"Voice" Release

Finally hit Go on Voice of the Lost.  It's up already on Smashwords (and Amazon) and will take a couple of days to a few weeks to get to various other venues.

I'm really liking the way the cover turned out.  It's eerie and beautiful.  Not representative of any scene in the book, but symbolic of Medair facing her past - or seeking a future.

As usual for my blog followers here's a first week Smashwords discount coupon - 75% off until 8 Sept.  ZK74L

Heh - and now the fun part where I wait to see what people think of it. :)

Status Report

Finally through the near-last edit of Voice!  That means (unless some great logical inconsistency is uncovered) it's likely to be out mid-September.  I'm currently working on the (rather spoilery!) map, and will be including a glossary (and adding one into Silence), since the titles and countries can be a bit difficult to remember.

Voice is very short!  The shortest thing I'm ever likely to release (though still novel length, closer to the average length for a mystery than a fantasy novel).  I debated adding a whole series of extra adventures, but this is the correct length, I think, for this part of the story.  It's practically a reversal of the traditional fantasy novel (which often build up to a huge battle), and is remarkably emotional at several points (tearing up at my own writing, tch).  I suspect, when the readers get to the last couple of chapters, they will be screaming at me, and sharpening the knives, heh.

Then it's on to finalising Caszandra.  This volume is 150,000 words long, so it's hard to predict how long this will take me to fine-edit.  I'm aiming for early December.

I also plan to 'relax' with writing more of Pyramids in there, but I've forbidden myself from working on that until I've finished all the tasks for Voice.

Sales were fairly bad this month (yet still actual pocket money).  August is apparently the absolute worst month for selling books, so I'm blaming it on that at the moment.  I did a giveaway at LibraryThing, and the general response has been good.  Diary format is still the main thing people dislike about Touchstone, though it bothers fewer people than I expected.

There's a few readers who seem to have gone through every book I've written and liked them all and that means a great deal to me.  :)

Novel Inclinations

Voice continues apace.  A very slow pace.  I'm attempting a tonal shift in a few critical chapters, and that's _hard_.  But progress is being made, despite self-sabotaging attempts to drag myself off course.

One of the suggested ways to get your name out as a writer (published or self-published) is to write short stories so people can get a taste for your writing, so I thought over possible short stories I could write this week, and came up with two new novels to add to my list of things I would really like to be writing at the moment.

I'm just a novel writer; it's my natural length.

When I'm seriously distracted by new story ideas, I usually write the first page or two, which gets it enough out of my head that I can go back to whatever I'm trying to _finish_, and gives me enough to pick up the threads if and when I come back to it.

You can see from this opening scene that I was pondering popular sub-genres and wondering what would make them interesting to me. ;)

The windows of the vampire's house were a sneer, a proclamation.  "Come, Sun!" they mocked.  "Find me.  Make me ash."

The sun was not slow to take up the invitation, flooding through countless squares of glass to burnish mellow wood and caress rows of leather-bound books.  But the vampire was in the basement discussing weather control with the Prime Minister, and the sun did not even reach the young man resting his head on one arm at the near end of the library's central table.  The broad sweep of light stopped just short of his other hand as he held it, thumb canted to form a partial frame, toward the window and the scene of controlled near-chaos outside.

A rope had snapped.  The Prime Minister's airship was canted to one side, and then bounced, the black and red ballonet threatening to smash the gondala against Sheerside Manor's sweeping back lawn.  The very problem Lady Buckmeer had come to discuss was likely to strand her in Heliotropus' bedeviled south.

That story, if I ever get around to writing more than an opening for it, will be called Wednesday.  But Voice first.  So many projects, so little time.

Fresh Eyes

I started working on Voice again this week, re-reading and fine-tuning and underlining a reaction to an event which was missing in the previous draft.

This is a book which starts out action-heavy, and as it has been quite a few months since my last look at it, I managed to get something closer to "reader reaction" to the story.  You can never truly read your own writing as a reader would (even if every reader was the same), but you can step back from the details and get caught in the story.

And, damn, I'm AWFUL to my characters.

Physically Medair comes out of the story better than most of them (Cass is by far my most-injured), but I think she is the most brutalised 'spiritually'.  Part of this is the product of the person she once was, a child of unthinking privilege, and also because this story is probably the novel of mine with the 'largest' theme, but she grew up so idealistic and proud, and I keep kicking her in the face.

Cover Play

I've been playing with possible font/title placement for Voice of the Lost.  I always tend to want fancy squiggly fonts, but these are always unreadable in thumbnail.  You can see that some of these options would work fine for the cover of the trade paperback, but won't be much chop for an inch-high image.

Other variations:

I've also been playing with fonts for some placeholder covers for next year's books, until I get pictures for them.  The font on The Sleeping Life (you'll have to look at it in close up) is one I find absolutely gorgeous, but there's not many covers it would work on.

 

Promo Month

I've lined up a small amount of advertising in a couple of weeks, and for a month all four of my current ebooks will be $0.99 to go along with the promotion.

Self-publishing has a Catch-22 situation in regards to discoverability.  It isn't all just word of mouth - particularly where Amazon is concerned you need a sustained burst of sales in order to have your book start appearing in the "also purchased" and "recommended for you" lists.  So you need to sell a lot to sell a lot.  Just dropping the price to $0.99 won't necessarily get you anywhere at all - there's a ton of books for $0.99 or for free on Amazon and search results are ordered according to number of ratings and reviews meaning, again, that the more you've been read the more you'll be read.

There's any number of things a self-publisher can do to promote their books:

• Chase reviews from book bloggers.  Something of a challenge - a book blog with any significant audience will be getting free books from publishers, and will often have a "no self-publishers" policy.  Whatever their policies, almost all blogs with an audience will be drowning in books sent to them for review.  However, a review from an established blog which is willing to negatively review books as well as gush about the ones they like can have a tangible impact on sales.  And a review from a small blog is still a review!
• Run giveaways.  I run giveaways at Goodreads - I have two up at the moment (for Stray and Stained Glass Monsters - you need to join Goodreads to enter).  I initially thought this would be a good way to get reviews but it's not entirely effective - winners aren't obliged to review, and so far I've had a less than 50% review response.  It is, however, quite a useful way to advertise for only the price of a few books, and I get the occasional sale from those too impatient to wait for the giveaway to finish.
• Paid advertising.  Not necessarily effective, though with the right venue, cover, content and price point there's a chance of one of those valuable sales bursts.
• Networking.  Blog tours, reciprocal promotion with other authors, building an audience on a non-related blog (known as having a platform), friending everyone in sight.  These are time-hungry pursuits and results vary wildly.  Writers who have a platform, a tangible connection to others, will have a nice springboard for sales.  Writers who insert their book into every post they make (or any post they make) will gain themselves a nice backlash.  Mileage varies.
• Word of mouth.  Someone loves your book.  They tell friends.  On it goes.  Requires someone to love your book first. :)

And none of these compare to popping up in the first search results for your genre on Amazon, which is the reason for the temporary low prices, combined with a paid ad (for "Stray").  It might work, it might flop, but it's my current concession to the business side of self-publishing.  On the whole I'm not a particularly successful self-publisher - the writing is far more fun than the promotion aspects.  Because I chose to have painted covers ('cause I love 'em!) it will take me a while to break even in costs.  On the up side, there's no hurry whatsoever.  I put the books out there, make my occasional stabs at promotion, and go back to concentrating on writing the books.

Curiously, the Aurealis shortlisting was not effective promotion.  It got my book mentioned on a lot of sites, but led to I'd say no more than a dozen sales.  Still, the judges' report was great for the ego:

"The magic is variously humorous and breathtaking, and Höst has a fresh voice and an unusual heroine—a diplomat rather than a mage. You can read Silence of Medair for its strong, conflicted heroine, its playful subversion of fantasy tropes, or its deep, detailed analysis of the nature of racism. If not, just read it for the beautifully crafted prose."

Currently I'm working on "Voice of the Lost" while waiting for my proof of "Lab Rat One" to arrive.  [Well, currently I'm reading a lot of Rex Stout and playing computer games, but theoretically I'm working on "Voice".  :D ]

Sixth Cover - Voice of the Lost

"Voice of the Lost" is the last of the covers from my first commissions.  The conclusion to the story started in "The Silence of Medair", we've moved here from fire to water.

The mood Julie has achieved here is just wonderful: a wholly eerie scene, with Medair contemplating her past self, and her past self looking disturbingly like she's capable of reaching up and taking a firm grasp of Medair.

I'm still not totally decided on font and font colour.  This is not a title shouting its name to the world, but it's readable even in thumbnail, and I love the picture so much I don't want to draw the eye from it with too loud a font colour.

"Voice" will be the last of this batch of first releases - I'm aiming for about March with it, and then there will be a gap till probably the last quarter of next year, where I will have one or two more.  I already have covers in mind for them.

Covers are fun.  :)