The State of the Writer, May 2023 Edition
Crystal Blade Episode 12: On Wednesdays We Wear Pink is live over at Kindle Vella. And may I say that it was fun writing an Uskelan episode of Mean Girls.
In other writing news I’m getting close to the end of Crystal Blade, which is nice because I am genuinely itching to get to work on High Tide (Olympic Cove 5) and To Love a Wild Swan (Hidden Empire 3). Remember, the goal for 2023 is to finish the Olympic Cove series and it’s already May so I really need to get stepping on High Tide and Hurricane Warning. Also, when I’m finished with Blade I’ll upload all of the episodes in a swath so that people can read them for a month while I’m prepping it for publication. Because I’m nice like that.
I’m also plugging along on Goddess of the Nile, the Hidden Empire novella that will only be available to newsletter subscribers. Considering that it follows the adventures of both Louisa and Henry AND Fyodora and Callum as they try to reunite a reincarnated warrior with his water goddess love while in Cairo, I’m hoping that it will prove enticing enough to get more people to sign up to my newsletter. We’ll see.
As if that wasn’t enough to have me running around like a headless chicken, I also need to get started on some short stories if I ever want my Patreon to get off the damned ground. I have *counts* four series going at the moment so you would think I’m spoiled for choice when it comes to short story plots. I could write about a day in the life of a queen trying to juggle ruling, her new twins, and her loving husband, I could do a prequel story for Fyodora (God knows she’s had enough erotic adventures over the centuries), and I could write about any of the groups on Olympic Cove. I’ve already done a Paladins of Crystal novella for Paladins of Crystal and am working on a separate PC academy romance for Vella, but I’m sure I could come up with a prequel story about Crystal’s life back in Towanda or one of the Buff Lords and how they got chosen to be a royal paladin.
All I need is time. That’s turning into a common theme with me, isn’t it?
Happy Book Birthday to Rosanna Leo!
Rosanna Leo’s awesome new paranormal romance Darke Music (Darke Paranormal Investigations 2) is now available!
She’s no stranger to ghosts. But love? That’s a mystery.
Historian Susannah Darke is no stranger to haunted houses. As one of a trio of ghost-hunting sisters, she’s had plenty of experience investigating the paranormal. When an opportunity arises to explore a haunted opera school in Toronto, she jumps at the chance, even though she once had her own frightening brush with its resident ghosts.
Noah Bellamy is the dean of the Asch Institute of Opera, and a former opera singer himself. He was once a student at the Asch and is well-acquainted with its boisterous spirits. But when the activity worsens, threatening one of his star students, he knows he has to take action.
The fact that Susannah and Noah have been hooking up for the past year complicates things, but they agreed long ago to keep things casual. As long as they both remember their boundaries, the investigation should go smoothly.
When the paranormal activity begins to target them personally, it becomes harder not to seek comfort in each other’s arms. For the first time ever, Susannah and Noah have to decide if it’s worth taking a chance on love.
The ghosts present a huge challenge, but battling their personal demons may be even harder.
The First of May
Crystal Blade Episode 11: Nobody Puts Baby In a Corner is now available at Kindle Vella. So, like, go read it.
Also, let me wish a blessed Beltane to all who celebrate, and please enjoy my favorite (and definitely NSFW) video of the day with a song by Jonathan Coulton (it’s a pity YouTube took down the WoW version).
Writer’s Strike
It now looks like the Writer’s Guild of America (the people who write your favorite TV shows and movies) are going on strike as tomorrow. USA Today explains:
“Hollywood writers have left their keyboards behind.
At 12:01am Tuesday, the Writers Guild of America, the union representing most of Hollywood’s scribes behind your favorite TV shows and films, went on strike. The board of directors for the WGA, which includes both a West and an East branch, voted unanimously to strike after talks between the guild and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which bargains on behalf of the nine largest studios, failed to reach a contract. Writers, they said, are facing an “existential crisis.”
If it feels like a TV repeat, that’s because it’s all happened before. For 100 days in 2007 and 2008, writers went on strike, bringing the entertainment industry to a halt. Now those behind everything from network series like CBS’s “NCIS” to Marvel movies to streaming series including Netflix’s “Stranger Things” will hit the picket lines for the first time in 15 years.”
I don’t blame the writers a single bit for this. They are regularly screwed over when it comes to payment for movie and TV work and that screwing just got harder and even more lubeless with streaming. I would also not be surprised to see studios start to approach indie authors and other non-WGA writers to see if they’re willing to cross a picket line.
Needless to say, I wouldn’t do that. And I really could use the money right now. But the only way these larger entities, be they studios or corporations or what have you, will ever start paying people what they deserve is if those people band together with all their colleagues and stand as one. So donate to the WGA members if you can spare a couple of bucks and plan on finding something else to do if your favorite show goes dark during the strike—say, read a book.
The Business of Writing
Crystal Blade Episode 10: Be a Dragon is now up at Vella. So now you know.
I’m working on a five year plan for Belaurient Press and what I want to do with my writing. I really do need to start thinking like a small business owner and not just a writer if I want to be successful and make any money, which means I need things like a five year plan.
I know, fascinating, but this is what it’s like to be an indie author. I need to come up with the money to start an LLC for Belaurient Press, which will help me at tax time, and I need to start buying ISBNs so that I can release the print versions of my books on IngramSpark, which gets them into more bookstores and libraries than Amazon. I can do that retroactively with the titles I already have as long as I make sure the IS versions aren’t distributed to Amazon.
I also really, really need to start releasing audiobooks. The nice thing about having done voiceover for various educational packages, plus producing a podcast for six years and those long-ago singing lessons is that I have a good voice for audiobooks and I know how to produce the audio files. But this will involve setting up a table in the closet (I need sound muffling) and bringing my laptop and microphone in there to start recording. It’s just a matter of doing it, but I have so much else to do in your average day that it keeps slipping my mind. Maybe if I turn it into an evening project, that might work better.
I’ll also have to kick the cats out of the bedroom which they won’t like. But they want to keep eating and have a roof over their heads so they’ll just have to put up with it.
Finally, I need to get the Patreon started. The roadblock with that is, I need to have something to give away to patrons, ideally a short story a month. Which requires—you guessed it—more time on my part. What would be really useful right now is to have someone who could help me schedule everything I need to do and maybe take over the social media promo stuff. If I could afford a virtial PA I’d hire one—I know a few who are absolutely amazing and who could really help me.
But I need money for that. Which means I need to sell more books. Which means … my career is a frigging vicious circle, isn’t it? Oy…
Wide Versus KU
I am pondering moving more of my titles from KU only to wide. My KU reads have been steadily going downhill since September 2022 and absolutely nothing I’ve done has helped with that. I’ve tried new Amazon and FB ads, new releases, working social media, using my newsletter, and none of it has helped. I don’t know how much of this has to do with Amazon pushing its Vella platform, but I suspect that, plus the KU strike promoted by Booktok and the fact that Amazon is letting some major writers put their books in KU without being exclusive to Amazon, is having some impact on KU reach and reads.
Problem is, going from KU to wide will result in a temporary shortfall in income until the books start picking up steam, and this can take up to two years (the more backlist you have, the shorter that time period is). I did move the Esposito County Shifters series wide back in March; so far those titles have made more from non-‘Zon platforms than they have from being a non-KU title on Amazon, which gives me some data. I’m still reluctantly to move the series that are still bringing in some KU reads, but I could move the rest of my standalones. Behind the Iron Cross, Degree of Resistance, Stealing Dmitri, and Trickster might do better wide, especially now that Smashwords has combined with Draft2Digital.
Something to think about over a weekend, I guess.
The End of the Month Is Approaching
I didn’t mention yesterday but Crystal Blade Episode 9: An Intimate Family Dinner was released yesterday on Vella. At least I finally got it into my head to call them episodes and not chapters.
I have to admit, I was really hoping to have Blade finished by now, but between various stressors and a couple of bouts of Not Feeling Well I just wasn’t able to get it done this month. Which is annoying because I would really like to publish something every month and have Amazon keep promoting me, but I’m starting to think that this may not be realistic for me.
At least, not at the moment. I’m tired. My last vacation was January 2017 and it has been go go go ever since then. I would dearly like to have one week where I didn’t have to do anything, cook or clean anything, or take care of anything. Basically, I want to go on a cruise. But to do that we not only need enough money to pay for the cruise itself but also for the week of time Ramón would need to take off from work (not having PTO really sucks). Which means I need to sell a lot of books. Which means I need to write more new books to keep myself in Amazon’s sweet spot. But I’m tired. You see my dilemma.
At least the sterling silver jewelry I’ve been making recently has been selling, which is something. Frankly, I’ve made almost as much from that as I’ve made from writing this month. Part of me thinks that’s sad, and part of me is just damned grateful that I have another income stream. And all of me knows that things could be so, so much worse so I should just shut up and be grateful for what I have.
New Review for Shifter Woods: Claw
Archaeolibrarian gave Shifter Woods: Claw four stars and said, “I enjoyed this story and feel like it is a coffee-break book.”
Which amuses me because Claw is the longest of all the Shifter Woods novellas. In fact, technically it’s a very, very short novel at 42,000 words. Looking back, I changed my original plan for the story because that would have required a full-length novel to explore, but even with the revised plot I probably could have gone into more depth of Angela learning about her history in Esposito County and Matt courting her over the two weeks that I glossed over. Maybe someday I’ll go back and write the events of those two weeks, who knows. The nice thing about being an indie author is that I can go back and add more material to a book if I so choose.
But I’m not doing that now because I have way too much on my plate, between working on Crystal Blade and prepping for High Tide, To Love a Wild Swan, and Hurricane Warning plus the other Paladins of Crystal story I want to do for Vella. I only have one brain and ten fingers, and there are limits on how fast I can make any of them work.
Dumb Ways to Die
Recently I’ve been working on my speed and stamina while walking on the treadmill, and today I knocked out a full mile in a half hour. And yes, I know this is bubkes for a lot of people who regularly do marathons, but I’m a big broad with one artificial knee and one that will need to be replaced at some point so for me it’s an achievement.
Part of my impetus is friends of mine who just did a 10K at the RunDisney Springtime Surprise event. They really got me thinking about doing something similar, and right now my goal is to be able to do a 5K within an hour. A 5K, BTW, is 3.1 miles, which means if I walk/jog at a 3.1 MPH pace for an hour I will have finished the race in the allotted time.
But apparently most athletic people can do a 5K in 45 minutes, which translates to a 4.13 MPH walking/running pace. And because I’m an idiot and now know what a 2 MPH pace feels like, I got on the treadmill a few minutes ago and bumped up the speed to 4.1 just to see what it’s like.
I promptly tripped, hit my nose on the display board, and strained my arm muscles as I clung to the railings while dragging my feet over to the side rails before the damn treadmill fired me into the wall behind it. I’m sure it would have looked hilarious to anyone watching me. Unsurprisingly I have a nosebleed (although it’s pretty much stopped now) and I think I may have a mild case of whiplash, not to mention the strain in my upper arms.
So, yeah, that would have been a dumb way to die. I may be able to get up to that speed at some point but it is most definitely not going to happen any time soon.
Crystal Blade Ep 8 Is Up
It’s over here if you want to read it. And I’ve discovered something—not exactly dismaying, but it explains a few things.
I have had people reading through the paid chapters, bless all of you who did that, and I had expected to make a tiny bit of money for those reads. But my Vella dashboard keeps reporting $0 royalties on episode reads.
So I did some digging. It turns out that Amazon offers you 200 free tokens in order to get you reading Vella chapters, which is great. I took them up on that myself, and I bet a lot of people have done the same thing. Except that those free tokens don’t count towards royalties so you have to burn through them and then actually buy some tokens before the author starts seeing any royalties on their dashboard.
Which is … yeah, annoying. I wish they’d explained that right off the bat because I’ve been reading friends’ Vella stories and it turns out that they’re not getting any moola for my reads. It also means that I’m going to burn through these as fast as possible so that I can buy some more and, you know, actually pay for my reads.
Technology. *shakes head*
Nicola Cameron Writes 