In Search of Good Indie Reads?
Or perhaps you’re an indie author who would like to get your book out there on a website where people can browse some of the freshest titles in indie publishing?
Do I have a website for you! Pretty Bookshelf, run by Zoe Blessing, is a quickly growing resource for indie publications (and not just romance—Pretty Bookshelf hosts everything from mystery to historical fiction). If you’re a reader, you can browse by author, title, spice level if you’re looking for romance, or just wander through titles until you find something that interests you. Click on a title and you’ll be taken to a page with the book’s blurb, reviews, buy links, similar titles, and a place where you can leave your own review.
If you’re a writer, this is a fantastic (and free) way to get more eyes on your work. I currently have Crystal Shard listed there and I’ve submitted To My Muse, and will be sending the rest of my catalog once I have a moment to breathe this week. While submitting to the website is free, they do have a Ko-fi account where you can drop them a buck or two to help support the work they’re doing.
So if you want to read some great indie published fiction or submit your own indie published book, go check out Pretty Bookshelf!
Well, That Was An Interesting Start to Easter
A raptor of some sort (we have hawks, vultures, and owls here) must have hit a dove or pigeon in our back yard because a good ten square feet of grass were littered liberally with feathers (the longest ones were dark about halfway down the shafts then turned white, and the down was white). I just raked them up—didn’t find any body parts so I’m guessing those were eaten by the raptor.
The only reason I saw this was that Someone had piddled a bit right at the entrance to the breakfast nook litter box (in their defense it was absolutely chokka with poop and pee so I cleaned it early), requiring me to take up the litter-catching mat and bring it outside to hose it down, whereupon I found the murder scene. In any case the floor has been swept and mopped, the broom has been hosed down and is drying with the mat outside, and the feathers have been deposited in the trash bin.
Happy Easter, everybody!
Returning the Favor
Weekends are non-writing times (also, I need a break from all the sewing I’ve been doing this week) so I’m currently beta reading an SF novel for my friend Bill Ledbetter. Level Seven is the third in a series and I’m really enjoying where he’s going with the story.
I am also steadfastly ignoring the Muse who keeps popping up with SF story ideas, the sodden wench. They’re great and maybe at some point I’ll get a chance to write them, but at the moment I am so damn swamped with work I really can’t take on anything else, much as I would like to.
Speaking of work, I’m now on Act III of Crystal Blade and everything is pretty much heading downhill at a good clip towards the big confrontation and the resolution. For those of you who know I used to be a SFWA Musketeer and own my own fencing epeés, you won’t be surprised at the big climax. I did call the book Crystal Blade for a reason, after all.
I also have the Hidden Empire Vella novella completely plotted out and in progress, and the Paladins of Crystal Vella novella (tentatively titled Crystal Clear) is also taking shape. Surprise—it’s a YA academy Why Choose romance. Why? Because Nicola’s house needs repairs and this is an insanely popular genre so why not write in it? Besides, it gives me a chance to flesh out the Academy of the Elements and Chancellor Toldin (who in my head looks like Colin Firth) a bit more for the master series.
On Monday We Write
And other writing-related chores, which for me means refreshing Amazon ads for Shadow of the Swan and Storm Season (I freely admit that I’ve been using ChatGPT to give me ideas for ad blurbs, which I then heavily tweak to get the result I want) and checking on the FB ad I started on Saturday for Esposito County Shifters: OE. Clicks on that are pretty good and I’m waiting for updates on Smashword’s Daily Sales report to see if there’s any happiness on the sales front.
Some nice people in England also bought a copy of ECS:OE and three of the novellas this morning, so whoever you are thank you for that.
In Crystal Blade news I’ve reached the midpoint of the book where Crystal makes a moderately shocking discovery about her parentage after being banished t0 the hunting lodge where she was born. Needless to say, the Buff Lords are not happy about this and Fallon has been dispatched to keep an eye on her and rescue her if necessday. More importantly, Crystal’s also been set a rather tasty task by the empress to prove her heritage, and it’ll be interesting to see how many people figure out the answer before I reveal it in the book.
I will give one hint here: 3-D printing. Heh, heh…
Ow. Also, Auntie Em, Auntie Em!
Weekends are for non-writing chores so yesterday I got out in the back yard and spread a big bag of dirt over the new lantana in the southern flower bed, then covered that with mulch. Today I am once again reminded that I am neither sixteen years old anymore nor am I Xena. Ow. Ow ow ow.
The muscle aches have not been helped by the arrival of joint aches due to a rather large storm system that has caused me to rack the car in the garage and park Ramón’s truck in the garage driveway (we can’t get both vehicles in the garage due to all the Stuff™ in there, and for storms coming from the west the house and garage provide some shelter from hail). Luckily it only dumped a crapload of water on us, which will make the lantana happy, but it did pop up a couple of tornadoes east of the Metroplex which doesn’t bode well for an already hammered Arkansas.
And it’s going to hit 90°F tomorrow before cooling off precipitously, plus the advent of more rain later on this week so my sinuses are already turning into a snot factory as a result. But hey, there’s no such thing as climate change. *pinches bridge of nose, sighs*
Relieved That It’s April
That is a March that I am particularly glad to see the back of, if I’m being honest. This month will be filled with getting my car’s registration renewed, continuing my plan to get this house deep cleaned bit by bit, finish Crystal Blade and get that published, and start on To Love a Wild Swan and the Hidden Empire novella (after a nice chat with Ramón I now have a plot).
Yeah, I know, I promised that I would finish the Olympic Cove series this year, and I will. But Hidden Empire is currently my bestselling series so I have to go with the money and add a book to it. I’ll keep picking at High Tide while I’m working on TLaWS and pivot to that once I’m done.
In the meantime I need to update my ads on Amazon because my KU reads are slowing down painfully and launch an FB ad for Esposito County Shifters: OE in the hopes that more people will buy it on non-Zon platforms. I’ve already sold a copy on Apple Books as well as copies of all the novellas and I would very much like to transfer that kind of selling action to B&N/Kobo/Google Play/et al.
Stormy Weather
Apparently March decided to go out like one hell of lion. My heart goes out to everyone affected by the appalling number of tornadoes and the sheer amount of destruction that stretched from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico today.
Dallas got off damned lightly—we got a fair amount of wind but that was about it. I was in my office when the clouds started passing over us and by the time they reached the east they were bruised and ugly. Watching the reports coming in from Little Rock was horrendous. I’m grateful that my friends and family in Arkansas were all okay, not to mention everyone else I know in places that got bad weather today. One of my favorite TikTok creators had a tornado touch down near her and damage her husband’s place of employment, and another creator in Arkansas had one come uncomfortably close.
Unfortunately, these storms aren’t going to stop any time soon, what with climate change adding more heat to the environment. I need to update our go bags and make sure we have enough carriers for all the cats (we have two hardshells and one fabric one that I bought to transport J.J., but I can pick up another fabric one on Friday which will give us carriers for all of the J Crew.
Back In the Saddle
Did a respectable chunk of work on Crystal Blade today, which felt good. I’m re-reading the existing chapters to remember where I was going with the story and how the different romances were progressing (juggling one woman and five men is … a challenge. Yes, let’s call it a challenge), and I rediscovered that I’d already fixed a problem with the middle of the book that had been nagging at me. So hey, got that going for me. I’m hoping to have this done by the middle of April and published two weeks after that. Seeing as I released three titles in March, I figure I’ve earned the editing and polishing time.
In other publishing news I’m still noodling over that Hidden Empire novella and I need to set up a Facebook ad for ECS:OE. Since both the omnibus edition and the individual titles are wide I want people to be able to see them outside of Amazon ads, and an FB ad is one of the more affordable ways of doing that. One of these days I will be able to afford a BookBub Featured Title promotion, but that day is not today.
One Week
The memorial corner has settled in nicely and the azalea bush is looking good and producing new blossoms. I also bought a really pretty sun-shaped solar light and added it in the very back of the corner, and I may plant some vinca on either side of the azalea.
I still miss J.J. The living room feels empty and quiet, and the futon looks so odd with its regular cover and cushions. Granted, it’s been easier to clean—I’ve been vacuuming the LR rug every other day and sweeping the floors every day, and I can clean in the kitchen without worrying about disturbing him. The mild pee smell is gone and I make sure I sweep the litter-catching mat in the breakfast nook every morning.
But we can still feel this space in the house where he used to be. The J Crew have been a bit clingy, understandably, and I’ve been giving them extra attention, grooming, catnip, and petting. Jessie and Jeremy are slowly losing weight what with the shut-down of the Never-Ending Buffet, and even our little round puffball Jemma (who doesn’t like treats, doesn’t overeat, and will only occasionally eat tuna when offered it so I don’t understand why she put on so much weight) is showing signs of slimming down, all of which will make Dr. Dana happy. Which reminds me, I need to make appointments for Jem and Jasmine to get them vaccinated and checked out.
I hope I was a good cat mom to J.J., but sometimes I have doubts. I worry that I kept him alive too long for reasons that didn’t benefit him, that I should have taken the vet’s offer to have him put to sleep back on March 6th. If he had died peacefully in his sleep I wouldn’t be so bothered by this, but I’m pretty sure he had a stroke at the end and there were about five bad minutes before he died.
I promised him that I would take care of him and there wouldn’t be any pain, and I wasn’t able to keep that promise. Wherever he is, I hope he forgives me. I won’t be able to forgive myself, and I won’t ever make that mistake again with the rest of the J Crew.
Running the Numbers
Considering that I released two brand new titles this month and an omnibus collection I’m a wee bit disappointed with my sales so far. They’re not horrible, but they’re not as good as I would have expected.
Then again I haven’t really been pounding the promo like I normally do, and for perfectly understandable reasons. I think I need to refresh some of the Shifter Woods: Howl ads in AMS and bump up my posting about Claw and A Theory of Crystal on social media, and I definitely need to add the last two titles to my books on BookBub and get some attention that way.
I’m also musing about the idea of writing a Hidden Empire novella and posting chapters on Vella, since that seems to be a very effective way of getting readers to reliably read my stuff. From what I can see, chapters tend to be about 1500 words or so, which I can knock out and polish in two hours if I have a solid outline. Now I just have to come up with an appropriately novella-length romance story set in Cairo starring Henry and Louisa with guest appearances by Fyodora and Callum, and I should be ready to go.
Nicola Cameron Writes 