Whetting the Appetite is out! I'm deliriously excited -- this anthology has some really fantastic little stories in it!
Technically, it was released by the publisher on March 22 or 23, but it was only available at the publisher's site for the first week. Lynn and I did a Facebook release party on the 23rd -- which is why I posted all the postcards then. But now it's been released to distributors, yay! So let's post All The Links!
If you pick it up, please, please, please consider posting a rating or a review at Amazon or Goodreads or wherever you bought it; nothing, but nothing helps book sales as much as reviews. And Lynn and I would really love to sell enough copies of this to make it into a print edition!
...from the edge of my sanity, that is. Here's what happened:
Lynn and I planned a Facebook "release party" for Whetting the Appetite -- an online chat, basically. I decided it would be fun to make up a promotional postcard-style graphic for each story in the anthology, and post them randomly throughout the day.
It took me over nine hours to make all the postcards (the anthology has 46 stories -- even compressing the three-parter into one postcard still left me with 44 to make!)... and at the end, I was feeling pretty proud of them, actually.
And then, the morning of the release party... my internet died.
Well, of course it did.
So I'm going to post them here -- all 46 of them. (I'll put them behind a jump break, to save your sanity, if you're on an RSS feed -- and if you're reading this from one of the repost sites that doesn't preserve images, please come check out the original post at
http://everyworldneedslove.blogspot.com/2014/03/postcards-from-edge.html )
I'm trying, for this release, to get some promotion out, because I'm really proud of this book, and I'd like to see it do well. Primarily, since I'm on a budget and can't afford to pay for ads, I'm going on bit of a blog tour.
If I've got my notes right, there's a preliminary (and slightly steamy!) post over at A. Catherine Noon's blog today, comparing writing and editing to a sub/Dom relationship!
The rest come as a blitz during the week of release:
Leading up to the 13th (release day!) I'll be here, of course, with some talk about worldbuilding and the cultures to be found in Foxfur.
On the 14th, I'll be featured at V. L. Locey's blog (where I'll talk a little about character development), and hosting Torquere's Livejournal community, where I've got several topics planned, including at least one spicy excerpt.
The 15th sees me over at Lynn's, explaining the value of a great beta reader.
On the 16th, I'll be at Torquere's blog, once again with a variety of topics in mind.
I'm taking the 17th off, but on the 18th, I'll be visiting Mychael Black, where I'll talk about why Foxfur's first draft was entirely unpublishable, and what survived the rewrite process!
And on the 19th, hop over to BA Tortuga's blog for a little chat about kink...
As you can see, it's going to be lots of fun, and there will be plenty of things for you to check out, as I'm fairly certain that none of those posts repeats any others!
But all those blog posts had to be written in advance (or at least the ideas for them sketched out) -- and some pictures dredged up, and my fellow authors begged for the slots, and...
I think I've written so much about Foxfur in the last week or so, in preparation for this publicity blitz, that I'm completely out of topics! Goodness only knows what I'll find to talk about next week. Maybe I'll do another grammar lesson. ;-)
September is Torquere Press' anniversary month, and this year, in honor of their tenth anniversary, instead of doing contests or drawings to celebrate, they've taken a simpler -- and more awesome -- approach.
They're giving it away.
Every day in September, for one hour each day, they will be making one of their most popular books completely free. The complete listing of books, and the date/time each will be available, is at: http://glbtromance.blogspot.com/2013/08/10-years-wow.html
Some notes:
Let me be clear, here -- these are not short stories, or the first few chapters of books. These are full-length novels.
Nothing I've written is in the list, alas, primarily because I don't have any full-length novels out (yet). But hey, when you're picking up the free book, there's no reason you can't also pick up something of mine!
You do have to get them directly from Torquere's website; it simply isn't possible to coordinate this kind of thing with all the distributors. But there are benefits to having an account with them anyway: Books you buy directly from Torquere come with all the available file formats, so you don't have to worry about losing them if you decide to switch from a Nook to a Kindle or whatever. Torquere is almost always running a sale of some sort for 15-20% off. And when you buy directly from Torquere, the authors get a bigger chunk of the royalties, which doesn't do much for you directly but certainly helps keep your favorite authors fed and able to keep writing!
The giveaway hour each day rotates, so whatever corner of the globe you're on, you're sure to be able to snag at least a couple of books while you're awake! (Of course, that means that whatever corner of the globe you're on, at least a couple will come up while you're asleep, too, so check the listing and see if you need to set any alarms!)
Note: All the listed times are CST.If you don't live in the CST timezone, adjust accordingly. Don't blame me if you set your clock wrong!
If you follow them on Twitter (https://twitter.com/torquere) or on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/TorquerePressInc) they will be posting reminders and announcements shortly before each book is released, so you may want to follow/like them if you think that would be helpful.
Thirty days of free books; how awesome is that? I know my TBR list is about to get a lot longer...
I keep being surprised by Wednesdays. You'd think I would get used to them rolling around once a week, but the Day Job's schedule has been crazily erratic lately, which kind of throws me off, sometimes, when it comes to getting routine tasks completed. Like remembering when to take the trash bins to the curb, or when I'm supposed to do my walk-around checks on safety equipment at the Day Job... or when I'm supposed to post to my writing blog.
(I keep worrying that I'm going to lose track of the custody schedule and forget to pick up my kids, but that seems a little more solidly embedded. I guess even my scatterbrain has a priority system in place.)
But here we are: Wednesday again!
What shall I talk about...? Oh! News!
I almost forgot about this in the excitement of Human Aspect's release, but Foxfur was accepted by Torquere! It's currently (tentatively) scheduled for a mid-November release. I'm very excited -- this will be my first actual novel release! When we get a little closer, I'm sure I'll be offering up some more excerpts, and maybe even a contest!
I've also had some whispered words from little birds about my shorts that are out for consideration, "The Dancing Princess" and "Squrk Squee". In both cases, the news is promising but unsubstantiated and unofficial, so I'm not announcing anything yet -- but I'm still pretty pleased with what I've heard! Keep your fingers crossed for me!
So that's the current news.
If you happened to pick up Human Aspect (or any of my other books) and enjoyed it, please, please, please consider hopping over to Amazon.Com or Goodreads and taking thirty seconds to rate/review it, or even share a link on your favorite socialmediapage. Word-of-mouth does more to sell books than any other advertising and promotion method. I'm tempted to say more than all other methods, combined, even, though I don't have specific numbers to back that up. But I do know that even a mediocre review is better than none at all. Thanks!
Ah-ha, it finally happened! Check out my interview with Kristi, general manager of Torquere Press! (for you LJ folk, the link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmZO4KCWV6c)
(What an awesome freezeframe of my face YouTube picked for the thumbnail. Good thing I don't look dorky at all, there.)
Kristi and I talk about how I started out as a writer, and what I like to read, and we also discuss the weather, social media, coffee and tea, vacations and travel, shoes, movies and TV, and how I start my mornings.
And as a bonus, in the background behind me, you can see my kitchen and the one plant I've ever owned and not killed!
On the off chance you hadn't heard already, I made a book trailer for Brainsss. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out (sorry, LJ folks; the Blogger/LJ crosspost strips out everything but text. But you can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRdQSbMJi_E):
There were some interesting challenges I had to get through to make this trailer.
First and foremost was deciding to do it at all. I really don't like the sound of my own voice that much, and I knew making a trailer like this was going to involve recording myself and then listening to the playback a whole bunch of times. I even thought about trying to find someone else to do the story summaries.
The next (and ongoing) challenge was learning the software. My laptop came with iMovie installed, but this was the first time I'd ever fired it up. (Yeah, seriously.) Though to be honest, this was a pretty minor challenge. I'm not a programmer any more, but a) I am not afraid of screwing around with software to see what it will do, and b) Apple generally makes a pretty tight product. I had some minor issues with figuring out how to do a couple of things, and I was minimally annoyed by a couple of limitations (which is why most really dedicated video bloggers use paid software, like Final Cut Pro). The biggest software challenge I had was when I was exporting the finished movie -- the number of options were enormous, and it took me a while to find a reasonable balance between resolution quality and file size. (My options ranged from a 6G HD-quality movie down to a barely-readable iPhone version for only 150K. The one I settled on is around 20M.)
Then I had to find the pictures. I couldn't just put up the book cover and leave it there the whole time if I was going to be reading all those individual story teasers -- I knew the thing would clock in at over two and a half minutes, and so the viewer would need something to look at. Zombie pictures were the obvious choice, but... well. There's a ton of zombie pictures on the web, but zombie pictures that are in the public domain, or else CC licensed for commercial use? Not so many. But I lucked out and found several that looked great, and in a few cases, were even particularly suited the stories I paired them with.
I was particularly pleased with the images that went with "W.O.L." (which includes a scene with a character getting his first look at a zombie through a thick window), "Delicious Caleb" (just for that tongue sticking out, really -- the zombie seems to be saying, "Mm, delicious!"), and "Two Guys..." (the image is not only silly enough to match the story's irreverent tone, but the main character has this thing about showers, so it was particularly appropriate).
The final challenge was in the music. I was originally going to let it slide without any music at all -- once again, there's this problem of finding something licensed for commercial use, and I'm not an audiophile, so I didn't relish the prospect of spending potential hours listening to public domain tracks so I could find one that would suit.
But then Lynn (yes, the same Lynn who wrote "W.O.L.") invited me to her Christmas party, which featured live music performed by one of Lynn's favorite musicians, Jonah Knight. (Yes, I am in that "groupie" picture.) Jonah writes creepy/horror/sci-fi/fantasy music. And between the two sets, I was chatting with him, and I said, "So I'm editing this book of zombie romance stories, and would you be willing to let me use "The Dead Crawl From the Earth, Alive" as my background music on the trailer, if I credit you?" and somewhat to my surprise, he said yes. So there you have it.
Though I can't take credit for the bit at the end, where I finish talking and the lyrics you hear are, "It seems you can't control the undead." It worked out almost perfectly like that, and I was so happy about it that I futzed with the timing (by no more than about half a second) to make it work out more precisely.
In the end, aside from still not liking the sound of my recorded voice, I'm really happy with the way the video turned out. Almost as happy as I am with the book, which should be released on January 2. Mark your calendars and plan to set aside some of your Christmas money!
I mentioned this last week, but the Backlist Strikes Back event at EM Lynley's blog is nearly over, so this would be a perfect time for you to go take a look and browse at the entire collection of authors' favorite backlisted books -- I know I've found several to add to my reading list!
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I spent a big chunk of last night working on a graphic for promotional materials. I bought a LivingSocial voucher a couple of months ago for discounted stuff from Vistaprint, which is where I've had most of my promotional materials printed in the past.
Vistaprint lets you upload your own pictures to use, but they charge for each picture you use, so it makes sense to get all your disparate elements laid out separately, build it into a single image, and then upload that.
I've got business cards and I've done some note cards for individual books, but my current plan is to make some bookmarks. Alas, that's the one item Vistaprint doesn't actually offer; I'm having to order rack cards and plan my graphics to be doubled so I can cut them in half down the middle.
This is the current design (click to embiggen). I'm still trying to decide what changes I want to make -- bigger name? More color to the text? Different background image?
And what (if anything) do I put on the back? Not enough space for blurbs. A couple of good review quotes? More links? Author bio? A sexy B&W image?
What catches your eye on promotional cards and bookmarks and the like? And what, if anything, makes you actually consider checking out the product?
