Category Archives: Books
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.
It Is Done
Welp, Shifter Woods: Claw technically turned out to be a novel as it clocks in at a touch over 42,000 words, but I declared it soup at 5:30 AM this morning (I’m backdating this post so that it’s dated as February 9, just in case anyone’s confused).
Claw is also quite a bit longer than I expected, but with the FMC having to discover her wolf shifter heritage I really needed more space for all that. I am going to let this simmer over the weekend while I work on Crystal Blade, give it another pass, then send it off to the editor and betas. While I’m doing that I’ll start work on the Esposito County Shifters omnibus edition cover (I can’t go with just a Photoshopped box set cover because this will be coming out in print), then once Shifter Woods: Growl comes out of KU I’ll publish all the individual novellas and the omnibus wide.
Why wide when I specifically went over to KU last year with the bulk of my titles and saw my income jump? Because more and more authors are getting their accounts yanked over KU titles that have been pirated (technically having a KU title on a pirate site violates Amazon rules because your KU title is supposed to be exclusive to Amazon. But Amazon is penalizing the wrong people over this, and nobody has time for that crap).
Also, people I trust in the indie publishing business are now recommending that indie authors go wide if possible because it’s looking more and more like KU’s days are numbered. I still have my Smashwords/D2D and Google Play accounts so taking the ECS titles wide will just mean a couple days’ work of creating or updating the non-Amazon versions before publishing them. Plus I keep hearing that there’s a rather tasty market for omnibus editions of a series on the non-Amazon platforms, so now that I’m about to possess an omnibus edition of a series I would like to take advantage of that.
Mind you, I’m not pulling everything out of KU. I’m still making money from page reads, especially on the Hidden Empire and Paladins of Crystal books, and I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot by taking those titles out of KU. But the ECS titles will be a good way of dipping my toe back into wide publishing and judging for myself if I want to move more titles (like To My Muse, which is a standalone) wide.
I Am So Close
Maybe another day or two and Shifter Woods: Claw will be in shape to head off to the editor and betas. Which is good because my writing brain is ITCHING to get back to work on Crystal Blade and High Tide, plus I also want to start outlining To Love a Wild Swan. I’m also tempted to go with a trio for that one because hey, Nessa is a queen of Faerie and doesn’t have to stick with Victorian social rules. If she wants a Fae lord and a hot djinn as her consorts, why not?
I also think that my Patreon short story for March (yeah, yeah, I know. But I already missed the February deadline so I’ll launch it then) will be the springboard for To Love a Wild Swan. Fyodora and Callum arrive in Cairo and meet up with Louisa and Henry, they get involved with a Romeo and Juliet conflict between some Egyptian deities and a djinn clan, and the denouement of the story leads into Swan.
As for April, I’m torn between using my F*ck the Patriarchy novella for my Patreon or setting it as the free story that new newsletter subscribers receive. Since it’s a Why Choose story and not everyone enjoys that subgenre I may use it for the Patreon and come up with something more general for the new subscriber story. I haven’t written anything in the Two Thrones series for quite a while—I think I may do something set there, maybe a peek at how Amelie and Alain are settling in, or Matthias deciding to gift his overworked wife with a seductive holiday. I’ve been asked to do a story regarding Darius and Lars’s wedding and honeymoon but I think I want to save that for its own novella.
Gracious
I must be feeling better—I edited two chapters of Claw, did the Daiso run, vacuumed out all the master bathroom drawers and installed the new inserts, organized all of our stuff in there, made dinner, and modified a sleeve pattern and cut out the pieces for a new dress jacket (rust red twill, and this is going to be gorgeous).
Of course, I also had to do my daily loads of laundry due to the Incontinent Cat, listen to him scream at me despite the fact that I’d bathed him, changed out his bedding, given him fresh water and treats, and dabbed ointment on his ouchie pooper duper, wipe up a full glass of water that Jasmine knocked over in the library, and try to pay adequate attention to all the other cats. But that’s part and parcel of being staff to the J Crew.
Now I just have to do some TikTok videos, update my reader’s group on Facebook, make some other social media posts, and I’ll be done for the day, whee!
