Category Archives: Vella
The End of the Month Is Approaching
I didn’t mention yesterday but Crystal Blade Episode 9: An Intimate Family Dinner was released yesterday on Vella. At least I finally got it into my head to call them episodes and not chapters.
I have to admit, I was really hoping to have Blade finished by now, but between various stressors and a couple of bouts of Not Feeling Well I just wasn’t able to get it done this month. Which is annoying because I would really like to publish something every month and have Amazon keep promoting me, but I’m starting to think that this may not be realistic for me.
At least, not at the moment. I’m tired. My last vacation was January 2017 and it has been go go go ever since then. I would dearly like to have one week where I didn’t have to do anything, cook or clean anything, or take care of anything. Basically, I want to go on a cruise. But to do that we not only need enough money to pay for the cruise itself but also for the week of time Ramón would need to take off from work (not having PTO really sucks). Which means I need to sell a lot of books. Which means I need to write more new books to keep myself in Amazon’s sweet spot. But I’m tired. You see my dilemma.
At least the sterling silver jewelry I’ve been making recently has been selling, which is something. Frankly, I’ve made almost as much from that as I’ve made from writing this month. Part of me thinks that’s sad, and part of me is just damned grateful that I have another income stream. And all of me knows that things could be so, so much worse so I should just shut up and be grateful for what I have.
Crystal Blade Ep 8 Is Up
It’s over here if you want to read it. And I’ve discovered something—not exactly dismaying, but it explains a few things.
I have had people reading through the paid chapters, bless all of you who did that, and I had expected to make a tiny bit of money for those reads. But my Vella dashboard keeps reporting $0 royalties on episode reads.
So I did some digging. It turns out that Amazon offers you 200 free tokens in order to get you reading Vella chapters, which is great. I took them up on that myself, and I bet a lot of people have done the same thing. Except that those free tokens don’t count towards royalties so you have to burn through them and then actually buy some tokens before the author starts seeing any royalties on their dashboard.
Which is … yeah, annoying. I wish they’d explained that right off the bat because I’ve been reading friends’ Vella stories and it turns out that they’re not getting any moola for my reads. It also means that I’m going to burn through these as fast as possible so that I can buy some more and, you know, actually pay for my reads.
Technology. *shakes head*
Episode Six of Crystal Blade is Live
I hope this doesn’t bug anyone but I’ll be mentioning each new episode (I have got to stop calling them chapters) as I post them so that interested readers can simply click and go straight to the episode page.
Episode 6: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C32WTWBJ
In other news my new knee is officially one year old today, whee. I can walk a mile in a half hour (working on improving that—I would like to do a 5K this year) and apart from some garbage left from the adhesions I have full mobility and no pain. The other knee is holding steady, although now that I’m able to move around more easily it is starting to get a little achy more often. Once it gets regularly painful I can go back in to TMI and get gel shots—my surgeon said that ideally he’d like to get me into my sixties before we replace that knee (and we will have to replace it—it’s a matter of if, not when). Works for me.
Oh, and I’m also officially in menopause, whee! Got to find a really good Crone t-shirt…
Crystal Blade Is Officially Live
And it’s official. The first five episodes of Crystal Blade are now available on Kindle Vella, may the Flying Spaghetti Monster have mercy on my soul, and the first three eps are free. I’ll be posting three episodes a week on a M-W-F basis until the story is done, and thirty days after that I’ll take everything down and publish it as an ebook and print book.
So if you want to check out the continuing adventures of Crystal and the Buff Lords right the heck now, head on over!
- Crystal Blade Home Page: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0C2PHK17L
- Episode One: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2P9ZZTF
- Episode Two: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2P8SJWW
- Episode Three: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2PD2YCJ
- Episode Four (paid): https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2PF1TT2
- Episode Five (paid): https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/episode/B0C2PB471S
And Now We Wait
Five chapters of Crystal Blade have been uploaded to Vella (Chapter Six needs more editing than I’m capable of doing right now) and are currently chugging through the ‘Zon. I’ll get Chapter Six whipped into shape tomorrow and uploaded, then I’ll start my two chapters a week upload schedule (and may I just say that my fanfic experience is coming very much in handy right now).
Also, the image at right is the story’s avatar. I think it says “fantasy romance” well enough and goes along with the title (and the five-pointed star was an unintended bonus that refers to the Buff Lords). I’m really hoping this does well because my ‘Zon income is a joke at the moment. The custom text AMS ads are still not serving (I’ve created automatic ads for all my titles so at least some ads are getting served) and my sales are wretched.
All of which is just convincing me to put all of my titles wide sooner than later. KU is clearly compromised and I’m not making anything near what I was making from it last year, and with Kobo starting KoboPlus (their version of KU that doesn’t require a title to be exclusive to Kobo) I would have a bit more stability and might even make more money if I went wide. Plus I wouldn’t have to worry about the ‘Zon abruptly yanking my author account because someone else had posted one of my books on a pirate site.
But for now I’m happy and pumped about Blade. With a good tail wind I should get it finished by the end of the month, then I can get started on Crystal Reflection, High Tide, and To Love a Wild Swan.
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…
Nicola Cameron Writes 