Category Archives: Books
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).
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.
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*
Time To Give Back
I love having other writers as friends. I’ve spent the weekend beta reading my friend William Ledbetter’s latest novel Level Seven, the third entry in his Killday series, and it is freaking awesome. BTW, the second novel in the series, Level Six, is currently available for pre-order! Here’s the blurb:
Fifteen years after warring artificial intelligences nearly destroyed Earth, Abby, the daughter of Killday hero Leah Gibson, finds an artifact from that struggle, upsetting a delicate balance of power and dragging her into the middle of a new fight for humanity’s survival.
One AI faction is working with humanity to repair a biosphere teetering on the edge of collapse, while another faction cares only about elevating itself to a higher plane of intelligence and will destroy anyone who gets in the way. As the only humans still not controlled by AIs race to build huge orbital habitats in space, a more secretive organization grows in the shadows and idolizes the man who triggered the nano-replicator attacks that nearly destroyed the world. They, too, believe the only way to stop the AIs is to annihilate everything.
In Nebula Award winner William Ledbetter’s Level Six, one woman has the power to save humanity — if she can survive long enough to use it.
If you like post-apocalyptic SF with smart characters, battling AIs, and cool space exploration, you’ll want to check out this series.
Episode Six of Crystal Blade is Live
I hope this doesn’t bug anyone but I’ll be mentioning each new episode (I have got to stop calling them chapters) as I post them so that interested readers can simply click and go straight to the episode page.
Episode 6: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C32WTWBJ
In other news my new knee is officially one year old today, whee. I can walk a mile in a half hour (working on improving that—I would like to do a 5K this year) and apart from some garbage left from the adhesions I have full mobility and no pain. The other knee is holding steady, although now that I’m able to move around more easily it is starting to get a little achy more often. Once it gets regularly painful I can go back in to TMI and get gel shots—my surgeon said that ideally he’d like to get me into my sixties before we replace that knee (and we will have to replace it—it’s a matter of if, not when). Works for me.
Oh, and I’m also officially in menopause, whee! Got to find a really good Crone t-shirt…
Okay, TODAY Is Officially Tax Day
And man, am I happy I got all of that done in February. Of course I have to send in the estimated taxes for Q1 and pay all the bills but that’s not a problem, I’m set up for that.
I’m also back at the jewelry bench, tra la. In addition to two other pendants I’m working on a rutilated quartz pendant that I’m going to use in a giveaway next week. Those of you who read A Theory of Crystal will remember that Yelena and her men were able to use rutilated crystal to save themselves from an unfriendly blast of magical evergy, and the cabochons are super pretty so I wanted to make one into a pendant. I’ll post pics once that’s done, and I’m giving some serious thought to creating a unique piece for each book from here on and using those as giveaways for promo.
Although I’m not giving away the carved labradorite flower bracelet from Shadow of the Swan that I’m going to make. That one is for me. Although I could be talked into making another one if there’s any interest…
Crystal Blade Is Officially Live
And it’s official. The first five episodes of Crystal Blade are now available on Kindle Vella, may the Flying Spaghetti Monster have mercy on my soul, and the first three eps are free. I’ll be posting three episodes a week on a M-W-F basis until the story is done, and thirty days after that I’ll take everything down and publish it as an ebook and print book.
So if you want to check out the continuing adventures of Crystal and the Buff Lords right the heck now, head on over!
- Crystal Blade Home Page: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0C2PHK17L
- Episode One: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2P9ZZTF
- Episode Two: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2P8SJWW
- Episode Three: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2PD2YCJ
- Episode Four (paid): https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2PF1TT2
- Episode Five (paid): https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2PB471S
Nicola Cameron Writes 