naomi_jay | Entries tagged with pondering

... It wasn't as good as the dream the other night where I had a farm in the country and kept chickens, but in it I was talking to someone about my writing career and I said to them, "Until I've been published traditionally and seen my book in a bookshop, I won't feel like I've succeeded as a writer."

And I woke up and was like, holy crap, that's true.

And now I'm confused.

Six months into the self-publishing experiment, I'm no clearer than I was back in January as to how I feel about it. I've had a good month this month, but I'm not actually making any money yet. Reading around, it's easy to find success stories from self-published authors. It's the ones doing well who are talking the loudest, which is fair enough, but I think it creates this false illusion that self-publishing is easy, financially rewarding, and creatively satisfying.

I'm not sure if that's true for me. I don't like structure, but I need it to function with any degree of efficiency. The structure, say, that's provided by working to deadlines with editors and cover artists. Left to my own devices, I become incredibly unfocused, I start too many projects and finish none of them, and then I feel bad about myself and decide I'm doomed.

So I've made a decision. WILD is staying where it is until the end of the year at least. That gives it six months in the indie market. It had a good first month and hopefully word of mouth will kick in. I tried getting WILD published traditionally and there were no takers, so I don't see any harm in keeping it out there. People are buying it, hopefully they will also read it and have an opinion on it. I'll also self-publish the two sequels.

The short stories (UNGRATEFUL DEAD, PAINLESS, THE BARKING OF DOGS) will stay where they are. I honestly don't care if I turn a profit from those or not; it's just supposed to be a nice, risk-free, low-cost way for people to find my work and maybe buy more if they like the short stories.

So, that leaves NIGHT AND CHAOS. I'm in two minds about this. I love this story and I love the plans I have for the rest of it. But it hasn't really taken off. I can speculate as to why, but there's no way to be sure. So my two thoughts are either:

A) Take it off Amazon, rework it a little, and submit it as it is to epublishers. Carina accept previously self-published titles; I'm sure Damnation Books and Eternal Press do as well, and I think it would be a good fit for any of them.

or

B) Take it down, work it into a full-length novel and submit it around then. Agents, epubs, small presses... Wherever. I'd love to have some titles with Imajinn Books (this has been a secret dream of mine for years, ever since I discovered Keri Arthur and Lilith Saintcrow's titles there). I actually originally submitted AFTERLIFE to them, but they were in the process of moving offices at the time and I would have had to wait a year before I heard anything back, so decided to try elsewhere.

I'm leaning towards B. I don't think I'll get round to it this year, but I do think a full-length novel is what I want. I can work in what I've already written of Blood and Bones fairly easily, and frankly the more I think about it, the more I want to rewrite the end of NIGHT AND CHAOS anyway.

I'm going to reassess at the end of June (ooh, four whole days!), but I'm 90% certain I'll go with Plan B. Hopefully the good reviews NIGHT AND CHAOS has already had would impress/interest a publisher. So we'll see. I need to update my to-do list again now...

Current Mood: chipper

I'm really obsessed with perfume. It seems logical to me I should make my own. Reading Jessica Verday's The Hollow has sealed this decision for me. Rummaging around online, it seems like it's not actually that expensive to do. I just to find the initial equipment to get started, and most of the websites I've found so far are either defunct or based in the US. I'm convinced there must be somewhere local I can get what I need - Boots should stock essential oils, I know a couple of shops that do/did stock fragrance oils. Then it's just getting the odds and ends for mixing, storing, etc. There must be a UK website somewhere, right?

I have this crazy dream of making enough money from my writing that I can quit, move to the sea, and spent my weeks writing and my weekends making perfume, and I have an open fireplace and a cat. Maybe a donkey too. I think the closest I'll get is probably just ... well, what I'm doing now, which is not living by the sea, writing in the evenings, and owning various snakes. But if I add perfume-making into the mix, I'm one step closer to my dream.

Current Mood: contemplative

There's an interesting review/discussion going on over at Dear Author right now. Jill Sorenson reviews The Midnight Hunt by LL Raand and rates it a DNF (did not finish):
.
The raw animalism and overwhelming masculinity of the characters, disturbed me. About halfway through, I quit reading.

Sorenson opens her review by noting that I’m not a lesbian. My opinion on your character’s sexuality or how you choose to portray it carries little or no weight,

As a straight female writer who's best known (if known at all) for SILVER KISS, a novel featuring a strong gay cast and starring a lesbian werewolf, I find this comment fascinating. The implication seems to be that unless you're gay yourself, you can't offer any constructive criticism on a gay novel. It's like apologising in advance and giving the author permission to dismiss everything Sorenson says.

In the comment thread, one commenter says that I think if you don’t like lesbian sex then you really shouldn’t be reading and reviewing the book, which hits me as drastically unfair. Leaving aside that I've read plenty of straight sex scenes that squicked me (Anita Blake, I'm looking at you), since when did being a lesbian become a requirement for reading lesbian fiction? Anymore than, say being American Indian was a requirement for reading books about American Indians or (pushing the point, I know), being a vampire was a requirement for reading a vampire novel?

Another interesting comment from the thread:

...as a straight reviewer of lesbian for a long time now, it is hard to review a book in which sexuality and gender roles are not a personal experience. I’ve felt the same as you in that I’ve wondered if I’ve had the right to review lesbian as a straight person. And I’m sure I’ve gone off the mark or said some things that a lesbian would be like, “what?”

I don't want to dismiss anyone's opinions here, but it irritates me to think, whilst there's a massive market for m/m romances read largely by straight women, that there's an apparent feeling that lesbian books should only be for lesbian readers. For one thing, that would mean I shouldn't be writing any more Urban Wolf books and that would make me sad. For another, I like to think anyone could pick up SILVER KISS and enjoy it, regardless of who or what they are.

In any case, it seems to me that Sorenson's reasons for disliking The Midnight Hunt are nothing to do with the characters' sexuality (she frequently reviews lesbian fiction for Dear Author), and all to do with the execution of the premise and the flaws she found in the plot:

I also thought Sylvan’s characterization was weak. Weres are hypersexual beings, needing constant physical release. If they don’t mate, or at least copulate, they can become violent and unstable ...Sylvan is reluctant to see to her own needs ... Sylvan decides she’d rather be alone forever than risk losing a partner.

The Alpha’s sexual frustration is bad for the pack. Her needy scent can trigger a snarling hump-fest by sending all of the females into heat and causing dominant members to fight for mating rights. I had trouble believing that Sylvan would continue to deny herself release and jeopardize the safety of her pack.

And whilst she does say that she struggled with the portrayal of sexuality in the book, again I don't think that means she's measuring all lesbian fiction by this one novel, and that all lesbian fiction is squicky to her. And the "don't like it, don't read it," mantra just pisses me off. It's decidedly unhelpful.

Someone else asks:

... where is that line between other-ing a character because you come from a certain POV and honestly speaking about your ability to empathize with a book?

Now this is an issue that I've seen before. Anyone remember #racefail? The YA Whitewashing Affair? It's so hard to take a sensitive subject of any kind - be it sexuality or race - and bring it in a public arena where personal opinion comes into play. A book is subjective. People will bring their own experiences and expectations to it, and there's nothing a writer can do about that except write the best book they can and hope. But if you comment negatively on a book that contains one of these sensitive subjects, it seems that people will immediately assume your issue is with that subject, not the writing, the characterisation, or whatever. They assume you're saying "this gay book didn't work for because it's a gay book," not "this gay book didn't work for me because I couldn't connect with the protagonist."

It feels like an impossible problem to solve to me. One of the things I've worried most about with the Urban Wolf books is whether my gay characters will ring true, given my own sexuality, and whether I'll be judged as the author because of my sexuality. In the end I kind of made peace with it by deciding that all I could do was write characters who felt true to me and let the readers judge the job I'd done. So far, the response has been great, so I guess I did fine.

I was delighted to see The Midnight Hunt up for review on Dear Author, A) because it's on my TBR pile, and B) because I'm very interested in reading lesbian UF/PNR, and I don't see the genre given a lot of exposure on mainstream blogs. It would be a massive shame if reviews like Sorenson stopped reviewing lesbian fiction because she feels, as a straight woman, she can't offer a fair review.

*I tried so hard to come up with something snappier than that for a title

Current Mood: contemplative

I'm probably a bit premature, really, since NIGHT AND CHAOS is still just a baby and hasn't been out on it's own long enough for me to make any solid conclusions, but still, that's never stopped me before.

So I've been spending a fair bit of time on the various Amazon forums looking for places to promote NIGHT AND CHAOS, and seen the same situation over and over. There are two types of forums. One - indie threads started by indie authors for promotional purposes that are apparently only frequented by other indie authors there to promote themselves. I've seen very little evidence of readers popping in and saying "I will totally buy this book, kthnx!" The other type is where readers have started a topic along the lines of "I'm looking for a book like X, please recommend something," which is then drive-by spammed by indie authors yelling READ MY BOOK EVEN THOUGH IT'S TOTALLY UNRELATED TO YOUR REQUEST OMG!!! This obviously creates a lot of negative feeling, and plenty of forums which specifically state they're not interested in what indie authors have to say.

I don't know how to get around this. I engage in quite a few of these forums (mostly on Amazon UK), and I'm so, so careful to keep Reader Nome separate from Writer Nome. If someone asks for recommendations, I'll offer them without mentioning my own work. If someone's looking for indie reads or offering indie promo, I'll post about NIGHT AND CHAOS there, but I'm convinced only other indie authors are visiting these places, since I'm not seeing a bump in my Amazon rankings that would indicate people are responding to such promo.

It's frustrating, but I completey get the reader perspective, since some of these indie authors are freaking everywhere and being all, "buy my book about communist gypsy bear-baiters in 1980s Sweden even though you asked for a recommendation on time-travel romances, dammit!" and it is pretty silly.

I've sent NIGHT AND CHAOS to a few places requesting reviews, but only heard back from three saying they'll read it. Whether that's because it's indie or because it's a novella, I don't know, so I'm not worrying about that too much. Because this is other lesson I'm learning: this is a long game. Quantity counts as much as quality; from what I can see, the indie authors having the most success are the ones with plenty of books available. I'm sure there are exceptions, but this seems to be the rule. Now, I don't have a massive backlist of novels, so I can't shove a ton of stuff on the Kindle and make myself more visible this way. Wild will be ready to go up there in a few weeks, but Wild is ... contentious, and not everyone is going to fall over themselves to read a YA werewolf urban fantasy where the heroine takes drugs, gets slapped around by her boyfriend, and generally has a miserable time.

Anyway. Where was I? Long game. Yes. Yes! Word of mouth is key too, I think, which is why I'd quite like some more reviews on Amazon. I'm taking a very long view with this game. Although ultimately my aim is be making enough money off Kindle sales to go part-time at the day-job, I don't want to put out a bunch of crap just because I can. I'd rather take my time and build an audience because I've got quality books available than because I spammed the hell out of people and put up 1002 shitty books.

And I don't plan to self-publish everything I write, either. Obviously my Urban Wolf books will always be with QueeredFiction, not just for contractual reasons, but because I love my publisher and editor there. Despite the fact that my sales with Damnation Books aren't great, I'd also prefer to keep my Shoregrave/Ethan Banning stuff with them too, because I see it as part of building a brand and a name, and I think DB are a publisher with big plans and sensible methods of putting those plans into action. Anything I write as

tessa_morelock , I will try to publish with epubs and small presses, because romance writing is not my strong suit and I don't trust myself to do a good job without the input of good editors. Not that my urban fantasy is world-beatingly awesome, but I've been writing and reading it long enough to feel more confident going it alone there.

Anyway, these are my conclusions thus far.

Current Mood: contemplative

Profile

Dirty Little Whirlwind

February 2018

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28

Syndicate

Style Credit

Style: Chocolate Rose for Funky Circles by ninetydegrees
Resources: Dirty Flamingo

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jun. 14th, 2025 09:30 am

One Hot Mess

100% Medically Accurate

Entries tagged with pondering

I had this dream last night...

Making Scents

Lesbian werewolves on Dear Author*

Reflections on the Indie Thing Thus Far