Tag: indie author

Publication Schedule

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Snagged the app for my new phone. I’m quite pleased with this thing.

Any who, with the app and data I can make blog posts again! 

I’m supposed to be writing Death Mask to finish that series off. I’m not certain that I can get the same effect from writing it on the computer as I can on my phone. It’s the focus that the phone draws in because I don’t have so many other things going on. 

My main problem with that at the moment is that my autocorrect is new, and not yet driven insane by my style. I’ll bring it around, though. Soon it will be writing full sentences and actually capitalizing after periods!

You’d think capitalization would come standard.

With Contract Broken launching today at midnight, it’s gotten me thinking about my publication schedule. 

I want to publish often, that was the point of writing a book a month. It’s always been the editing that catches me up. Another problem is that every once in a while, things just stop working. It happens, and it sucks.

The past two and a half months have been an example of that. I’ve written At Death’s Door but that was on my phone during commutes. I might as well have been reading the thing for the first time.

And that’s why I want to continue writing on my phone.

At the same time, nothing got done at home. stuff happens, you end up playing games because the words just don’t come.

So I don’t think I’m going to be able to maintain one book a month. Okay, that’s fine because that’s how that goes. Guess those are now the rules. 

I still want to launch as often as possible. At least I’m writing full novels and not ten thousand word snippets.

Oh, and then there are the snippets, starting to come to me and I may just give in and publish those too.

I like my day job, I’m just tired of getting up at 6am every day and being exhausted and walked all over for a job no one but me even cares about. I’d rather work part-time, and snippets are faster to write and edit.

I’m considering it, is all I’m saying. I definitely would not stop writing the novels. Me? Stop writing novel length works? Ha!

At this point the plan is: 

Masked Intentions – January

At Death’s Door – February

Morgan’s Story? – March

Death Mask – April

Maybe snippets throughout. Maybe Signed in between. 

Signed is a trilogy I’ve been debating writing. It’s basically Nathaniel’s story but is not a complete recounting. The first comes before Izzy, the second during the events of Contract Broken, and the third afterward. I’m just not certain yet if anyone would be interested. 

Oh, and maybe Angel in between or afterward.  I didn’t start it last night, so okay, let’s set this up for me.

I will start working on Angel on December 1st. December is the busiest month of the year for us at the day job, so I’m not expecting to write it in a month. There.

See?

There’s already that tingle down my spine and the whining voices of the muses at the back of my mind. This is what they get for not writing for two months. 

That’ll also give me more time to plan the series out. Which means I could be cast out to May, maybe June if I can get Cheating Death written. 

I was talking to at friend recently who knew I’d be getting into Romance publishing and she inquired so I told her about the next launch.

“Oh? Is that all? That doesn’t sound like you.”

“And another next month, editing one for January, planning the world of another, writing another, have one sitting for editing, oh and the side project.”

“That sounds like you! At least you’re publishing them instead of just writing them and then leaving them on drives laying about my house.”

“Is that like my telling you to stop tearing up your drawings?”

“Shut up, they’re terrible.”

“That’s totally why I’ve got them hanging on my wall.”

…

The long and the short of it is that I have plans for more launches and very soon. Well, soon in publishing. 

Beth publishes one or so books a year. I’ve got three this year and six planned next year. Different genres, though. Different authors too. 

Good luck to me, I feel like I’ll need it.

*Unitalisized titles are working titles.

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.

 

Time Off is Important Too

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Beth and I try to make certain each of us takes time off. Even if it’s just a couple of hours. Back in February when I started setup,  Beth had been working two months straight. She had taken an hour here or there, but even while out, she was on and focused on her writing. 

It drove Dorian crazy. He likes all the attention focused on the conversation when he’s there. I swear Beth does it just to mess with him, but their friendship is like that. 

He pokes her, she pokes him. Like a big brother, little sister thing.

Anyhow, as of Saturday I’m off work for a week across my birthday. Thank goodness work was okay with that. I’m not exactly the most stable person on my birthday, which actually has little to do with getting older and more to do with having no family to rely on. 

An entire week, no writing. Whatever am I going to do with myself? 

I’ll be back to work July 31st, restarting a novel August 1st. Along with editing and combing through formatting on Taken and Broken.

I’m supposed to be walking all over next week. Exploring the city to keep myself busy. Dorian promises to keep me out of the apartment and busy the entire time (out of his apartment too,  we tried that last year and it didn’t work).

Exploring could be good for the creative flow. 

On Planning

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

My original plan was to set up preorders for the Contract trilogy three months apart. Of course, I’m being guided by Beth, who is a planner. She makes me research everything. Or… nearly everything. 

When it first came to the preorder she was completely on board with the idea. Three months would give me a ton of time to market and build a readership. 

But the other day she stumbled on a discussion between authors. One of them was in a situation similar to mine. A trilogy was at the ready and this person was debating between doing preorders or launching all three books at the same time.

The author was advised to launch the first immediately, then do a preorder for three weeks for the next, and three weeks for the one after. The idea is to drive readership. And this will help you start off strong. 

Except I’m not certain three weeks is enough. What if something comes up, what if I need to make an alteration to the second or third books? How is three weeks going to help me, as a new author, to build readership? 

I, of course, went to Beth with these questions. So she sat me down and we had a discussion of our own.

See, Beth views writing as a type of business. It is still a hobby for her, she is not making enough to live off of it, but she hopes to one day. 

The way you would treat a customer in retail is how you should treat your fans. Or, if you can, treat readers better than you would customers. Now, she works in retail so that imagery works very well for her, and I can see where she’s coming from.

Businesses who treat their customers well, do well. If you were going to buy a suit and the salesperson was rude, would you still buy the suit? Most cities have multiple fine clothing stores, you don’t have to be limited.

Most people would go to another store. The same is true for indie authors. You aren’t the only one writing stories like that.

Of course, I adore my readers so for me that part isn’t really a problem. 

The part that deflated my ego was the next bit: it takes five years to build a business and about a minute to destroy it.

Beth, when she first published, wasn’t even close to popular. After two years she’s finally seeing some traction, but has to take a break because she can’t afford editing costs at the moment. That means her… cloud? Is slowly going to get smaller unless she gets the next book written  and finds the money for editing. 

Being a new author, she told me, I need all the help I can get. That means that if three weeks will help me build my foundation, I need to swallow my pride and just do it.

It also would mean that I’d have two months or so before I was back where I am now. Growling about editing. In two months I could probably finish writing the Daughters of the Alphas trilogy. 

Or I could finish the first and finish its edits, putting it up for a three months and basically buying myself time to write and edit the second, then do the same to get to the third. If I really focus I could work another writing project in the background. 

Because I’m keeping up a free story somewhere, so it’s not entirely impossible. If I could get the freaking tablet cord, I could write at work and edit at home. Which is what I was doing before. 

On the Contract Renewed front, I discovered why I only had four chapters left when I swore I had five chapters worth of stuff. That was because in the first draft, I somehow created two Chapter Fourteens. 

Go me. I can’t believe I missed that in the first two reads. Checking that the chapters read appropriately is one of the first things I do before I start editing.

So now I have twenty-one chapters with the possibility of rewriting the introduction to be more of an introduction instead of just a short chapter. I can take the old introduction and probably mire it into Chapter One, I think.

Before I left the house today, I went through Chapter Seventeen (I think) and started Eighteen before I got listless. Had to get ready for work. It’s still possible that I’ll finish Eighteen tonight.

Who knows, with tomorrow off and only three chapters left, I could finish with Contract Renewed tomorrow.

*Enter Witty Title Here*

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Ah, the WordPress app. Beth suggested it while the tablet is having issues. You don’t even have to publish it, just put notes in a draft. I’ve tried all sorts of note programs and Office type programs but none of them really work. Or, if they do work, they don’t really make a file I can take to my laptop/tablet. 

Yesterday morning I edited a chapter. Then I did two blog posts first on the way to, then on the way from work. As soon as I got home I was on the phone with UPS because my package did turn up. 

Then I went back to editing and did another chapter, and another this morning.

UPS’S driver obviously entered the wrong city, which happens, I get that (and it turned up, so how could I complain?) And I was able to get answers and timely responses from them. 

I had, however, entered a ticket for my My Choice thing, because when I did the authorization apparently nothing took. I opened it under the tracking number for this package and was told to confirm I had entered it. I said yes and asked how I go about doing that again since obviously it didn’t work. And how would that work with Canada Post being weird? 

This morning the person responsible for the ticket responded with “I see your package was delivered to *wrong city* I hope you found our customer service helpful.” 

That wasn’t what this ticket was about.

With Canada Post being weird, I need to go through UPS to get hard copies of my books. The other service that runs starts with a ‘d’ and I can’t recall the name, but they suck. The drivers will not attempt delivery to apartment buildings. They drive up and idle for a bit, then leave claiming they were unable to make contact. As they did to me on four occasions for two different packages.

So my frustration at this dismal service does link into my writing. 

My local postman may mark something as delivered and then not deliver the notice for three days, but at least my package is safe at the local post office. It’s also about a third of the cost. 

I hope they resolve their issues soon. 

On the editing front, I’m now on chapter sixteen. I checked the word count today. I shouldn’t have.

Contract  Taken is about 87k words, Contract Broken is about 89k word. Currently Contract Renewed is sitting at 76k words. 

Going in, I knew it was shorter. When I started it was 66k words. I wrote its bare bones and knew that as I finished. The point was to get the skeleton out and to add the details later. Chapter fifteen was three pages of nothing but dialogue. It’s now five pages, but could probably be expanded on for physical reaction to emotion and stimulus. 

I definitely will need to do another go-through for editing and checking on that sort of thing. 

With four chapters left, I’m not even certain how I managed this because I swear there were two more chapters of sex and three more of other stuff. 

There’s definitely not enough sex. Of course I’m trying not to repeat too much, wouldn’t want to bore anyone. I think I’ve done well so far, but while I could easily add more, it’d probably be summed up by Izzy as, “a regular play session,” which kind of makes it sound boring. However, I’m concerned that if I go into details of a regular play session, the reader will find themselves bored because they’ve already had that.

I could add some suspension play, I know both of them are interested in that, but I have absolutely no experience with suspension. It’s something that Dorian isn’t interested in, let alone has the setup for, and I can’t play in public at all. 

I’d just start crying, like last time. 

It’s kind of funny how I’m very private about play (using an anonymous pen name to say I do play doesn’t count) yet I’m parading Izzy’s exploration of play before my readers. 

Once I go through the edit, I might ask Dorian for help. And I’ll be specific that I don’t mean seduce me for ‘inspiration’ purposes. He’s supposed to help me with Nathaniel’s trilogy as well. 

I know the male perspective of books can be well-received but Nathaniel isn’t like that. One book is about Izzy, I think. The other two are about before her. Everything that led up to his meeting her. 

I sound a little ramble-ly, I know. But doing a blog post helped me stay focused through the day yesterday, do I’m hoping it’ll help today as well.

When it Rains, it Pours.

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Remember how I said Canada Post was going on strike and I wasn’t going to get anything from anyone else for my birthday? Well, I had bought something for myself and was quite happy that it would be waiting for me when I got home today, as I had to pay for UPS. A pay service of that cost wouldn’t make a mistake,  would they?

… except they delivered it to the wrong city. 

I double checked all the addresses on all the statements. Yes, it was mine. The only one not showing my address was the actual delivery notification. 

The sound of the customer service representative’s voice when I told him where it had been delivered had that quality of genuine surprise. Even as he asked me to confirm my address and I stopped at the postal code and he read it out to me. 

“I’m just going to connect you to the investigation division…” two minutes pass and I can hear the frustration in his voice, “I can’t seem to get ahold of them, they’re probably very busy.” 

I’m already thrumming with frustration myself. Not by his actions, not even by the ‘theft’ of my only present this year (Dorian and I have a strict no gifts rule, we spend time together instead) but from a need to beat out a world a little more. 

The need to write always brings an ache to my chest and my hands tingle. Just need to get a few words down, then I’ll be able to focus again. 

…Maybe. 

It’s not even necessarily vampires who are aggrivating me. I haven’t written in weeks, I’ve been stopped up and now the itch is coming back. 

Yesterday I forced myself to write a new chapter for Contract Renewed, maybe that was what opened the flood gates. I’m on chapter fourteen of twenty, still need to add ten thousand more words. I can do that, I know I can. 

I just want to move on. I love the trilogy, I do, but this is more time than I’ve spent on any one thing. 

Maybe writing the whole trilogy and then editing the whole is a bad idea, like Beth said. Sure, I get the consistency errors fixed, but at a cost to my productivity. If I had done them one at a time…

Well, with Contracted I wouldn’t have been satisfied with the outcome. Or I may have been for a few months, but then I’d want to rip it to shreds for missing just that one little thing.

With Daughters of the Alphas I may edit as I go. Write one book and mull on it. Place it up on preorder and dive into another world. And then another… and another. I can circle back around to whatever keeps my fancy, just so long as I get the worlds written and available before they get mired in the fog that is my brain. 

We’ll see. Who knows, I might write the first book and immediately want to start the second. 

How many books can I write in a year? Oh, now there’s a challenge I’d like to take up.

Too Many Ideas, Not Enough Time

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

If I do no editing whatsoever, I could write all the ideas! But that won’t work… so what I’m thinking instead is finishing Contracted and getting it up and out of the way, then writing for about nine months straight.

Why nine months? 

Because I believe Amazon will let you do preordering three months out at the most. So once Taken goes live, I give it a week and start the preorder for Broken. 

And avoid all the reviews.

I’ve got a new idea kicking around for a world with vampires. I know, typical creature stories are overdone and after that, then what? Werewolf? 

I have a dislike of shifter stories, though.

While I’ve always sworn never to write a vampire story, my dislike of them boils down to the tropes. Like, if there be vampires, there must also be werewolves.

So I just play with the tropes I dislike. Such as having vampires argue the spelling of vampire, or upon being asked where the werewolves are, the MC is told this is the real world, not some romantic fantasy.

I’m also thinking about including excerpts at the end of the books. A sort of ‘coming soon’ but I’m not sure if I want proper excerpts or if I should have the MCs explaining their world to the reader. 

“In my world, genetically ‘superior’ humans are called Alphas. They spend their lives trying to outdo one another and accumulating wealth in the form of property, money, and companions. 

What’s a companion you ask? 

I am. 

We’re humans who carry what the Alphas call the G14 genetic marker. That specific sequence of genes means that under the right conditions we will break and form an everlasting bond with the one who breaks us, Alpha or human.

Women were once excluded from the selection and breaking process, but when the Alphas overthrew the government, everything changed. 

I’ve been caught, charged with a ridiculous crime, and they’ve decided it’s time to break me.

I won’t go down without a fight.” 

Seems to catch my attention more than trying to select am excerpt from the entire book. It also gives a look at the world, oh… it could be the description  of the book too! 

I may be spouting the stupidest idea ever. I need a sounding board. Being in a different genre and even writing in a different perspective, Beth isn’t much help for excerpt and description set up.

World creation, yes. Though she’s constantly asking me why my worlds are based around BDSM and domination. Guess that’s just my thing? 

Sweet romances don’t go over well. The last time I did something fluffy, everyone expected the characters to all be slaughtered at the end. Apparently I have a tell…

If I write something adorable, somebody’s going to get hurt.

So I’m trying to change that. It’s an amusing tell, though, so I’m still kind of debating whether I should just keep it. 

End a book in a trilogy with fluff and watch everyone cry…

The Tech Problem

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

My tablet is working on and off. What it really is, is the plug in. I’ve got a Surface 2 and Microsoft decided that a little magnetic latch on thing with four dibbles that push into the charger head itself. There’s a shelf type of thing that these dibbles push back behind and one of my dibbles is caught behind that shelf.

Why must you complicate things? The more moving parts, the more likely it is to be damaged.

I’ve never messed with this charger, I’ve been very gentle with it. Mainly because I saw those dibbles and knew it could be a problem.

So I can’t charge my tablet.

The next one is going to be simpler to charge. Preferably with a little plug like what my phone, kindle, and mp3 player all use. It has a name, but I can’t recall it off the top of my head.

Then there’s the laptop problem.

I can write upwards of million words a year. I kept track of it one year. Not including emails, blogs, chats, social media updates and all the rest.

I’m very prolific.

So my laptop is four years old. In January the backspace button popped off. Yeah. I have to hit the little knob that once was the backspace button. The ctrl buttons work on and off, and somehow the spacebar still works. For now.

The problem with tech, therefore, is that without it, we can’t really write in the modern age. I couldn’t write as quickly as I do because my hand can’t write as fast as it can type. Let’s face it, I’ve never seen someone who can write sixty words a minute legibly. My head also works faster than my typing or my writing so by the time I’m finished typing, I typically have the next thing lined up and ready to go.

This all leads into what I use these items for. The tablet is for writing on the go and at work. While at work is when I really want to write (on my breaks, of course) but without the table there, I don’t get anything done.

By the time I come home I’m stuck in the mud because I couldn’t write all day, so I don’t get editing done.

At any time both of these machines could fail and I’d be unable to access my stories until I bought new ones. Which aren’t exactly cheap, especially for someone who just started working full-time.

Cue Beth saying, “If you start the pre-order you’d have more money. Sure, not for six months but that could be the bit that chooses between a netbook second-hand, or a full laptop brand new.”

I have a birthday coming up, I’d ask for money and then pool whatever I got to put that towards a second-hand laptop, but Canada Post is on lock down or strike or something. No cards or gifts or anything for me this year. Unless they miraculously come to an agreement but given the length of the whole thing that’s probably not going to happen.

Beth thinks I’m making excuses. She thinks I’ve got cold feet about sending my baby out into the world because the bad reviews will kill my ego.

Not because Beth assumes my book is bad. It’s a borderline erotica and it kept her attention. She’s actually a pickier reader than I am.

Every book gets bad reviews, that’s the nature of the beast. If a book has nothing but five-star reviews, it’s… it’s suspicious.

Would I want nothing but good reviews?

Yes.

But Beth’s received a few ‘meh’ reviews, nothing really disastrously rage filled and nasty, and her ego took a blow.

I suppose at the end of it all, this sums up to: Need new tech to keep writing, afraid to start the pre-launch of Contract Taken.

An Author’s Bookclub

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

“Not what I want to read, not what I want to read, that’s another fucking shifter book. You know how uncomfortable shifter fiction makes me? It’s a step away from having sex with an animal.”

“I’m pretty certain they stay in man-form during sex.”

“It still makes me squeamish.”

“Okay, fine, don’t read it. What about that one?”

“The male MC mates the female MC by touching her? Wh… is that standard in their world? What the fuck?”

“My Gods, and I thought I was a picky reader. Look, if you’re going to be a jerk about your books—”

“I prefer the term specific reading requirements.”

“—and a whiney little bitch, then don’t read an indie book until you find the storyline you’re looking for. In the meantime, pick up some of the classics.”

“But they want fifteen to thirty dollars for those.”

“Not on Amazon, Gutenberg, and numerous other places. As long as it’s in the public domain you can get classic books for free in ebook or pdf form by knowing how to look for it.”

Beth has shown me how to find books to read. I grabbed about twenty of them while she helped, it was that easy, then I started doing the equivalent of running circles trying to figure out which to start with. So she suggested what she was reading, H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

It’s not that indie books aren’t good enough, but that I’m searching for something very specific in my romance area. Sci-fi on the other hand… Well, once I started looking at the classics I forgot all about sci-fi.

I feel a little better after finishing The War of the Worlds, but apparently not a hundred percent better. I’ve been picking away at the chapter all morning. Starting and stopping on and off. It’s a little frustrating, but at least it’s moving instead of just staying there, mocking me.

Beth refers to it as refueling, although she refuels by playing a simulation game while reading a book and watching television. I think she’s crazy, but at least she has something that works for her.

Then again, she’s also the one who babbles about book family trees, where every book can sort of be traced back to a ‘parent’ book that it’s very similar, if not outright based on (like 50 Shades and Twilight).

So I’ll keep reading as many books as I can while picking away at the chapter.

I haven’t had a chance to speak with my cover artist yet. She’s very busy, but when I see her, I’ll ask to proceed on the covers. Once the covers are done, I’ll begin the final stages of the pre-order for Contract Taken and move on from there.

I’m still not in a rush, I’d very much like to complete the whole trilogy before doing the first pre-order so that there’s no cliff or hang off point. Everything will link into one another and I won’t have to worry about the world again unless I decide to write another book for it.

Mm, books.

What are your favourite classic works?

Editor’s Block

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I’m not editing or writing. It’s taking a really long time to get anything out or to get motivated for writing. Today I visited Beth and she showed me how to Google myself.

I know, I know, how did I not know how to Google myself? Well, the how is pretty obvious, but it never occurred to me to do that before.

Beth found one of her books on Ebay, then all kinds of links that she didn’t know about. Including a tweet she hadn’t realized had been posted at her. Then she handed me her laptop and told me to do the same for myself.

Fun… I exist online, whoo! Except the first thing that popped up was my blog, which I haven’t updated in forever. That got me a cuff upside the head.

To which I cuffed Beth back because she hasn’t updated in longer.

The third link down was my Goodreads page, which has only attached to 36 books I’ve read because I couldn’t recall the others. I stopped, bit my bottom lip and basically moaned.

When was the last time I read a book?

When was the last time I read a good book?

I need to get a good book. I’d like some Romance with a twist of fantasy. None of that bear or wolf pack stuff either. Some good, honest fantasy without vampires (any variation of that spelling) but plenty of smut.

Or I could pick up the novel of a big time traditional author. Maybe reading a book or two will get me back on the editing and rewriting the last book. Something I desperately need to do.

Contract Taken and Contract Broken are almost completed for editing. I’m trying to go through the first edit for Contract Renewed but it takes a lot of re-writing because I skipped out on an important thing so I have to flush it all out and fix it all. Which is fine, the re-writes will make it so much more … interesting.

If only I could get motivated. I don’t know, maybe I’m kidding myself with the editing them all as one and I should put up the first for pre-order and keep working on the last one. Should I do that?

Beth keeps telling me to shut up and do that. Dorian just looks at me the way he does and then the writing gets put off for a while longer.

Suppose if I’m going to do the pre-order and all, I’ll have to contact my cover artist and ask her very nicely to get the covers done. Then however long it takes her to complete the covers is however long it takes and that’s just more time for me to beat my head on a wall about this re-write.