, you may still have the crap version on your Kindle. (Not sure how that works.)

I am truly embarrassed and extremely sorry. If you have experienced this error, please PM me and I can send you a PDF copy of the book free of charge. (To protect myself, you must be able to tell me specifically what the error is in order to claim a PDF file.)

Again, all apologies. The error is totally on me and I have no excuses. I hope you'll forgive me for any irritation this may have caused and continue to read my books.

On the upside, he was very nice about it and said he was enjoying the series.

If you're seeing this here for the first time, you don't have to FB private message me to get your PDF.  Email me instead.  Protection still applies.  If you can tell me exactly what was wrong, then I'll email you a PDF copy for your troubles.   

Not exactly the way I wanted to start Thanksgiving, but thanks to the one conscientious reader who took the time and had the courage to contact me, it should be fixed shortly. 

All my other books appear to be fine.  I checked.

Always, if you have any issues with any of my books, please contact me.  I'm pretty approachable.

Thanks again for your support and your understanding.

-B.E.

The Writing Shuffle

There's a little dance we do here in the writing world.  Stop me if you've heard the tune. 

Two steps forward, experience paralyzing self-doubt, two steps sideways, dodge falling book sales, two steps back, run into a wall.  Lather, rinse, repeat. 

The order of the steps changes from time to time, but however you go through them, they're all there.  Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get to do step one repeatedly and skip all the others.

I'm stuck in the 'paralyzing self doubt' and 'dodge falling book sales' loop.  No steps forward or sideways.  Thankfully, also no steps back and no wall. 

It looks like this:  "Why bother writing when it's all been done before and no one is buying your books anyway?" 

It sounds like this bit of Cabin Fever from Muppet Treasure Island. "Allemande left, allemande right, it's time to sail or sink.  Swing your partner over the side.  Drop him in the drink."

Yep, it's nuts.

Why any of us put ourselves through this escapes me sometimes.  Then I remember that I have stories inside my head that need to come out.  Getting it from inside my head through all the screaming meemees there onto virtual paper?  Ah, there's the niggle.

I'll get through this.  I always do.  I simply have to tell all those meemees to get the hell out of my way and to shut the hell up.  Or try to dance around them. 

The Writing Shuffle.  It's got a bad beat and you can't dance to it.

Have you done the dance?  Can you think of a better name for it?  Because The Writing Shuffle is kinda lame.

The Best Laid Plans

If you're in the Kindle Select program (the Amazon exclusive thing), you know that you have 90 day windows in which to use their prezzies to market your stuff (i.e. free days or Kindle Countdown Deals).  Each book has a start date and an end date to show you your window.  It's all cool.

Except when you have a series and all of their dates are staggered around. 

My Once Upon a Djinn series is staggered because I wasn't planning anything when I did my releases, so there's no cohesion within the series for Kindle Select purposes.  WIOH, IDW, and WHTF are all kind of close together.  Poor UWC is hanging out there alone.  Which makes marketing a little sketchy sometimes. 

So, I figured I'd take it out of the program until it got closer to the others.  And that's where the issue came up.

Right after I set UWC to not be in the program - a program you have to be in to garner page reads through Kindle Unlimited - someone in the UK started reading the series in KU.  They went through WIOH in a couple days and started IDW, which meant that they'd be getting to UWC shortly.  Except UWC wasn't in the KU program anymore.

Blerg.

So, despite my idea to have the books be together as a series in the program, I had to put UWC back in right after I took it out.  Don't want to disappoint the reader.  Lucky for me, the whole thing is automatic.  Once you click that you want it in Kindle Select, it's available for KU subscribers to read.

I guess there are worse problems to have than the one where someone is reading my series so I can't be all anal about dates and junk.  I'd still like to have them be uniform, but c'est la vie.  Wishing for the ability to do so is like wishing for no page reads.  And that's just silly.

Do you get anal about stuff?  Or is it just me?

I Haz the Dumb

I cannot brain today.  I haz the dumb.  If you came here looking for something to semi-intelligent, go visit yesterday's The Writing Spectacle, wherein I talk about not having discipline and looking for balance between life and writing.

If you've already seen that...

Well, I could do a sale wrap-up, but that's depressing.  Or a NaNo update... but I'll leave that for Sunday. 

Tell you what.  Why don't you tell me what's going on with you and your writing? 

No Pushing or Kicking

Well, we're past the halfway point on NaNo.  And I am nowhere near halfway through the 50K I'm supposed to be writing this month. 

However...

I've written every day except two and those days I was having back issues which meant prolonged time in this chair was not going to happen. 

The book, which lay forgotten for 6 years, will be written all the way to THE END - if not during this month, then before the end of the year.

I'm feeling more like a writer than I have for the majority of this year.

Now, I could be kicking myself mightily for the failure up to this point.  I mean, if you look at the word count thingie on The Writing Spectacle you'll see more red days than black days.  But kicking myself is unproductive.  Instead, I'd rather celebrate the days where there's a number higher than zero and call all of them wins.

If this keeps up, which I'm going to try hard to make sure it does, then I might actually have some stuff to publish in 2020.  Like this fantasy I'm writing.  And the other two books in the Sleeping Ugly series.  I could actually write SCIU #4 and Dennis Haggarty #3.  You know, stuffs like that.

But I'm not pushing myself there either.  It's nice to look ahead, as long as it doesn't hold you back.  Right now, I'm just happy to be writing again.

It's Sale Time Again!

Wednesday, the entire Once Upon a Djinn series went on sale - 99c US/99p (UK) each.  That's a $12 savings there, folks. (Always free with Kindle Unlimited, of course.)

Advertising will go out Sunday, but the sale is going on until Tuesday night.  Shop early, shop often.  And they're all available in paperback, so if you want to hold them in your hands and see them on your shelves, there they are.

If you're not familiar with the series, it follow genie Jo Mayweather - who has made it her mission to rescue her fellow genies from the slavery of being tied to a Master - as she tries to figure out who is killing genies and then finds out there's a whole weird plot to ruin her life.  Or so she thinks.  There's action, adventure, suspense, mystery, and whole lot of magical goings-on.  Plus a little divine intervention and a host of otherworldy beings.  Jo's got issues and snark and a backbone. 

All in all, a fun series to read.  And it was a fun series to write.  I hope you enjoy it.

Author Pics

Part of marketing, I guess, is putting yourself out there.  So, in an effort to improve my business image, I had a set of author photos done over the weekend.

Okay, I had Hubs take a bunch of pics with my old Nikon, which I then sorted through, cropped, and tweaked for optimum jazziness.  Cost = $0.

I picked out the best two.  They're now splashed up everywhere I could think of that had my old author pic - which Hubs also took - from 2017.

This one...

... against the siding of our home... is on my personal FB page.

This one...

... in the front yard next to the cedars... is on my business FB page, at Amazon (US and UK), on Goodreads, MeWe, Pinterest, the NaNo site, and here on my Blogger profile.  (I feel like I'm forgetting somewhere.  If you see the old pic of me in a blue t-shirt anywhere, let me know.)

I set aside these:

in front of one of fiction bookcases in the office

Passed on that because it feels slightly blurry and this one because I look a little confused.  Plus there's the guy wire in the background.

next to one of our big cedars

I tossed all the pics that made me look fat.  Or the ones where I had a weird look on my face.  And the one where I was basically stinking my tongue out.  (I must've stuck the tip out to wet my lips right when he snapped the pic.  Blerg.)  Which stunk because otherwise that one was good.

Anyway, Hubs and I had fun with it.  With him saying, "Work it, baby." and me making goofy faces and taking one 'bathroom selfie' with the two of us in the bathroom mirror.

So, you see, taking author pics doesn't have to be expensive, or a trial, or 'professional'.  Of course, you need someone who can take pics and a good camera (these days it seems like everyone's phones take pretty good pics, so no need to shell out for an expensive digital) and something to edit photos with.  I used MS Office Picture Manager for the tweaking and cropping.  But I think it's worth it.

And I'm glad we did it.  These are much better pics than the old one I was using.  Mainly because I actually put some effort into it.  Got cleaned up, made my hair behave, tried on several outfits until I found one I thought looked professional and that I also felt comfortable in.  No makeup, of course.  I'm not even sure I have makeup in the house anywhere anymore.  Hubs was a champ and very patient.

Do you like your author pics?  Do you get them professionally done or wing it the way I do?  And the big question, do you like having your picture taken at all?