Unfortunately, I’m still using talk to text, please forgive the way this blog flows or doesn’t. My right hand is probably going to be out of commission for a minimum of a month. Let me tell you it’s very difficult using a mouse with your non-dominant hand, it’s really difficult to use.
i’ve begun making edits on VioleNt, which is book one of Violet's Tales. It’s going slow with only my left hand to work on it. It takes a lot of use of the mouse, which I have not mastered. Typing is literally one very twisted finger. But I’m determined I have a deadline; the ARCs go out September 6th. I have to have it finished before then.
Speaking of my hand, I got the cast off and the stitches out and now have a specially molded plastic brace, and I still have pins sticking out of my thumb, which is creepy and weird. I struggle with blood and gore in movies, and in person. I generally pass out. I know it’s surprising because I’m a horror writer. I can write about it all day. I just can’t look at it. Even when I have to have blood drawn, I have to look away. So having pins sticking out of my thumb has been a difficult adjustment. But for someone who gets queasy at the sight of something like that, I think I’m doing pretty well. I can’t say the same for the rest of my family, not naming any names.
I have a friend Miranda Page who’s also an author. I finally had the opportunity to read her book. It’s her first book, Soren. It’s a fantasy romance also commonly known as a romantasy. The thing that makes it unique is it’s a male/male romance. I've only read a couple other romances in that genre. This one was excellent. I’ve been friends with Miranda for a while and I just haven’t had time to read her book yet, I started at one point and got a few chapters in, but then life took over and I didn’t have time to finish. Being laid up recovering from surgery, I finally had the chance to read it. I can’t say enough good things about it if you like fantasy romance or romantasy this book is awesome. The story is very well done, and the romance is top-notch. It’s truly an epic love story. Add in the monsters and it’s just really entertaining. I couldn’t put it down and you won’t be able to either. Her next book will be out soon, it’s called Brir.
I finally received all the copies of my book, Force Majeure, that I ordered through Amazon, a huge relief. The only problem is I can’t sign any of them in my current condition. Debating how to handle that. I haven’t tried to hold a pen, but I don’t think it’s possible. Now I’m wishing I had ordered some type of a signature stamp at some point. But I don’t know if that would be fair to readers buying a signed copy or not.
I had an interesting situation come up. I’ve decided to put my books on Kindle Unlimited or KU. But when you do that, you have to follow the Kindle Select contract. This contract only allows you to distribute or sell your e-book through Kindle Unlimited. I was worried about this because when people sign up for my newsletter, I give them a link to download a free copy of my story The Devil’s Affair. After some research I found that I cannot do that. So I removed The Devil’s Affair from KU after about 24 hours. I’ve decided to keep it as a free option. My dilemma comes up with Violet’s Tales. My plan is to offer Origin of Violet free as a reader magnet for Violet's Tales series. At this point, I havn’t put Origin of Violet on KU and I think I’m going to keep it that way. I really like the idea of having it for free.
In Violet's Tales book .5 is Origin of Violet and it’s really the prequel to the series. Book one is VioleNt. Book 2 will be Vile; it won’t be out until early 2025. Origin of Violet and VioleNt are both coming out October 13th. Of course, that’s assuming I can get the edits finished in time. I’m Working hard to get it done so I can get it to my formatting person and get my designer to complete the cover so I can get it out on schedule. I could also allow myself an extra week or two if I send out Origin of Violet first because it’s finished, but I’m hoping not to have to use that option.
Force Majeure has been out with ARC readers for a couple weeks now and so far I’ve gotten a few reviews back and they’ve all been excellent. I’m debating if I should send out a reminder notice or possibly just kind of a check-in email to see how the rest of the readers are doing. I’ve only gotten approximately four reviews so far. I ended up with about 53 ARC readers, I’m hoping for 10-20 reviews, but it may be wishful thinking.
I didn’t get nearly enough done today with my edits. I think I might have to work this evening to get enough done for today. My goal is to try to get 100 pages done a day and we had a inspector coming for the house today, so I had to interrupt my work, and I think I only got about 60 pages done. I have quite a bit left. I have to say I’m thankful that we have our power back, that was just another delay early this week, from tropical storm Debby.
I keep seeing posts about authors, having difficulty with ARC readers trashing them. I also keep seeing post about ARC readers, pirating authors books, and pirating in general. A lot of them say that not only our ARC readers pirating the materials, but they’re just finding books on Amazon. As far as I know, this hasn’t happened to me yet. Probably because nobody knows who I am, and nobody’s ever heard of my books. But unfortunately, it seems the more popular you get the more likely it is that will eventually happen. I’ve come to the decision that if that happens to me, I’m not gonna worry about it. If somebody pirates my books and starts selling them somewhere else, maybe it can be some kind of free advertising you know the more people hear your title the more book sales you get. If that happens great, if not, if they’re just stealing that stinks, but what can you do? They’re usually in another country and our laws don’t apply to them.
My mom‘s coming to visit for a week. She knows I write, but we don’t talk about it. She has no idea I’ve written more than one book. As far as I know, she’s only started reading one and never finished it. She doesn’t like blood or guts, murders, or anything like that. So she won’t read any of my horror stuff. The book that she started reading was romantic suspense. But I’m guessing that was too much for her as well. Which is fine. I don’t care if she reads it or not, but it’s gonna be awkward working on my editing while she’s here and not discussing it. I’m excited to have her come. She’s mostly coming to babysit me while my husband has to go away for a few days. He’s worried I won’t be able to take care of myself one-handed. Which he’s right to be worried. I can’t open a lot of things and there’s so many things you need to do that you take for granted under normal circumstances. Not sure how I’m gonna take a shower without my husband while he’s gone. Definitely don’t want my mom involved in that! We’ll see how it goes. Wish me luck.
While she’s here we’ll be having lunch with a cousin of mine. No one outside of my immediate family knows anything about my writing and my cousin is a reader. I definitely don’t want her to know. So, this will be interesting. I hope my mom doesn’t bring it up. I may have to ask her specifically not to mention it. We’ll see how it goes but it should be an interesting week and maybe I’ll have some interesting things to tell you about in my next blog.
It seems the voice artist that I’ve been talking with has been too busy to really make any recordings of my books lately. I’ve been thinking about doing some recordings myself more and more. Especially since it’s so hard for me to write anything right now it seems like if I made some recordings at least I’d be accomplishing something. We’ll see, I’m undecided, or still procrastinating.
I’m looking forward to attending the upcoming Readers Break the Internet Fantasy Edition. It’s being hosted by the same author Abby Woodland, as before. This time I’m only going to be a reader attending the event versus presenting like last time. I’m not really a huge fantasy fan as I’ve explained, but I’m still excited. You never know, there could be another Soren, that I’ll enjoy. I’m excited about it. I should be getting a shipment of my fantasy swag items for the event, which I’m sure will be awesome. It’s going to be on August 17 at 8 PM Eastern daylight time. I’m not sure how many authors are involved with this one. But I’m sure they’ll be great, and the fact that I don’t have to present anything will make me much less nervous about it.
If you’re interested in attending, I think you can still grab tickets for the event. There are free tickets, and then different tiers. You can purchase to go up to a higher tier and have swag and entrance into a raffle. If you want to attend, you should grab the tickets quick because she closes them a couple days beforehand, so she has time to mail out all the swag, and it’s a really cool event.
I have some interesting things planned for my upcoming release of Violet's Tales. I’m going to be sending out the emails with the ARC copies from Violet herself. Violet has her own email address, and I thought it would be funny and interesting if she’s the one who handles everything. My editor and I have jokes about what would Violet do in this situation or that situation. Violet definitely has some very interesting ways of handling things often a little more violently than necessary but entertaining none the less.
I think that’s all I have to say, I’m gonna stop here. As always thanks for reading.
Here’s a link for Readers Break the Internet Fanatsy Edition:
https://forms.gle/hiXGBXRwVNQ3DEEi9
Here’s a link for ARC signups for Violets Tales: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10atvmcVrIgEb-3P5ZT38oUB2nYCGDraCAg7-fcAlT30/edit