Biggest disappointments for self-published authors

THE ON/OFF SWITCH – PERSONAL USE, RECOMMENDATIONS

The post below has been sitting in my DRAFTS folder for months. As usual, when something is a bit controversial, I find myself not wanting to make waves – but some of these topics need discussing, because SPAs (self-published authors) don’t have teams at their publisher to KNOW what to DO.

The topics are ones I struggle with – not ones I’ve solved.

TAKE AS SUGGESTIONS AND QUESTIONS: RANDOM MARKETING THOUGHTS

**********

What do you support?

I haven’t figured out yet how this works, so I’m asking myself how I would deal with some of these questions. And I have friends who are authors in different genres from what I like to read, so the question isn’t academic: Do I buy their books? Do I read them? Do I review? Do I recommend them? The answers are not obvious.

My writing support, except for my original writing partner from last century, Sandy, has always been online, but I have come to ‘know’ some of these writers rather well, mostly from long back-and-forth conversations (comment threads) about mutually interesting topics.

If a friend opened a restaurant, would you go?

If a friend opened a store, would you visit and possibly buy or commission something? Would you think of them when you needed something they sold?

If one of your children did an outstanding job in a play, would you be proud, tell people, and try to get people to go see the play?

If your child is now a mechanic, would you send customers to their workplace?

Family and friends

who don’t share or recommend, who seem more embarrassed by you than proud of what you’ve done. Would I be the same? I like to think I wouldn’t.

But we aren’t necessarily each other’s audience, just because we share DNA.

It seems to be an ON/OFF switch. I asked, for example, about a niece’s new business, only to be discouraged from trying to find something there because I am not in her target demographic. Not fancy enough, not thin enough, not rich enough…?

Asking for help and not getting it

Each ‘ask’ is making myself vulnerable – without some special reason, why would someone help you? So when I do that, open up a little bit of my diffidence, tell a stranger who seems potentially interested due to something THEY’VE written, something personal – and get the usual “Good luck!” back, instead of something more specific and more useful and more personal (such as actual help), my carapace hardens further, and it’s harder the next time.

Turning someone’s request for help down should be done gently, possibly with an actual usable suggestion as to where to get the help. So far the help rarely materializes; the help which does is small and within the obvious parameters and requires a lot of time and effort to ask for in the first place.

A lot of care, and research into what they’ve said before, goes into creating a request which MIGHT get a review, for example.

Best not to make implicit offers if you’re not open to carrying through, and just want to make yourself SOUND caring, open, and helpful.

Finding the RIGHT readers, being turned down – it happens

Many SPAs are introverts – not great at asking or marketing – but we try to do it, anyway. Sometimes we’re clumsy at it.

Not getting the readers who, by their reviews or comments, you think would really understand your work. Commenting is easy, agreeing to read and review requires a commitment of time, energy, and skills. I get that.

Replying to strangers who act as if they think they know you and your requirements – obviously difficult. Reviewers are used to getting many, and many completely unsuitable, requests for their time. But it’s still rare to find them actively seeking ‘good stuff’ among these requests. It’s more likely to run up against their fence-posts: ‘temporarily closed submissions’, ‘no longer reading…’, and my very personal favorite, ‘no self-publishing.’

Their statistics are probably accurate: most of what is offered isn’t as good as the submitter wants to imply it is. Most of the books offered are generic, and come with generic appeals.

But there often seems little room for the carefully-crafted appeal that takes into account more than just the submission guidelines, and shows a real effort by the requester to make sure this is the kind of material the reviewer likes – and earns a generic turndown. The worst? A generic turndown months later.

Those who substitute congratulations for support.

These are often people who congratulate you on publishing but never buy or read, much less review. Sort of the adult generations ‘participation trophy’ view of the world.

Instead of taking their trust in you as a person to imply that maybe, just maybe, you might have a little something special as a writer, and they are in a privileged position to participate in the launch.

And, since you know them, you might have actually taken that into account in writing – so they would find resonances and interesting bits in YOUR fiction they wouldn’t find in a random author’s fiction – because you’re, somehow, ‘one of us.’

Gedankenexperiment?

The perfect term – thought experiment – for when doing actual experiments won’t work. For the writing/publishing field, with readers as independent data points you don’t know, unless you have a big marketing firm that can find a way to understand the individual points in the context of a whole, the experiments are not independent explorations of how a group of readers might respond, but instead an attempt to put oneself INTO the point of view of those individual readers, and figure out what is going on.

The clear first step is to let a bunch of readers of your kind of fiction know you exist. This is targeted advertising – but only studies those who would see your ads. You can’t make them change where they get their information, so if you can’t access those same information sources to provide yours, you’re out of luck. Example: if they only look at Kirkus reviews, they won’t even see your information unless you BUY a Kirkus review for your book, and not even that if the readers you crave have already trained themselves to scroll/look past the Kirkus indie reviews.

Using what’s special to market

Your book? Lots of ideas out there to market to various groups. Each one takes energy to develop for those different groups.

Yourself? A little tricky for fiction – and very hard to take back once you’re over-shared. And it can get you a label you can’t shake. And make you subject to being ‘inspiration porn’ – cute or interesting or laudable, but not really enough ‘good’ to succeed without being patted on the head.

ANSWERS? Go viral.

NO ONE knows how to make something become the next big thing – or how to capitalize on it if you happen to get that kick of karma.

Commercial PR firms do a lot of work, and charge a lot – and sometimes succeed at making it look effortless.

On your own, it’s very unlikely.

What you CAN do is to ask yourself, “Am I ready if it happens?” Can people find my books, can they buy them easily, is it easy to get them from the library? Is the front matter and back matter up to date wherever the books are sold? Will they know where to sign up to be informed when the next book comes out? Can they find my other books?

And the biggest: is the next book being created right now?

**********

That’s it, in a nutshell: be ready – hope to get lucky.

And the perennial: write a VERY GOOD BOOK. Because if you don’t, all the publicity and virality in the world won’t keep the readers you snag.

If you know THE ANSWER, please send it privately – nothing spoils a secret like sharing it on the internet. I will be eternally grateful.

**********

Obsession is liking something way too much

A DANGEROUS WORD, A DANGEROUS CONCEPT

OBSESSION is

The foundation for Pride’s Children: PURGATORY and Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD.

And defending the consequences of that obsession is the foundation of Pride’s Children: LIMBO, which I am sharing as I write through the final volume of the trilogy.

When does liking something, preferring it, turn into obsession? When it dominates too much of your waking hours, when it starts to interfere with your dreams.

Overdoing calm control leaves you vulnerable

The one who had no trouble learning Mathematics or Logic in school, who has a PhD (for heaven’s sake!) in NUCLEAR Engineering (fusion) was a big reader as a child, and has always had this, uh, underpinning to her temperament, a capacity for intense interest in something fantastical.

The tech subjects were easy, easier than it seemed they were for other little girls in the classes, so the decision was made to represent women, and follow that lead. It seemed a waste not to use the gift that had been given to that child.

Besides, it seemed to amuse the grownups, to make them take the little girl more seriously.

It had the wonderful side benefit it still has: understanding the why of everything from snowflake patterns to the rings of Jupiter, to make the natural world even more fascinating.

Capacity was not limited

It seemed I could do both: understand the logical stuff, and stuff my head with reading the fantastical. Switch the intense focus from one to the other, still be happy. The fact that no others seemed to enjoy the same dichotomy made it a little lonely, but the family support was warm, and the teachers had a high-performing pupil to point to and be proud of, and there was plenty to occupy the time.

If anyone had tried to focus that intensity at that age, they could probably have created either kind of monster, but most adult energy was expended elsewhere in a class with 50 students, and the mother had four younger children and needed help and had no problem demanding it. The father worked long hours building his engineering business, and the grownups were happy not to have problems to deal with.

The child was allowed to obsess without much in the way of supervision.

Or direction.

Or individual guidance. Or indeed anywhere to express it.

Call it ‘benign neglect.’

The keystone: neglect

If you’re quiet and don’t make waves, and sparkle when a flashlight is shone in your general direction, you fly under many radar beams.

Switched to an American college halfway through university because there were ‘student’ (ie, young communists with nothing better to do than disrupt) riots at the Mexican one, but because I spoke perfect American English (it was, after all, my mother tongue), no one at the new US university realized or made an effort to smooth the transition they didn’t realized had been made. Benign neglect again.

The transfer student didn’t make waves, have academic problems or do any of the things which trigger supervisory attention. The grades were good, the activities obvious, and no distress signals seemed to be being put out.

She also had no guidance about what to do or what to do next – not an uncommon situation in college – but, when graduation approached and she didn’t want to go home to Mexico, someone mentioned that she should take the Graduate Record Exam. So she signed up, with no clue that one should prepare for it, and showed up with her yellow pencils on the appointed day.

One section was hard – it had a bunch of questions on details of Optics, a subject never studied. But either it was amenable to logic (as applied), or it was the ‘experimental’ section which didn’t count, because the test results were high numbers.

And the professor who had made a pass, and was probably feeling somewhat guilty about it, read in the paper that another university had a big grant in fusion, and suggested that the girl student should apply there, and went an extra step and CALLED the director of the program. Who said, even though the deadline was past, “Send her papers.”

Graduate school – where benign neglect is not a good thing

I was the only woman student in my cohort. Was not invited to participate in the sessions where the male students did their homework and helped each other learn. The advisor I had applied to work for LEFT soon after I got there, to a big corporation – didn’t reply when I sent a request for guidance. The new advisor was a recent PhD destined for bigger things who found one male grad student in our bunch who thought like him – and groomed him only. He had no clue how to advise the lone female student allotted to him, except to tell her she should ‘read the literature.’ Full stop. No details. No guidance. Attempts to change advisors were unsuccessful.

Stumbled through. Did a project that was useful to the little empire the advisor was creating because the data supported a pet theory of his. No one told her that 90% of the students going through such a program were NOT destined to be sucked up by academia OR the national labs that were considered the next step, but would have to find a job ‘elsewhere.’ The obsession with reading, mostly SF now, continued unabated. In self defense.

Skip ahead a lot

to where all this disconnected stuff had resulted in working on submarines, marriage, a failed bid to become a NASA Mission Specialist, a leveraging miracle of some sort resulting in a job at Princeton – in fusion! – with a discovered facility for handling large computer codes on CRAYs, and two small children.

And then the disaster: contracted a virus at a physics conference where I was presenting a paper, went home with a raging infection – and never got well: ME/CFS had claimed another random victim.

Obsession went underground – there was no energy to feed it with, and a third child on the way – but the specter of a STEM PhD at home, sick, led to what I called ‘accidental homeschooling’ – the use of that education to bring up offspring who turned out to be easy to teach – rather than deal with the logistics of school buses and lunches and paperwork and parental involvement.

And then obsession struck again

Writing fiction. I could do that in tiny chunks once the kids didn’t require every second of my attention. I had always planned to do it in retirement; it happened earlier, agewise, because there wasn’t much else I could do when we had accomplished the necessary schooling: my energy was so limited even leaving the house was rare.

And then the biggie: they were going off to college around the same time a single story hit me and demanded to be written – because ONLY I would write this one. So many things went into it – including an obsession with books and science and movies and a crippling disease – causing a flash burn that showed me the story from one end to the other at once.

Now I’m in my twenty-third year of an unabated obsession, and writing the third volume of what turned out to be the single welded spot where it all stuck and – dare I say it? – fused. I marvel at its staying power, because it happened to the slowest writer on the planet.

Would it be the same?

If I had made it as an astronaut?

If I had stayed a researcher in fusion physics?

If I hadn’t become chronically ill?

If I hadn’t had children or spouse?

If I had succeeded in getting the mystery series accepted by a traditional publisher?

If, in other words, I hadn’t been thwarted a lot in how to apply the capacity for obsession?

I doubt it. Becoming what the bruising travel over the rapids made me, has been trigger and sustenance.

OBSESSION = WRITER’S FRIEND

You get what your writer IS.

**********

Prequel SHORT story (1500 words): Pride’s Children prequel: Too Late

and if you liked it (and followed the PC site):

Pride’s Children: PURGATORY

Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD

Pride’s Children: LIMBO (coming ASAP)

Apologies for US links here only – a universal link is on the To Do list.

**********

Nailing pet peeves for the final trilogy volume

CAN READERS CHANGE WHAT THEY READ?

I’m a big fan of ‘canon’ – what the author of a book or series of books has written IN the book(s), what the true fans consider immutable and the final word.

I don’t read books or sequels written by someone else, mostly because every time I’ve tried that in the past, the results just made me mad.

Case in point: the sequel to Gone With the Wind, the book Scarlett, written by Alexandra Ripley – I know I would agree with many of the 1* reviews if I had read it, simply by seeing a plot summary.

Case in point: The 7% Solution, an attempt to write a Sherlock Holmes story in the ‘style’ of Conan Doyle – I did NOT like it, felt Holmes had been stretched and distorted in ways apparent in NONE of the canon stories from Sir Arthur.

I love writers precisely for their style, their unique way of writing a sentence, plotting a story, evincing the themes. And for THEIR unique creations: their characters.

Not very flexible – am I? – and either you are the way I am, or not, and I don’t aim to convert anyone!

This is your chance to argue for me to ALTER canon as I write LIMBO

Just as a writerly experiment, and because I’m at the stage (I have an awkward horrible rough draft written many years ago to scope out all the ideas, and written in a lot of haste before I learned better how to manipulate words) where I CAN possibly alter the text of the rest of the story a bit, I’m floating another one of my odd ideas:

If you were me, and could eliminate pet peeves in the final volume of my mainstream trilogy, Pride’s Children: LIMBO, what would YOU choose to emphasize?

Think like a famous author, with a ghostwriter who will do the actual writing, retaining all control over both content and style.

What would you have me do slightly differently from the previous PURGATORY and NETHERWORLD (preferably based on your having read them, but I won’t insist, and probably can’t prove it anyway)?

What would you like me to make sure does NOT appear in LIMBO?

What would you do if you were writing LIMBO?

What bothers YOU?

It would be kind if you mentioned why, or just generally what other kind of books you like to read, as the basis for your personal peeve, but I also won’t insist on a reason.

No promises, except that I will consider carefully and thoroughly any suggestions, and at least let you know privately that I did if I accept your suggestion. Fair enough?

**********

I’m about to get serious.

I have started the process of bringing the new MacBook Air up to speed in my environment – just ordered an external SSD for backups which will be delivered tomorrow.

The thinking part, given that the Migration Assistant supplied by Apple has failed (it did last time I upgraded – must be me), will take a bit of time, but I’ve decided I can ALSO trust the beginning plot/plan for LIMBO, since it is so clear in my mind and starts only a few hours after the end of NETHERWORLD – and give in to the writing itch.

Plus the paperwork problem is supposedly almost finished (ask me Sunday night), and dumping it on the accountants should go smoothly (ha?!?), and I can get out from under something that has been in my way for over 1.5 years.

So tomorrow I install the SSD, download and authenticate my copy of Scrivener3 (paid for long ago) and watch a video or two about the new features, and WRITE again, with the intent of seeing if I can speed up the process to make up for lost time.

Oh, and install Pixelmator3, also long paid for, now that I have a LOT of internal storage space on the Air (one of the reasons for upgrading): LIMBO’s cover is clear in my mind, also to be executed in downtime (graphics are easy compared to words), so I have the cover ready by the time the text is finished and edited and proofed. Graphics take a lot of space if you want to keep layers separate for future ease of change.

TOO LATE, the prequel short

It’s been submitted to a literary magazine which would be a lovely addition to my credentials if they decide to publish it.

ONE of the reasons for doing so is that I forced myself to make the necessary final pass to edit the style as close as possible to match the style of the novels. It was as much work as I expected since TOO LATE was written before the final version of PURGATORY had settled into what you might call my voice.

If not, the cover is started, the crucial photo approved, and the whole plan for the ‘look,’ so it is obviously part of the trilogy’s story, is in place. I’ll throw it up on Amazon for a buck, and/or use it as a reader magnet, but a final ebook version is required, and it’s now much closer than it was before.

That’s the plan, in any case.

Hoping to hear your pet peeves.

**********

2023 Update on B1 megadoses, CFS, and writing

MISSING FROM POSTING IS ENDING!

I never intended to stop writing blog posts here, and at the books’ site – it just sort of happened, for the usual reason these things happen to me: there is only so much energy left to someone with ME/CFS after dealing with it during a day, and only so much of it doesn’t have active brain fog, and stress makes it worse, never better (I don’t have the equivalent of being able to supercharge with caffeine, adrenaline, or, well, anything).

So ‘things happening’ and climbing to the top of the priorities lists (as they always do) means other things get neglected.

I’ve posted some when I had a little energy, but I have about twelve STARTED posts, six per blog, because when I have an idea I quickly create a new one, think up a temporary title, possibly even create a graphic (thanks, Stencil, for 10 free ones a month), sketch in a few quick notes… And usually follow up. Which I haven’t been up to doing lately.

Erratic is the result. Sometimes people even forget you exist.

And they certainly don’t have time in their lives to track another blogger down.

COMMENTING keeps my hand in

and serves a second purpose: getting the brain cells trained toward thought and typing.

If I find an interesting post, I will leave a comment if I have anything to contribute to the conversation. Bloggers don’t get enough engagement, and they put a lot of thought into the posts, and seem to like even my digressions (ON their topic) enough not to block me. Online I’m more of an opinionated extrovert than I manage in person. I still try to keep it civil and not sound as if I’m the ultimate authority on the subject – my rule for myself is, “If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it at all.” True internet anonymity is not my style.

If I get it wrong, I apologize. Text exchanges inherently lack nuance, and more than once I’ve interpreted something my way and found out from a reply that it was meant some other way. Even with knowing the blog or FB stream, it happens. Twice in the last year the best response was to delete what I said. Not too bad, considering I flap my fingers thousands of times. And have strong opinions of my own.

But commenting doesn’t mean I’m capable of organizing and finishing a post of my own; often it means the opposite.

THE BIG ONE is almost finished

I wish it had been another piece of fiction, but it wasn’t. It was a tax problem which affected me, has taken a lot of time to resolve, and is ALMOST finished, which is why I can START thinking about how to use my time for my writing again.

I like to contribute as much as I can to problems which are partly mine. And this one was big enough that I needed to maintain as much of my usable ‘good time’ for it every day – and ONLY for it – because I have such a small amount of it that it really can’t be split and still get anything accomplished. It also took almost all of my assistant’s time in the two 2-hour sessions I had with her over months, so I got no other benefit from her time most sessions.

But the problem slowly got pinned down and then solved, piece by piece, because I CAN do that, still, if I HAVE to.

I fear for when this is no longer true.

And worry that other things aren’t getting done.

But I refuse to be a parasite just because I am disabled, and I COULD help with this one, so I did.

And I still managed to get Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD published – by spending the money, and having my good friend Bill Peschel do the cover and formatting work. Yes, he was great. No, he’s not making a career of that part of it – he has enough work of his and his wife’s to keep him quite busy, thankyouverymuch.

Otherwise I would be sending everything I could his way. Our loss.

The PHYSICAL parts I will gloss over:

The first was necessary and long postponed surgery (due to the pandemic) last September (which is why I had someone else help get NETHERWORLD out – you never know for sure if you’ll come out of surgery). And a totally unexpected VERY painful recovery and meds mess; mostly over now.

The second, this year, for the fun of it, was a trip to the ER because of chest pain. Did you know that half of the time you have chest pain AND elevated troponin (a cardiac enzyme) levels, it is NOT a heart attack, but you’ve probably done something and deprived your hear muscle of adequate oxygen for a while? But they can’t tell without dragging you to a hospital WITH a cardiac unit, and performing an angiogram to see if any of your stents have plugged up OR you need a new one OR, I assume, something else is wrong. Big fuss. Hospitals (2). Days (3). Recovery (a good week). All of this very difficult when you already have ME/CFS. I will not be doing carpet scrubbing bent over any more. The good new was that I don’t need more stents; the bad part was that I already knew that from the angiogram required prior to surgery last September. And the final word was from the cardiologist who released me who said, “Well, that should be good for another 2 – 5 years,” and who probably wasn’t thinking that I’d had one four months before which should have meant I was okay now. I’m grateful they don’t take chances, but the effect on my tiny life was astronomical.

That’s me ‘glossing over’ anything. For Heaven’s sake, the woman likes to talk! Maybe the second paragraph will help someone else in the future…

Now that I’m supposed to be getting MY life back…

all I want to do is finish LIMBO, and see if I can shorten the 3-5 year expected time to write and publish it.

The other tasks (some of which I’ve been kicking along in little bits of time) include:

Getting readers and reviews for NETHERWORLD. Seven 5* reviews/ratings is a lovely start. Selling one copy in February 2023 is not. ARCs are slowly going out to the reviewers who said they were waiting for it, but it is a long time commitment (about 12 hours to read, plus the time it takes to review), and each ask takes me a couple of days of my tiny bits of leftover ‘second best time.’

Submitting to awards. NETHERWORLD was a Finalist for the 2022 Indies Today Awards, a decent showing for the second novel in a trilogy (PURGATORY won 2021 Best Contemporary novel from Indies Today last year). I’ve submitted to one other award – will know in May – but investigating awards which are good to have has taken a lot of time, and applying to them is getting expensive. I have more to say about help on that front, but won’t, for now.

Marketing. Two attempts to get help from ‘professionals’ have resulted in nothing yet; one of the companies has ghosted me twice (hmmm).

Mainstream literary fiction – the best way to categorize what I write – is a difficult sell if you’re a self-published author; even my Facebook group admin for marketing it has stated they ONLY take their recommendations from regular media (in their case, broadsheets (newspapers) of significant repute which still have review sections). Discouraging.

My somewhat tongue-in-cheek post about how to go viral with literary fiction left me with finding the right influencer as the main method, and I’m trying, but it’s even harder than finding reviewers!

I had at one time the thought of looking at the reviews of popular traditionally-published literary novels – and targeting the readers who DIDN’T like those – until I realized what a huge effort that might be (there were thousands), and decided it would be better to spend the energy writing LIMBO, as having a COMPLETE trilogy is considered far better than having only one or two volumes finished. I’m not sure I believe that – there was a lot of publicity (much of it expensive PAID publicity) for Elena Ferrante’s quartet before the last two came out – but my record for marketing up until now is unprepossessing. At best.

THE REST OF MY SO-CALLED LIFE

The pandemic – and waiting for surgery – did a number on the fun things here at our retirement community.

I’m now able to go out (when it’s warm enough) and ride around on Maggie (my Airwheel S8, a bicycle seat on a hoverboard) on and off our campus. I’ll have to build up to doing that more – and possibly find new people to do it with.

I will be going back to using our pools, including the nice warm therapy pool I love to bob in for a half-hour or less, followed by the huge but necessary time-wasting of a shower with hair-washing.

I hope to regenerate our folk-singing group, on hiatus because singing in an enclosed space turned out to be a really good way to spread the virus, but will have to find a safe way to do that (a bigger, better-ventilated room would help). It has been so many years since we sang together that it will be practically a new venture.

I’m back to using B1 (150mg of benfotiamine + 500mg of Vitamin B1, 2-3 times daily) plus B12 (liquid B12, dropperful sublingually up to 8 times daily) because they or the combination seems a LITTLE bit better than nothing for getting me to have a usable brain.

And I continue to write better when blocking the internet with FREEDOM or ANTI-SOCIAL for a given chunk of time, so I don’t get sidetracked (I’m easily distractible – shiny!).

THE REST OF MY WRITING LIFE

All the obvious:

blog posts

sales for the books

publishing Too Late, the prequel short story

marketing

finding MY readers out of the vast sea of not-my-readers

maybe some short stories about Kary, Andrew, Bianca – and offspring

the next big writing project/book

publicity of some kind – possibly including me if there is enough interest

the as-read-by-author audiobooks

the easier hardcover and large print books

applying for relevant awards

and always, finding ways to persuade reviewers whose reviews I like that they will enjoy reading MY story, and will possibly encourage me by giving the books one of their lovely reviews.

———-

I think that’s about it. Y’all are sort of up-to-date about my MIA status.

I no longer have a BookSprout account (it didn’t produce a single download or review of either PURGATORY or NETHERWORLD in a year), so contact me (comments or About for the email address) if you would like an ARC and would CONSIDER writing a review; I don’t nag.

If you like my fiction, there’s a lot of short stuff here

I am always honored when a reader recommends Pride’s Children to friends or family. Or BOOK CLUB!

Visit the Pride’s Children blog for more about the books (including questions for book clubs!) and to read the prequel. If you FOLLOW there, you’ll find out more about LIMBO and timing and sales when I send out the occasional email/newsletter.

Pray for stability to my life – it helps the writing.

———-

Pride’s Children PURGATORY, NETHERWORLD 0.99 or free

If you have ever wanted to read my novels – there’s a Kindle Countdown deal starting Jan. 12 at 8am (GMT in the UK, and PT in the US) at 0.99, and all the details are at the books’ blog.

There are also instructions for creating a free BookSprout account, downloading the ebooks for free – in exchange for writing a review. I have ZERO control over the review content, as it should be, and love to read what readers think.

I’m the worst marketer ever, in addition to one of the slowest, but I LOVE my blog readers to get a bargain.

**********

A friend said you should consider a blogger’s fiction if you like their posts – makes sense.

Success for literary fiction defined

WHY DO I WANT TO BE WIDELY READ?

Success? I don’t know if others are in the enviable position of not writing for a living, but I am. Which is good, because I’m what we used to call glacially slow, until the glaciers started calving and melting with climate change. A friend called it ‘at the speed of continental drift,’ which still works.

My concern is that after I’ve put twenty-two years so far into the first two books of a mainstream literary trilogy, I want READERS. Legacy would be nice, but that isn’t exactly an aim, and if you’re not known during your lifetime, you will have to be unbelievably lucky in today’s world to be known because someone championed your work after you left us.

Disability – and now – retirement make writing my personal choice. I always meant to do it when I retired from computational plasma physics at Princeton; disability just made that happen at 40 instead of 66.

I spend my energy parsimoniously – there isn’t much of it, and I want it spent on writing when it is discretionary. I’m sure that if I had managed to persuade a traditional publisher to take me on, the marketing would have still been a problem – most traditionally-published works get six weeks on a bookstore shelf before they disappear.

I would like to see all the hoopla be about the quality and especially accessibility of the writing itself: as I have always found books such as Rebecca and Jane Eyre eminently accessible STORY- and CHARACTER-wise, that is what I’ve aimed to write. Maybe my view of ‘literary’ is flawed or limited (personally, I’m not a fan of ambiguity – others love it, or of speculative fiction – ditto, or of creatively formatted fiction): I want better, more intense, more compelling fiction with care for all the factors that make a ‘good book’. Which is why I appreciate the genre fiction with a literary quality – ‘Dune’ isn’t just SF: it is at least literary-quality SF, at best literary storytelling.

The problem is that ‘literary’ now covers anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere, a common contamination.

Instead of being the fiction that subtly raises literacy – and pleasure. As it was for me as an American child growing up in Mexico, with limited access to books in English and no libraries.

I want READERS. Readers who find what I write better than their usual fare. That’s how I define ‘success.’ It requires that I do a much better marketing job somehow.

**********

To see what I mean by ‘accessible’ and ‘pleasurable’, try the short story prequel to Pride’s Children.

If you like that, consider tackling the longer novels:

Pride’s Children: PURGATORY

Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD

**********

Who and what a writer is matters

WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG, YOU TRY OUT FEELINGS

And the books which become favorites, the ones you remember, are the ones that make you feel good somehow.

Because that’s what you get objectively and subjectively when you read/buy a writer’s book: their particular take on a life, love, and the universal.

It isn’t accidental that some books become classics: they appeal to something in the reader that makes the reader buy the book as an adult, and read it to their children, because it’s an easy way to say that: this is what I want you to grow up loving – and feeling – because it was important to me, and I want you to have it.

As you go through life, and get battered, you choose

But you have to read widely first, so you find out what you need.

Is it The Velveteen Rabbit?

Is is Pooh, original or Disney (or both)?

Is it mysteries or gory serial killer thrillers? Do you like fantasies and are you satisfied when someone else – the protagonist – is The One? Or do you prefer stories in which, due to the writer’s skill, YOU are the center, the quester, the One.

There’s a whole MATRIX of other relevant bits

• Historical time
• Gender
• Location on this planet or an alternate universe
• Ending
• Language
• Complexity of ideas
• Style and tone and vocabulary
• Originality

But the most important one is always: how does it make you FEEL?

Because that’s what you’re looking for in the next story, the next favorite, the next book.

And that’s what will determine a basic satisfaction with what you read, and what you look for when you take a chance on something new.

I’m a sucker for well-written books

And I get annoyed when that leads me astray: well-written – but with a basic nastiness to the ending; well-written – but with an underlying misogyny or racism; well-written – but with characters you’d never want to meet in real life.

I still remember one book which was recommended by a literary blog I no longer recall and which the reviewer said it was a shame more people hadn’t read, since it was so well-written. I bought it! I read it! I was indeed very well written. And the recommendation made me miss the early red flags, because the story, about a murdered young girl, and how it affected her family and friends, turned into a story which blamed the victim for her own murder – because of the way she ‘responded’ to the sick adults who perverted her innocence. And the final conclusion to the story was that it wasn’t important to identify and stigmatize the killer!

I deleted the book from my Amazon account, something I rarely do, but haven’t been able to scrub how it made me feel from my mind.

Because first the writer described how wonderful she was and how everyone loved her – and then destroyed her by saying she deserved what happened to her! As if anyone, especially a child, a teen, deserved to be murdered.

It makes me wonder WHY someone would write such a book. And realize there’s a whole subculture of writers who do – and readers who love those books.

When I write I make conscious choices

I leave the characters those turnoffs that the big trucks use on a mountain road when their brakes fail – but I can’t make the characters use them.

I adopt the slow burn: things happen with enough time to think about why, to consider consequences, to justify actions. There are plenty of stories – and real life events – where something pivots on a tiny accidental point. They don’t interest me because there is nothing a character can do to avert the coming disaster – they will cope with the change, and the coping will show who they are, but it’s a cop-out, and, under dire circumstances, even good people make mistakes. And have to live with the consequences of a split second.

Not much in the way of subtlety with the turn-your-life-on-a-twisted-dime stories, especially if the reader can see it coming at the previous mile marker. Plus, those books don’t reward re-reading, and that’s a waste: depending on a trick ending is a fool-me-once.

I WANT to write something re-readable.

I want it to take several readings to see many of the connections.

I want most readers to have to go back and read the previous volume before the new one – or to have internalized what came before so they wouldn’t have to (I’ve had both kinds of readers comment about this).

I offer the usual bargain:

I do the work – you tell me how it made you feel.

Then tell me how it worked for you.

Try it out on the prequel 1500 word short story Too Late.

Then remember there’s plenty more where that came from.

**********

Phoning in a bad editorial review

PAYING FOR AN EDITORIAL REVIEW GUARANTEES NOTHING

I’m going to be very careful with this post, as getting a bad editorial review is one of the hazards of paying for reviews: your book could be crap, and a proper reviewer is entitled to say exactly what they think of it.

This reviewer sends you the review as a courtesy, so you can tweak any problems before it gets published.

Sometimes you have the recourse of requesting that the review be dumped, and I have exercised that right.

So any quotes I list from the to-not-be-published review are my only product for my money – as only the reviewer and I should have access to the content, and therefore no one should be able to search for the quotes on the internet, and identify the person I’m complaining about here.

Got it?

I will leave off any identifying information

and write only about the substance of the review, which is the subject of my complaint in a general way (I can already see readers wondering how bad Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD was, and whether I simply can’t take criticism).

Indies like me need a few impartial honest editorial reviews and we need to pay for them. They – in full, or quotes from them – go in the Editorial Reviews section of the book’s Amazon page.

Having a decent editorial review legitimizes you as an author, gives you some credibility.

We need to choose our source, as it can get into real money (for example, a Kirkus review is almost $500), and it will take a lot of sales to make that review worth the expenditure.

There are many other reputable review services available to self-published authors (SPAs), less expensive ones, but the field is, like literary agentry, completely unregulated, even taking into account that the ultimate result, the review, is published for anyone to see.

One would hope for some self-regulation, but the standard thing for an author to do if you don’t like a review is to let it sink like the millstone it is and hope no one sees it.

FIGHTING a review is not done, and will get you branded a ‘difficult author.’

Again, got it?

So why am I taking the risk?

Because I had expectations (silly woman?) that a professional reviewer would at least read the book.

Or enough of the book to be able to say something real and thoughtful about what I spent 7 years of my small supply of good energy producing.

When I was offered the draft review to tweak

my heart sank.

I wrote back, after a bit of reflection at the complete mismatch between my understanding of my book, and the review:

…I have been looking forward to your review for a long time.

And now I have to ask you to completely cancel publication.

If you have any interest, let me know, and I can provide you with a list of all the points your review did not mention that are critical to the story continued in NETHERWORLD.

I don’t know what to think, but the review below in the email you just sent me is not something I would want published if I have any choice in the matter. It does not represent the continuing story nor the characters.

Email, 11/5/22

I did NOT expect a response other than cancellation; what I received was:

Oh my! The review can of course be put on hold.

Please let me know what was wrong or missing. I will go over my notes and re-read, and re-do the review to get it right.

Sometimes I leave out some points in a story in favor of trying to preserve some elements of surprise for the reader; but in this case it sounds like I missed too many and was too general.

Please let me know specifics, and I’ll work at identifying where in my notes I went awry, and will redo the reading and notes as needed.

Lovely offer, so what’s the problem?

I’ll go into specifics of a few things below, but ‘missing a few points’ was not my interpretation.

In fact, when I started to make a mental list of the ‘few points,’ I quickly realized that the entire book had been left out, and a completely generic Romance review was what had been supplied.

If anyone knows Pride’s Children, they know that it is NOT a Romance, was never intended to be one, and misses every trope that a Romance reader expects from a satisfying Romance. Romance is a perfectly viable category with dedicated writers and MANY more readers than literary fiction – and enviably lucrative – but I don’t write Romance.

I’ll let a reviewer for PURGATORY comment:

…And the development of the central attraction isn’t a “romance,” except in the sense that a Jane Austen novel could be called one (and allowing for differences in setting and literary conventions between the early 19th and early 21st centuries, a comparison to Austen isn’t entirely inapt!), nor is it predictable or syrupy…

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R37NLDE4OZP2AG/

In fact, as much as I respect Romance writers and readers for knowing and getting what they like to read, I have been fighting Pride’s Children being categorized as a Romance everywhere that crops up, including Goodreads, where the librarians refused to do anything because some READERS had chosen to include PC on a shelf with ‘romance’ somewhere in its title.

Pride’s Children is a LOVE STORY embedded in a mainstream trilogy set in the intersection between Hollywood and writers

From the same reviewer:

…This is solid general fiction of a very high order, in the best Realist tradition, exploring human interactions and relationships between enormously well-drawn characters who come fully alive, as real, intensely human people. These relationships do include romantic attraction and love (and even have it as a central focus), but it’s not the sole focus; family relationships, friendships, working relationships, etc. -some healthy and some not– come under the lens as well…

Op. cit.

And now for a few review details, so you can judge for yourself

The whole mention given to Bianca, arguably the most important character in NETHERWORLD, is “And then there’s Andrew’s film co-star Bianca, whose debut film is starting to make its mark on the world,” followed by a single reference to ‘the dance between these three’ and one to ‘a triangle of connections, ambition, and obsessions that embraces scheming, film industry politics, and love and friendship alike.’

The rest of the review tries, generically, to make a two-character Romance out of the friendship between Andrew and Kary: “… recommended pick for prior enthusiasts of the tale, who will find the ongoing growth and connections between Irish megastar Andrew O’Connell [sic] recluse author Dr. Kary Ashe continues to introduce challenge and revised their visions of life…” and “…As each makes their way through dates, other life connections, and events that test their talents and perspectives, readers receive an intriguing contrast in personalities and love that will especially delight prior followers of Andrew and Kary’s worlds.”

The ending tells libraries that NETHERWORLD has “… thought-provoking escapades and interpersonal conundrums where all the characters are both villain and hero will welcome the nicely-developed tension and psychological insights…”

All the characters are both villain and hero?

Excuse me while I gag. The whole point of Pride’s Children is that integrity and morality are NOT relative, not subjective, not ‘opinions,’ but fraught choices with consequences even for those who don’t get to choose.

What do authors do with bad editorial reviews?

Distinguish here first between the REVIEW being bad and the BOOK being so bad the review which says that is good, but this can be irrelevant unless the book is so hyped people go to the original source to see what was actually written, which could lead to a firestorm of sorts until the internet finds the next flaming pile.

The most obvious and most common response is to find some chunk of words in the review that can be used as a pull quote – words to put on the cover or in an ad – that are TECHNICALLY not a lie, because those words, in that order, appear in the review, even if the review context clearly negates the pull quote. Easy? “…one of the best thrillers…” from an original “Nowhere NEAR one of the best thrillers…” Usually a bit more subtle, but you get the idea.

Or if lucky or money is available, a bad review can be buried by several good ones. With the additional fillip of implying the unwanted review is somehow sour grapes.

Dropping the review completely means the loss of whatever was paid for it, which is sometimes the only option.

Arguing about the review in public, WITH names, is best left to well-paid PR pros, because of all the positive and negative ramifications. ‘Going to war’ is expensive, with pitfalls.

Another option, mine, is to use the review carefully as a cautionary example of what can happen, for the newbies to learn from and more experience writers to commiserate about. And then to put it behind you. And, of course, never use that reviewer or editorial review service again.

I briefly considered one OTHER final option

Complaining to the service managers or owners about the review and the reviewer.

Not probably the best option – the reviewer may have been bringing in cash for the service for a while.

Possibly an excuse for the review service to dump the reviewer (usually added to other examples of the reviewer cutting corners or losing their touch).

But extremely dangerous to the individual unarmored AUTHOR, because people won’t necessarily remember that there was some justification for a complaint, only that a certain AUTHOR (those horrible people) had the nerve to complain about a PROFESSIONAL REVIEWER, followed by closing of the ranks of the pros and more complaints about, in this case, entitled indie AUTHORs.

So I’ll stop at ‘cautionary tale,’ hope I get some feedback and not too many people trolling (if you are not a regular, that behavior will get you banned before leading to any posting of your comment; regulars are welcome because I know they will be civil).

I can’t be the only one unhappy with a paid-for review that seems entirely unrelated to the book.

Am I?

**********

Oh, and don’t forget to BUY the book (or going to Booksprout to request an ARC if you are even considering writing a review), so you can make your own decision if my happiness with NETHERWORLD, and especially its ending, is a crock.

**********

Surviving an extraordinary month in one piece

So many places you can be!

WHERE HAVE I BEEN AND WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING?

I am just coming out of a period that started, really, far before Sep. 26 when I went to Stanford U. hospitals for a badly needed surgical repair.

It involved taking care of myself in ways I had to learn, going through all kinds of medical tests to make sure that someone with ME/CFS (me) would be a suitable candidate for surgery at all, and then getting there at the right time without the coronavirus putting a stop to the whole parade: I literally had a covid PCR test on Sunday Sep. 25 in a parking lot in Redwood City – all ready for the hospital the next morning – and being fairly sure I was not sick, but knowing that the juggernaut would come to a shuddering halt if I happened to be and be asymptomatic.

And it would take months to get another surgical date, months I did not want to have to face.

Husband and I had isolated in our apartment in the retirement community for over two weeks, going out for doctor’s appointments, and husband going down to dining to retrieve takeout every night for dinner so we wouldn’t be exposed to the cases that seem to randomly infect this place now that people are being so less careful with masks and gatherings.

I had literally been waiting 2.5 years for this surgery date, since I needed it just as the pandemic was getting going in 2020, and anyone who could avoid going to a hospital did so.

Before going to my medical destiny, I published NETHERWORLD:

The Pride and Joy – NETHERWORLD

It was finished in March, but the complications of the health stuff kept me from focusing on cover and formatting, and I finally got help from friends, Bill and Teresa Peschel of Peschel Press in Hershey, PA. Bill kindly and accurately produced the cover from my notes and comments (patient man!), and responded to many rounds of requests for corrections to the interior formatting of the paperback – and I did the final touches to the ebook cover and interior produced by Scrivener on Sep. 18 and 19 and uploaded the files, which Amazon accepted with relative alacrity, making me no longer a one-book author.

And then came the surgery and its aftermath – the HORROR

The operation went fine, and the results have been stellar and relatively painless, and most everything now works properly, and all of it as well as possible.

But pain management went flooey – starting with side effects of medication changes the week before, and then continuing for the most pain I’ve ever had, for weeks, accompanied by side effects from other new medications designed to help, to finally me getting off EVERY NEW MED, and back to my long-time stable pain medications from before – and them slowly being enough.

I tried to tell them I’m a non-standard patient; I thought they had listened.

Nope.

Don’t know what I’ll do if I ever need to do something like this again, but there will be some very interesting and thorough conversations somewhere along the line: ME/CFS patients are NOT normal patients.

It’s over, I will be released from restrictions in a week

and I will be able to use our warm therapy pool, and then work up to riding my tricycle, and longer trips that the bare minimum rides on Maggie, my Airwheel S8 (a bicycle seat on a hoverboard).

And after getting my brain back these last few days, and catching up enough on sleep to be coherent (pain makes it IMPOSSIBLE to get rest), I have a big paperwork task to finish and send to the accountants.

And I will then be able to start up my new Macbook (I got the midnight blue one), and plug away at organizing the upgraded software I bought it for, and get going to finish the trilogy by writing volume 3, working title LIMBO.

I will be back to whatever passes for normal in this body and this household.

Nothing has yet changed on the research horizons

Rather, it seems that every day some scientist group has a new theory about what may be going wrong in the aftermath of viral infections such as Covid-19 and ME/CFS, and they want research money to find out if they’re right.

One of them will figure it out – the economic impact of millions of people coming down with Long Covid cannot be tolerated.

Except for the diehard holdouts, most doctors are starting to believe that post-viral illnesses are real and not psychological, or hysterical. They have no clue how to help us that gets down to basics and CURES us yet, but they are starting to treat the symptoms and minimize some of the miseries.

There is where HOPE lies: enough scientists committed to figuring it out, supported by research funds. Whether it is too late for people like me who’ve been ill for decades won’t be known for a while, and indeed the research horizon, my husband cautions, is more likely to be five to ten years than anything much faster: the coronavirus does an incredible amount of damage.

Some of it may not be fixable. I may not be fixable. Which would be a bitter conclusion I’m not ready to face yet.

All us post-viral illness folk still have to make it through the days

If you have it, my sympathies. If you have managed to avoid long covid, please be careful – if you get covid, your chances are estimated at 10-30% to not get better.

Have sympathy if you are not ill or have not lost someone dear – the tragedies are endless.

And send good vibes, pray, or cross your fingers – because I can’t wait to get back to spending my daily tiny allotment of energy FINISHING Pride’s Children.

**********

If you read mainstream fiction, or psychological literary fiction, and haven’t read NETHERWORLD, it’s on Amazon in ebook and print. And in KU.

I would love to hear what you think – especially about whether it ends suitably.

And you can sign up to be informed about matters connected with the books at prideschildren.com.

**********

Pride’s Children: PURGATORY fans – NETHERWORLD sale!

The SALE is on!

In a week the price will be back to $9.99.

How to read and review NETHERWORLD

PRIDE’S CHILDREN: NETHERWORLD IS WAITING FOR REVIEWS

If you hurry, you might be the first to post a review – poor NETHERWORLD is sitting on Amazon without a single one as I write this.

I’m slowly getting over the aftereffects of surgery, so I will be more proactive in the coming months.

FIRST SALE FOR NETHERWORLD BEGINS OCTOBER 19

because Amazon needs its price to not have changed for 30 days, and I have set up a Kindle Countdown Deal for my readers who follow this blog: you can even buy it for $2.99 in ebook on Amazon US that day (unfortunately, countdowns are a US thing, too).

OTHER ways to read and review:

IF you want to download an ARC

follow this link to the books’ site, and it will tell you how to join Booksprout and become a reader/reviewer (they even have other books you might like to download and read). While you’re there, if you haven’t clicked ‘Follow’ before, feel free to do so now – it is the best way to get details about the book delivered to your inbox, and to hear about sales in a timely manner.

I’m using this method because I am still not well enough to handle the back and forth of individual communication about ARCs; if you want that, it’s going to be about a month before I can commit to doing it (it takes a lot of work on my part).

I would appreciate it very much if you join, download and read, and review – and it will be much faster for you.

IF you would rather buy

simply mosey over to Amazon’s page for Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD, and choose ebook or print. It is a bit longer than PURGATORY, but the ebook is the same price.

And, of course, I would still love a review!

**********

It’s that easy.

But be warned: I write long books.

But then: that may be partly why my readers love them.

I’m slowly getting back to functional, but surgery isn’t easy for someone like me. All anyone really needs to know is that it seems to have been successful, and I’m working on the pain part, and can’t wait until I’m back to what passes for normal for me.

**********

UPDATE March 26, 2023: Back to writing, finally! LIMBO is moving!

The reviews and one rating for NETHERWORLD so far – 9 – are all 5*. I didn’t expect that – but I am honored.

**********

Thanks to those who go beyond

Who will tell you what to read?

WHAT YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF YOU CAN’T EVER READ

Seems such an obvious statement, but being invisible is a big problem for authors – getting the title of your book out there is a constant pressure, and you become very fond of those who make the effort on your blog, their blog, a writing site, a reading site, or any place where readers who would like YOUR books congregate.

And then something has to persuade them to read enough words to get to a ‘Call to Action,’ which can be as simple as a recommendation followed by a link.

The problem of recommendations

If the subject of what you’re reading comes up naturally, I don’t find it too difficult to ask a few questions about what someone new to me likes to read.

I rattle off a couple of favorites of mine – say Jane Eyre and the Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries and maybe Dune – and watch to see if the listener’s reaction is fight or flight.

No one likes pushy authors, those who insist their books are ‘for everyone.’ Because it’s not a very believable statement in general, though people who are glad they read Jane Eyre have the most flexible mindset (which is why it gets so much attention). The enjoyment, or even that the story was self-chosen, are the keys – such a reader probably plowed (or ploughed) through similar long-lasting books.

I tried reading A Confederacy of Dunces – an award winner with a good author story (John Kennedy Toole committed suicide when he couldn’t find a publisher, his mother persuaded a legendary literary agent to champion the book, and it won the Pulitzer Prize), but had to force myself to finish Chapter 1. Because it may be brilliant, but it made my gorge rise and choke me. ‘Icky’ is the best I can remember about that long-ago attempt I have no desire to repeat. I don’t get very far into Lolita, either, for similar reasons. Or The Catcher in the Rye.

I can’t imagine their authors spending time with those characters, however good the writing may be.

So I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, and am glad I don’t have to assign either book to, say, a class of high school juniors (assuming teachers still get to make those choices), and then have to talk about it in class.

It’s personal for the author

And books can become a personal crusade favorite for readers who then recommend, gift, or lend something they loved.

So, if you LIKED a book, take a moment and do SOMETHING to encourage the author to keep it up:

• Rate the book
• Review and rate it
• Blog about it
• Recommend it to a friend
• Leave nice words on the author’s websites
• Buy an extra copy to lend
• Send a copy to a friend or family member
• Use as gifts
• Ask your library to order the book(s)
• Write a guide
• Mention your favorite parts
• Tell people you can’t wait for the next book in the trilogy
• Hire a band to parade in DC in costume
• Anything you would like if YOU had written the book.
• Be your most creative.
• Give a copy to any medical personnel who have no empathy for diseases like ME/CFS – this will allow them to live the life of one – without actually having to get it, or Long Covid, or Post-polio Syndrome, or Lyme disease – or any one of a bunch of post-viral syndromes and similar misunderstood ‘invisible’ diseases.

Crusade for indie books in principle by doing something a little beyond your normal response – the author will be delighted.

It’s not the money (though adequate royalties of around $6 per any version I have are about three times larger than many traditional authors make per book) – I crave the readers. Thanks!

**********

Don’t forget – the Pride’s Children NETHERWORLD ebook is IN KU, and

The NETHERWORLD ebook goes on sale (Kindle Countdown Deal) for a week starting October 19 – lowest price you will find it.

**********

NETHERWORLD ebook is live – prideschildren (dot) com

And the print version is ‘In review’ at Amazon

If you are interested in my fiction, and haven’t signed up at its site, click on Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD‘s announcement post for the ebook – but the print version is already up, cover and all, and Amazon has notified me it may take 3 days.

The ebook took ONE HOUR to be approved, late last night – I guess no one else was up!

Details at the link – not everyone who comes here is interested in fiction.

Check there, too, for the details of the two Kindle Countdown Deals that are set up – one for PURGATORY, Sep. 21, and one for NETHERWORLD, Oct. 19. Best way to pick up a copy of either.

**********

Should blogging identities be kept separate?

You can’t help but be connected!

SHOULD YOU MIX YOUR AUDIENCES?

I’m an acquired taste.

This blog has 967 followers as of today – and I’ve been at it since 2012.

I’m two posts away from 700 – and no, that’s not why I’m blogging today.

Many blogs I follow have posts every day. I don’t necessarily want to do that, even if I could.

The blog I really care about is the one for the Pride’s Children books, prideschildren.com (I did have the sense to buy the domain way back in the early years, along with this one and a couple of others I keep just in case, such as the one with my full name).

But PridesChildren.com has 40 followers, and this blog has 732, and I’m wondering if I’m somehow neglecting to get readers who come HERE to continue on to the PC blog – assuming some of them read mainstream fiction, or, Oh, Joy!, have read some of my short fiction and want something more.

With limited energy, a staple of my life, I have to choose every day that isn’t too severely brainfogged, where to do some writing:

Where does the (writing) time go?

When one of the volumes of Pride’s Children is being written, that’s where the efforts mostly go, unless I physically can’t accomplish much because the time is short.

When I have something specific to say or to record for posterity (which often includes my own odd brand of writing advice), I blog at Liebjabberings (here). I’m actually considering writing a book of advice for writers – if there is any interest in my coping mechanisms.

And when I want to look polished and professional (even though I usually write in PJs) and am reminding myself that I have one chance to make a good impression with the fiction I care the most about, I blog at Pride’s Children. Or when I have something to say about a launch, or a sale, or an award.

And there’s always something on both sites that needs updating or polishing – feel free to weigh in.

Do I already have some crossovers?

Yes, but not as many as I expected.

So I’m making an open invitation: try out my short fiction here, go follow me there (or on Amazon at my author page), and you’ll know when I have a publishing event you might be interested in.

Other things to do

Contact me (See the About page) – ask me anything, or suggest a topic for a post. I love questions, and would be happy to write about something (assuming I have anything to contribute).

Comment on a post – I look at them as conversation starters, not articles of truth. Love chatting.

Recommend me to a friend, as a blogger or fictioneer.

Read something – try out the short fiction. Or a favorite post of mine. Or dig into the old ones with the strange titles.

Why now? Because NETHERWORLD is so close, and I’d love to give it a good party sendoff. And because sales are short-term events, and I’m figuring out timing that would be most beneficial – for more people to acquire ‘the taste.’

**********

It’s that time: typo hunting time

THE PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD

In the publishing of the next book, every self-published author has to face the fact that typos exist, are blamed on the author (who has ultimate responsibility), and are as hard to eliminate completely as cockroaches.

What is a practical limit for the number of typos?

A little checking provides a couple of rough guidelines:

1. A typo per thousand words is too many.
2. Three typos in ten thousand words is proofing to a professional standard.

That standard means that, in a novel of 187,000 words, one could discover 56 typos – a huge number – and still be within professional quality. But it’s a twenty-chapter book, and that is only 2-3 typos per chapter, which doesn’t sound quite so bad.

The kind of errors matters

Using the wrong word isn’t a typo – it’s a mistake. It often comes from not knowing a word well enough, and not looking up the correct usage if you’re not certain.

There are a number of these anthills to die on, and experienced writers will know the difference between may and might, principal and principle, and verb affect/effect and noun affect/effect.

No one but beginners should have problems with its and it’s, or their/they’re/there. A professional writer needs to be certain about the basics, and have a cheat sheet for the ones which cause them trouble personally.

And it never hurts to check again, reinforcing what you know, challenging what you think you know. I am getting very humble in that department, as my damaged brain keeps throwing me the almost right word, I find it slightly odd – and have the sense to check. The bigger your vocabulary, the more chances for this to trip you up.

Leaving out a short word is a typo – a good friend just caught me leaving out ‘to’ from the infinitive ‘to commit’ – thank you!

The little shorties which are the wrong word, but are an actual word, are one of my peccadilloes: it, if, is, in – it is so easy to type the wrong consonant!

Transposing a couple of letters or leaving off a final letter – happen frequently to all typists, and can be very hard to catch. Sometimes the best way is to have the robot voice of your computer or program read you your own deathless prose – and make you giggle. My current typo-in-hiding is leaving the final ‘r’ off ‘your,’ which sounds funny when read back to me – YMMV.

Paying for professional proofing

does not guarantee perfection, unfortunately. It may be worth it but I think it doesn’t teach you anything. You’ll still make mistakes and typos, and have to figure out how to make the corrections stick in your writer’s mind, if they’re the kind you can learn from such as using a word incorrectly.

If you accept the corrections made by a pro too quickly, you may not move the problems into long-term memory properly – and so will continue to make that kind of flub. It’s worth taking some time to ask yourself why they happened, and whether you can make a permanent self-fix.

And you’re still the one with your name on the book.

So wish me well on what is the final proofing:

Sending out ARCs I think are perfect, and getting back the little niggly (and wonderfully welcome), “I liked it – but on page #n, you have a typo…”

Embarrassing – but I am grateful for every catch.

And vow to learn from them.

Can’t be perfect – but I can always become better.

**********