Author: Aya DeAniege

Or, in Other Words: QUIT SPAMMING ME

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Gods.

To all the indie authors on Twitter: I get it.

BUT FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODS, REAL AND FICTITIOUS, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

I keep receiving direct messages on Twitter that are automated. If you actually take the time to write a message, it’s a lot more obvious.

Now, for one. Twitter has a rule where you have to allow users to opt out of receiving your messages. Crowdfire does not. I’ve reported them to Twitter, fuck you crowdfire.

I’ve also been reporting every message I received from their automated system as spam.

I will never use their services. I do not appreciate their services. You know what I appreciate? SocialOomph, I believe is the app. They allow you to send direct, automated messages but also do due diligence and allow people to opt out entirely.

So you don’t want to receive a Twitter direct message that reads something like, “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? FUCK SPAM AND FUCK YOU,” don’t use Crowdfire.

Because I’m reaching that point. When I contacted Crowdifre, I believe they lol’ed and told me that unsubscribing from automated direct messages wasn’t their thing.

… I kind of hope I become something just so I can be like “screw crowdfire!”

Guys, just… just like obey the community rules and don’t be a douchebag, okay?

I’ve received some auto-messages that aren’t tagged as to an actual auto service. This could be the author with a copy and paste. Which is fantastic dedication!

My response is to basically imitate them almost to the letter. However they ship their stuff, I ship mine directly back, but substitute my story for theirs. So far there have been a bunch of messages and about twenty percent have turned around on me.

So, to all you indie authors out there. Be sarcastic just slightly and respond in just that tone to your spammers. Some of them are real, some of them will respond.

I got two pre-orders after a snarky snarl at someone I thought was an auto-message asking me to retweet their pinned tweet. Of course, my response was to retweet mine first! Within two minutes of sending the tweet, I was retweeted (thank you, kind stranger!). I did, of course, return the favour.

I have followed someone who said something like, “retweet me and I’ll retweet you.” So I took them up on the offer. They retweeted me twice. Two different tweets, of course.

The problem with auto-tweets is that the way I find my followers is by looking into my genres. I follow those people. There are some who follow me randomly, but as I have no books published so far, I tend not to follow them back. I tried that today, re-following an unknown.

She claimed she spoke to a close friend of mine, who told me I’d be interested.

I reported her as a spammer. Urgh, so annoying.

As indie authors we are tossed all kinds of helpful “hints” but it seems fewer and fewer actually stop and consider how much of a narcissistic asshole you need to be to actually follow that advise.

Spamming all the people who follow you on Twitter is not going to help you. I will not buy your book because you spammed me. You have three thousand followers, they’re probably all indie authors. Stop telling people to buy your book.

Not because your book isn’t worth it, but because you’re sending auto messages to people on freaking twitter.

DON’T TELL PEOPLE ON TWITTER TO BUY YOUR BOOK.

Contact me and tell me to re-tweet your thing, I probably will on the condition of… retweeting my pinned tweet.

So, basically. If you are going to auto message, me it should read “hey, retweet my pinned tweet and I’ll retweet yours.” But so fucking help me if you don’t. I will be upset, I will remember it.

And I’m totally going to be someone and something one day and I’ll matter to people. Important people and we’ll just make sure everyone knows how you can’t be trusted to keep your word and you’ll never sell anything ’cause we’ll blacklist you.

*the last paragraph, while hopeful, was written with the full understanding that the world and life sucks, and the author has not written the next Fifty Shades of Grey.

 

At Death’s Door

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

At Death’s Door was titled ‘Vampire’ until just a few chapters ago. This is written on my phone and will be extensively edited on a computer. Or, edited as any of my works are. There are two more books to be written, though I’ve not dabbled much in the plot of those so I can’t even give away the ending!

Vampires come out to humans and interviews are set up. Many humans are still skeptical as the vampires haven’t given physical proof besides some historical records. Those doing the interviews expect fluff and a little grief stricken darkness. A smidge of “oh, how killing mortals pains me!”

Most interviewers get just that. Boring vampires with boring lives (or at least edited for mass consumption) then there’s Quin.

Who probably shouldn’t have ever been on the list of interviewees. Like. Ever.

 

Continue reading “At Death’s Door” →

Updates

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

What have I been up to?

Well, Prototype in a month was a bust. I seem to be missing something to tell the story, even though I know how it all ends. That kind of sucks, but I’ll keep working on it and maybe do a re-write. That seems to work well for me recently.

I’ve almost written another book, At Death’s Door is part of a trilogy called Wraith’s Rebellion. All the writing is done on my phone. Isn’t that a nifty thing? More like crazy as could be, but I have long commutes and haven’t wanted to read anything. It doesn’t even feel like work because it’s doing a great job at distracting me from hours on a bus.

The Contracted trilogy is up for pre-order on Amazon, and I’ve reached out to the cover artist to do the wraps she had promised. Coming up with other options well, I know she’s very busy and might not have the time to put them together.

I’m considering getting Indesign as I’ve heard you can do the ebook formatting on there and have Amazon accept the fonts. I’ll believe it when I see it, but it’s kind of expensive. Its subscription based and would cost me the same to hire out for the work, and that’s a problem. So I’ll keep looking around.

My laptop was failing to the point where it couldn’t work with some web pages, WordPress included. It works on my phone, but I’ve been writing At Death’s Door on there. So that’s kind of why I’ve been absent.

I won’t accept large gifts from people. It’s never ended well for me even to accept gifts in general. Dorian knew that, and one day showed up with his brother’s old computer. He set it up before I arrived and absconded with my laptop. The act of it led to our first fight in months, because there were things on that laptop I needed.

Apparently, his brother upgraded to a full on gaming rig, and Dorian told his brother he’d recycle the old computer. His brother isn’t the sort to ask if Dorian recycled it or not.

So my computer issue was fixed, though the monitor is driving me batty. I may have to save up and buy a new one, but those are a great deal cheaper than getting the entire rig.

I’m thinking about working on an angel and demon story. Woooo scary.

Because it’s just not possible, and I should know better.

But then… I also said no vampires.

My list for October is simple. Finish Prototype, finish At Death’s Door, do the first edit for Masked Intentions, and get the final copies of Contract Broken and Contract Renewed up. Preferably, get the hard copies of the Contracted Trilogy settled so I can do a giveaway.

I am planning on resisting the urge to write. However, as I can now write on my phone, most bets are off.

I also have this nifty world building app, which I put At Death’s Door into before I started writing. It has helped immensely. I barely follow the plot I wrote up, but the few times I’ve gotten stuck, I’ve been able to refer to it. The chapters are broken up, and I’ve found it much easier to dart all over. No extra pulls or anything, all the chapters linked together and at my fingertips.

If there’s mention of Hitler or random insanity that’s inappropriate, that’s because I caught the person sitting beside me reading my screen. Most of them moved pretty quickly.

Except for the one woman, who is on the bus every day with me. The next day she also sat beside me.

People are weird.

Okay, a Little Work

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Dorian would be about to kill me, if I hadn’t done work while making a roast dinner. Beth’s been teaching me for a while, mainly because I’ve seen how Dorian reacts to her food. He loves it, I was jealous.

When I told her I was jealous she told me, and I quote, “Quit your fucking bitching, any moron can learn to cook.”

She had to add an addendum, when I somehow screwed up a hard boiled egg. It exploded.

… along with about fourteen after it.

So today I made Dorian a roast dinner and he reacted almost the same way. I know him well enough to know when he’s putting on a farce. It probably didn’t hurt my chances, that I did the entire thing in a summer dress with a loose skirt and bare feet.

It’s not the barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen thing with him. A woman barefoot is somehow seductive to him—in the kitchen or not—add in a skirt and what he calls ‘flouncing’ and I had to slap the man off of me so that I could carve the roast.

I’m years away from cooking like Beth, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying.

So while I made a wonderful dinner, I also filled out my Goodreads author page, set up the Amazon Author Central page, and slapped up an author profile image.

I need a better camera. Or to get one professionally done, both will cost about the same.

 

When Your Mind Fails You 

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I’m so tired, I can barely think. It’d be a good feeling, if only I could write like I want to.

My new MC is Maggy. A green eyed, brown haired beauty with pale skin who is a little bitter. I like her style, it’s not as Snarky as Rachel and Isabella. She’s more defensive than anything, quickly trying to defend even her own thoughts.

While that might get old fast, she’s not going to be able to keep on that thread long. 

Her pairing is a little confusing, but her story revolves around Zak.

This world has existed for probably sixteen years inside my head, so the back stories of most of the characters are already written, which is awesome. 

… on the way to work, I had a startling realization that made me choke on my coffee. 

According to stories that came previous, Zak is actually the oldest son of a king and was supposed to inherit his father’s world. Except the world is very, very traditional and Zak was a lot more… silly. So like every good, honorable prince, he ran away and hid his identity from his new friends.

Possibly because once they found a new home, his daddy was the driving force behind the attacks that started happening to try and claim the land.

Every time I try for a regular guy… 

Meh, prince-in-hiding, billionaire, and sadist are much more interesting. 

Not that Zak is scheduled to take over from his father. The worlds balance one another out. His home world always has to be traditional. Suppose if the balance was offset everyone would start bickering and war mongering and generally trying to “kill it with fire” when it came to anything new and strange.

His being a prince might not even make it into the story. 

I’m not sure what the plot is here, but I know what happens so that’s what I’m going to write. And I’m going to keep writing until someone kidnaps someone else or maims them. Maybe even a little explosion.

Hell, they’re being difficult, let’s unleash some crazy villains to make an example of them.

The other books for the world centre around a couple of different things. In one, a nightmare world is discovered. Maybe I’ll have Zak eaten then. 

But for now, I’ve got these two people who are living their lives and then they intersect. Just my brain isn’t working so well in figuring out the rest.

I need sleep. And food, if my stomach rumbling is any indication.

Working and Working More

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I had Tuesday off my day job and worked sixteen hours to get Contract Taken up on Amazon. I did a preorder in case anything went amiss … it did.

Now, I could have simply pulled the book and started again but I’m worried if I tried that, it’s never go up. So yes, I’m doing a preorder on my first book. This is not usually suggested. 

But at least the book will go up.

When Dorian found out what I had done, he scolded me.

About the long work day on my day off, not the preorder. 

I was up at 9am and didn’t get to bed until 2am. I did take probably 15mins every four hours to do chores, feed myself, and feed the cats. The last hour was spent trying to find a way to use fonts in a book on Amazon.

It looks so … unfinished without them. Unpolished, like I just don’t care. I’ve seen others use them, but I just can’t seem to figure it out myself.

Using a free epub converter (I discovered this morning) does the same thing! 

When I told Dorian that he scolded me again! 

Because I told him I wasn’t going back to work until next week. I will start writing today (get between me and writing, and I’m likely to bite you. In his case, literally) but I swore I wouldn’t do anything else.

It’s a long weekend, meaning Dorian and I are both off. I get the feeling I’m going to be … er … tied up most of the weekend and at this point I’m not sure it’ll be in a naughty fashion. I’m in so much trouble, he couldn’t even bring himself to threaten to smack me.

Someone asked a valid question though, and she’s willing to do a review on the book, but can’t use Amazon. So I was just trying to do a fulfillment now rather than next week when I’m running around like a crazy person before heading on “vacation” to a wedding across the country.

I don’t know what to do about the font and formatting thing. I don’t want to have to pay someone to format for me. I should be able to do it myself, but no one wants to tell me how.

I have just over a month to figure it out.

Dear ‘Zon… Just no.

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I spent fifteen hours yesterday working over Contract Taken until the editing was done. Only to realize the whole thing was corrupted and I had to basically start over. Then I got it all nicely done up and found out that Amazon strips basically all the formatting out.

I know it’s not because your Kindles are incapable of displaying fonts. I’m looking right at them on my kindle, to which I placed a .pdf. It looks fantastic. It looks like I spend hours working on it (let’s face it, I spent almost a year on this).

So I’m a little peeved. Just a little. Okay, maybe I threatened to light my office on fire, but I was at the end of a sixteen hour work day and it was two in the morning. My Google-fu was also failing me.

I know others have used fonts in their kindle books. Beth was all, “of course it works!” so I grabbed her first book and now she’s also threatening to light her office on fire.

So it is up for pre-order with no inside visible because I desperately want to sort out the fonts before I do that. When it comes time, every other retailer will have the awesome copy and Amazon will have the one that looks like it’s a text book on boring topics.

 

September’s Book

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

So I’m going to ask my readers’ help deciding what story I will write in September. I may have to overlap with Rachel’s Story due to health issues, but with the tablet up and running, I can do it. I still have time to finish Rachel’s Story, I think.

I have quite a few stories I could write and for starters can’t decide on my own. Secondly, there has been more than once where I had a bunch of possibilities before me and it turned out they weren’t as good of an idea as I thought they were.

If you’d like to ‘vote’ for the story you’d like to see, here are a few rules.

  1. This is for published stories. I’m looking at those readers of the Two Lovers who are probably, understandably, going to vote for Home. If you don’t vote for Home, you’ll still be able to get it in a few months. I just want to be clear in that you don’t have to vote for Home to get it at any point, there is still a plan for it, but if you’d like to see it written, edited, then published, vote for it. All others will be written, probably, and are only going to be published. (Published in this case means self-published in ebook form, or pay-to-read format)
  2. To vote, you need to make a comment. Either here or on Facebook. Even emailing me is acceptable. You just have to let me know and I need to be able to tell that no one is manipulating votes.
  3. Really want that story published? You can get a second vote for any story of your choice by publically sharing the Facebook post announcing this. The only reason it has to be publically shared is because otherwise I can’t tell it’s been done. Facebook is funny like that. I’d settle for a retweet of the story you’d like over on Twitter where they’ve all been tweeted about, by me.
  4. If you vote and would like a copy of the finished (unedited) story you can receive a pdf copy. Again, you just need to let me know. If your story isn’t selected and you still want a copy? Let me know! The plan is to have the pdfs out to you, the reader, by October 15th, baring any sort of new medical condition, flying bats, or ending of the world.
  5. Now to the stories: head over to the ‘Books’ page. There are a list of stories there. Anything but Contracted is up for er… grabs. The Excerpts for each are linked below the small blurb.