Booksick - like Homesick

I just finished the 2nd book of an unfinished trilogy and I am booksick for the next one!

There are authors whose worlds I slide into like greeting an old friend. So happy to be back there and mingle with the familiar characters. I know the countryside and who to be wary of. There are things that I can expect and surprises that will enrich this special world.

I gallop through the book eager to take it all in. And yet I measure the pages left wishing them to not dwindle. Even a distraction of a secondary character is okay as I follow that streamlet eager to see where it will blend into the river of the story.

I stay up too late and read through my lunch time. I cram every spare minute into devouring the book. But I don't want to get to the end.

When I turn the final page and fall out of the dream, I pine for the next. The characters follow me around for days suggesting where the plot might go. And I lie in bed at night and worry about them.

Thanks goodness I have so many new authors to turn to for consolation. But I can't leave the previous world just yet. I'm not done thinking about them.

Bits and Bobs

Here are a bunch of random items that I keep forgetting about.

Scattered Seeds is now available in print.
Amazon          Barnes and Noble

Lethal Seasons has finally been removed from Flipkart! Yay! So that means it is now exclusively at Amazon and can be read for free through Kindle Unlimited. If you don't have an Amazon Prime subscription, it is only .99 right now.

So my experiment of having the science fiction books in KDP Select can now get off the ground. Fingers crossed that it brings in some new readers.

White Lies and Dark Deeds have been shifted over to Draft to Digital for Barnes & Noble, iTunes and Kobo. So far I haven't had any new sales through the new channels, but it's only been a week. I may lower the price on White Lies next month to see if that helps.

The garden is winding down for winter. We haven't had a frost yet, so everything is still thriving. Well, except for the tomatoes. The full week of rain we had pushed them all over the edge. They turned black and blighty almost overnight.

I bought some winter veggie starts and they are doing well. My garden doesn't get much sun in the winter, so I can't do a lot. The bok choy plants have already contributed to a stirfry. I am hoping the broccoli and Brussels sprouts will manage to produce something before the really cold weather sets in. I also got some lacinato kale, one of my favorites. Looking forward to some of that soon, too.

The work in progress - Façade - is coming along well. I decided to not try to rewrite the same failed story. So I picked a plotline and changed one character. I made her smarter and stronger and that immediately dictated a whole new story. She became smart and strong in the original doorstop, but it took too long. And I realized that I had rushed to get to the point where she achieved that, which caused some weirdness and some boring bits. So I dropped that all out and started where it should be. It's still just bare bones, but I have a good feel for it now.

The weather has been gorgeous this week. I have been wanting to get a lot of outside work done but something always comes up. Today I promised myself some time in the garden! So off I go.

The Cheese Keeps Moving

Think of a maze where the paths shift around, new ones appear and old ones become dead ends. That's not the plot for a new horror story, it's the playing field of self publishing.

Tried and true only seems to last for a few months, symptoms of an emerging industry. When you think of how young self publishing is, you have to expect bumps in the road. A new ereader could hit the markets tomorrow requiring a brand new distributor. Or a new distributor could wrangle a bigger hold on the market making authors migrate as quickly as possible because the first ones over always have an advantage.

Free isn't as big a boost as it used to be. Advice on sweet spot pricing ranges are all over the map. Every day I read another article or blog post with advice that is immediately poo-pooed in the comments as being old hat. Which comes down to the truth of the matter - nobody really knows.

What worked last year doesn't always work this year because everything is evolving. From formatting to distribution to discovery, things change so rapidly it's hard to form a roadmap.

Last year I tried just about everything and failed at most of it. I was reading the "Get Out There!" articles and going against my nature to do it. This year I dropped the ball in January when I got the flu-from-hell. By the time I felt up to tackling the dreaded marketing again, I knew I needed to reassess things. I did a very basic Return on Investment analysis. Were my sales up from all this flailing about in social media? Nope.

So I dropped the things that were painful or that I didn't understand well enough. I had spread myself thin joining up to every new site and forcing myself to post something somewhere. I think I have an adequate internet presence that anyone could find me easily. I'm not going to tie myself in knots to be on any site that doesn't come easily.

And I will keeping on doing what I think is the simplest and best advice - keep writing and publishing good books.

Smashwords Nightmare

My books are for sale where?

Let me preface this. Back in 2012 when I self published my first book, I was happy to load White Lies into Smashwords and send it off to all the retailers they distribute to. Finding my ebook on sale at Barnes and Noble or iTunes was exciting. When Smashwords expanded, I thought that was fantastic. My books were available all over the world. And my reports showed me a trickle of sales in foreign countries. I was delighted.

Then the sales abruptly stopped. In the past 8 months, I've sold only 1 book through all those distributors. I thought it was odd that as I published new books my sales went down, but I haven't been doing a lot of advertising.

Last month I decided to experiment with putting 2 books into KDP exclusively. I unpublished them from Smashwords on August 30, and waited. And waited... Luckily, Scattered Seeds was a pre-sale and didn't go out to all the distributors. Lethal Seasons was another story.

First unhappy surprise - Kobo redistributes my books. I discovered this through a forum somewhere. So I went out to look and sure enough, there are my books on a French website. I have no idea what the market is for post apocalyptic survivor stories in France, much less for those in English in a non-English speaking country. As the author and publisher of that book I was annoyed that I didn't know about this redistribution. Although I admit it could be in the fine print somewhere that I carelessly skimmed over.

Second unhappy surprise - Smashwords can't control their partners. I am still waiting for Flipkart to remove Lethal Seasons from their website, 31 days after making the request. I have emailed them several times, only to be told that all they can do is ask. Even now that they have severed their partnership, Smashwords seems unable to retrieve its catalog from Flipkart.

While staring at the display page for Lethal Seasons on Flipkart, I discovered yet another unhappy surprise: my book is offered for sale through WS Retail. After a little research I found out that WS Retail is owned by Flipkart in some sort of loophole to dodge Indian laws. How that affects me and my little ebook, I've still to sort out.

So some of the retailors are acting as distributors and passing on my books to yet another retailer. I suppose that explains the odd royalty variables. But now I am suspicious of my complete lack of sales through all those new extended channels. It is totally possible that I am just having a bad run. And as I said, I haven't been doing any advertising. But I still have that niggling doubt that sales are falling through the cracks somewhere.

And my marketing plans for the latest book are all on hold. It's hard to promote book 2 when book 1 is being held hostage.

...And Repeat

Time to start all over again.

I am still wrapping up some Scattered Seeds book launch odds and ends, but I've started on the next book. In fact, the other day I had to tell myself that marketing wasn't cheating on my writing, because it is important, too. But I am very possessive of my writing time.

I've got the mechanical bits of publishing down pretty well now. If I could just get a handle on the marketing side, I'd be delighted. So many things to learn. Yet it seems to all comes down to word of mouth and reviews. So go review the book you just finished reading! Authors need you!

I've got the bones down for the first few chapters of Façade. Since this is a story I've been writing for about 15 years, I was able to outline the first book easily. I think I have managed to strip out the bloat and focus the story. There will be hints of the backstory that will come out in later novels. It finally occurred to me that some of that stuff needed its own novel.

As often happens, the story took off in an unexpected direction. I followed it and realized where it needed to go. I'm pleased with how things are coming along. Since some of the Scattered Seeds editing took longer than I expected, I'm running a little behind on my word count schedule. I have learned to build in some leeway for those little interruptions called life (illness, emergencies, laziness and such) so I should still be about on schedule.

Façade is going to be submitted to the Kindle Scout program. (Provided it is still running next spring.) I think this series has tremendous potential. I hope they agree with me. I will post more information about it when I get closer to completion. The novel must be finished, polished and have a cover for the submission.

So - back to writing!

Scattered Seeds Ebook

I am leaving the ebook at $2.99 a little longer because of some serious typos.

I am about 3/4 of the way through the press proof and I have a lot of those sticky flags. Every flag shows an error. I am having the computer read the book for me. Hearing it is a sure fire way to discover typos. Things like repeated words or missing ones stand out easily when heard. I know that it is really easy to slide over them while reading because our minds show us what we expect.

So I am going to ask people to wait to buy the book for a few more days while I clean it up. Anyone who has already purchased it should get a notification from Amazon that an update is available.

My apologies! I rushed to publish a little too soon.

Scattered Seeds Excerpt

Here's chapter 1 - a little teaser for anyone waiting for book 2.

Scattered Seeds is available for pre-order on Amazon for $2.99 until the release date of September 18. After the release it will be $4.99

Lethal Seasons, book 1 in A Changed World series is also available on Amazon.

Scattered Seeds

When the disease had run its course in the fall of Zero Year we acted like a war had ended. The dead were buried in mass graves. World leaders declared a day of mourning. We met in public parks, singing hymns and holding hands. Those of us left alive were grieving and battered. We had survived a cataclysm of unknown proportions. And then, fools that we were, we tried to return to normal.

History of a Changed World - Angus T. Moss

Wisp felt a tide of worry rush over the people in the vegetable field. The concern he felt had an edge of fear to it. He detoured to the field out of curiosity and because he could sense Nick’s presence. It was just after dawn on a drizzly, overcast morning when most of the people at High Meadow were still asleep. He’d been on his way to the cafeteria to catch a quick breakfast before all those quiet minds woke making it too uncomfortable to stay in the building. Barely a week of living here, and he knew he’d gotten too complacent around these amicable people.

He cut through the tidy rows of vegetables, in what had once been a ball field, toward a group of people hunched in the chilly rain. Since it was such a gentle sprinkle, they hadn’t set up the storm sheeting over the crops. Nick, Lottie, Harlan and old man Larson stood around the blackened tangle of vines that had once been a tomato plant. Harlan shook his head. Despite being nearly blind, Harlan was proving to be surprisingly capable. Lottie, head of the Growing Committee, looked like she was ready to cry. Her sense of loss was so strong, Wisp wondered if this could be about more than losing a plant.

“What kind of blight?” Nick asked the group in general. He acknowledged Wisp with a glance, his green eyes clouded with concern.

“Must be late blight, don’t ya see,” Larson said in a countrified drawl. “Early blight comes first. Be already dead iff’n it were early blight.”

Wisp looked around for the grandson that always tagged along after the old man, but he might be with the chickens, as that was the main chore for both of them.

“But they were fine yesterday,” Lottie said. A solid woman, she had tanned skin and frizzing gray hair cut short. There were notes of frustration about her that were tangled with helplessness and tainted with fear.

“Naw. They had the start of it. A couple yeller leaves. Spreads on the wind, ya know.”

“No,” Harlan shook his head. “No, it’s in the dirt.” He stamped his foot in emphasis.

“But the wind blows it up,” Larson countered, windmilling his arm in explanation. Harlan gave a shrug of tentative agreement. The two old men seemed sure of the information they were imparting.

Wisp looked down the twenty foot row of staked tomatoes. The first two plants in the row were dead. Their vines black, spotty fruit, the color of muddy water, hung like half-deflated sacks. The next plant had more than a few yellow leaves spattered with black spots.

“What causes it?” Nick asked. He pushed a few stray locks of damp hair off his forehead.

Wisp sensed a layer of resignation holding back a low lying anger in him. This morning Nick looked unkempt. He needed a shave, and his short brown hair looked like it hadn’t seen a comb in a few days. That was unlike him. There must be more to his sour mood than the dead vegetables.

Larson raised bony shoulders in a plea of ignorance. “Always had blight here abouts. My meemaw used to spray hers with milk.”

Harlan bobbed his head in vigorous agreement. “Right. Mine did, too.”

“But we didn’t have any last year,” Lottie said in a mournful tone.

“First year luck,” Harlan said.

Larson snorted a laugh. “Eh yup, that’s it.”

“What does that mean?” Nick groused. His irritation hit a tipping point, cascading into anger.

Larson took a step back, watching Nick with a careful eye. Lottie turned an impatient scowl on him.

“First year of a garden is always the best,” Harlan explained. “Bugs and diseases haven’t found it yet.”

“But this isn’t our first year,” Lottie countered. She folded her arms and took a solid stance as if to physically bar the disease.

Larson raised his hands palm up in a sympathetic gesture. “So you a got a couple free years.”

Lottie nudged the first plant with the toe of her shoe. Three rotten tomatoes fell, bursting open to spread dark slime over the ground. “What do we do about it?”

“Rip ‘em out,” Larson said. “Burn em.”

Nick turned to Lottie. “Can you handle that?”

Lottie squared her shoulders and set her jaw. “Of course.” Her frustration bumped up into indignation. “We’ll take them out down to...” She walked along the row to a plant that remained uniformly green. “...about here. Can we plant something else?”

“Nothin’ in the nightshade family. They’re all susceptible.”

Lottie recited all the nightshades she knew, “Tomatoes, potatoes...”

“Peppers, eggplant,” Larson peered up at her with a sly look. “Tobacco, um, husk cherry.”

“We’re not growing any tobacco,” she said with a finality that sounded like the response to a very old argument. “Maybe I can put a couple of pole bean plants in here.”

Feeling a resolution of the agitation, Wisp headed towards the school building, knowing Nick would catch up. He had the feeling that Nick wanted a few last words of reassurance from Lottie. Their hopes for self-sufficiency rested on her success with the crops.

Wisp looked across the converted school’s campus. He admired the plan of how the sports fields had been reused for food crops. Despite Lottie’s alarm, the rest of the plots seemed untouched by the blight. Shiny green foliage filled bed after bed with lettuces, mustard greens, the red-veined leaves of beets, frilly spikes of carrot greens. Cucumbers and beans clambered up trellises. A damp breeze rattled through shaking drops from leaves and kicking up the scent of wet earth. Despite the arrival of the disease, the fields had a healthy smell.

Nick came up beside him, his pant legs soggy to the knee. They walked side by side past the other vegetable beds. “Neither Larson nor Harlan seemed surprised or worried,” Wisp offered.

“It might be normal, but it’s another problem to deal with. Something we didn’t know about yesterday. And the solution is milk, another thing we can’t get our hands on.”

“You could ask Creamery,” Wisp said. He almost sent a tendril of thought toward the dairy, but it was too far to feel anything useful.

“That’s a long ride for supplies we won’t be consuming,” Nick grumbled. “If they have enough to share. Or want to share.”

Wisp didn’t call Nick on his half-truth. Creamery had been more than willing to barter their cheese when Nick was there. “How badly do you want or need the tomatoes?”

Nick stopped, looking back toward where Lottie was shooing her consultants on their way. “I don’t know. I hope Tillie’s on top of this, because I have no idea how important they are to the food supply. What if we do lose them all?”

“I think the Growers Committee can deal with it,” Wisp said. “If the disease is indigenous to the area, they need to develop methods to counter it.”

“I guess. Do you think Kyle could come up with something?”

Wisp bit back his initial denial realizing he couldn’t say if his brother would be interested in the project or not. Kyle and Ruth were spending most of their time looking at the impact the virus and vaccines had had on human DNA. That might seem like more important work, but protecting the food supply could trump it. “It’s possible he might know how to fabricate a fungicide.”

“I’ll ask him.” Nick’s mood lightened, but he continued to stand in the light rain, staring over the vegetable field. His gaze moved to the road up to Barberry Cove.

In the wistfulness of Nick’s emotions, Wisp could almost feel the memory forming of the day that the superstorm hit, and they found all the children out on the road. “You are unsettled.”

“I want to get out of here,” Nick grumbled. “We promised the Barberry Cove kids that we’d look for their parents. It’s been a week and no new information. We got a name for the man we found with the gut wound--Glen. He’s still in a coma. We may never get any information out of him. If he even saw anything. His kids are toddlers, can’t give us anything more.”

“It’s one parent found,” Wisp offered. He felt the need to move, also. He’d made a promise to the children. And maybe it was time for him to be back on his own.

“Right,” Nick muttered. “The unconscious father of two kids barely old enough to feed themselves. That’s not making me feel any better.”

“I have no commitments,” Wisp said. “I can leave today.” Saying that gave him an odd touch of disappointment.

“I’ll tell Angus we need to go,” Nick said. A calmness settled over Nick once he made the decision. He started toward the building again.

A spike of fear shrilled across Wisp’s senses. “Trouble.”

“What?”

The glass doors to the school clanged open as Lily burst through them. From the slight height of the terrace, she scanned the fields before bolting down the three steps towards them. Nick jogged over to meet her, Wisp on his heels.

“Nick, Nick, Nick!” Lily hollered as she ran. “Angus is hurt!”