Category Archives: Vella

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Belaurient Press

May 29

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Crystal Blade Episode 23: Surprise, Surprise, Surprise is live at Vella. You know the drill.

I got my proof copy of Melanie’s short story collection Random Realities today (the print version really did turn out beautifully), and I noticed the colophon on the spine. That’s when I realized—I never explained how Belaurient Press got its name, did I?

Story time—back in college I used to play D&D occasionally, and one time I was working on creating a magic user character. I noodled around with some names and finally came up with Bel’orient (it was the mid-80’s, I apologize, I know better now).

One of my fellow gamers who was clearly ahead of his time suggested that I get rid of the apostrophe and change the name’s spelling. Thanks to the beauty of homophones, I adjusted it to Belaurient and thought, “Ooh, yes. I like that. My character’s name is Belaurient.”

She died in the next game. Fast forward to 2008 and I decided to set up an Etsy store to sell my jewelry and other wares. When it came time to name the store, Belaurient popped back into my head and I decided to go with Belaurient Arts.

Fast forward a little more to 2012 when I decided to bring out Random Realities and needed a name for my eensy publishing company that would produce the book. I figured, what the hell, I was a sole proprietor and could do what I liked, so I named the company Belaurient Press.

Of course, because I am a completist I needed a colophon (the little graphic that is the logo of the publishing house and is printed on the bottom of the spine) for Belaurient Press. I wanted something simple yet memorable, and after some noodling around in Illustrator I came up with the little juggler logo because 1) I am actually a juggler (learned it for a community theater production of Barnum), and running Belaurient Press requires a lot of juggling of assorted hats.

So that’s how my publishing company was named and its colophon came to be. Of course, once I start my LLC I’m going to have to come up with a name that encompasses both the jewelry company and the publishing company. Must think on that a bit more…

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And Finished

May 27

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All of the Melanie books have now been sent off to Smashwords and Google Play, so hopefully everything will be accepted at SW and sent off to Kobo/Apple/B&N later this week.

Which means I can return to Crystal Blade and get episodes 23 and 24 hammered out, edited, and uploaded to Vella for release on Monday and Wednesday, respectively. I also need to get on my stick and get the book finished ASAP because I no longer have a two week cache of episodes anymore and that makes me nervous.

I also really need to knuckle down and get the PayPal business account started this week so that I can add purchase buttons here. The thing that’s holding me back is that I would really like to have an EIN and a separate business bank account first, in order to keep the book money separate from my personal money. I’m just gonna have to get an EIN online, then go into my credit union and set up a new account. Ideally I would also prefer to have an LLC, but that will have to wait until I have enough money to file for one.

Posted in Crystal Blade, Vella

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Mother’s Day Approacheth

May 19

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Crystal Blade Episode 19: At Her Majesty’s Pleasure is now live on Kindle Vella. Go read it already.

So yeah, Sunday is Mother’s Day, not that this has any real onus on me since my mother is currently sitting at the heavenly poolside dandling William Holden in her lap, but I know it’s an important day for a lot of mothers and their kids. If you fall into one of these categories I hope that the day is pleasant, stress-free, and provides you with everything that makes you happy.

In other news, all of the Olympic Cove and Two Thrones books, as well as Stealing Dmitri, are now officially out of KU and I fully expect to see my Amazon income crater until I can get Crystal Blade out. Still, I think I’m doing the smart thing by taking most of my series out of KU (I’m leaving the Paladins of Crystal books in there because KU is tailor-made for Why Choose readers). I’ve already seen a significant jump in wide sales of the Esposito County Shifters books and omnibus, better than they had been selling on Amazon, and I’m hoping that as I set the other novels wide I’ll see improved sales on all those as well. Maybe not enough to offset the KU income loss, but hey, that’s what Vella, audiobooks, and selling print books from my website are for, right?

 

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It’s Wednesday. You Know What That Means

May 17

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Crystal Blade Episode 18: That Escalated Quickly is now available at Vella. Help a writer out and read the story, okay?

In other news I’m busily plowing through Shadow of the Swan in Vellum to make sure the formatting is accurate, and I have to admit that this story holds up well. I probably went a little overboard writing in a Victorian style but it’s still fun and engaging, and The Crimson and the Black is a pure romp. When I get around to working on To Love a Wild Swan I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with Louisa’s cousin Nessa and her unwilling Seelie Sidhe fiancé. I’m still toying with the idea of giving him a boyfriend who also takes a fancy to Nessa, but I’m not sure how that would fly with readers of this series.

Then again, Fyodora is pan and there was a FF love scene in Crimson, there are gay and lesbian couples in the supporting characters, and nobody’s complained about that. I think it might be fun for Nessa to join an icily handsome Fae and a (literally) hot djinn in a menage.

Posted in Crystal Blade, Vella

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I Do Love a Productive Monday

May 15

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  • Got Crystal Blade Episode 17: Loose Lips Sink Ships up at Vella
  • Finished editing Blade Episodes 21 and 22
  • Got them saved on Vella so I have a full two weeks’ worth of episodes to post every M-W-F
  • Started working on Blade Episode 23 and got a goodly chunk of it done
  • Did a very necessary food shop
  • Swept and vacuumed the downstairs
  • Finished shaping a double gallery setting—next up is building V-shaped prongs and attaching those and a bail
  • Made dinner
  • Updated both blogs (sorry about the delay with this one’s posts)

All in all, I feel like I successfully adulted today.

Posted in Crystal Blade, Thoughts from the Bench, Vella

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Nobody Ever Tells You How Much Paperwork There Is In Indie Publishing

May 12

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Crystal Blade Episode 16: Children Are Our Most Valuable Resource is now available at Vella. Because maybe you’re not going out tonight and need something to read, I dunno.

I am also delighted to announce that people are starting to pay for Crystal Blade eps and not just read them using their free tokens, so I’ve got that going for me. Now if I could just rustle up some contract work and send Ramón home for two weeks things would be magic.

In other news I’ve got a weekend full of business work ahead of me (I need to start a business PayPal account so that I can sell books and jewelry through the website, start reading Zoe York’s books on the business side of indie romance publishing, update all of my income/expenses spreadsheets, and tweak my Amazon ads), plus I really need to do a big stock-up shop and give the bathrooms a deep clean.

I keep thinking that eventually I’ll have a weekend where I can just relax, read, watch TV, that sort of thing. I still remember a Sunday many years ago when the house was clean, I’d gotten all of my tasks done for the week, I didn’t have any jewelry projects on the go, and I spent the afternoon on the couch reading. It was freaking magical. I would like to experience that again.

Posted in Business of Writing, Crystal Blade, Personal, Vella

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The Writer At Work In the Garage

May 10

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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…).

Posted in Crystal Blade, Thoughts from the Bench, Vella

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Parsing Reviews

May 5

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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.

Posted in Crystal Blade, High Tide, Hurricane Warning, Shifter Woods: Claw, Vella

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The First of May

May 1

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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).

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The Business of Writing

Apr 29

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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…

Posted in Audiobook, Crystal Blade, Vella

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