A Week Of Ups And Downs

Posted under A Writer's Life, Spindle, Wolfskin on July 12th, 2015 by

WARNING!! THIS POST CONTAINS MULTIPLE GRATUITOUS LINKS.

Last week was a bit of a wild week. Wolfskin was on blog tour, I started a new WIP (Blackfoot), and Spindle started a month-long stint in Netgalley (not, it has to be said, with particularly glowing reviews). Then, toward the end of the week, Angst! and Drama! But more about that later.

Wolfskin got some really lovely reviews from C.J. Anaya, Jax of Bea’s Book Nook, Sage of Coffee & All Things Random, Maghon of Happy Tails & Tales, Mariela of Just Us Books, and Ashley of Book Nerd’s Paradise. I was given more than a few delightful comments upon the beautiful cover (thanks Joleene!) and overall Wolfskin‘s reception was very positive.WOLFSKIN - 2000

Meanwhile, over on Goodreads and Netgalley, I was discovering just how tough of a crowd Netgalley reviewers are. From them, I learned that a reviewer can love a book and its characters, and want to read the others in the series, and still rate the book at three stars. Whew! That’s when I knew I was in for it 😀 From them I also received my first one-star review! I’m not quite sure whether to be happy I’ve got it now and don’t need to be always dreading it, or whether to be shattered that it’s on my newest book, Spindle. Regardless, the not-so-wonderful reviews have somehow managed to rid me of (most of) my fear of the review process. Some people are just not going to like my book. Some people will rate low. It’s something I don’t need to be afraid of. And the reviews have my no means been all bad: the three-star reviews have been thoughtful and well-written, and there were four stars in there as well.

Back at Wolfskin‘s blog tour, I was being interviewed on not one, not two, but four blogs! Basically, if there is anything you want to know about me and my books (from favourite books to thoughts on fairytales to preference for chocolate or icecream) you can find it out on any of these lovely websites: A.F.E. Smith’s Reflections of Reality, Sandra Fairbrother’s Blog, Kimber Leigh Writes, and Jess Watkins’ A Book Addict’s Bookshelves.

I was also fortunate enough to have a guest post on Mythical Books (From Fantasy to Fairytales) and another on Bookwyrming Thoughts (Villains I’d like to know more about).

Over on Netgalley, Spindle was still jostling for position with Terry Pratchett’s World of Poo on page 11 of Most Requested in Science Fiction/Fantasy.

And then #Plot Twist I got An Email.

It said something like: “Hi. I thought you might like to know that someone is suggesting that you buy reviews” and included a link to an author’s Goodreads blog.

Well. Naturally, I followed the link. And found that the author of the blog had posted a letter they received after doing what I had done earlier- approaching some of Amazon’s Top 100 Reviewers for reviews. This letter purported to be from one of the same reviewers I had approached, and in the plainest of terms, it told the author that he would be glad to review his/her work- for a price. Namely 1 review for $XX, 2 for $XXX, etc. All apparently for his charity of choice.

Cue me feeling physically sick to my stomach. You see, the email I received from the same reviewer had said that he would be glad to review me. It was only after that, that he said he had a charity he would love donations for, and would I mind checking it out. He stated in no uncertain terms that it would not affect his review. I checked out the charity, found it to be for a good cause (library for kids) and trusting that Amazon wouldn’t allow dodgy business under their aegis, I donated (as I do to many other causes).

It was VERY different from the email this other author had received. And that’s when things became rather nasty. This other author then listed ALL THE AUTHORS who had been reviewed by the Top 100 reviewer (myself included) with the very broad suggestion that we had all paid for our reviews, and that the Top 100 reviewer had a reason to make sure we all succeeded.

Cue me throwing up in the bathroom.

One author, playing judge, jury, and executioner with my writing career. Thanks for that, mate. I appreciate it.

I don’t know whether this reviewer is taking money for reviews. I know I didn’t pay for any of my reviews. I left a message on the blog post, but by morning the whole thing had vanished from Goodreads. I still don’t know whether this reviewer was running a scam (it looks AWFULLY like it) but I do know that I was left feeling as though I’d been made a fool of. More, that I’d been tarred with a brush that I didn’t deserve, and that could kill my career before it even started.

I can’t even get the reviews removed, which means I’ll always be connected to it. Please, please guys- be careful what you say about your fellow authors. You don’t know that it’s true, and you don’t know the damage you can do.

It makes me appreciate all the wonderful authors out there that support and help one another (and me!) Toward the end of the week I had the lovely surprise of finding that the talented and much-celebrated A.F.E. Smith had been so kind as to mention my murder-mystery fairytale Masque in her list of Top 5 books containing Fantasy & Murder. A.F.E. has been on her own blog tour with her newly-released Fantasy Novel Darkhaven, and has been busily promoting other SFF authors in her blog tour like the delightful lady she is. Cheers, A.F.E!

A big thanks to all the others out there who have encouraged and shared and cheered, too. Thanks especially to: Kate Stradling, Ingrid Seymour, CJ Anaya, J. Ellen Ross, J.J. Sherwood, and Karataratacus. You guys have been fun and encouraging and so generous with your shares! I appreciate you all!

And thanks to everyone who shared this week of ups and downs with me (especially Sis and the Hubby, who put up with all the whining and pouting and upchuck). It’s been a somehow wonderful week. Also thanks for putting up with a 1000 word blog post 😀

Obsessive-Compulsive, Thin-Skinned and Delusional (Aka, Writer)

Posted under A Writer's Life, Book Blog Tour on July 3rd, 2015 by

It’s been a whirlwind week. One one hand, I’ve been madly prepping for Wolfskin‘s book blog tour next week (sending off completed interviews and guest posts, making sure my Upcoming Tours/Event Page is updated sufficiently). On the other, I’ve been madly sending out review copies of Spindle and obsessively clicking on the refresh button at Netgalley to see where it sits in the ‘most requested’ Sci-Fi/Fantasy group. (It’s slowly climbing from page to page, FYI. This does nothing to help my compulsion to keep checking). Also Netgalley has little ‘thumbs up’ and little ‘thumbs down’ icons for the cover. At last peek there were 26 ‘thumbs up’, and 3 ‘thumbs down’. You know what I thought?

WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE WHY WOULD YOU THUMBS DOWN MY BOOK COVER IT IS A WORK OF ART AND COMPLETELY GLORIOUS AND YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO TASTE.

C'mmon, it's GORGEOUS!

C’mmon, it’s GORGEOUS!

Really, it just showcased what my first 3-star review showcased. I’m thin-skinned. Which is bad, because who can make it as an author with a skin that thin? So I’m trying to be more TUFF. Well, I’ve got to be. I’ve heard that the Netgalley people pull no punches. And that’s okay, because the reviews aren’t for me. I may not even read them. (I’m lying, I’ll definitely read them all, probably weeping).

I’ve also been involved in A.F.E. Smith’s Darkhaven Release Day party, which is still going on here, (with lots of giveaways and interviews and fun stuff!). And tonight at 11pm (if you’re in Australia)/1pm(British Summer Time)/8amish(American time) I’ll be one of the authors being interviewed! So that’s been fun and frantic and a little bit terrifying.

And while all this has been happening, my Meniere’s Disease has been acting up, which means I’ve been woefully chuck-uppy and have lost about 25% of my hearing for the week. Most of my conversation, in fact, has consisted of ‘What?’ and ‘Huh?’ Hopefully my hearing will go back to normal when I get better. In the meantime, I’ve been learning a lot about lip-reading (just call me Sue Thomas, FBEye).

Oh, and my power just fizzled.

So all in all, things are starting to get interesting. If I manage not to end up as a quivering heap on my livingroom floor, I think I’ll be doing quite well, thank you.

Catch up with me tonight/tomorrow/midday on Facebook, and don’t forget to check out Wolfskin’s Tour Schedule (posted below for your convenience). I’ll see ya on the road!

Wolfskin Tour Dates/Locations (Will be updated with post links as they come):

July 6th

–A British Bookworm’s Blog>> Excerpt

-Books and Ashes>> Review

–Girls With Books>> Excerpt

–Author & Book Spotlights>> Review

July 7th

–Book Nerd’s Paradise>> Review

–A Book Addict’s Bookshelves>> Interview

–Happy Tails and Tales>> Review

July 8th

–Coffee & All Things Random>> Review

–CBY Book Club>> Excerpt

–Bea’s Book Nook>> Review

July 9th

–Reflections Of Reality, A.F.E. Smith>> Interview

–Bookwyrming Thoughts>> Guest Post

–Kimber Leigh Writes>> Interview

–Archaeolibrarian – I Dig Good Books>> Review

–Sandra Fairbrother’s Blog>> Interview

July 10th

-Mandy’s Books & Beauty>> Review

–Blog for readers, writers and bloggers by Daniela Ark>> Excerpt

–Just Us Book Blog>> Review

–Mythical Books>> Guest Post

Writerly Things

Posted under Writerly Things on June 8th, 2015 by

I like to Google-Search stuff sometimes. Sometimes it’s writerly stuff that I need to know (for instance, when the screwdriver was first invented/mentioned) and sometimes it just weird stuff that occurs to me as I’m taking a break from writing (or procrastinating, as it’s otherwise known).

This afternoon I Google-Searched for images of writers. It came up with some interesting pictures. According to Google, writers are people who drink, smoke, love cats, tea and/or coffee, and live in cluttered, paper-strewn offices and studio apartments.

And my personal favourite?

Writer the last

<– This guy. He’s wondering what the heck he did to bring himself to this point in his life.

By and large, then, there seems to be a general idea of what a writer is/likes/does. Which is interesting, because it prompted me to think about the writers I know (other than myself, of course).

99% of the writers I know love and/or have cats. Myself, I feel about cats much the same way that I feel about spiders. Most of ’em are too big to squish without feeling sick and the ones that aren’t make you feel creepy-crawly up the back for ages after you do squish ’em. If you want to know more about my brief experiment with having a cat in my house, I refer you to The Saga Of Cat. TL;DR? It didn’t work out so well. I’m definitely a dog person.

Smoking and drinking? Don’t know many writers who smoke: we seem to (mostly) know better nowadays. Drinking appears to be more common, though from what I can tell it’s more of a celebratory/after work type thing. The days of artistically drunk writers who scrawl away under the influence seem to be largely gone. Though if you replace ‘whiskey’ with ‘bacon’, then I, too, frequently write while under the influence. Each to his own, eh?

Tea and coffee now, that’s where I become properly writerly. I love my cuppa tea. Several a day, in fact. Writers are divided between tea and coffee, but it’s always either one or the other. Can’t get through the day without at least one cup. Getting up when you’re stuck at a difficult part in the paragraph, savouring a moment of peace in the storm of words with your fingers wrapped around a warm cup and the scent of tea lingering in the steam. Pepping yourself up with the caffeine. We’ve all been there.

Now when it comes right down to littered houses, I’m slightly red-faced. My house isn’t in the best state at the moment. That, however, is not a constant state: if I have too much clutter around me, I can’t concentrate, and I can’t write. There are sometimes that I literally have to clean before I can settle to write. Procrastination? Writer’s Block? Maybe. But I prefer a clean house. The other writers I know waver between highs of spotlessly clean desk/house/nook/other, and troughs of the time in between, when everything slides slowly until it’s a huge mess again.

So what are your writerly things? What are some of the stereotypes you’ve seen? Are they some of the ones I’ve mentioned, or do you have your own weird writerly things that no one else seems to have?

Experiments (Of The Kind That Don’t Go Boom)

Posted under Advertising, Book Blog Tour, Self-Publishing, Stuff you learn on May 14th, 2015 by

I’ve been doing a few experiments this week (and last). Unfortunately none of them involved high explosives, but ya can’t have everything, right?

Mostly my experiments have been with ads: Facebook ads, Twitter ads, Goodreads ads, etc. I wanted to see which (if any) provided bang for buck, and which (if any) would provide hard sales. I began with Goodreads ads, which I’ve had some success with in the past. I ran an ad and a giveaway for my new book Wolfskin. Those are still running, but my conclusions from this and past campaigns is that Goodreads, although providing a few scattered sales, is mostly good for name awareness. It gets my books out there for the notice of readers. And that’s not accounting for the slow burn of sales: each of my books on Goodreads is on a couple hundred To-Be-Read shelves. I’m hoping that will mean sales in the future.

Facebook ads. Well, I tried. I got no further than using my book cover as an image. Initially, the ad was approved. Five seconds and two click-throughs later, it was disapproved. Why? Apparently it had ‘more than 25% text’. It’s a book cover. It has a title and an author name. What you gonna do? Until FB ads allow book covers, they’re going to be pretty useless to me. I canceled the ad and won’t be bothering again.

Twitter ads. Huh. What can I say? Oh, I know: don’t bother. Not unless you love being retweeted and faved by fake accounts. I don’t know whether it’s a dodge by Twitter themselves, to earn easy money, or whether it’s just a whole bunch of fake accounts that love retweeting and faving random stuff, but it was next to useless. I got a heck of a lot of click-throughs, but since all the retweets and faves were from fake accounts, I’m not holding out much hope that the hundreds of clicks are from real people either. I guess the next couple days of sales will tell. At this stage, I don’t think I’ll be bothering with another Twitter ad, though. It’s too much to pay for fake interest.

I have been doing other things these last couple weeks, though, so All Is Not Lost. I’m very close to being able to start final edits on Spindle, I’ve written a guest blog post over at Tiger Hebert’s Blog (entitled The Problem With Self-Publishing– check it out!), and I’m having lots of fun on Twitter apart from bogus ads and fake followers. Oh, and I just sent off the review copies for my Xpresso Book Blog Tour of Wolfskin! It’s a week long from July 6-10, and will have 2 Guest Posts, 2 Author Interviews, and roughly 10 book reviews, so YAY! Also keep an eye out, because There Will Be Excerpts!

Maybe next week I can start with the kind of experiments that do go BOOM.

Mistakes I’ve Made This Week

Posted under A Writer's Life, Adventures In Real Life, Dayjob on May 8th, 2015 by
  • Calling a woman ‘sir’ at the dayjob. In my defense, she was wearing bloke’s jeans, huge sneakers, a bloke’s flanny, and had short back-and-sides. And I only saw her from behind, in my peripheral. Still . . .

  • Waiting so long to read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I was gonna try and finish up the book I was reading before I began, but I’d heard such good things about it that in the end, I couldn’t help myself. Now I’m sorry I didn’t start on it first. It’s simply wonderful so far.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. NOT my cover, unfortunately. It's lovely.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. NOT my cover, unfortunately. It’s lovely.

  • Eating maybe just a teensy little bit too much chocolate. Okay, I overloaded on sugar. But it was in a good cause, because the hubby was forcing me to watch Vampire Diaries. Which brings me to . . .

  • Being inveigled into watching The Vampire Diaries. Aarrrgh! My eyes! The soap! Seriously, either Elena needs to stake both of the boys to stop having to INTERMINABLY CHOOSE BETWEEN THEM, or the boys need to cut Elena in half so they can each have a piece. I mean, it’ll be bloody, but they’re vampires. They love blood. WIN/WIN.

  • Not drinking enough tea. I need to drink more. Tea is the great relaxer; comfort and contentment all in one lovely warm cup.

  • Messing about on the internet instead of writing. Oh boy, did I do this! Someone may need to stage an intervention.

Must  . . .

write . . .

must . . .

finish . . .

book!

  • Twisted my ankle while carrying the washing outside and down the stair. Yes. Stair, singular. Just one step. And I managed to twist my ankle on it. Huzzah! I’m half-way to Mary-Sue YA heroine status already!

How ’bout you guys?

Breaking The Rules

Posted under A Writer's Life, Butt in Chair, Distractions, editing, Growing as a writer, Methods of writing, Stuff you learn on May 2nd, 2015 by

I’d like to start out this blog post by saying that I break the rules. A lot. (Not laws and work rules and such- I’m almost offensively straight-laced when it comes to following those. I am not a rebel.)

Nope, I’m talking about writing rules. The ones that say things like ‘Cut ALL adverbs and adjectives’ and ‘Never start a sentence with a preposition’ and ‘Never use any dialogue tags’. Stuff like ‘Always sit down and outline your book before you write the first word’ and ‘Never use semicolons’. No run-on sentences! Not to mention all the various grammar rules and regulations. Let’s face it, when it comes to writing, there are a lot of rules.

For the record, I use quite a reasonable amount of adverbs and adjectives, and although I don’t tag every bit of dialogue I write, I do tag some. There are some rules of grammar that I break for effect or in line with a particular character’s voice. I quite often, for stylistic purposes, start a sentence with a preposition. I may, in fact, have broken most of the rules of writing. There’s a time and a place for everything.

HOWEVER.

There is a huge, monumental, gaping great difference between breaking the rules for stylistic/characteristic/etc purposes, and breaking them because you don’t know what the heck you’re doing. A huge amount of my favourite authors break the rules constantly, in one way or another (reading Terry Pratchett last night just reinforced this) and I don’t think there are many people who would be daft enough to tell Terry Pratchett, Patricia Wrede, Steven Brust, etc, to pull their socks up and get their grammar right. This is because they know the rules. They simply choose to break them every now and then. But they do know them.

I’ve read a heck of a lot of bad books. Books with bad spelling, the wrong homonyms, atrocious grammar: errors that stick with you whether or not the actual stuff of the book is good. I’ve also heard a lot of authors, when their errors are pointed out, say something along the lines of: “Oh, I didn’t realise that. But it’s okay, insert famous author here does it all the time.”

It’s not okay. Breaking the rules is okay, but there needs to be a reason. And you need to know that reason. You need to know the rules before you break them. It makes all the difference between good and bad writing. You might get it right by accident, breaking the rules, but you’re far more likely to get it horribly wrong and find your book being mocked for the rest of its (probably short) life.

So pull your socks up. Learn the rules.

Then go ahead and feel free to break ’em.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Posted under A Time-Traveller's Best Friend, A Writer's Life, accomplishments, Current WIP, Dayjob, Distractions, editing, Publishing, Self-Publishing, Short Stories, so much work, writing on April 11th, 2015 by

It’s been a busy week. And now that I’ve written the word ‘busy’ five times, it’s looking really weird to me. Maybe I need a nap.

But I digress.

It’s been a busy week. My proofs for Wolfskin came in (finally!) but since they’re late arriving I have only a week and a half to check and correct. So there’s that. Then there’s the last 5000-odd words of Spindle that need to be done by next week if I want to keep on target with that particular deadline. And then there’s Memento Mori (the second volume in the Time-Traveller’s Best Friend series). I’ve only just begun it, and though I know roughly what the story arc for the collection will be, and have a few titles and ideas for a few of the stories, I still need to write the thing. By August at the latest.

With all these deadlines, you’d think I’d be madly at work on one or all of them. No such thing. I also got a new idea for a Short Thing for Weekly Fiction’s Open Call For Submissions. Naturally, I started work on that, with a little bit of editing and proof-reading around the edges. Fortunately, Wolfskin is proving much less complicated than Masque was. I seem to have caught most of the errors and inconsistencies and missed words before this point (does that mean I’ve advanced a level? New Power! Error-Free Gained!) and it’s really mostly a matter of a tiny change here and there.

Added to all the above is a busier-than-usual week at work, coupled with an annoying surge of my favourite companion, Meniere’s Disease.

I may just quietly go mad for a while. Don’t mind me. It’s a self-chosen madness after all.

What about you guys? Who else has a murder of deadlines? (Well, what is the group word for many deadlines, anyway?) And are you actually working on them?

All The Lovely Stuff

Posted under A Writer's Life, accomplishments, Distractions, Self-Publishing on March 20th, 2015 by

When I first decided that I was going to go with self-publishing rather than traditional publishing, there was no doubt in my mind that it was going to be a long, hard slog. I knew that I’d have to work very hard for potentially very little reward, and that success – if it came – would most likely come slowly.

I was prepared for the exasperatingly finnicky adjustments and bug fixes of preparing different formats for different platforms. I was prepared for the necessity of promoting myself (not an easy thing for an introvert). I was even prepared for the arduous gauntlet of GST, ABNs, EINs, ITINs, and every other taxation-related acronym. I knew I’d have to do a fair bit of leg work to get my books into the local bookstores, and that this would involve a lot of stammering, ums, and daft half-sentences that would lead the most patient store owner to wonder how an idiot ever managed to publish a book.

I knew, in fact, that there was a very good possibility that I would publish to very little reception, and that I might never write to an audience of more than three or four people (not counting mum and sis). I figured I could live with that, because let’s face it, I write because I love writing. Getting paid for it would be a plus, but it’s not the reason I write. Becoming famous would be awesome, but it’s not the reason I write.

I was pretty well prepared for most of what I’ve had to do. A few things have taken me by surprise: been harder or easier to do than I expected, etc. But I find that I neglected to think of one thing.

It didn’t actually occur to me that someone, having loved what I wrote, would write, email, tweet, or contact me in some way, to tell me how much they’d loved it. It seems a bit stupid of me not to have thought of it. But the first email I received, telling me that the writer loved Masque and that they were waiting eagerly for my next book, was a complete surprise. The second left me stunned and a little dizzy, and inclined to stare into the middle distance with a fatuous beam on my face. Then there were the lovely tweets, comments, and emails that followed.

So to everyone who has contacted me in some way to tell me how much they enjoyed my book/story/excerpt, etc: Thank you! You’re part of The Lovely Stuff about being an author. When you tell me that Thing you particularly enjoyed about my book, it delights me to know that someone noticed that Thing. Odds are, I worked very hard to make it right.

It can sometimes feel like I’m shouting into an immense void, and the occasional human touch from across the internet is very much appreciated. Thank you for reaching out and becoming a part of my life.

Jim Carrey in The Mask, sourced from http://giphy.com/search/thank-you/2

Jim Carrey in The Mask, sourced from http://giphy.com/search/thank-you/2

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