Category Archives: Books
The Work Must Flow
High Tide Episode 18: A Walk on the Beach is now live on Kindle Vella. Go forth, read, enjoy.
Despite my health issues I need to keep writing, mainly so that I can make money and help pay the medical bills I’m about to be getting. I’m going to try and get enough High Tide eps banked so that I can release them next week on a M-W-F schedule while I’m in the hospital.
I’m also working on the first chapter of a Hidden Empire novella, Goddess of the Nile, that will be exclusive to my Patreon members in case you’re interested. Goddess takes place a few months after The Crimson and the Black and follows Fyodora and Callum as they arrive in Cairo for a visit with Louisa and Henry. Needless to say, things get a little complicated when a lovesick water goddess asks for help in locating her long-lost lover, a stuffy British official gets involved, and hijinks ensue. This one is going to be a lot of fun and will be available to all my Patreon subscribers, FYI.
And Now, a Three-Fer
High Tide Episode 15: Dangerous Truths, Episode 16: Mothers and Sons, and Episode 17: How I Met Your Mother are now live on Kindle Vella. Yeah, yeah, I know, but there are Reasons™ why I’m just posting about this now.
Namely, I am on a working vacation, so to speak. My sister was kind enough to invite us up to stay with her in beautiful mid-central Illinois for a week. Since all we’d have to do is rent a vehicle that both Ramón and I could drive (he drives a pickup truck and prefers vehicles that are higher off the ground), we jumped at the chance. And yes, the usual cat sitter is at the house taking care of the J Crew so don’t worry about them—they still have a human staff member watching over their every move, as they expect.
But this change in scenery has been very welcome. I got to see both of my sibs, say hello to my lake, indulge in a bag of White Castles, have dinner with my BFF and his husband, and just generally enjoy not dealing with Texas heat. I mean, it’s been anywhere between 69-80°F here during the day. AND we had rain. I ask you.
As for working, the BIL has his own small office building so Ramón is set up in an office here (he’s a contractor so no PTO, but he works remotely anyway so he’s working from Illinois this week) while I’m in the receptionist area with my sister writing and doing various authorly tasks. It’s been incredibly nice being here—there’s a great diner across the street and a McDonald’s a block down the street, and we’re staying in a lovely room at my sister’s house that looks out over a lake. I feel a lot more relaxed and recharged, and so does Ramón.
Which is good because I need to start hauling ass on High Tide since we’ll be on the road Saturday which knocks out one writing day, and I have an unavoidable event next week that will knock out at least one other writing day as well, boo. But I’m past the 1/3 point and on my way to the halfway point, so we’ll just have to see what we can see. And yeah, ignore that deadline—it was set before I knew we’d be coming on this trip. I’m aiming to finish the first draft by 10/20/23 or so, with a release on 11/21/23.
So mark your calendar, Susan—you’re gonna be getting High Tide soon!
And Now We Wait
So my first ZoeBub/Stuff Your Kindle/eReader event is done, and I had over 8,800 copies of Crystal Shard downloaded, plus a significant handful of Empress of Storms.
For ease of math, let’s say that 9,000 people downloaded one of my books. Seeing as 1) romance readers are absolutely voracious when it comes to reading, but 2) they also tend to have immense TBR backlogs, let’s posit that maybe 5% of those 9K readers will get around to reading my book in the next six months or so and like it enough to want to buy the next one in the series.
That makes 450 readers who will either buy Crystal Blade or read it in KU (although I already have three purchases of Crystal Blade racked up since the beginning of the event). If those 450 readers buy it, I’ll make $1,548. If they read it in KU, I’ll make less than that but I’ll still make a significant amount. And if I have Crystal Reflection, Crystal Citadel, and Crystal Empress out by then, I could make as much as $6,192.
Now, let’s look at Empress of Storms. If one reader read Empress and decided that she wanted to read the entire series (and this happens a LOT), that’s the purchase of three novels, a novella, and a short story, which earns me $13.46. And Empress of Storms is romantasy, which is really starting to take off now (more on that in another post) so it’s very likely that more readers who read Empress will want to read the entire series.
But that’s just the money aspect from this one ZoeBub event. From a purely audience building point of view, knowing that one of my books was downloaded almost 9,000 times is absolutely tremendous. And it’s building the audience of dedicated readers that makes an author’s career.
TL;dr, I deemed the Stuff Your Kindle event to be a tremendous success, and hopefully I can participate in the December event as well.
Last Day To Stuff Your E-Reader!
High Tide Episode 15: Dangerous Truths is now live on Kindle Vella. Go forth, enjoy, and all that stuff.
I would also like to remind you that today is the last day of the Stuff Your Kindle/eReader event for romance readers. You can still head over to www.romancebookworms.com and pick up over 2400 free romance ebooks in seventeen different categories. I already picked up a bunch of awesome titles, and my own WC fantasy romance Crystal Shard is in the event, in case you haven’t read it yet and would like to try it for free.
I also got a review for Crystal Blade, the sequel to Crystal Shard, today and it has me squealing in joy:
Crystal, our relatable heroine, has a remarkable journey from the mundane life of a Sav-R-Mart clerk to embracing her newfound role as the potential Empress of Sideros. Her character development remains a highlight of this series, as we get to witness her growth from an average human girl with a troubled past to a powerful and determined force to be reckoned with. The political maneuvering and the competition with Crystal’s cousin for the throne add layers of complexity to the plot, keeping readers engaged and invested in the outcome.
If you are a lover of high fantasy books with a great plot, amazing character development, and forbidden love… read this series!
This pleases me because I recently made the discovery that apparently I write romantasy—a story with a strong romance plot and an equally strong adventure plot with worldbuilding. I always follow the romance requirements of a HEA/HFN and a romantic couple/group at the core of my stories, but I also send my characters out on adventures, regularly put them into danger, and require them to do some personal growth before the end of the story. That’s what I like to read, so that’s what I like to write.
And now it’s officially a thing, which is fabulous from a marketing perspective. Anything that makes it easier to get my books into the hands of readers who will enjoy them is aces with me!
Consider This a Twofer
High Tide Episode 13: Going For a Ride and Episode 14: Pouring Oil On Troubled Waters are now live on Kindle Vella. Friday’s episode didn’t upload until late so I didn’t post about it last week, sorry about that.
Speaking of contacting people, I sent out a newsletter yesterday thanking folks for buying Crystal Blade and talking about some other projects, and woke up to four people having unsubscribed. Which, believe it or not, is fine—I would much prefer people who actually read my stories and enjoy hearing from me to get my newsletter. Having a huge newsletter audience is pointless if half of them only signed up to get a free book and plan on unsubscribing at some point. I’d much rather build a solid group of readers who actively enjoy my books and want to hear about what’s coming up next, read teasers, get entered into giveaways, etc.
And even though I lost four subscribers yesterday, today more than made up for it with four book purchases, including a print version of Esposito County Shifters: Omnibus Edition. Apparently Mercury is no longer in retrograde and everyone is rejoicing by buying books, hurrah!
A Productive Day
Got 2,388 words done (combined for High Tide and Hurricane Warning—I was in the mood to write Chiron’s confrontation scene with the Fates. I did mention that Hurricane Warning is his book, right?), and I think that’s it for the day. I still need to make dinner, and I’d really like to do some cleaning downstairs before I turn in for the night.
It helped that the temps were in the 70s all day and absolutely beautiful. It goes back up to the 80s tomorrow but that’s still quite nice after triple-digit hell. In fact, after I get all my writing work done tomorrow I may even go in the back yard and do some work on the fence (a couple of panels are drooping and we’re having problems opening the back gate, all things that can be fixed with a power drill and a handful of screws).
I also just found out that Barbie is available for rent on Amazon so I think I may kick off the weekend with that. I’ve seen enough reviews and snippets to know that I’ll enjoy it, and who knows, maybe even Ramón will join me for a viewing.
It’s Good To Finish Things
High Tide Episode 12: Aftermath is now live on Kindle Vella. And lo, thou canst read it at thy leisure.
We have rain on the way and I cannot wait. I love writing when it’s raining outside—I even have a rain sounds track on iTunes so that I can play that when I’m writing something that doesn’t need a specific musical track.
Even better, the quilt project for a friend is 99% done. I now have to turf it to someone who can quilt it on a longarm machine, then I get it back, put on the binding, and send it out. I don’t know about you, but unfinished projects nag at me so I always feel really good when I get one done (or almost done in this case).
Once I get back from the quilt store, I’m settling in here to work on High Tide (which is almost 25% done) and Hurricane Warning (still outlining the bulk of it, but I think I’ll post the unedited version of the first chapter Real Soon Now). And this weekend I’m going to finish setting up my Shopify store where people can buy bundled ebooks directly from me. I want to do signed paperbacks as well, but that’s going to have to wait until later when I have the spoons for it.
Best of all, now that the weather has cooled off and I won’t sweat to death in my bedroom closet I can start working on the audiobooks, yay!
And It’s Monday
High Tide Episode 11: Divine Etiquette is now live on Kindle Vella. You know the drill, go forth and enjoy it.
The weekend was most productive—I got some ads tweaked, worked on a quilting project for a friend, continued outlining Hurricane Warning (I know how I want it to begin and I know how I want it to end—it’s the middle part that’s always the challenge), and poked a bit at the paranormal Vella serial I want to start posting once High Tide and Hurricane Warning are done. Devil’s Deal will be a true serial, designed to be read over a cup of coffee, and the leads are a rather dishy Prince of Hell who has a wee gambling addiction, a witch/data miner who gets catapulted into PI status when the investigator she worked for gets killed, and the blondest, snottiest angel you could imagine (think Sam Reid in Lestat mode, only with a British accent). And I’m not restricting myself to Heaven and Hell—this story can wander into any pantheon or afterlife you can imagine. This is gonna be fun…
Even better, the heat has finally broken here in the clavicle of Texas and we’re looking at days in the 80s, one day in the 70s, and rain this week, which is so thrilling I can hardly stand it. Seriously, when you go from mid-June to mid-September with only three breaks in a string of triple digit days, it wears on you like you wouldn’t believe. And I work inside in AC (well, relative AC)—the people who had to work outside during those temps are the ones who I really worry about. If next summer is anything like this one, we may seriously have to look at moving because I’m Olde™ and I can’t take temps like that anymore.
One More Day
High Tide Episode 10: The Orisha Olokun is now live on Kindle Vella. Go forth, read, enjoy.
The title of this blog post, by the way, refers to this most unpleasant burst of heat that’s afflicting Texas at the moment. However, it ends tonight and temperatures drop back down into more seasonal ranges so we just have to cross our fingers and hope that Anita Gigawatt holds out for a few more hours.
In writing news the latest High Tide Vella ep has been uploaded and a newsletter has been sent off to subscribers with the special epilogue for Crystal Blade. The rest of the day will be spent working on High Tide (I’ve just introduced the orisha Olokun, the Yoruba god of the oceans who had a fling with Amphitrite eons ago and is not happy with how Poseidon is handling the whole Mad Nereid situation, so that should make for some tasty drama), creating series bundles for Shopify, and outlining Hurricane Warning, the sixth and final book in the Olympic Cove series. That one is going to be interesting because we find out what happened to Asclepius, and things finally come to a head between the Olympic Cove gang and Thetis.
That will also give me two completed series this year, which is good. It leaves me with four books in the Two Thrones series and three books in the Paladins of Crystal series to finish. Hidden Empire is open ended and can run as long as there’s interest, and I’m also noodling over a paranormal Vella serial at the moment. Hey, it’s good to have plans.
Still Working on High Tide
High Tide Episode 9: …Or Will It? is now live on Kindle Vella. You know the drill.
With that done and uploaded, I’m about to send out a newsletter to my subscribers with a special epilogue to Crystal Blade that won’t be released publicly. Only my newsletter (and Patreon subscribers, when I get it set up) will be able to read it. So if you want to see how the Buff Lords react to the events at the end of Crystal Blade, you might want to subscribe.
In other news I’m setting up a Shopify storefront so that I can sell bundled ebooks (and eventually signed print books but I don’t have the spoons for that at the moment) directly to readers. I figure I already have the Esposito County Shifters bundle, so I can do one for Olympic Cove, Two Thrones, Hidden Empire, and my standalone MM titles. We’re looking at some major bills in the near future so any money I can make from my writing is needed and most welcome. And I will finally be putting my Patreon together this month, so readers will be able to get sneak peeks at work, exclusive short stories in one of my series, and free ebooks and print books depending on their tier.
And now, I must write.
Nicola Cameron Writes 