Adding a New Venture

Since it is so tricky putting books on sale DIY – and since I have several friends who have already written books – I started asking around about office space. Today, while I was on Main Street in E’town – I hit gold on my very first try.

The office space is large. It is AFFORDABLE, which amazed me. It is in an old Hotel…like the Iroquois Club…and the energy is marvelous. The place fairly hums with positive vibes and the desire to succeed.

The main thing an office will do for me, is make me focus. I can work on my books for 8 hours a day, instead of 18. Then when I’m home, I’m home. Not working, not marketing.

Now, I will tell you that my Real Life is COMPLICATED. So it is very hard to put boundries between when Kat is Working and when Kat is Home.

I already have 3 clients.

And then there are those odd serendipitous events that are re-enforced with mini-coincidences. Zoe Winters Blog today was a poke in the ribs. ‘Honoring Self’ is something that women don’t do enough. Men don’t have a problem with it. A guy will go overboard to pamper himself.

A woman will worry herself sick over it.

The Good News & The Bad News

The good news: In spite of a 5-day blitz of the laptop being FUBAR I managed to get the damn thing running again. I didn’t lose any files ( ’cause I had backups.)  This minor miracle meant that I could finally get the PDF of the ‘Let’s Do Lunch’ interior printed out.

It is SO pretty! These little dropcaps and everything. BUT I’m going to read it again and clean the hell out of it. One More Time. It might take a week. (EEEEKKKK!!!!!)

The bad news: 1 copy sold of LDL and StM on Amazon. El Zippo for the other sites.

I R depressed about that. (How depressed?) I haven’t signed into Kindleboards much. I’m also damn picky which posts I look at when I do. I’m not going to ‘waller’ in it – no matter how tempting that may be.

July was PHENOMENAL!

What I need are some great reveiws for a kickstart.

Tweeting & Tweaking

I joined #ShareTheLoveChain from Women’s Nest. #SampleSunday I enjoyed over 100 hits on the Discarded Scene from ‘Let’s Do Lunch’.

That was a big WOW!

However, it showed me that I’m not as organized as I should be. I’m still thinking of my primary blog as a personal discussion, when it’s my primary website.

I’m still working on lnking everything on Jordan’s Croft to the relevant sites. There are hundreds of opportunities for linking. (See the sentence above for an example.) There are links to the books on the character sketches.

Keeping up with the details is getting more complicated all the time. I’m looking around at my office, with the Whiteboard acting as a giant stickynote. There needs to be a better way to schedule my time…or maybe I should start scheduling my time.

Instead of saying “Mondy I clean house” maybe it should be something like “Sunday is #SampleSunday” and “Monday I update Jordan’s Croft with a 500 word post, write 1k words AND clean house.”

Something to ponder.

New Cover for ‘Let’s Do Lunch’

New Cover by Create Speace

This is the new cover for ‘Let’s Do Lunch’ – I’m so happy to have one that reflects the contemporary nature of the story.

 

I’m also pleased to say that the excerpt from “Lunch” is the most frequently hit post on my ‘Jordan’s Croft’ blog.

 

‘Let’s Do Lunch’ Discarded Scene is from McTaggart’s point of view. He is sitting in Open Group Therapy with several other soldiers, including Colonel James Bennette retired Green Baret.

 

The group challenges McTaggart to ‘get a job’ so he will stop sitting at home feeling sorry for himself. Bennett offers McTaggart a job as a gardener.

 

Unfortunately, this scene was one of my ‘darlings’ that I was forced to kill when I dropped all the non-estentail PoV scenes.

 

 

FUN TIMES!

I suppose I shouldn’t be squeeing about this – it is far too early. But I’m writing a new contemporary and I’m having SO MUCH FUN!

I’ve posted the ROUGH draft to Authonomy.com to get some feedback from my trusted readers. So far, I’m on the right track.

You can take a peek here: “Tempest in a Teapot” 

A widow and a soldier-turned-biker on a collision course with the one thing they have in common – the death of her husband.

Widowed and alone for the summer, Wendy Truesdale decides to pass on the life-long role of grieving widow. She has the opportunity and the drive to reinvent herself by turning her Victorian home into a teahouse.

First Sergeant Leo Stephenson is at Fort Knox, waiting the knee replacement that will end his military life. Wounded, jaded and ‘fresh out of give-a-shit’ Leo has nothing he wants to live for, besides his Harley and his next drink.

A fender-bender brings Wendy and Leo together – both on a collision course with the one thing they have in common – the death of Major Roger Truesdale, Wendy”s late husband.

The 99 Cent Ghetto (via Zoe Winters, Paranormal Romance Author)

Zoe Winters on the ‘race to the bottom’ of e-book pricing.

I agree with her 100% – the pressure to sell books at $.99 is author created.

I also think that Amazon’s 70% royalty was engineered to get authors to raise prices. Why else would they pick the $2.99 price point?

My books continue to sell in a steady trickle at the $2.99 price point. I am content with that. When I feel like giving them away, I’ll do that at Smashwords like I did last month. Plenty of people took advantage of the free short stories and novels.

I WILL point out, just because it’s true, that Zoe and Joe both got their start at the $.99 price point. Zoe an unknown with novellas and Joe with books he couldn’t sell to NY.

However, they didn’t STAY there. As soon as they got the momentum they left the ghetto behind. They timed it right. My hat is off to both of them.

The conversation is taking place here: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=5002

I'm sure I'll piss someone off with this. But it's got to be said. I know there are people out there who believe that it's only a matter of time before the uppity authors (like me) who charge an actually decent price for our work have to grovel and crawl and beg for readers at the 99 cent price point. I call bullshit. I just don't buy that there will ever come a day when all ebooks are 99 cents or free. I just don't. You can't compare it to itune … Read More

via Zoe Winters, Paranormal Romance Author

The Weaker The Better? (via Undecided)

Not sure how I found this site.

However, this is VERY interesting. It can also relate to writing ‘strong female’ characters.

One of the ‘weaknesses’ of my first novel is that Lindsey is torn between being a good daughter and being a business owner.

A reviewer expressed surprise that Lindsey didn’t like confrontations. She side-steps them with her family and her employees, which gets her into a whole lot of trouble.

The stereotype that a ‘business woman’ is hard and mean, confrontational and sarcastic is a deep one. However, it has been my experience that most women don’t like confrontations and WILL sidestep them.

But I degress – this is a good essay.

So says Carina Chocano, anyway, in Sunday's New York Times: enough with the "strong female characters," she writes, give 'em to us weak. Strangely, I think she has a point. And while I take issue with her choice of words, I think there's a lesson in here for those of us in real life, too. Where Hollywood offers us "strong female characters" who, as Chocano suggests, are "tough, cold, terse, taciturn and prone to scowling and not saying goodbye wh … Read More

via Undecided

The Results Are In – Smashwords

Photo by George Ducro

Now that the Smashwords giveaway is finished, I’ve got my totals.

Mom whipped my butt with 227 ‘sales’ of three stories.

While I had 197 copies go out,

132 of them ‘Let’s Do Lunch’

27 copies of ‘Swallow the Moon.’

Grand total = 423 copies downloaded.

I’m stunned. I’ve never seen numbers like that before. EVER!

Realistically, I can’t expect all those e-books to be read. Book hoarders typically fill their readers and never read 1/100th of what they have.

However, every one of those files had the links to our writer’s pages. There is the possiblity that a few people will read, like and spread the word.

My opinion: Mom has a following. Nearly identical numbers of her stories went out. 66 of each with 65 copies ‘Do You Have an Aunt Cecilia’ downloaded the first day.

Stay tuned to see if this translates into increased name recognition and sales down the road.