Phew

Squeaked by, but Icarus Helix #6, "Frigid" is submitted for my January writing project!

Yaaaaaaaaaay!

I know "Frigid" has been a long time in coming, glad to finally finish it up and get it out there. A lot of people liked "Thief", and it has a lot of the same characters in it (Jayden, Mason, Dennis Harper). It adds more to the story, and reaaaaaaally makes you wonder about the "company" ;)

So, so far this year I'm 1 for 1 in the "publish 1 project a month" category of my writing goals! Yay! I am, however, quite behind in the word count... yikes...

Anyway, FRIGID! Check it out soon, please :)

The Bedside Table

When I was a kid, I fell asleep on a dime. The instant the lights were out - so was I. As I got older, I slept less and less. It wasn't until I was in college and I forgot to sleep for three days (and started hallucinating) that I realized I might have become an insomniac somewhere along the way.

I don't suffer from rampant insomnia, just very, very minor. I have a friend who would stay up for a week or more at a time and then crash - and there was nothing he could do about it.

Stress obviously inflames my insomnia. But if I'm not quite tired when I lay down, I have the worst habit.

With my eyes closed, my body relaxed, waiting to drift into sleep under the warm covers, I start to create.

The perfect scene.

The perfect line.

The next bit of the story I'd been stalled on while sitting at my computer all day.

And who wants to get up then? When you're already snuggled into bed and waiting for sleep? And what are the chances you will exactly remember that phrase or scene or word, just as you had it, in the moments before slumber? I'll give you a hint. It starts with "Z" and ends with "ero". For me, anyway. I am most perfectly, unquestionably creative when the last thing I want to do is get up and write it down.

So on my bedside table, I left an empty notebook and a pen. And my booklight...

Just in case.

Last night Andy fell asleep within milliseconds of laying down. And SNORED (sorry, hon, but it's true!) I couldn't fall asleep. But what I could do, was imagine.

Imagine I did!

I couldn't take it anymore, I wasn't sleeping. But then it hit me - I was prepared. I snapped on my bedside light, opened up the notebook and exploded all my thoughts onto the paper, effectively writing the first chapter of a novel I've been hemming and hawing over for the past... three? years.

Turn your weaknesses into strengths, that's what I say :)

That New Year's Thing

Well, I had a blast for New Year's Eve! We had literally all of our family in the surrounding area crammed into our tiny house (including us - 10 people and a dog!) Everybody brought way more food than they should have, so it went over quite well :) We all played Wits and Wagers as well as Mad Gab, before watching the ball drop.

Being decidedly of German descent, we did our age old tradition of pork and sauerkraut for New Year's dinner. The more sauerkraut you can cram down your gullet, the more GOOD luck you will supposedly have for the coming new year. (They had to make up SOME good excuse to eat rotted cabbage!)

For the record, I ate more sauerkraut this year than any other year previously. Despite the tears in my eyes. (And that's after mom pre-rinsed it and added brown sugar to take the edge off... and after mushing it in with my stuffing and mashed potatoes...) That means lots of good luck for me!

I have some pretty lofty goals this year - goals that are concrete and will probably take me the entire year to complete. Here are some, in no particular order:

1. Pen 500,000 publishable words. (Including but not limited to 6 IH episodes, 3 novels, 3 short stories.) This should be achievable if I write 5days/week, 2k/day!

2. Lose at least 40lbs. (The holidays were not kind to me :P... or rather, I was too kind to myself...)

3. At least, triple the royalties earned last year. (Which is to say, I still won't be making mortgage payments or swimming in my own pool of gold coins like Konrath ;D)

4. Try to go through every box I have in the house, and really throw away/condense it down.

5. Publish at least 1 new piece per month. Period - no excuses! (Compendiums and omnibuses excluded!)

So, what do you think of my short list? :)

See You Next Year!

I know, real original title there...

Things have been insanely busy this holiday season for me. From Thanksgiving to Christmas... (beau's b-day is 2 days after X-mas), trying to spend time with TWO families, out of town relatives coming and going...

I know, excuses, right?

Well we're culminating the whole thing this year with a huge celebration at, of all places, our tiny abode, haha. Both families will be mushed into our main room for a night of gaming and probably name-calling :P Should be a good time! This is the final good-bye to the rocky ride of 2011, and a big smile and open arms for the possibilities of 2012...

(And BOY, do I have plans for 2012!!)

The Opportunity of KDPS...

or, Kindle Direct Publishing Select.

Basically, this is a system that allows Amazon to run the world's largest digital library. In exchange, author's get a tantalizing look at a very large pool of money, to be split among those that are borrowed the most.

Amazon gives this (distillation, me) example to help explain:

If 100,000 books are qualified as lent books in a month.
If your book is downloaded 1,500 times.
When the pool equals $500,000 for the month.

Then: 1,500 of my downloads from 100,000 total downloads
= 1500/100000
= 1.5% (of total downloads)

And $500,000 in the pool
Then: 1.5% of $500,000
= $7,500 (earned in that month from the lending downloads)


More realistically, let's assume 100,000 downloads (which seems like an awful too few), and, seeing as how I believe every book in the library has been checked out at least ONCE (I know I sure tried), what happens if, all else true, your book merits only one download?

Then: 1 of my downloads from 100,000 total downloads
= 1/100000
= .001% (of total downloads)

And $500,000 in the pool
Then: .001% of $500,000
= $5 (earned in that month from the lending downloads)

Or, if 200,000 books qualified for download (more realistic and thus cutting your earnings in half), you would earn $2.50 in royalties from KDPS, for that month, for your single download.

As with the store, there is no guarantee of getting noticed. Nothing says you will have a better chance than the other hundreds and thousands of books available. Big name books from big name publishers will probably take the lion's share of the pool.

Regardless...

My first novel, "Shackled", of which I am quite proud, has garnered me a number of excellent reviews. What it has NOT garnered, is attention and sales. Much like sticking a book on the shelves of your local library and hoping one day someone tries to check it out, I will be putting "Shackled" into KDPS. Except, unlike that scenario, I have a chance for a least a little money. (I am not going to pretend I will earn $7,500 from this opportunity, but even $2.50 is more than $0.00... and in fact more than I would earn in normal royalties, anyway.)

It was easy to unpublish from Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords. Both were done within the hour. However, I don't know how Smashwords' extended network will work - but I was not particularly included as I don't have ISBNs yet. (It may only be a problem with Kobo.)

An added bonus of KDPS is that you are enabled to choose 5 days during your 90-day mandatory exclusivity contract (you didn't think they let just ANYONE get their hands into that money pot, did you?), as I said, 5 days in which your work is completely free on Amazon. They can be random days, or all at once. You cannot roll them over into a second 90-day contract. When they are free in the store, they are not available for download. You may choose the days and that will be adhered to, sans (minus) downtime for Amazon's own latency issues (their words). It could be quite a useful promotional tool. It is also the first time indie authors have the ability to make their work free directly on Amazon, instead of the roundabout-competitor's-have-underpriced-you-carousel.

So fly, little novel. Find your audience in the land of (for them) free monthly downloads :)

HUGE NEWS!!!!

Today marks the release of "Emergence
", omnibus #1 of the Icarus Helix series.

This is GIMUNGOUS news!!! "Emergence" is priced at $5.99 - almost a 40% discount from buying the episodes individually. This is great for everyone involved! :D

For those that would love to be fantabulous people and help spread the word - tagging, posting, tweeting, etc, it would be more than appreciated... it would be GROOVIFURCATED! (And also, thank you, thank you, thank you!)

Because I'm Good At It.

Being the awesome procrastinator I am, imagine my surprise that I've almost exhausted my barrel of tricks when it comes to not writing. I am seriously running out of "other" things to do...

But anyway, I thought it might be nice to check in with the ol' chart, since I haven't updated it recently. I'm not going to do the whole sales break-down, as I'm sure you'll see why when you see the chart. Suffice it to say - once I put IH on hiatus, my sales dropped off considerably.

Lucky for me (and I didn't realize this until I just charted them a few minutes ago) they are in fact, slowly climbing upwards again. Releasing new content can't have hurt me (provided it wasn't awful) and November actually saw my first sale of the THE THUNDERSTORM (Krakakow!) releases :)

And while I'm thinking of it, I got my first review of Disappear. Bakari, I, like many others, gaze into the stars and wonder where you vanished to after your blog disappeared. But please accept my most humble thanks for both purchasing and enjoying my work :)

So, here is the chart, I've almost been at this game a full year! Can you imagine? :) As for the color scheme, despite the gory works I've recently released, deep down I'm a girl and harbor a secret love of rainbows. Get over it ;)