Author Archives: Nicola Cameron
Son of a…
There I was, innocently moving some music that I’d burned from CDs years ago onto my desktop and adding covers when I accidentally clicked on “Smooth Operator” by Sade.
By now everyone should know what this song is about, but years ago it prompted an idea for a contemporary romance where a newly elected female CEO of an up-and-coming tech company gets talked into attending a high-class kinky auction and wins the services of a handsome older gigolo, only to find out to her shock that she already knows him (and had a crush on him in her teenage years). She doesn’t want to be CEO—she’s on the spectrum and served as the company’s CTO while her older brother was the CEO until his suspicious death. She hires the gigolo to act as her platonic companion and social interface while she sets out to find who killed her brother, which boggles him but he’s aging out of the job and is happy to have one last gig to finish off his nest egg. And then hijinks occur, as they do.
It was a cool plot and I had a lot of it worked out in my head, but it was a contemporary romance and I didn’t really have time to do a Natasha M. Stark story so into the mental story trunk it went. And then I played “Smooth Operator” a few minutes ago and the story came roaring back, only this time it’s a near-future SF romance. Goddamnit.
Thing is, the MMC isn’t a cyborg or an alien. He comes from a rich family that owns mines out in the asteroid belt but loses all his money when his father dies and it turns out dear old Dad was broke, which is why the MMC chose to go into high-class prostitution (and has some enhancements that allow him to act as deadly bodyguard as well as lover). And SF romance these days needs the MMC to be some big, hulking male who is somehow “other,” otherwise it doesn’t sell. And I don’t have time to do another book right now.
Grah. Why you do this to me, brain?
Being a Small Business Owner is Tough
I wish I could say I started out in indie publishing as part of a carefully coordinated plan to jump from being a traditionally published author to being an indie author. Truth is, I did it on a bet—another writer challenged people to write an 80,000 word book, get it professionally edited and covered, and publish it in six months. I said, “I’ll do it in six weeks” and that became Empress of Storms, still my most successful book to date by orders of magnitude.
And Empress took off like a freaking rocket. I now realize that I was surfing the last months of indie publishing’s golden age; if I could go back in time to 2011 or so I would skip working with my original publisher entirely and publish all my books myself because people were making bank on ebooks back then. In three months Empress made more than all of my books with Evernight had combined. As I am not stupid and would like the Brit to be able to retire someday, I decided to jump into indie publishing and turned that bet of a book into a series while I waited for the Olympic Cove books to age out of my contract with Evernight.
Empress was the only book that earned me five figures, however. That golden age of indie books raking in tons of money is long gone and nowadays the market is glutted with indie books. If you want to make a career out of indie publishing, you have to realize that you are now a small business owner who needs a good, solid business plan to manage all the hats you have to wear.
As such, I’ve paid for courses on how to make Amazon and FB ads work for me, I have an accountant who tracks my assorted income streams and is worth her weight in gold come tax time, I’m on social media mainly to promote my work (and chat with people at the same time because an account that is only about SELL SELL SELL quickly gets ignored), I keep an eye on marketing trends and how to recognize the next big thing, I’m constantly tweaking blurbs and SEO terms to get better visibility, I read Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s business of writing blogs religiously and joined 20 Books to 50K™ in order to learn how to improve my business acumen and sell more books (don’t get me started on registering copyrights, designating a executor for my literary estate, and all the legal paperwork that comes along with this gig)…
…and man, I’m tired. I’m hoping to get to the point eventually where I can afford a virtual PA who can help me with promotion and social media, but at the moment I’m doing it all myself plus all of the other things I have to do (cleaning, cooking, shopping, laundry, budgeting, managing JJ’s needs, etc.). I’ve been able to streamline some processes, and clawing back weekends so that I only do bookwork instead of writing then has helped, but I really need a nice break at some point where I can sit around somewhere warm and drink margaritas.
That being said, I wouldn’t trade this for traditional publishing. Yes, indie is a ton more work but with all the effort I put into it I also reap all of the rewards. The bulk of the purchase price of a ebook goes to me, not to some publishing company in NYC who may or may not be showing me my actual royalty numbers. And when I start selling audiobooks (coming soon, I promise), I’m not going through ACX. I’ll most likely use BookFunnel as my fulfillment app and sell them via some sort of storefront app (I really want to sell ebooks, print books, and audiobooks directly from my website and use PayPal as the payment app but apparently PP is wickedly difficult to implement that way. I may need to find a PP wizard to help me out with that).
So yeah, lots of work, lots of tiredness, but in the end I believe the payoff will be worth it. Still want a vacation and a margarita, though…
*Touches Fingertips* So…
As you know, Bob, I took off the week between Christmas and New Year and quilted my little heart out while listening to old episodes of my favorite podcast Pod is My Copilot (personal journal podcast that features three friends who have precious little boundaries, will talk about anything, and have frequently made me laugh so hard that I almost peed).
And it got me to thinking. From 2007 to 2015 I produced a podcast called Don’t Quit Your Day Job. Originally it was supposed to be a writing podcast starring my friend Jerry and myself where we talked about science fiction and fantasy (this was before I started writing romance). Jerry had to step away for a couple of weeks right at the beginning so I drafted my best friend Patrick in as guest host, and he worked so well that he joined the show permanently once Jerry came back. Then I recruited my sister Stacy to be our news girl, and Stacy and Patrick together are some of the most hilarious people in the world, especially when they can pick on me.
So for about eight years we had a really good, funny show that ranged all over the place. Unfortunately Stacy had to drop out after awhile due to lack of time, and then our remaining schedules got so complicated that it was really difficult to get everyone on Skype long enough to record. So we made a dignified last show and that was the end of it.
Or so I thought. Because as I was listening to the PiMC eps and hearing them call out DQYDJ and add little asides to me, I pulled up old episodes of our show and listened to those and my God, we were funny. I also realized that I missed podcasting and hanging out with Jerry, Patrick, and Stacy. Since circumstances have changed for all of us in the intervening eight years I thought I’d float the idea of maybe doing a monthly podcast with the usual suspects.
First person I asked was Stacy. I said, “So, I’ve been listening to old eps of DQYDJ and I was wondering—”
“Yes.”
“Uh, okay.” Turned out that with all of her kids out of the house she now has more than enough time to record, and if we wander off into adult topics (which we did a lot) she doesn’t have to worry about mentally scarring her offspring.
Next up was Patrick, who I thought was going to be a tough nut to crack. Turns out he was totally up for it and said that he would pull out all of his recording equipment and make sure it was functioning.
Finally, I asked Jerry, who is incredibly busy at the moment with his own media empire and a number of other podcasts. To my shock he also said yes, adding that he’s at a point in his life where he really wants to be back on DQYDJ.
TL;dr: I will be starting a new podcast in February called Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Second Shift. We’ll be talking about writing in various genres, acting, and life in our assorted locations, but I can already promise you that the topics will be wandering all over the place and will definitely wander into weird, profane, and hilarious territory.
And somewhere, Jeffrey Combs just shuddered and doesn’t know why. Heh, heh, heh…
Things Are Moving Along
Shifter Woods: Claw currently stands at 30,533 out of a projected 35K (although it might go a little higher). I’m not even going to promise when it’s going to be finished because every damn time I do something happens to stall me (giving a dirty look to my giggling Muse in the corner) but it does seem that I’m on the home stretch. Of course, now that I’ve said that something will happen that will suck up all of my available time, just watch.
Anyhoo, I’m currently working on a dream sex scene set on the shore of Lake Michigan with the lights of downtown Chicago in the distance (my story, my rules, and I’m from Chicago and I love Lake Michigan with a passion that passeth understanding), and once that’s done I have one chapter that will be the big real-time love scene between Matt and Angela, one chapter that will be the villain trying to kidnap Angela and throw her under the bus to save his own skin from the Chicago Outfit, and one wrap-up chapter.
And then I have to edit it, whee. I desperately want to get back to Crystal Blade or any of the other books, but if I do that Claw will be left to molder and I want to get it done, out there, and the Esposito County Shifter box set published. So I’m imposing some damn discipline on myself and finishing this before I get to do anything else.
My beloved editor also has a cameo in here as the beta of the wolf shifter pack. She laughed like a drain when I told her about it, which made my day. Pro tip, kids—always keep your editor happy.
Sphincter…Relaxing…
My Amazon KU sales are continuing to pick up, thank Cthulhu, so clearly I did the right thing by turning the automatic renewal back on for the bulk of my titles. Still, I’m going to be significantly short this month on expected income, which kind of blows because I would really like to take Ramón to Sarasota for a weekend sometime in April and I need sweet, sweet publishing income for that. Even if I published two new titles next month I wouldn’t see that money until the end of April so obviously I need to kickstart the Shopify store and start selling signed print versions of my books with swag.
I need minions, I really do. Or a PA, but I can’t afford one right now so it’s all on me.
In the meantime I’m thisclose to finishing Shifter Woods: Claw and will get that out before the end of the month, and as soon as Shifter Woods: Growl finishes out its KU period in February I’ll release the Esposito County Shifters box sex on all platforms with Howl, Snarl, Growl, Claw, and Roar. Which reminds me, I got a very nice 4 star review for Growl last week and the reviewer didn’t understand why different sites had different numbering schemes. I had to explain that I’m not J.R. Ward and can’t mix MF stories with MM stories in a series and get consistent read-through (seriously, the moment I took out Roar and made it an associated novella my sales increased. Go figure).
To which the reviewer said, “Well, just so you know, I’ll read all kinds of combinations in a series.” Which warms my heart.
I also just remembered that I have to start designing the ECS box set cover. Must take a look at other paranormal romance box sets and see what’s currently in vogue, tra la.
Music vs. Silence
I was reading a post in FB today where someone who is sound sensitive was raving about the noise-canceling Bose headphones they got and how much writing they were able to get done with them on as opposed to dealing with all the noise around them. Which I find interesting because I’m also sound sensitive and have misophonia (poor Ramón has problems chewing with his mouth closed due to a broken nose and I have to leave the room if he’s eating by himself because any sort of wet/mushy noise like that kicks in my fight or flight reflex), and yet I cannot listen to silence when I’m writing. I need something to listen to, preferably a soundtrack for the story that gets me into the mood for a specific scene (remember, frustrated screenwriter here).
Granted, when I’m listening to music I usually prefer instrumental stuff because I can’t listen to lyrics and write at the same time (I have actually been writing dialogue where the main character suddenly broke into the chorus of “Celebrity Skin”). I do have book soundtracks that include sung music, but when I listen to those I have the volume cranked down so low that I can barely hear the lyrics.
When pedal has to hit metal and I need to crank out serious wordage, however, I usually resort to instrumental soundtracks. Some of my favorites are the soundtracks for Salt (there is nothing better for writing fight scenes, I swear), Stage Beauty, Sherlock Holmes (the RDJ movie), The Crown, Interstellar, the Cirque du Soleil show O, and Naqoyqatsi, with a little bit of Westworld, Game of Thrones, and Iron Man thrown in there (I do love Ramin Djawadi’s work). I suppose I can always try Ramón’s noise-cancelling headphones and see what they’re like, but I’m pretty sure they’re not going to work for me when it comes to writing.
Phew
As many of you who read Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog or attended 20Booksto50K™ 2022 may know, there’s been a lot of talk between indie authors about Kindle Unlimited, how it may be going away at some point (hence the creation of Kindle Vella which is 100% supported by readers purchasing tokens), and how that will impact authors who have been exclusive to Amazon.
Now, I’m not all that worried about this because I have Smashwords/D2D and Google Play accounts and can shift back to wide in a couple of days if I need to. Hell, I was wide until last July when I decided to try putting the bulk of my titles in KU and my income jumped five-fold.
That being said, it did occur to me that I might want to start looking at ways to sell ebooks directly without having to rely on Amazon, especially since they have a rule that if you price a title over $9.99 (as you might wish to do with, say, a box set) you can only collect 35% royalties on it. As I have hopes of publishing three box sets this year, that’s going to cause some complications which will require me to pull the titles out of KU so that I can sell the box sets wide (there’s a way around the ‘Zon’s restriction if you split the set into duologies but that’s a topic for another day).
So I checked all my titles in KU and when they were due to drop out. The bulk of these were going to drop out in late February so I unchecked the “automatically renew in KU” box to guarantee that none of them would accidentally be renewed. This was on January 13th.
On January 14th my KU reads dropped like a fucking rock.
In fact, the only sales I made were two title sales (the spike on 1/19) and KU reads from Shadow of the Swan, which happened to be the one title that I didn’t uncheck the auto-renew checkbox. Needless to say I freaked out. Clearly the ‘Zon took KU titles that weren’t signed up for automatic renewal out of whatever promotion its algorithm uses.
So I went back in and re-checked the auto renewal box for all the titles and waited. I know from experience that it can take them a week to apply changes so I tried not to punch walls and scream at the sky while my publishing income circled the drain.
And I was right to do that. Much to my relief I started seeing KU reads for other books than Swan today. I have left all of the Esposito County Shifters books out of KU, however, since that’s going to be my first box set once Shifter Woods: Claw is published and Shifter Woods: Growl ages out of KU in February. So if you were looking forward to reading Claw on KU, sorry.
That being said, I am going to prep D2D and Google Play editions of all my titles for the inevitable point where Amazon cancels KU, and as I finish the Olympic Cove and Paladins of Crystal series I’m going to take those titles out of KU so that I can publish them wide, as well. I also need to get the Shopify store up and running to sell signed print copies and find a good way to sell ebooks once they’re out of KU. Must think on that some more.
The Spring is Winding Tighter
As I work on the last couple of chapters for Shifter Woods: Claw I keep thinking about plot elements for Olympic Cove, or Hidden Empire, or Two Thrones, or Paladins of Crystal. It’s not exactly distracting me, but I keep getting flashes of sending my main trio in High Tide (Olympic Cove Book 5) to New Orleans as part of a deal to get one of them home … only to find out that the NOLA trip complicates things even more. Or how the main couple in To Love a Wild Swan (Hidden Empire Book 3) are going to have an enemies to lovers romance, or how the MMC in Mage of Fire (Two Thrones Book 5) has to convince a prim librarian to help him find a hidden book of magic, only to have to kidnap her in order to keep her alive. What I’ve got cooking in my back brain for Paladins of Crystal is way too involved to get into here.
Clearly I really need to get this damn novella done so that I can go back to work on my series before they start leaking out of my ears.
I am a Sad Little Potato
I’m not sure what’s going on but I feel like absolute crap today. Hot, exhausted, and in no shape to cook or do anything much. In fact, I feel a lot like Charles Darwin did in the quote at right. Pollen is a strong suspect—the mountain cedar count for DFW is hellish at the moment and my car looks like it hasn’t been driven for months, the dust is so thick on it.
Ramón suggested that I go take a nap but I wasn’t able to get any reasonable sleep. So I got back up and somehow hammered out a thousand words on Claw. Because even though I feel like a sad little potato right now, I have work to do and I can accomplish it if I nail my ass to the chair and remind myself that everything can be fixed in the edit.
Hopefully we’ll get some rain soon and wash some of this crap out of the air. In the meantime, I’ve got work to do.
Executive Function or Spoons? You Decide
It is currently 11:41 PM and I have just finished a massive session of baking where I made 60 Italian Christmas cookies (we love them all year round) and a promised fruitcake for a friend. In between mixing, rolling, and baking I washed a lot of dishes (couldn’t put them in the dishwasher because I knew I’d need them almost immediately) while keeping an ear on the washing machine and dryer to keep the laundry trundling through.
Before that, I wrote 2200 words on Shifter Woods: Claw. Before that, I completed a motif of the quilt I’m making. Before that, I went to the store and got fried chicken and fixings for dinner as well as a couple of other things we needed.
And before that was the event that triggered all of this can do energy. I took my aunt’s fruitcake to the post office and mailed it.
Yeah, I know, it doesn’t make sense to normal people. But I’ve been going back and forth about making this fruitcake for a number of reasons, and apparently being stuck on the fence about making this fruitcake had royally gummed up the executive function I need to do other things.
So last night I said screw it, mixed up the fruitcake and baked it, then packaged it up this morning and sent it off to the PO. And boom—suddenly I had all the executive function I needed and powered through a day’s worth of writing, sewing, baking, and cleaning.
My brain is a weird, weird place. But at least my aunt will have her fruitcake on Thursday and I have a clean kitchen, a bunch of my favorite cookies, a chunk of wordage done on Claw, and clean bedding for the Ancient One.
I’m calling that a win.
Nicola Cameron Writes 