Category Archives: Shadow of the Swan
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.
And Here’s February
The ice outside is melting thanks to the rain that’s currently falling, although that’s predicted to freeze later tonight, but tomorrow will be in the 40s and we don’t need to go anywhere until Friday anyway so as long as we have heat and power I’m good.
Now that you’ve had the weather report from the clavicle of Texas, here’s my to do list for February:
- Finish and release Shifter Woods: Claw
- Finish Crystal Blade
- Prep and launch my Patreon (which requires writing a short story—I think I’m going to write about Fyodora and Callum’s arrival in Egypt, much to Henry’s dismay and Louisa’s amusement)
- Start recording the audiobook of Shadow of the Swan
I’m also toying with the idea of releasing a serial story on Vella. Remember that contemporary romance idea I had that turned into an SF romance? It would lend itself to an episodic form and I could definitely release at least one 2K episode a week. But I would have to ruthlessly outline it first to make sure that I didn’t wind up boxing myself into a corner halfway through the story and annoying the readers. I may work on the outline this week and see if I can get it into shape.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to churning out 3K for the day, whee…
Learning, learning, learning
Back in April or so I was supposed to participate in Bryan Cohen‘s 5-Day Author Ad Profit Challenge, which would give me tips on how to improve my Amazon Ads game for my books. As you may remember, Bob, that was also the month I had my knee replacement surgery so unfortunately I missed out on the challenge.
To my surprise, I received an email two days ago inviting me to the next challenge. Since I really do want to improve my ad game I signed up, and two days in I’m already learning stuff about Amazon ads that I never knew before (like, you can have an ad target an entire category instead of keywords. That’s a game-changer).
So I’ve been busily creating new ads for Shadow of the Swan to test which ad copy works the best, which category is most profitable, how auto ads might work for it, etc. The nicest thing is that a slew of people complimented the cover, and I just refurbed the blurb last month so I’m hoping I can get some more traction on that book and read-thru to The Crimson and the Black. Plus, anything I learn will be immediately applied to the Paladins of Crystal books since I’ll be running ads on Crystal Shard once Crystal Blade is out and I can de-RH Shard‘s blurb and keywords.
I saw that quizzical eyebrow go up. Amazon won’t let you run ads on anything that promotes an unusual sexual lifestyle (frex, I can’t run ads on Behind the Iron Cross because it got classified as erotica due to the BDSM content). Since the ‘Zon considers reverse harem to be an unusual sexual lifestyle, you can’t run ads on any book that is obviously RH. Which means that once Blade is out, I can de-RH Shard, run ads on it, and heap the RH references on the rest of the books in the series).
I know, you’re fascinated. Not. But earning promotion and effective advertising is just as much a part of being an indie author as writing, and since I would like Ramón to be able to retire at some point I need to step up my selling game.
In other news Crystal Blade is progressing nicely and will be out on July 31st, 2022, so mark your calendars!
The Business of Writing
Well, Shadow of the Swan officially goes to its full price of $3.99 today. It’s had an absolutely excellent sale run — I’ve sold 224 ebooks and two print books, gotten 19 reviews/ratings on Amazon, and it’s gotten enough buzz that I’m using it to start a new series, God help me.
A bit of a breakdown: 59 of those sales were via pre-order, and 10 sales were courtesy of the brilliant and incisive writer Jim Wright (aka Stonekettle on Twitter and FB) being kind enough to retweet my buy links (in addition to being an amazing writer he’s also a photographer and fellow crafter so so go check out his gorgeous nature photography and handmade wooden items on Etsy). Which means I’ve sold 155 ebooks by advertising and word of mouth, which bodes well for future books. Now it’s time to bump it up to its full price and see what that does.
In other news, I’ve also decided to up the price on all of my series starters to $1.99. I kept them at 99¢ because I was following the common wisdom of “price your series starters cheaply so that people will get hooked and then buy the rest of the series.” Which worked occasionally, I guess, but but nearly enough to make it worthwhile — I sold far more copies of the series starters than I did of the rest of the series books, mainly because of the psychology that readers will see a book priced at 99¢, buy it because it’s cheap, then leave it on their TBR pile for whenever they have time. Whereas if you pay $1.99 or more for a book, you’re more likely to read it ASAP, and that leads to people wanting to read the rest of the series and going back to Amazon to buy them. My goal is to get more people to buy my series starters and then buy the rest of the series. Ironically, the best way to do this seems to be by setting the price on the series starter at a respectable rate. Who knew?
In other publishing news, between sales and pre-orders for King of Blades I am at the 2/5 mark of what I made in September, and it’s only October 7th. The goal this month is to hit $200 in sales, then keep increasing that in the following months. Seeing as I’ll be releasing three more books this year, all of them part of existing series, I think it’s doable.
And finally, I have an appointment to see an orthopedic surgeon tomorrow to be evaluated for a knee replacement. I know I need a replacement, and once he sees this wreck of a knee I think he’ll agree — the only potential sticking point is my weight. I’m hoping I don’t hear, “Lose 25 pounds and come back then,” but we’ll see.
King of Blades, Day *counts* 22
Yeah, I know, I suck. In my defense, have you SEEN what’s been going on out there?
Anyway, King of Blades. I’m at 45K words, past the midpoint, and I was supposed to be finished today but everything pretty much exploded out there in the last ten days so I’ll be doing 5K a day (again) until I hit the end. At least this time I know the world really well, and there shouldn’t be any surprise extra chapters popping up.
I just jinxed myself, didn’t I? DAMMIT.
In better news, last month was the first time I’d done three figures’ worth of sales on Amazon since June 2019 ($155.19, for total transparency). Not only is that five times what I made the previous month, it’s pretty much equal to what I made between January and August 2020, so that’s a definite improvement. The sales for Shadow of the Swan were a big help and provided $70 of that take, plus the two reader magnets (“A Gentle Fall of Snow” and “Beneath Their Own Blue Sea”) brought in more money and additional eyes on my other titles. My goal for this month is to do $200 worth of sales on Amazon, and between the pre-orders for King of Blades and what I’ve made so far I’m a quarter of the way there as of–
–checks calendar–
October 5th. So I’ve got that going for me. My goal for the rest of the year is to keep bumping up that monthly intake until I get to the point where I’m actually making a living wage at this job (or better yet, enough to support us both so that Ramón can retire and go find a narrow gauge railway where he can volunteer his services). But the only way I can do that is to keep releasing titles and hone my advertising game, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Speaking of releasing titles, if you follow me on Twitter or FB you probably noticed that I would up getting the rights back for my short story “Fine Dining” and my novelette “In His Name” from Evernight Publishing (one of the other authors in two of EP’s anthologies wanted their rights back, so EP pulled the anthos and sent the contributors rights reversion letters).
Because titles don’t do you any good if they’re not published, I spent most of last Thursday getting both shorts re-edited, re-covered, and re-released last week. If you’d like to pick up some 99¢ M/M contemporary romance short stories by me, here’s your chance (and if I may say so, “In His Name” is one hell of a good story). Plus L.D. Blakeley will be re-releasing her short story “Mile High Rebound” and I got a sneak peek at the awesome cover today, so keep an eye out for it!
Okay, still need to make word count tonight so I’m going back to work. Talk to y’all tomorrow!
Finish one project, move on to the next
So Shadow of the Swan is out there on all online markets, earning money and reviews, and I’m happy with that (as of this moment I’ve sold 143 copies on Amazon). I’ve even uploaded a free short story titled “A Gentle Fall of Show” about Henry and Louisa’s first Christmas at Bookfunnel (all subscribers to my newsletter got the link; if you want to subscribe, click here, enter your email address, and you can download “Snow” in MOBI, EPUB, or PDF format).
So what’s next, Nic? I’m glad you asked.
Since it looks like we’re going to be stuck in COVIDland for the foreseeable future, I am setting up some structure for myself for the rest of the year. And I know I’ve said that before, but this time I’m doing it partially for income and partially because I really need it to stay sane.
So — today, I am wrapping up the re-edit of Deep Water and uploading it to Amazon, B&N, et al. Tomorrow I go back to work on King of Blades (Two Thrones 4) with a goal of finishing it by Monday, October 5. If I do 3,265 words a day, I’ll make that easily. Moreover, I KNOW I can write that many words a day easily (I knew it before, but 2019 kinda shook my faith in myself). Even better, now that I’ve been testing my lavaliere mike, Scrivener’s dictation function, and Otter.ai (oh, Holy God, dictation is a fricking godsend to anyone who needs to write fast and can handle saying stuff out loud), I should be able to crank out that amount within two hours, then spend another couple of hours editing it into shape. The rest of the work hours will be taken up with promo, cover design, et al, and outlining the rest of the books I’ll be writing this year.
On October 6, I pivot from King and let it cool for a week while I fire up Cross Current (Olympic Cove 4). People have been waiting VERY patiently for this book for about five years, so now that I have the rights back for all of the Olympic Cove books I want to reward them for their patience. The goal is to finish Current on November 2. On October 12, in parallel with my work on Cross Current, I will start editing King with a goal of getting it out to my editor and the betas by October 16. After I incorporate their changes and do the final polishing stages, I’ll publish King on Tuesday, October 27.
On November 3 I let the completed Cross Current rest for a week while I go back to work on Uncertainty Principle (and by then I’ll actually have an outline, please God — this book has been frustrating me for the better part of two years) with a goal of finishing it on December 4. Once again, I’ll edit Cross Current in parallel with writing Uncertainty, with a goal of publishing Cross Current on November 24. Uncertainty Principle will be published on December 22, and I am taking the rest of December off to let my brain cool down and get in some well-deserved relaxation by that point.
IF I HAVE TIME AND INTESTINAL FORTITUDE, I will work on The Crimson and the Black in December once Uncertainty Principle is finished. I am not going to promise anything at this point because, quite frankly, I may need to collapse at that point. Much will hinge on how well the dictation goes, how quickly I can edit, and whether or not I still have extra processor cycles available. If I decide to put it off until 2021, it will be the first book of that year.
I’m not going to post my planned schedule for 2021 yet because it’s still kind of soft and I want to get some details firmed up. But my goal is to release at least four full-length books that year (I’m telling you right off the bat, two of them will be the final books in the Olympic Cove series), along with a handful of novellas and free short stories.
And yeah, I know it looks like I’ve bitten off far more than I can chew, but King, Current, and Uncertainty are all partials so it’s not like I’m starting from square one on any of them. If I can get all of them done and out the door, I will have cleared my backlog and can start 2021 with a clean conscience. Let’s see if I can get this done.
*lifts storm shelter door, peers out*
So, the last time I spoke with y’all, it was August 18th and I thought I was on the downhill slope for Shadow of the Swan. The book was supposed to be 80,000 words or so, and I had just crossed the 60K line so I figured (quite logically at the time) that if I spent the next five days doing 4-5,000 words a day I could be done and dusted by 8/23/20. That would give me a few days to get it cleaned up before I sent it off to my editor and betas. Since I didn’t have to have the final version uploaded to Amazon until 9/4/20, I had plenty of time.
Ha. Ha ha ha. Hahahahahahahahahahaha*SOB*
Yeah, no. For one thing, I felt like absolute crap on the 19th and 20th, so no wordage was achieved. By the time Friday the 21st rolled around, I knew I had lost valuable time and had to make it up with minimum 5K days. But Friday through Monday would do it, right?
Well, it would have if the book had stayed 80,000 words long. But as I got stuck in, I quickly realized two things:
One, my word count included chapter synopses that I stuck in months ago to tell myself what was supposed to happen in each chapter. As I deleted these and replaced them with actual story, I wound up losing anywhere from 500 to 1,500 words. So even though I physically wrote 5,000 words a day, I only wound up with 3,500 – 4,500 words in the end, which meant that I had to write even more to hit my 5K word quota.
Two, this book was not going to be 80K long. When I hit the 80K mark on Monday, August 24th, I still had the climax of Act II to write and all of Act III. Many, many bad words were said at that point.
So I kept on keeping on. Wrote 5K+ day after day, and watched in helpless terror as my characters got themselves into deeper and more complex trouble, and wondered how the actual fuck I was going to resolve all this. By Friday, August 28th, I still had three chapters to go and less than a week now before I had to upload the final version.
I don’t remember much of Saturday, August 29th. I do know that it was a personal best when it came to output because I wrote 8,672 words that day. (And in case anyone is wondering, yes, I got up to take regular walking breaks on the treadmill, stayed hydrated, and did everything I could to keep moving and avoid deep vein thrombosis. I was frantic, not foolish.) I wrote until 5 AM, when I finally added Louisa’s last words in the last chapter, then I checked my total word count.
106,620 words. I wrote 40,839 words over eight days. The old fashioned way, with my fingers on a keyboard. I was honestly shocked that my brain wasn’t leaking out my ears by that point.
I slept until noon, got up and frantically edited, then sent it out that evening to my editor and betas with abject apologies that they were getting, in effect, version 1.5. I immediately turned around and went back to work on a full edit. Is this recommended? No. Is this something I could handle? Yes.
In the end (and I attribute this to experience gained over twenty-five years of professional writing along with a healthy dollop of naked, abject fear) I had somehow managed to write a fairly clean, coherent draft that only needed tweaks here and there to fill the occasional plot hole. I still don’t know how I managed that. My editor, bless her angelic heart, sent me changes live as she went through the book, which helped immensely. My betas both turned it around in record time and got me their lists of grammar, spelling, and punctuation goofs. A very kind reviewer friend who got an ARC sent me a handful of missed goofs and a couple of plot points that needed a bit more work, so I was able to get those incorporated, as well.
By 9/2/20, I had a reader-ready edition. I spent Thursday formatting it, giving it one last review and polish, then uploaded it and the cover to Amazon for release on 9/8/20. So here it is, the day before release (and Labor Day as well), and my stomach is in knots because this is my first new release since November 2018 and I just want people to like it.
So, that’s where Shadow of the Swan currently stands. I now need to finish re-editing and formatting Deep Water and get that out, then go back to work on King of Blades. Because the best thing you can do when you finish a book is start writing the next one.
Although I may indulge in a rum and coke. I think I earned it.
At the top of the hill, heading down
So this is deadline week where I want to get the book finished by Saturday, which will require 5K days from today through Friday. Mind you, I can DO that. It’s not pleasant, but it’s doable.
It helps that as of last night I cracked 60K, which means I have about 20K left to go. This is all the exciting stuff in the story, which will make the 5K/day slog a little easier. I’ve had Louisa meet the Swan King (and he’s as creepy as advertised), she and Henry have had an argument, Henry’s off to play supernatural squash with his partner in order to blow off some steam, and Louisa, the housekeeper, her female lover (and one of the most powerful sorceresses in London) and Henry’s Maker Fyodora are about to settle in for a Victorian version of a Girl’s Night In. Yes, I know women from different classes wouldn’t usually mingle like this, but 1) this is a very special situation, 2) Louisa really needs some expert female advice right now, and 3) it’s a fantasy so my world, my rules.
Now if Jeremy would just stop whining and wandering around the house looking for a sister to harass, that would make things absolutely perfect.
Speeding along nicely, thank you
Sorry for the extended radio silence but I have been flying, people. I’m currently at 53,380 words on Shadow of the Swan and intend to top that off at 54,000 by the time I’m finished today, leaving 26,000 to go. Easy peasy.
The goal right now is as follows:
- Have the first draft done and dusted by 8/21.
- A quick edit done over the weekend to fix things I know need to be fixed but don’t want to spend time on right now.
- Off to the betas and editor on 8/24 while I dive in for a deeper edit. I rely on the betas to find any grammar/punctuation/spelling errors, plus anything that doesn’t make sense to them, and the editor does a high-level pass to make sure the story flows well from beginning to end.
- Ideally I’ll get all of their edits back in 8/28. While I’m waiting on that I’ll do a weasel word pass, a grammar/spelling/punctuation pass, and a fine polish.
- When all the edits arrive, I’ll get everything incorporated, polished to a shine, and formatted into ebook form by 9/2.
- 9/3 I read it through as a reader would, catch any last infelicities and fix them.
- 9/4, I upload to Amazon for the 9/8 release.
I genuinely can’t wait for all of you to read this — I’ve been describing it as the Brendan Frasier-era The Mummy meets Bram Stoker’s Dracula with a touch of Carnival Row, and it’s an absolutely wonderful romp. I so very much enjoy writing in this world, and if people like it and buy enough books I may even get to write another book set in it. Let’s hope!
In other news, I got the rights back for Deep Water so that will be edited over the weekend, formatted, and released as soon as the Evernight ebooks are down from all online retailers. I’ll probably work on the print book after I send Swan off to the betas and editor on the 24th.
Even better, this means that I can finally start releasing the new books in the Olympic Cove series so you can expect to see Cross Current (Book 4) out in December, and the remaining two books sometime in 2021. Yay!
Day Drinking Is Starting To Look More Attractive
So, I reached the mid-point in Shadow of the Swan. Huzzah, I’m happy, it’s all down hill from here, right?
And then I sat down to write the sales copy for the book, with a goal of releasing it on September 8. In doing so, I realized I had screwed up oh so majorly by adding a character who wasn’t necessary at all. In fact, this character actively annoyed me, which explained why my output had slowed down over June and July. Really, I should have been zipping along in the story, but knowing that I had to deal with this character was like a sea anchor that just draaaaaaaaaaaagged everything down.
(The character? The nice but slightly dim nobleman that Louisa is supposed to marry by order of Queen Victoria. I really didn’t like him, poor soul.)
And that’s when it dawned on me — Louisa is in mortal danger of being grabbed and taken off to Faerie by a deadly Fae king. Her uncle knows damn well that his niece isn’t interesting in marrying and popping out ANYONE’S kids, much less a deadly Fae king’s, but the only way to save her from this fate, ironically, is to marry her off to someone else first. The logical solution to this problem would be for her to marry someone 1) who also works for the Ministry and understands the situation, 2) is a powerful entity himself, 3) doesn’t want children, and 4) will disappear from public view fairly soon, leaving Louisa a respectable “widow” who can marry again should she choose to do so.
1+2+3+4 = Henry Carstairs, gentleman vampire. Which means I am now going through the chapters in Act I and retrofitting them to this new storyline. It also allows me to introduce another, very necessary, character earlier, which is good for the plot. All of this rewriting will result in a much better story, but this is also the third time I’ve frogged Act I of this book and restarted it. Here’s hoping the damn thing runs on rails now.
Nicola Cameron Writes 