Updates and Decisions I'm Not Ready to Make

Well, I finally finished the edit notes for Untitled Fantasy.  And I counted them, finally.  30 pages of notes - college rule, single side - for roughly 97000 words.  Or 1 page of notes per approximately 3200 words worth of story.  

As always, some are as simple as noting that a comma needs to be inserted or removed.  But I really try not to hit the simple stuff on the first draft.  Most of it is bigger stuff - rewriting a line, etc.  Some of it is huge, like rewriting an entire scene.  

All in all, though, this is a solid book.  Nothing that makes me want to scrap a whole chapter or anything.  

Okay, so maybe I'm unsure about whether to leave a large chunk of the end to the next book.  I'll either figure it out myself or let my readers tell me what they think.  But that's down the road a ways.  

I'm also playing with the idea of adding to the beginning because right now, it just sort of throws the reader into the thick of things without a whole lot of set-up.  (Not the main thick, but sort of the beginning thick.)

I had hoped to have this phase finished by the end of October, but somehow it reached the friggin' 18th of the month and finishing this phase in the remaining 13 days seems problematic.  We'll see how it goes.

And I need a title.  I had a list of potential titles, but I just looked at it and they all suck.  I'm not sure what in my head thought 'Time of the Twins' would've been a good idea... There's a Dragonlance book with that title already.  Nope nope nope.  Not riffin' off that series and don't even want a hint it's anything like those books.  Derp.  It's bad enough I've already got my name lending the impression I'm nursing at the Brandon Sanderson teats.  

Speaking of which, I might publish this under my maiden name.  B.E. Meissner worked for me when I was a maiden, so why not now?  

And I'm playing with the idea of trying to get this published through Baen or something.  Gah, the idea of querying makes me want to hurl.  But they have resources I don't have, so going with them would get me a better cover than I can afford.  It would definitely get me better exposure.  The question is whether they'd want an old self-pubber like me.  :shrug:

Decisions, decisions.  On the upside, I have a lot of work to do before I have to make a decision of any kind.  Yay for turtle speed.

Updates... Finally

Sorry that it's been a couple months since I posted here.  If you've been following along over at The Writing Spectacle, you know why.  If not, I was helping a friend prepare to move.  That's done now, so I am trying to get back to my regularly scheduled life.  Which means writing... or rather writerly pursuits.

Yesterday, I picked up Untitled Fantasy again and got back to making edit notes.  I was a little over halfway through.  Now I'm a little bit more over halfway through.

I feared I wouldn't be able to get back into the groove after six weeks away, but I picked up right where I'd left off and it was like I hadn't ever stopped.  Which was totally cool.  Usually my brain is all like 'what the hell is happening here' and then I'm forced to go back and figure out where I left off.  Yay for brain cooperation.  

This is still a behemoth and I still have 42% of the book to make edit notes on, but I'm progressing again.  Now, let's see if the notes I made in July and August make any sense when I circle around and start inputting them into the manuscript.  

I've also been playing with the idea of writing that Christmas short story set in my genie world.  Don't get your hopes up.  I started that thing a few years ago and never got back to it.  But it would be a nice thing to finish and get out there in the world in time for the holidays.  We'll see.

One thing I really need to do is get back to marketing, but I'm not sure where to start and how well any of it will be received after all this time.  I mean, it's been a while since anything sold, so the rankings are in the basement and generally, whether we like it or not, that means people are less likely to want to take a chance on a new-to-them book with craptastic rankings.  It's best to market when you have a reason to market - like a new book out.  Since I don't have a new book out and I'm not going to any time soon, I guess I'll have to make up my own reasons and go for it.  Halloween is always a good reason.  Maybe I'll do a sale on the genie books around Halloween.  Maybe the model books.  We'll see.  Stay tuned.

Also, looking forward, we have a little less than three months to the end of the year.  Yeah, I know you don't want to think about that, but I need to.  Spreadsheets arem't going to make themselves and all that.  

So, what's on your plate these days?  What's up for the rest of the year?  Any plans?  Or are you hiding from the 2022 workload for a bit longer?

Sales and Marketing Updates and Junk

It's the last day to get UNEQUAL for free.  Starting tomorrow, BLINK OF AN I will be free for 5 days.  Then the sales begin.  RUMOR HAS IT will be on sale from 6/2-6/8.  The first three genie books will be on sale from the 9th through the 15th and WISH HITS THE FAN will be free from the 9th through the 13th.

I'll schedule additional sales for other books for later in the month.  

The thinking on the Once Upon a Djinn series sale this time is this:  A lot fewer people have read the fourth book than the others.  And I really want them to read that last book.  It's the one where everything comes together and I'm really quite proud of it.  So I made it free, while the other books are cheap.  We'll see if it works.  If you haven't read that last book, you're missing out.

As of this morning, I only moved 12 copies of Unequal, which is kind of depressing.  Dystopian is hard to move anyway, but I guess right now, living in a pre-dystopian world makes it so people don't actually want to read about one.  :shrug:  We'll see what happens with Blink.  

I still don't have money in the budget for advertising, so I'm doing the best I can with the free outlets available to me.  Two of my go-to FB groups have gone to archive - which means they aren't live anymore.  (One of them went to archive in the middle of my advertising campaign, which blew my mind.  One day it was open and the next it was closed.)  FB keeps glitching out on me and making life difficult, but I am persevering.  I have a couple book groups I belong to on MeWe, but the reach still isn't there yet.  

Anyway, thanks to all of you who have read and reviewed my books.  I really do appreciate it.  If you haven't read or reviewed yet, I'd appreciate it if you did.  Every download helps.  Sales help more.  Reviews are icing on the cake.  

Kind of a Cascading Sale Thing

Okay, so I totally forgot to post here on Wednesday.  Which is kinda stupid of me, since I had a sale start on Wednesday.  Oh, I did all the marketing posts to FB and MeWe, but not here.  Derp.

Anyway, here's the deal...

DYING EMBERS is on sale now.  99c if you're in the US.  99p if you're in the UK.  This sale will last through to the 16th.  Then FERTILE GROUND goes on sale for 99 through the 23rd.  Then EARLY GRAVE goes on sale for 99 through the 2nd of March.

:shrug:  I'm trying something there.  Kind of a cascading sale thing.  Of course, I think the sales for FG and EG would be dependent on sales for DE, and so far it's been crickets for DE.  I'm not holding out a lot of hope.  

But hey, you can't win if you don't try.  Right?  

In other news, I've been so wrapped up in preparing for and worrying about the weather (it's frigid now and they're predicting 3-9 inches of snow for next week), I haven't used much brain power to actually work.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  One would think because I'm stuck inside, it would be the perfect time to work.  Umm, nope.  

Hopefully, now that we're as prepared as we're going to get, I can settle down and work.  I need to poke myself in the ass and just get it done.  Sheesh.  

Updates and Stuff

Yeah, I know it's not a day when I usually post here, but hey, it's good to shake things up a little every now and then. 

Anyway, I finished the edit-note phase of Duke Noble: Rumor Has It.  (Still not sure about that title.)  I ended up with thirteen college-rule, notebook pages chocked full of notes.  Typically, it takes me about an hour to input a page of notes.  I'll start that today.  If I can squeeze three hours out of each day to edit, I'll be done by the end of the week.  However, the chances of me editing for three hours a day is slim.  I hate editing.

The saving grace of editing is that it's a step toward having this book published.  I love the thought of that.  Having this book out into your hands is the goal.  Editing moves me toward that goal.  Thus, I will edit.  

Let me amend that slightly.  Having this book out - and worthy of being read by you - is the goal.  I could write THE END and shoot this sucker into space right now.  But it would suck and I can't do that to you.  You deserve better.  This book deserves better.  So, I edit.

And I bitch about editing.  Heh.  It's my process.

In case you're new here and haven't seen the process before, it goes like this: 

1) Write the book.
2) Send the book to my Kindle and read through the whole thing while making notes in a notebook.
3) Input the notes
3) Repeat steps 2 & 3 until I feel it's ready to send to readers
4) Send to readers
5) Input notes from readers
6) Read through entire manuscript again, making notes if there are any
7) Input notes
8) Format for publication
9) Publish

The other day I had a gal who read Dying Embers ask me how long it takes me to get a book all the way through from start to publication.  If all goes well, I can complete steps 1-9 in three months.  Things rarely go as planned.  Lord knows, this book has taken longer.  I started writing DN in August.  In August and September, I got about 8000 words down and then the wheels fell off.  I restarted this in December, finished it 6 weeks later.  It took me two and half weeks to actually do this edit round.  It should roll faster now.  Good lord willin' and the creek don't rise.

I hope to have this into the hands of readers by the end of the month.  They'll take however long they take.  Once they're done, publication won't be too long after that.  End of March maybe?  

I still have to make a cover.  Blerg.

So, Duke Noble will be born into the hands of readers soon.  Well, soon-ish... for varying definitions of soon.  Sooner than traditional publishing could make it happen.  =o)

Once Upon a Djinn Sale Wrap-up

Gah I overslept.  And I didn't set this up beforehand, so bear with me.

I wanted to talk this morning about the sale that just wrapped up last night.  I'm not sure if any of this is interesting to anyone but me, but here goes...

The sale ran from 12/23 through 12/27.  Wish in One Hand was free and the other 3 genie books were 99c/99p each.  

Books moved:

WIOH - 82
IDW - 3
UWC - 3
WHTF - 3

No page reads yet. 

To achieve that, I posted to 16 different Facebook Groups, 2 MeWe groups, 3 FB pages I own, and my MeWe page.  I know of two different people who posted about my books as well.  

I made $5.82.

Now, before you think that's depressing news, it's actually not totally gloomy.  I mean, it isn't great, but looking on the bright side, that's pure profit there.  And it's more money than I made on books in five other months this year.  

(Yeah, I am blowing smoke up my own wahoo, but it's early and I don't feel like being bummed out, so there.  =op)

Anyway, there was a sale.  I moved some books.  There are 88 new chances out there in the world for people to read and enjoy my work.   Maybe the freebies will spark someone enough so they'll buy the rest of the series and then buy the model series and then the rest.  Fourteen other books for them to read.  Yay.

The rest of this week will be devoted to getting my 2021 spreadsheets up and running.  I might talk about that on Wednesday.  I'll also be writing on Duke Noble.  I rolled over 30K words last night.  Woohoo.

Now, on to more coffee before my brain implodes.

Another Update

After spending most of the week dragging my ass about doing the proofer notes for Cinder Ugly, I finally got them all input last night.  They really weren't that bad - which is what the proofers told me, but fear made me drag anyway.  That fear thing is a really pain in the buns.

Today, I have to do some search and replace on some crutch words.  Then I can do the formatting.  Like I said, I'm trying to have this done and uploaded for pre-order so it goes live on the 2nd.  We'll see how that goes.  If I can't get it up in time to do pre-order, then I'll just upload it for release on the 2nd.  Good lord willin' and the crick don't rise.

I also have to do a Goodreads listing.

And get both CU and UatB formatted for print.  Which I can then use for numbers to send to my cover artist so she can do the print covers (gah, I haven't talked to her in forever, I hope she has time to do those soonish... lucky the print covers are already paid for as part of the cover package).

I need to drag out my pre-publication checklist so I don't forget anything.  Blerg.

But soon, my fifteenth book will be out in the world.  It's the last in a trilogy, so maybe having it out there will boost sales for the other two.  Fingers crossed.

More Updates and Random Stuff

Since I'm more than a little scatterbrained this morning, what with stuffs and junks, here's another random post.

I finished my round of edits on Ugly and the Beast yesterday and sent the manuscript out for proofing.  If you were expecting a copy and didn't receive it, let me know.  I really think I nailed it, but we'll see what readers have to say.  Hopefully, it's not too messy.  I tried really hard to make it a clean copy, but sometimes we writers miss stuff.

I took the rest of yesterday off.  Kinda.  I did sit down to see if I could get Cinder Ugly jumpstarted again.  Nope.  I suspect I am going to have to either go back and delete a bunch of stuff to get back on track, or just forge ahead and hope I can fix it in edits.  I'm kind of a linear writer, so it'll probably be Option A.

To whoever read Fertile Ground and Early Grave over the weekend, thanks.  Now, if you could wander over to Amazon and leave a couple reviews, I'd really appreciate it.  Like mightily. 

I discovered why I'm suddenly showing more Amazon review numbers than I had.  Amazon decided to put all the worldwide reviews together, so basically I'm seeing the few reviews I have in the UK added to my US numbers.  Still pissed about the ratings thing, but international reviews are okay. 

And that's about it for me today.  Time to wander off and get the day started.  What's on your plate today?

Updates and Changes

I started a paranormal mystery last night and sure enough, it had a black cat in it.  And this one talked, too.  Again. 

Other than the cover art for Ugly and the Beast, it's not that hard to change the cat from black to some other color.  At this point, any other color would do. 

I need to contact my ultra-busy cover artist and see if she can squeeze a quick change in.  If swapping out the black cat for another cat is too much work or requires extra payment, I may just nix the cat from the cover altogether.  She didn't charge me when I had her pull Mary off the cover of In Deep Wish, so there's hope. 

It's just as well I'm finding this stuff now.  Once the book goes live and people start reading it, it's a bitch to change anything in it.

If she can't do it, Kazimir (formerly Oliver) will remain black.  No help for that.  Can't have a black cat on the cover and not have the damn cat be black.

I keep having to change things in these books because I keep finding similarities to other books.  Which reminds me, Pinky isn't Pinky anymore.  He's still a pink hellbeast, but the name has changed to something more interesting because someone else had a hellhound named Blue.  Too same-same.  I like the new name better.  It has a story behind it - relating back to a manager I had once upon a time who wore the most garish pink nail polish, and her use of nicknames for everyone.  But I'm not talking about the new name here because it seems like every time I let a piece of info out, I have to change it and it's very confusing.

I rewrote the end of Ugly and the Beast, too.  Which I think I like better.  I kept the old ending, just in case. 

Anyway, I'm making headway.  I've re-read and edited the 9300 words I have for Cinder Ugly and will be adding new words to it starting today.  Not sure where I'm going but the fingers will do the walking and we'll see what happens.  Weeeeee.

And that's what's going on in my world. 

I'm still not posting here very often.  If you want more posts, visit The Writing Spectacle.  If I'm not here, most likely I'm there.

SCIU Sale Wrap-Up

As the year progresses with no new books to show for it, the sales get weaker and weaker, so I probably shouldn't expect much.  You need to be constantly putting forth new material.

Anyway, I said I'd share the results of the latest sale, so here we are.

First, an update on last month's OUAD sale.  It finally made enough money to pay for the ad I placed.  And with page reads still coming in, I'm ahead a little.

Now, the SCIU sale.  It ran from the 10th through the night of the 16th.  Dying Embers was 99c, Fertile Ground and Early Grave were $1.99.  I placed an ad with Bargain Booksy that ran on the 12th for DE ($55).

As of this morning, I sold just under 36 copies of DE, 5 copies of FG and 5 copies of EG.  I'm still seeing page reads, but the hope of actually paying off the ad is slim.  Which kind of blows but like I said, not unexpected. 

Overall, I'm still ahead on ad revenue, showing a 8.91% profit.  $271 spent on ads.  $297.50 earned off ads.  That'll change a little as the month progresses and page reads continue to come in, but not in any major way.

I didn't keep track of rankings this time.  At one point, DE made it into the 300s in its genre specification and into the teen-thousands in overall books.  Not quite enough to effect sales greatly. 

Prior to the ad, I had no sales this time around.  I fell down on the job of pushing on FB.  That may account for lower sales from the ad because the rankings of all three books were so poor when the ad came out.  I made a pretty, new graphic that seemed to get a lot of Likes on FB, but didn't really equate to more sales. 

Could be that because one of my pre-ad push days was Sept 11th the pre-sales fell apart.  It wasn't really a great day for book buying or looking at ads.  But when I set my sale dates, it wasn't even on my radar.  My mistake. 

Anyway, live and learn. 

Not sure what lies ahead for marketing this year.  I have sales penciled in for October, November, and December.  Whether I'll be able to advertise remains to be seen.  Gotta make money to spend money to make money... Ad infinitum.

As for overall sales for the year, I just passed the 400 books/$400 mark.  Not sure if I'll pass last year at this rate, but I've already passed 2017, so this won't be my worst year ever.  That's gotta count for something.

And that's it.  Any questions?

Sales and Advertising Update

It's Labor Day.  I'd like to say I wrote this post as a nod to that - because like it shows the fruits of my labors - but in reality, I forgot it was going to be Labor Day today.  

At the beginning of the year, I made a goal to have paid advertising at least once a month this year.  So far, with the exception of March, I have stuck to that goal.

Here's how the paid advertising has broken down so far this year...

January - ad for SU.  Spent $6, made $8.53.
February - ads for WIOH and OUAD.  Spent $50, made $57.14.
March - Derp.
April - ad for AD.  Spent $15, made $29.30.
May - ad for WIOH.  Spent $40, made $53.71.
June - ad for DE.  Spent $15, made $21.96
July - ad for AD.  Spent $55, made $46.04.
August - ad for WIOH.  Spent $35, made $32.66 so far.

That's a total of $216 spent and $248.34 made, so I'm ahead overall.  By like $33.  And I've made like $100 on books where I can't directly attribute the purchases to any paid advertising.

I set up an ad for DE for next month.  DE will be 99c.  FG and EG will be $1.99.  Fingers crossed it doesn't go the way of my July ad.  That would suck.  I like to think it was July's fault.  July always sucked back when I was selling electronic components.  Maybe July is just a sucky month for sales of anything.  (Although, when I hop into the wayback, July of 2015 was my 2nd best month ever, so who knows?)

Anyway, I'm still chugging along.

A while back, I wondered whether I should save my advertising money and put it toward editing.  Umm, no.  Like I said, I've spent $216.  That wouldn't even pay for half an edit.  Even if you add in the $55 I spent for next month's ad, it wouldn't pay for a whole edit.  And imagine how bad sales would be if I didn't pay for any ads.  :shudder:  So, I'll keep advertising and keep my fingers crossed something else breaks so I can set up editing again.

As always, this is just an informational post and your mileage may vary.  What works for me, may not work for you... or it may work way better than it did for me.

Any questions?

Sales and Marketing Update Thingie

Time again for another sales/marketing update thingie. 

I've been doing even more to keep track of things this year, so it's easier to see what I did and what worked.  As always, advertising is what works.  For the most part anyway.

In January, I held a sale for Sleeping Ugly and placed an ad*.  2 sales.  But I had residual sales from ads placed for the SCIU series in December, so another 16 books there.

In February, I held a sale for the OUAD books with an ad.  52 sales.  I also had one freebie day for Unequal and gave away 22 copies, but I got one person to read the whole book in KU, so 1 sale.

In March, I held sales for Natural Causes and Project Hermes with no ads.  3 sales and 1 sale respectively.

In April, I held a sale for the SCIU books with no ad.  5 sales.  I also held a sale on Accidental Death with an ad.  27 sales.

So far this month, I held a sale for Blink with no ad.  0 sales.  I have another sale for the OUAD books starting Tuesday with an ad going out on Thursday.  We'll see what happens when I have a sale twice in the first half of the year and advertise at the same place.  The venue keeps sending me emails that the majority of their advertisers place ads every 90 days for optimum success.  We'll see if they're right or blowing smoke up my skirt.

Next month, I'll be having more sales with, hopefully, more advertising.  We'll see what the budget allows. 

To date, I've spent $71 on ads and made $96 I can directly relate to those ads, so I'm ahead of the game there.  Not by much, but I'm calling it a win.  Here's hoping the $40 I spent on advertising WIOH this week will net me a bigger return. 

Nevertheless, I've said it before and I'll say it again, ads work.  Maybe not as well as I would like, but they usually pay for themselves and get my books in front of people.  They'd probably work better if I had something new to put out there, but I haven't worked that out yet this year.  They'd also work better if I had more reviews, but there's little I can do about that. 

Any questions?

* Ad or no ad, I'm always posting to various FB groups throughout these sales.  Some more than others.  I lost my will to post during the Blink sale and you can see what that netted me.  Zilch.

A Nothing Update

Sorry I missed posting Wednesday, but I had nothing.  And I'd hoped to be able to talk about something today, but it didn't happen.

What I had hoped for was to have this phase of the editing done before today.  Ummm... Yah.  I am like 89% of the way through the manuscript, which is more progress than I've made in weeks... errr, months... but not quite where I wanted to be. 

On the upside, this manuscript isn't nearly as terrible as I'd feared.  There's a bunch to do, but nothing insurmountable. 

I should have the last bits of this part done today or by the end of the weekend at the latest.  Then I'll have to input those edits.  Then I'll do another read through and make more notes, input those, etc.  Then I'll probably have to set it aside until I've amassed enough scratch to pay my editor. 

The hope is that while I'm setting this aside, I'll be able to write the next book.  And that once I have editing funds available, I'll be able to shoot both books through the system, so they can release within a month of each other.  But you know what they say... wish in one hand...

Anyway, I have my fingers crossed, but I can't give anyone any firm dates about anything at this time. 

Sorry I didn't have anything better to give you as far as an update goes. 

What have you got going on in your lives?

Mid-Sale Update

Well, the sale is rolling along nicely.  Way better than the last two sales because I actually advertised this time.  And by the end of the day yesterday, I cleared the cost of the ad.  Yay.

But it's actually kind of sad when making more than $15 on a sale is a Yay moment.  I mean, you have to celebrate the little victories.  But when you have to woohoo the small stuff because there are no big victories, it's sad.

Anyway, this morning's marketing copy for FB is all about reaching #48 in Hard-boiled Mystery.  Breaking the Top 100 in any genre is cause for a bit of Woohoo.  This is the image I made using the cover art and a screen capture of this morning's Amazon rankings:

Which was reached by selling 27 copies of AD yesterday.  (Also sold one copy of Natural Causes at full price, which was cool.)

We'll see if I sell any books today.  I did get a couple page reads last night, so there's that to look forward to.

I made a new little graph in my sales spreadsheet to show month by month sales.  It's pretty. 

So, as of now, April is looking to be my 2nd best month so far this year.  Sell another 17 books and it'll be my best month of 2019.  Yay.

Next month is still up in the air.  Whittling out enough money for advertising should be fun.  We'll see how that goes.  I'd like to lay some bigger money down so I can get bigger sales.  I dream of being able to afford advertising at one of the big venues.  Someday.

Meanwhile, this is good. 

Updates, Such as They Are

I don't have much to talk about with regard to writing/editing today.  I'm still in that limbo place - can't start anything new until I finish UatB and I can't finish UatB right now.  Meh.

Yesterday, the sale for Project Hermes came to an end.  With only my own postings to FB groups, I only sold one book.  I did, however, see movement on some of my other books, so I'm counting it as a win.

I have a sale starting next Wednesday for all of the SCIU books.  DE will be 99c/99p.  The rest will be $1.99/1.99p.  Thru the following Tuesday night.  I didn't manage to set up any paid advertising for this, so we'll see how it goes.  If nothing else, I'll be pimping it on the FB groups.

Someone is currently reading through the SCIU series in Page Reads, one after the other, so that's nice.  They're on Early Grave right now.  I hope they enjoy it.  They must've enjoyed the other two to keep reading them all. 

I do have the ideas necessary to write the fourth SCIU book, but the gumption isn't there.  (See above.)  This may be where I can use my Wrongful Termination title idea, but I'm on the fence about that.  That title was originally meant for one of the Dennis Haggarty books.

I'm planning a sale for the Once Upon a Djinn series for May.  Same general idea as the SCIU sale - the first book at 99c and the rest at $1.99.  Hopefully, by the end of next month I'll have money to pay for advertising.  :fingers crossed:

And maybe I'll do a Dennis Haggarty sale in June.  My goal for 2019 was to do at least one sale a month with advertising.  I'm managing at least one sale a month, but not the advertising part.  Let's hope I can get back on track with that.

All in all, despite the slow March, this hasn't been a horrible sales year so far.  Not the best year either, but I shouldn't complain.  It's been a horrible writing/publishing year, but I have hope for the next nine months. 

Sometimes that's all we can do - hope.

Finish the Darn Book

So, this morning, I got the cover mock-up for Ugly and the Beast.  It looks awesome and I approved it. It's super cute.  Jeni doesn't look pissed this time.  And there's a kitty involved.  I am hesitant to show it, though, because the darn book isn't finished yet. 

But the cover definitely encourages me to get off my dead butt and get back to work. 

After I finish editing Unequal, which I really need to do like yesterday.  Today will be a marathon editing day again.  I'm still looking at having this to the editor by the end of the week.  Which is like three days from now.  Which means three marathon days... :panics a little: 

Once I get Unequal off my plate, I can get UatB back on track.  Which, unfortunately, means scrapping most of what I've already written and starting over.  I can do it, but ugh.

Of course, as luck would have it, I also received a packet of work from pay-job that I need to complete ASAP.  Busy busy.  Good thing I don't have any other tasks today.

And there's my life in a nutshell.  Get off my butt and finish editing Unequal, so I can finish writing the darn book and then you can see the cover and then you can read it sometime in the first quarter of next year.

You know, if I don't burn myself into a crispy critter before then.

Short Stuffs and Mini Updates

I had an idea for Ugly and the Beast the other night.  I didn't get up and write it down and now it's gone.  All I'm left with is the memory of thinking it was really awesome.

Sleeping Ugly should be back to me tomorrow for final edits on my end.  As long as they aren't numerous or lengthy, I should be able to put this up for pre-order sometime before the 25th.  Or would you rather I just put the book up for sale when it's ready?

Part of me wants to put books up for pre-order.  Another part doesn't see the point. As a reader, I rarely pre-order books.  I don't like buying something and then waiting for the cost to come out of my bank account at some future date.  Cuz I might forget about it. 

Obviously, I am not going to have Ugly and the Beast ready to send to AWE any time soon.  So, I'm going to send her Unequal next, in order to have a fourth book come out this year.  From a sales standpoint, I probably should've buckled down and busted my ass to get UatB out next, but apparently that's not how I roll, baby. 

If you're keeping track, Sleeping Ugly will be my 12th published novel.

I had planned to do some marketing for the Once Upon a Djinn series this month, but since the stuff I had planned fell through, I scrapped the idea and went ahead and raised all the prices for those books to $3.99.  Now I have to wait 30 days to hold any kind of sales for those, so maybe next month I'll do something sparky. 

I still haven't done paperbacks for my last two books.  Do any of you care?  Cuz if I thought anyone cared, I'd be more motivated to get that stuff done. 

My cover artist is doing a paperback cover for Sleeping Ugly.  I'm still not sure if I'll go paperback with that book yet, but I'll have the option. 

Okay.  That's it.  Does anyone have any questions?  Comments?  Wisdoms?

Updates and Junk

I gave myself quite the pep-talk on The Writing Spectacle yesterday.  And I still am way short of my goal to have this done by the end of today.  We'll see what today brings.

Talking with my cover artist and she's all 'how do you want this laid out?' and I'm all like 'gah!'.  Then I went to the Top 100 Urban Fantasy list on Amazon and looked at what some of the bestsellers are doing for covers.  I kind of liked one and then kind of liked another.  The second one was the half-face thing, which I hadn't done before, so she sent me a mock-up.  Meh.  We're going with Jeni in the middle, my name on top, the title on the bottom.  With magical sparklies and stuff.  I found what I think is a good model for Jeni, in a pose that looks like she just woke up and isn't happy about it.  Should be fun.  Fingers crossed it draws in readers.  You'll see the cover when I approve it.

I have a sale set up starting Saturday for all the SCIU books.  99c or .99p each.  Thru the 28th.  And I got accepted for another ENT ad for Dying Embers.  It'll go out on Monday.  Fingers crossed on that, too.

I was at the doctor's office yesterday for my shot and the nurse, who I see every three months so we're pretty friendly, asked how the writing was going.  Then she asked some questions about how things work in the biz.  It was nice to talk about it to someone outside the biz who was really interested.  I just wish she had more time to read. 

Well, that's about it for the update today.  Any questions? 

Updates and Junk

Okay, so the ad on Wednesday was a bust.  I sold 5 copies of Project Hermes that day.  Which puts me about $45 in the hole for that one.  Eh, live and learn.  I didn't have any expectations for this, so I'm not crushed or anything.  I did start seeing page reads for it last night, so maybe there's hope.

On the bright side, PH went from 1.2 millionth in all books to 39K in all books and reached like 253rd in Technothrillers.  Not sure why Amazon put it there, but hey, it's kinda technothrillerish.  Also not sure how it went so high with only 5 sales.  I'm hoping a lot of KU readers downloaded it due to the ad.  Wouldn't that be lovely?

In other news, Early Grave got another 5 star review at Amazon.  Someone who'd reviewed both Dying Embers and Fertile Ground, so yay.

And both Accidental Death and In Deep Wish got new ratings at Goodreads.  Hey, I'll take what I can get.

I found a couple new (to me) advertising venues I'm going to try - one for strictly mystery/suspense and the other for just SF/F.  Unfortunately, they both require the books to have at least 10 Amazon reviews, so I only have a few books to choose from for advertising there.  I think Dying Embers later this month and Wish in One Hand sometime next month.   We'll see.

I have until no later than the 18th to get Sleeping Ugly whipped into better shape and back into my editor's hands.   I'm hoping for an August 29th release, so you'll have it your hands for reading over Labor Day weekend.  Provided I get the editing done and my cover artist gets the cover done and there's no floods, famines, pestilences, Armageddons, etc.  As we get closer to getting this published, I'll have a better idea of whether I'll make the date, go early, or completely fall apart.

And that's about it for updates. 

Any questions?  Got any news of your own?

Updates and Stuffs

First off a little reminder that my Dennis Haggarty mysteries - all both of them - will be on sale starting Tuesday.  99c or .99p each (depending on what side of the pond you call home).

Next, I think the residual sales from my Kindle Countdown Deals are wrapping up.  Mind you, all but one of those sales are KU Page Reads.  But I've had almost 8K pages read this month so far and that's about 2K more pages read than last month, which is WAY more than any of the other months this year.  Sure, 8K is nothing compared to a lot of other writers, but hey, it's better than a sharp stick in the ear.

So, the final tally is $76 spent on advertising.  About $170 made in sales.  Not standing under a waterfall of currency here, but I'll take it.  I'll take every sale I can get because it means someone somewhere is reading my books.  Yay!

I updated my balance spreadsheet this past week, so I know exactly where I'm at with Outgo and Sales Income.  Yeah, it was pretty depressing.  For the entirety of this venture (since Nov 2014), I'm approaching the $10K spent mark and I'm just past the $2700 income mark.  Thank Hubs and my side job for keeping this machine running.  Without that, it would all grind to a halt. 

Editing is underway for Sleeping Ugly.  Meanwhile, I'm writing Ugly and the Beast (Yes, I finally gave SU2 a name) and it's rolling along even if I have no clue where it's going or what will happen.

If all goes according to schedule, my cover artist should start work on the SU cover next month.  Again, I am eternally grateful she could squeeze me into her schedule so I can still meet an August release date.  Without her, I'd be screwed.  And without my editor being available I'd be screwed.  I don't want to even think about THAT.

I'm still on the fence as to whether SU2 or Unequal will be next on the publishing schedule.  I suppose it depend on how SU2 goes.   If I can get it written and edited in time to meet a November pub date, then SU2 will be next.  Fingers crossed.  Whatever happens, you will see Unequal by sometime next year.  Good lord willin' and the creek don't rise.

Onward and upward!