Category Archives: Books
The Writer At Work In the Garage
Crystal Blade Episode 15: A Ball Is an Excellent Way To Make New Friends is now available at Vella. Go check it out.
As you know, Bob, when I’m not slaving over a hot computer during the day I’m usually out in the garage making jewelry, and I’m currently working on an exceptionally fun custom order. It’s a sterling pendant setting that will hold a large marquise cut (oval with pointed ends) rutilated quartz that’s been faceted. I get to use prongs for it and make my own double gallery setting with V-shaped prongs on each end to hold the points securely. It’s complex but the result should be gorgeous, plus this is excellent practice for me in using prong settings.
Which leads me to say that I would cheerfully shank someone for a real jeweler’s bench right now with the cutout and catch drawer because man, I am tired of dropping teeny things on the floor (like, oh, the bur container that came apart while I was bringing it down from a shelf and scattered the burs all over the floor. I still can’t find two of them and my curses are still ringing in Plano). Dropping things, BTW, is a regular occurrence in every silversmith’s life, which is why the cutout and the catch drawer/sling were developed in the first place. But my bench is a regular workbench from Harbor Freight with a particleboard top screwed into a metal frame so I can’t even make a cutout myself.
Oh, well. I can dream. And keep an eye on local sales groups to see if I can pick up a used one. In case anyone wants to buy me an early birthday present, this bench would be ideal. And in the meantime I’ll keep plugging away on my Harbor Freight table (and keep looking for those last two burs, goddammit…).
My Snot of a Muse Is Back
So, I have the kind of brain that hears a song or sees a picture and suddenly a love scene pops into my head, and then have to write an entire book just to use that scene. I swear, my Muse is cackling into her mojito right now.
An explanation: the combination of watching Queen Charlotte (the Bridgerton prequel) and hearing Loreena McKennit’s “Mummer’s Dance” has inspired my one and only quasi-Regency romance. No, I do not have a completion date on this because I need to finish Crystal Blade, then get to work on High Tide and Hurricane Warning (Olympic Cove 5 and 6) before OC fans riot (hi, Susan!). And because this is so far outside my wheelhouse, not to mention mixing and matching genres (I’m calling it a quasi-Regency paranormal romcom) I won’t be making it widely available. It’s going to be only for newsletter subscribers and members of my FB reader’s group. But I will be picking at this story when I can because my brain will not bloody well leave me alone until I promise to do something with it.
Oh, the story? When newly divorced librarian Amelia Barker takes a job managing an occult library in a grand old country house, the last thing she expects is to meet the ghost of a Regency duke.
Actually, no—the last thing she expects is for the ghostly Sir Robert Wycliff to be so damned charming and attractive. Amelia knows she should be helping him cross over, but she soon finds herself falling for him instead. If that wasn’t problematic enough, Amelia also needs to deal with an eccentric noblewoman-cum-relative, a neurospicy occult expert who may or may not be courting her, and issues with her overbearing ex-husband. As for Robert, he has his own problems that he needs to solve before he can be released from his current condition. Can Amelia and Robert find a path to a HEA that doesn’t require Amelia dying? Let’s find out.
In other news I would also like to announce that as of today I have made my first $0.03 on Kindle Vella. I assume someone’s free tokens ran out and they had to buy some to keep reading. Huzzah!
Parsing Reviews
Crystal Blade Episode 13: Question Authority is now available at Vella. Go do the thing.
So let’s talk about reviews. Unlike a lot of writers, I do read my reviews (mainly because I have to post links to a review on the relevant book’s page here). I try not to let the bad ones bother me because everyone is entitled to their opinion and my stuff isn’t going to appeal to everyone. More importantly, over the years I’ve gotten a fairly good handle on how to parse them.
Like in the case of Shifter Woods: Claw. So far it’s gotten three four-star reviews. All of the reviewers liked the story, they didn’t have anything negative to say about it, which *phew.* But the fact that the last and longest entry in the Esposito County Shifters series has only been getting four stars instead of five tells me that I screwed up somewhere.
And I think I know what I did wrong. The original plot of Claw was for the FMC Angela to have no idea what shifters were and to find out to her shock that she was half-shifter when she wound up in Esposito County. But when I was working on the outline I realized I would have to spend a lot of time on her coming to grips with her ancestry and learning about shifter culture for the story to make sense. There was no way I could cram all of that AND a romance into a novella. And the whole point of the Shifter Woods novellas was that they were novellas, meant to be read in an afternoon.
So I pivoted. Angela now knew about her shifter heritage but for Reasons™ had never shifter or interacted with other shifters. And even then I had to skip over a whole two weeks of activity in order to keep the story novella-length.
That … was a mistake. I should have just let the story be as long as it needed to be, cover the events of the intervening two weeks, and give it a richer, fuller feel (in my head there were coffee dates with the MMC Matt’s beta, there were goofy but sweet little interludes with Matt, and Angela coming to terms with her mother’s decision to eschew shifter culture). Even with my edits I missed the novella cutoff and turned Claw into a (very, very short) novel at 42,000 words; in hindsight it really should have been around 60K at the least. But I needed to get it out ASAP so I bit the bullet, and I think that’s why it’s only getting four stars instead of five.
The nice thing about being an indie author is that I can revisit this story at some point and add in those missing two weeks. Not now, mind you—I have to finish Crystal Blade and get to work on High Tide/Hurricane Warning (looking at you, Susan). But if I can carve out some time late in the year, I will see about revisiting Claw and expanding it the way it deserves.
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?
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*
Nicola Cameron Writes 