Ya Chat-tat-tat-tatty-hoo

I have a button for http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/ on my blog and if you haven't yet checked it out, it is a fabulous website for readers and writers of romance.  In my case erotic romance.  They have tons of things going on - discussions, book reviews, friendships, giveaways, contests...and eloop chats. 

I've scheduled a chat for Thursday, October 27th, 2011 from 6:00-9:00pm.  I'm telling you now because if you want to join the fun, you have to sign up for the yahoo group. 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/karendevinkaren/

I think you need to have a yahoo email account.  Then you go to the link and ask to become a member.  Once you are accepted, make sure you post something.  A hello or whatever, just to make sure your posts are received.  Then on my chat night, we can have a conversation about stuff, including my new book, Dr. Cockburn's Medicine, which launches the next day - October 28th. 

The way a book launch goes - it doesn't happen all at once, because the various ebook sites have different days of the week when they accept uploads.  And the print book never coincides with the ebook launch.  It's weird.  Not with a bang but a whimper.

But it's still very exciting.  I think I'll do a couple giveaways during the chat and maybe share some excerpts.  Unless, of course, I end up talking to myself.  That won't be such a big deal.  Been there, done that.  I can just post and eventually someone will read it.  Coffeetime Romance does have regulars who enjoy the chat group aspect and do it regardless of whether or not they know the author.  But it would be nice to chat with people who have read Cinderella Club or may have read an earlier version of Doc Cock before it became a 50,000 word novel.

It's so exciting to finally have another book on the market.  But I sort of know what it must feel like when an actor has to do talk shows to promote their movie.  Usually the movie was made the year before and they're currently working on something else.  And that's what's so strange.  It was a while ago since the last time I read Dr. Cockburn's Medicine.  So I have a month to brush up on it before the chat.

Oh, I hope you decide to join me.  It really will be fun to "meet" you all. 

Check out the website then get a yahoo account and click on the link to the yahoo group.  It's pretty simple to prepare to chatty-kathyfy yourselves.

Here's the link to my blog, in case you want to follow it - and please do!  http://mianatasha-erotica.blogspot.com/

2nd Quarter Royalties: Still Wagging at the Tip of the Long Tail

Another quarter gone by, another royalty cheque. $180 this time.

It’s a good thing I like my day job. I certainly won’t be handing my notice in with those figures!

Still, it’s $180 and every little dollar (or pound in my case) is welcome in these austere times. While it isn’t a revolutionary amount, I’d guess it’s reality for most self-published writers hanging out in the long tail (and even some legacy published ones as well). For every Locke or Hocking there’s going to be thousands like me and thousands more doing even worse. That’s the nature of these things.

This was the argument behind Ewan Morrison’s recent article for The Guardian as he bemoaned the imminent demise of the author as a professional occupation. It’s all a matter of perspective really. Writers lucky or talented enough to have already made it through the gates, but have failed to find popular appeal and are reliant on ever-dwindling advances, are understandably unhappy with how the publishing world has changed. They face uncertain futures and will probably need to find mundane day jobs to pay the bills, like everyone else.

Then you get folks like me, who now get the opportunity to put our work out there for people to read. I have written two collections of short stories, A Succubus for Christmas and A Succubus for Valentine’s Day. Both have sold nearly 150 copies each and made me around $750 over the last year. That’s not a lot, but it’s more than they’d have made sitting in a slush pile, or on a free website, or locked in a drawer. Something is more than nothing, especially if that something keeps ticking up every month.

As I said, matter of perspective.

(Please feel free to contribute to that ticking up each month ;) )

M.E. Hydra

Deadline Disharmony

I think I might have a problem with deadlines.

I’ve always been a procrastinator. My approach to deadlines in the past was to put the project off until the last possible moment and then get it done in a frantic blaze of activity. Deadlines were useful to me. They said this thing needs to be finished by this date, and gave me the incentive to get it done.

As I’ve grown older, my idea of what constitutes the last possible minute has been pushed further and further back until any notion of getting something finished in the remaining time is hopelessly optimistic. Cans of Red Bull might keep me awake through the night, but they can’t magically turn one hour into three.

For me, the real problem now is the corresponding loss in productivity. I missed my last monthly post for this blog because I was battling with a tricky story. I’d like to say it was because I was engaged in frenzied writing, but in reality it was more patient hacking at a computer screen, like trying to chisel out a sculpture made of words.

Distraction behaviour is the bane of productivity everywhere, especially nowadays with so many modern distractions. I find the best way to combat it is to have multiple projects on the go at any one time. If a story is proving troublesome, switch to another one and come back to the first with a clearer head. All the stories worth being completed will get completed and with, hopefully, a minimum of head-banging-against-a-wall frustration. It should be fun, after all, otherwise why write at all.

Throw in a deadline and it gets messed up. I can’t justify switching to another project because I need to be writing this specific story for this specific date. But sultry Distraction Behaviour is still lurking and waiting to lure me astray with her glittering temptations of internet, computer games, television, etc. This is the point where my productivity takes a nosedive.

Anyone writing short stories will encounter opportunities and deadlines in the form of anthologies, magazines, competitions and the like. In the past I used to be the kind of writer that dashed from one deadline to the next, hammering out stories to match whatever theme was required. I don’t think this suits me now. I think I need to be the other type: the type that writes what they feel like writing at the time and fires off whatever happens to be most appropriate from their folder of complete and near-complete story ideas.

M.E. Hydra

Game On

I rewrote the first chapter in Cinderella Ending.  It still needs a lot of work.  I was a little repetitive but it's not that big a deal.  I can fix it or leave it.  Thomas was thinking and I felt like he kept vacillating between thoughts coming back to his oiginal theory.  I do that all the time, but it is probably redundant in book form.  I have to mull it over some more then try to make decisions tomorrow.

I worked for several hours but only managed 1,000 words. 

I'm going to try to write tomorrow - get back into the swing of it and get focused.  I know what the ending is but will it really be a Cinderella ending?  I don't have a clue because I really don't know what I'm doing.  I don't even know what I'm doing here.  For some reason, I always thought that if you were on the right path then your journey would make sense.  Everything would sort of fall into place, like love and stuff.

I'm not sure if this is the path or the detour.

The main reason for my existentialism is that I fell asleep to a 2012 doomsday show on the History channel and I got a little freaked.  Naturally, I had a nightmare about it.  No one seems to think it's a big deal - like maybe it's another Y2K.  And maybe it is.  But according to the show, they are predicting a tilt to the earth's axis based on its allignment in space.  And depending on how much we rotate, it could have dire consequences.  This is not Mayan or Ancient Chinese mumbo-jumbo.  It's real - science.

I'm surprised that more people aren't freaking out or at least having a sense of urgency in their relationships.  Maybe preparing for the end somehow or in my case maxing out every credit card possible.  Are you even remotely thinking about this?  Getting affairs in order?  Being nicer to people, etc.?  Or am I sounding like an idiot right now?

I had better get this fucking book written so it can have a May 2012 release date.  Otherwise there could be the possibility that I write it and no one gets to read it.  How dumb would that be?

Okay doomsday - game on!

House of Shelves

"House of Shelves" - This innovative "shelf pod" house can hold 10 TONS of books! 

Floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall shelving... just for a book collection.


Someone needs to buy this gentleman an ereader.

Selena Kitt

Erotic Fiction You Won't Forget

www.selenakitt.com

I Am My Own Muse

Ideas are popping up everywhere - for erotic stories that is.  They swish into my mind  at the strangest times and linger in the corner until I'm ready to tap into them.  In a way, they remind me of that creepy I-see-dead-people movie.  Like they are all standing in a queue waiting their turn until they see me and suddenly they wave their arms frantically for a chance to be written. 

Unfortunately, I'm not the ADD type.  I'm a one-thing-at-a-time girl.  So they will have to wait.  Sometimes I'll write an outline in a journal and go back to it like it's buried treasure or something.  For example, the whole story arc for Cinderella Ending is in my head but I haven't written any of it yet.  I have plans to start July 1st.  Hopefully the thing will flow out of me because there are other things to write.

Does this happen to other writers - that the more you write the more you think of to write?  I don't have time to read any more because I am constantly rereading my own stuff, and I rarely watch anything on TV past Days of Our Lives, which, as much as it's annoying me right now with that horrid freak of a girl, Taylor, muscling in on EJ Dimera, will continue to be my rabid guilty pleasure.

I wish I had more time to get this all out of me.  I need a giant summer purge, like a brain yard sale.  Or maybe I can be like Sharon Stone and be someone else's muse.  That sounds like a sexy plan.  Hmmm.

A Slightly Fluffier Dose of Reality

Back here I blogged about receiving my first quarterly royalty cheque. It was for the earth-shattering amount of $84.

Well, everyone’s got to start from somewhere and 84 bucks is still 84 bucks.

A couple of weeks ago I got my quarterly cheque for the first three months of 2011. That was for $575.

Hello. That’s starting to feel like proper money. Okay, it’s beans to most people making a full-time living from writing and atoms (or maybe even sub-atomic particles) to someone like Stephen King. I’m not full-time. I still have a day job. So I don’t have to sweat over whether human beings can actually survive off a diet of hay. It’s a nice bit of extra income to go towards a new TV, trip to see the folks back home, etcetera, etcetera.

The first quarter was when my second collection came out and that definitely bumped sales of both. More books gives more chances for readers to find you. Both have sold about a hundred copies, which is also encouraging. Readers are buying the first and liking it enough to buy the second. Definitely a good sign!

A lot of my sales are for Amazon Kindle, but it isn’t the only game in town with over half of my sales coming from a wide range of other sources such as Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and eXcessica. This will be reassuring for anyone worried about Amazon becoming (more) evil and maybe slamming down the portcullis on this little self-publishing revolution at some point in the future.

Since then my sales have been steadily picking up (on Amazon at least). I guess the message is don’t be too disconcerted if your numbers don’t explode overnight. Sometimes these things take time.

M.E. Hydra