Category Archives: Books
Not The Greatest of Saturdays
My cat J.J. is definitely not doing all that well Today I washed his bedding, washed him (it’s basically a sponge bath on the side of the bathroom sink, popped him with some sub-q fluids, held a bowl so that he could slurp up some water (one thing that hasn’t changed—this cat loves water and will drink at any opportunity), tried to get him to eat something (no dice on that front), then propped him up where he could see me while I did dishes.
I keep wondering if this is it and he’s reached the end, but he still tries to get up on his own, still loves drinking water, and his tail flicks like a metronome. We’re going to see how he does tomorrow, and if he hasn’t improved I’ll call out vet and make an appointment to have him evaluated and see what we should do next.
Because I have to take care of him I don’t have time to finish my edits and format Shifter Woods: Claw for release on Tuesday as planned. I’ll try to release Claw and the omnibus by Friday, and barring that I’ll do it next week, but right now I have to focus on my black velvet purrmonster.
Writing? What Means This Word, Writing?
Welp, we got through the storm pretty much unscathed except for our welcome mat going sailing into the bushes. Considering that I saw a house in our neighborhood with a tree that came down on its roof, I can live with a displaced mat.
As for writing, not so much today because I need to get Shifter Woods: Claw polished, formatted, and ready for release on Tuesday along with the ECS omnibus. Unfortunately I also have an extremely elderly and infirm cat who needs to be bathed, hydrated (I literally stood hunched over the futon for more than five minutes holding his water bowl so that he could lick at it), supplied with clean bedding and head scritches, and generally monitored.
Which means that my day is spent split between my office and coming down here multiple times to check on J.J. and get him whatever he needs at that moment. On the plus side, I’m getting my steps in so that’s good. On the minus side my legs are aching like hell, and the wild weather we’ve been getting isn’t helping. I’ve resorted to some CBD oil in the hopes that it will resolve the issue and I’ll actually be able to get some sleep tonight, which would be nice.
You know how y’all keep telling me I do so much and you don’t know how I manage it? I do this on sleep that is broken every two hours or so by something on my body yelling at me. If I could regularly get a full night’s sleep, I’d be able to take over the world.
Goodbye February
Welp, I didn’t make quite what I’d hoped to from Amazon this month but I did make three figures so that’s something. As I release the ECS omnibus wide and promote that and To My Muse on FB (althought I intend to take the course I bought on FB ads first—no point in throwing good money away on badly formatted ads) it’ll be interesting to see if sales pick up.
And of course once the ECS omnibus is out that should start making money from the readers who refuse to start a series until it’s completed. This doesn’t make sense to me considering how many series get abandoned because they don’t make enough money, but it’s their money and their choice.
And I’m sure there are some people who are looking at my income and thinking, “But romance is supposed to be a gold mine—why aren’t you raking it in?” Because the romance market is hypersaturated, to be honest, and people who are raking it in either are a name, have a rabid fan base, or have so many books out that they can make decent money from just a few KU pages reads on each title. I’m working on creating the rabid fan base and having a buttload of books available, myself, but that takes time.
Then again, I already have sixteen full-length titles out there and will be released at least another four this year, so I’ve got momentum on my side.
I May Have Scared Ramón
So I was checking my KDP dashboard this morning, as you do, and went to make sure that Shifter Woods: Growl was out of KU (today was the last day of its current cycle) and ready to be included in the ECS omnibus.
A horrified shriek rang through the house as I saw that the KU period had been renewed as of today and Growl wouldn’t be out of KU jail until May. See, I’m an idiot and didn’t uncheck the “automatically renew in KU” checkbox like I did with the other titles I’m putting wide because if you do that Amazon won’t promote the titles anymore in KU and I was hoping to get a few more page reads out of Growl before I set it wide. With visions of the omnibus being put off to May swirling in my head, I unchecked the box and closed the little pop-up, cursing to myself.
And then I thought, “Well, wait a minute. Today is the last day of the current cycle and I’ve opted out of the renewal. Check it again.” So I did and mirable dictu, it was no longer enrolled in KU.
I need a drink. And maybe a nap. And poor Ramón is still recovering from hearing me shriek. Bad Nicola, no new laptop.
Editing, Editing, Editing
Normally I like to take weekends off and give myself the chance to catch up on paperwork, clean the house, and sometimes just, you know, relax, but I’d really like to get Shifter Woods: Claw out so I’m working on the edits this weekend. So far things seem pretty clean—I have a tendency to repeat words and luckily T is good at catching those, and she hasn’t pointed out any gaping plot holes or logic gaps so that’s always reassuring, especially since I’d changed a lot of things about Angela’s background and motivations during the writing and I can never be sure that I caught everything. That’s why editors and beta readers are godsends.
I’m also getting more comfortable with Vellum—I still wish there was a way to stop certain pages from being including during a compile like with Scrivener so that I could keep all the platform editions in one file, and I really wish there was a way to center the Table of Contents, but the formatting is really nice and I like being able to have fancy scene break icons and big initials at the beginning of a chapter.
In other news I’m continuing Operation: Finish All The Craft Projects 2023 by going through my office closet, pulling out all of the half-finished craft projects I’ve stuck in there over the years, and actually finishing them. As of today I’ve finished two baby quilts, three quilt tops, a wall hanging, two dresses, two jackets, and quilted covers for the stand mixer and food processor, which is pretty damned good considering that I’ve been doing all that in the evenings and weekends.
At right is my latest finished project, my Skulls and Roses swing dress. Now, I love swing dresses. They look great on me and I have three of them from Torrid, so when I found this awesome fabric I knew I wanted to make a swing dress out of it. I found one of those “designed to be adjustable” patterns that give you more than enough seam allowance so that you can baste the dress together and fit it to yourself before actually sewing everything, and I must have cut the actual pieces out three or four years ago.
So I started putting it together today. To my surprise the dress fit almost perfectly except around the waist, so I let that out a bit and tried it back on. Et voila, I had an awesome new dress that Ramón pronounced, “So you.” I have two more batches of fabric (black swirls on black and a cream, lavender, and light blue with handwriting on it) that I want to turn into dresses sometime in April or May.
And To My Muse is Wide. Again.
Following recommendations from some of the best minds in the indie publishing sphere, I’ve decided to start moving my standalone titles back to wide. KU is great if you have a lot of series (and I do), but it’s kind of hard to make money on standalones purely from KU reads.
So I’ve finished formatting To My Muse in Vellum, made three different versions for Amazon, Smashwords, and Google Play, and uploaded the files. Amazon’s file is already live, Smashwords’ file is live on their site and is in review for release to Kobo, Apple, B&N, etc, and I’m still waiting for the painfully slow Google Play engine to process its file.
In Vellum’s defense they do have a mechanism in place for adding platform-specific links to a platform-specific edition, so if I wanted to generate a Google Play edition it would contain only the links to my other books in Google Play. But that still doesn’t change the problem with the different copyright page required by Smashwords (unless they decide to change the rules now that they’ve merged with Draft2Digital) so for now it’s easier for me to maintain three separate Vellum files for each book. I was doing that anyway in Calibre so no biggie.
Next on the work bench—finishing up the edits for Shifter Woods: Claw. I’m not even going to predict when it’ll be released—when it’s available I’ll let everyone know.
Back to Reality
The goals for this week include the following:
- Get To My Muse reformatted and out to Smashwords and Google Play, hopefully to earn me some money because Mama needs some new things for her business
- Finish editing Shifter Woods: Claw and publish it (whether I stick with only Amazon/Not KU or set it wide will depend on whether Shifter Woods: Growl is out of KU by the time I’m ready to launch)
- Throw my hands in the air and put together the omnibus edition for Esposito County Shifters in Vellum, then get it ready to launch as soon as Growl is out of KU
- Continue working on Crystal Blade
- Start writing the Patreon short story for March (and prep everything I would need to launch my Patreon next week)
I also have to pay bills, cancel the cable, talk to T-Mobile and get our two cell phone accounts combined into one for their 55+ discount, and do a number of things around the house, but that’s a completely different blog post. One of these days I’m gonna make enough to be able to hire a virtual PA and oh, the hosannas will ring across the land then.
How Did It Get to Friday Already?
I swear to God, it feels like it was just Monday yesterday. And yes, I know this comes as wonderful news for a lot of people with weekday jobs and I’m happy for you, but damn.
And man, I have a busy weekend ahead—I need to:
- Set up my closet, pick up some Flonase and Vicks to dry up my constantly running nose and dental wax to fill in the little gap in my front teeth and take care of my faint lisp, and check that I have the right software so that I can start recording Shadow of the Swan for the audiobook
- Go over the AMS ads and prune out the non-successful ads
- Finish editing Shifter Woods: Claw and get that out to the editor and betas, as well as start putting together the omnibus edition
- Start work on the Patreon short story
That’s in addition to the usual housecleaning and food shopping tasks. Plus Ramón said there’s something causing the pool motor to vibrate badly and we may need to take down a fence panel to get to it (don’t ask). I also need to get out there and prune back all the dead lantana and hope like hell that the bulk of it recovers.
Mrrgh. I’m starting to see the appeal of having teenagers.
Crystal Blade Is Chugging Along
Man, I really did forget how much murky the palace politics are in this one. I don’t know if I need to ratchet some of that back or not—I’ve got notes to keep an eye on it during editing and make sure it doesn’t overwhelm Crystal’s growing relationship with her guys. Must remember this is a Why Choose romance, not Game of Thrones and I can save the political machinations for the Melanie books.
That being said, Blade is currently at a smidge under 40K. Since the whole book is slated to come in at 80K or thereabouts I’m pretty much at the halfway point, which is fun in this particular book because it’s when Crystal finds out who her fathers were and this knowledge … well, she’s happy about one of the guys. Moderately horrified about the other two, but hey, there’s no drama if all of her fathers turn out to be lovable, right? It also sets up a situation that will come to fruition in Crystal Reflection (Book 3), and I can’t tell you any more about that but muwahahahaha…
I also learned today that my writing process is pretty much the same as the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s, which makes me feel both happy (because if it worked so spectacularly for him, it can work spectacularly for me) and wistful (because I knew Terry and I still miss him).
Aaaand I’m on Spoutible
If you’ve started an account on Spoutible, you can find me at https://spoutible.com/YesItsNicolaC. It’s slow so far and still a little glitchy (my spouts aren’t appearing on my profile) but that’s understandable—I suspect they’re processing a LOT of new users. Now I have to check the App Store and see if they have an OS app for it yet.
In other news I’m back at work on Crystal Blade and oh, it is so good to be back in Uskela and dealing with palace intrigue, murky politics, and those lovely, lovely paladins. I seriously missed these wacky kids and it’s great to watch as they desperately try to find a way out of marrying Crystal’s cousin Veronika (who I kinda feel sorry for—she was shoved into a role she never really wanted and made to feel like it was the whole of her identity so of course she’s going to be upset when a contender for the throne shows up. Because if she feels relief, what does that say about her?). Meanwhile Crystal is still trying to wrap her head around her parentage (at least half of it) and what that means for her future. But I have utmost faith that she’ll be able to figure it out and wind up with five gorgeous consorts as a result.
Nicola Cameron Writes 