C. Litka's Blog, page 14

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 85)

Another library hold book came in, so... Another mystery. The fourth in a series of four. I haven't read the second on yet, as it had a lot more holds on it. Well, on to the book.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Rivals in the City by Y S Lee   C

This cover calls it a "Mary Quinn Mystery." I don't know if she is planning more of them or not. They used to be called "The Agency." As you may recall, the premise is that Mary Quinn was saved from the gallows for theft as a child and raised in a private school that prepares girls for a successful life as a woman in Victorian England. The best and the brightest were invited to become undercover agents, on the theory that women were often overlooked. Mary Quinn is one such agent.

In this story we return to characters central to the first story to tie up at least one loose end, though it seems like several others were left dangling. Like all the other ones I've read, the story is rather over the top, but in this installment, only the premise is. It is actually rather prodding, featuring little snapshots of Victorian London, of which the author is an expert at. The appeal of these books for me was the character of Mary Quinn, and while that is still the case, it's not so much in this book. And, as I hinted at, the premise is pretty unbelievable, and how it actually was worked was not all that well explained. And the ending, melodramatic in a classic melodramatic way, with a gun pointing at our heroine. In addition there seemed to be characters who were left hanging at the end, their fates undefined. 

I see that this series is considered YA, and that may well explain how loose its plotting is. Well, as you can see, this installment left me feeling pretty so-so about the book, and the series as a whole. The first book while over the top, was a fair bit more entertaining than this one. You would hope they'd get better as they went along. Now, while I have yet to read the second installment I don't think they have. We'll have to see how that one goes when I get it, but it won't be for months yet. I'm not holding my breath in anticipation.

The Project 2026 Inspirations Part Two

In my first installment of this series I talked about the shape and scope of the story, in this one I want to talk about its mood. 

Though I toured Scotland some 50 years ago, I have such a poor memory of my own life, that I have little authentic memories of the experience. I know some of the things I did, but far from all. Which is to say, that much of my "idea" of Scotland comes not from personal experience, but from the books set in Scotland that I've read. I have a much better memory for things like that. These books include a number of John Buchan stories, like The 39 Steps, and Huntingtower, and John MacNab, as well as a number of Compton Mackenzie stories, like Monarch of the Glen, and Whisky Galore that are also set in the Highlands of Scotland. I've tried to give my Loc Lore Rey district a sense of place like that, though it is also very different, far more forested, recalling my vacations spent in Ontario Canada's Lake of the Woods area. As I said, this is going to be another "What I did on my Summer Vacation" story, and I want to get something of that timelessness that would be spending a whole summer in a cabin in the north woods.

The emotional component, at least of the narrator, are actually drawn from a tune with lyrics by Holt Marvell (Eric Maschwitz) music by Jack Strachey called These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You), It is a melancholy song the lyrics written on a Sunday afternoon between coffee and vodka in 1936. And specifically, Ella Fitzgerald's complete 7:31 minute version on Ella and Louis Again. You can hear it HERE on YouTube, so I won't include all the lyrics here. Now, I'm not much of a poetry fellow, and no doubt the lyrics are pretty basic poetry, but the images they conjure up and the mood they create is, for some reason, so very vivid for me - in a very much 1936 way. "The Ile de France with all the gulls around it" or "The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations" or "The waiters whistling as the last bar closes" reminds me of the Paris I never knew, at least in this life. I want to bring that mood into the outlook of my narrator. That and a bit of Chet Baker's  live version of I Get Along Without You Very Well from the album Straight from the Heart, The Last Great Concert Vol ll. that you can hear HERE. Heck, that whole album. By this time in his life Chet knew heartbreak well.

I also envision a singer in the story who looks something like Julie Collins as she looks on the album cover of Strangers Again or with Joan Baez Diamonds and Rust video HERE. In short, lots of musical inspirations for Project 2026.

Otherwise, well, there is going to be a little fishing in the story, fly fishing to be exact. Never much of a fisherman, I took up fly fishing when my son got into fishing. I decided that if I wasn't going to catch fish, I might as well have fun trying, and fly fishing seemed to be an interesting way to try to catch fish in and of itself. I think I'll put a little of that into the story as well.

There are also some old favorite tropes of mine in the story, too many, in fact, but alas, as an old dog, new tricks are hard to learn.

Well these are all the ingredients that I can think of that I'm tossing into the mix for my next novel. We'll have to see what it ends up tasting like. I am hopeful it will all come together to entertain you.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 84)

 

Though I moved my L L Bean mission-style easy chair from the photo of my wall of books, it usually sits right next to it. The authors on the shelves that I can reach over, pick out, and read without having to get up from this chair include Raymond Chandler, Sax Rohmer, and P G Wodehouse. I was between library books, and so, with nothing to read, I reached out and picked one out to reread. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Joy in the Morning (AKA Jeeves in the Morning) P G Wodehouse  B+

This one is one of the middle books of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster novels, dating from 1946. In general, I like the earliest of these stories, with Right Ho Jeeves! being my favorite novel. However, uncharacteristically for me, I actually might like the Jeeves and Bertie Wooster short stories even better than the novels. The earliest stories and novels have a freshness to them. As time went on, they became more and more formulaic as Wodehouse continued to churn out these and other books for five decades. This book in particular is very densely written, and while it has its share of laugh out loud lines - one of the characters is a writer and Wodehouse has a lot to say about writers - I found it was sometimes slow going because it was so wordy. Clever, but wordy. The reason for this wordiness, I suspect is that Wodehouse had six years to write it. 

As it happened Wodehouse was living in France when the Nazis invaded France and he ended up interned for the duration of the war. Indeed, he got into some very hot water in England when he agreed to appear on a German radio broadcast, intending to assure his fans that he was alright, but it was considered in England paramount to treason for aiding and abetting the Germans. He lived in the US after the war. In any event, he had six years to go over and polish this novel, and it shows, for better or worse.

The story is typical, and nothing too original for P G. Actually its rather loosely constructed, with Jeeves running the show. He's helping Bertie's uncle Percy by marriage (to Aunt Agatha) to strike a business deal. This task brings Bertie to a Steeple Bumpleigh. Most are characters are ones we've met already in previous stories. We have his ex-fiancée Florence Craye, Uncle Percy's daughter, along with that familiar pest, his son, Edwin, the boy scout who's always several days behind on his good deeds, and Stilton Cheesewright, now a police man. New to this one is Nobby Hopwood, the girl who wants to marry is old pal, the writer, Boko Fittleworth. While Jeeves tries to help Uncle Percy land his business deal, Bertie tries various schemes to get his Uncle Percy to accept Boko as Nobby's husband, since she is his ward, and she needs his permission to marry before the age of 21. While Florence is engaged to Stilton, their romance is on the rocks, and Bertie fears he'll end up being Florence's second option if that engagement goes south. And well, all the usual mayhem ensues as Bertie tries, and largely fails, at various schemes to help Nobby and Boko while at the same time attempting to avoid becoming Florence's default husband.

As I said at the top. Lots of clever writing, plenty of smiles and laughs but for me, it lacks the off-the-cup looseness and inventiveness of the first volumes of the series, hence the B+ grade.  

BookTube and Me

In the last few years I've gotten into the habit of watching "book tube" videos on YouTube, which is to say watching people review and talk about books. I think I can credit it for a revival of my book reading. Since the turn of the century, I maybe read a dozen books a year. Even less when I started writing my own stories. But in 2022, I at least started to read 40 books, in 2023, that number jumped to 108, and settled down to a respectable 53 last year. Those 53 books included longer and a wider variety than I'd been reading before. All to the good, this in spite of the fact that most of the YouTube videos I watch are on books I'm not very interested in.

Specifically, I watch channels devoted mostly to fantasy books. Which is hard to explain, since I'm not really a fan of fantasy. I read one every now and again, but most of the books they talk about I have no desire to read. I first started watching science fiction channels, but these days I like science fiction even less than fantasy. In fact I don't like science fiction at all.

So why am I wasting my time hearing about books I'm never likely to read?  A good question. One reason may be that some of these channels cover more than fantasy, and I've read a number of non-fantasy books they've promote, as well as some of the fantasy ones that sound vaguely interesting. But the main reason is that they talk about what they like in books, and being a writer of books, I am interested in that.

Alas, I have to admit that I doubt any of them would like my books. I don't write the books they, and likely many readers, seem to like. I've identified four of those reasons why.

The first is that these book people value being emotionally moved by the stories they read. The more the better. Just as sports fans savor the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, it seems that readers, at least booktubers, want their books to stir emotions in them. I, on the other hand, am not a fan of strong emotions. I much prefer peaceful contemplation and a pleasant, uneventful life to strong emotions, in both my life and my reading. This bias is likely reflected in my writing. I don't write strong emotional scenes or situations. The first person narrator doesn't dwell on his emotions, and the other characters' emotions are only seen, not felt. I'm quite sure my books would not deliver the emotional impact these readers look for in a book.

Secondly, as much as I like to think that my stories are character driven, I don't think they measure up to the book tubers' masters of that trait. They cite  Stephen King and Robin Hobbs as masters of characters. I've tried reading both those authors and DNF booth attempts. The King book was 11/22/63. I found that I was too deeply into the head of its first person narrator - too many trivial thoughts such that I found it vaguely creepy, in fact. I abandoned the Hobbs book after pages and pages of a side character thinking about mostly trivial things that had little to do with the story at hand. It was just too boring. I don't know how my characters come across to the reader, but I'm not much of a "people person." I don't make a study of people, and no doubt that is reflected in my narrator's description of people and my treatment of them. Thus, I think my writing may well fall short of what character-driven readers expectations.

Thirdly, many, though not all, of these book tubers value beautiful writing. One book tuber spend half an hour breaking down two paragraphs from a Janny Wurts fantasy book praising how masterful and wonderful her writing is. The first line of which was; "Dakar snapped awake, gasping and soaked in runnels of terrified sweat."  All I could think of was, I didn't know sweat could be terrified. As for runnels, I'd just have to guess what they were, not too hard, but still. Essentially this is what I would consider purple prose. We all have our own sense of beauty, so this is not a criticism. I prefer wit and cleverness in my reading, and try to put some of that in my writing. Otherwise I'm more in the Georges Simenon school of writing, which is to say, writing plainly to build scenes upon very concrete descriptions in order to create a sense of place and mood. At least that is what I aspire to do.

And fourthly, they often talk about the themes in books, issues they addresses in the narration. Often deep and serious themes and subjects are said to be explored in the story. I have no idea how much of this has been explicably put into the story and how much these readers find for themselves in the story. All I know is that I never read a book to analyses it for themes. Nor do I ever explore themes in my books. If you found any, great. But I'm innocent. I write solely to take the reader someplace outside of everyday life, and to entertain them while there. Period. I've no wisdom to impart, but then, no one listens to me anyway. Indeed, I consider my novels light reading, and I'm unapologetic about that. 

So, long story short, my work would not be a booktuber's darling. Many authors send these book tubers books to be featured for a minute in their "book hauls" and in the hopes that they might, someday, read it, and love it, and promote it. I'm not going to bother. I'm pretty sure I have to look elsewhere for my audience.

These days I'm slowly expanding my book tube viewing, looking for someone who has similar taste to me. Anything is possible. Nevertheless, I do enjoy hearing what they say, not only about books, but about their life as "content creators" on YouTube, as there are parallels to the problems faced by author/publishers finding and maintaining an audience. All in all, an enjoyable way to spend one's free time.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 83)

I have (well had at the time I wrote this post and read this book) several books on hold at the library that should be showing up soon, so to hold me over, yet another Cadfael mystery this week. What will I do after I've read the last one?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Potter's Field by Ellis Peters  A

A body is uncovered when the Abby of St Peter and Paul puts a plow to a field that they had exchanged with with another abbey. The Field used to used by a Potter who decided after many years of marriage that he had the calling to become a monk, and left his wife to become one. This was allowed at the time, the man was free to follow his calling, while the wife was still considered married and could not marry again. The Potter's wife very strongly objected to his decision, and disappeared shortly after her husband took to becoming a monk. The bones of a woman, who had the hair of the monk's former wife is found buried in the field close to his cottage. While there was no way to identify who this woman was, who else could it be? Suspicion turns to her former husband, now a monk. It falls on Cadfael and his friend, the sheriff, Hugh Beringer to discover the truth. And it wasn't easy, the truth being hard to come by, with may false leads.

Another good book featuring Ellis Peter's attention to characters and the time period.

There are not many Cadfael stories to go. One more novel in the omnibus volume I'm reading and two more novels and three novellas in the final omnibus volume. What will take their place?

The Project 2026 Inspirations Part One

A locale in The 2026 Project

The 2026 Project novel, as I outlined in a previous post, is going to be another  light novel - a "small" slice of life story.

I think this taste in light novels goes way back to the first books I read when I discovered reading (rather late in life - 5th grade). I started reading the Tom Swift Jr and Hardy Boys books. The Hardy Boys were focused on solving small crimes locally, and while Tom Swift featured inventing planes, submarines, and ever more exotic things - no doubt the seed for my interest in science fiction -  however, my favorite Tom Swift series was actually the original one, which was written over a couple of decades starting in 1913. It featured Tom (Tom Swift Sr. in the new books) living with his widowed father in then contemporary upstate New York of 1913. The first story featured Tom buying and fixing up a damaged motorcycle and dealing with bullies and crooks. Eventually his inventions took him far from Shopton, but there was always this air of quaintness about the stories, set as they were - when I was reading them - in the rather quint and distant past. Later, most of the science fiction stories I read were in fact, old fashioned romances - characters going off to exotic lands and surviving the trip. They may have discovered amazing things, and had amazing adventures, but the stories were focused on just that. As I expanded my reading to things like detective stories, mysteries, sea stories, Victorian/Edwardian adventure stories, military stories, and later domestic life stories, often set in England, these were all stories set on small scales, without epic scope or serious novelistic ambitions.

My current interest in writing small, light novels, arises out of my recent readings, which include the domestics stories/romances from the pen of British female writers like D E Stevenson, Molly Clavering, as well as the mysteries stories of Ellis Peters, and a modest novels like John Hadfield's Love on a Branch Line, and of course, P G Wodehouse. And this is not the first time I read such stories. Why thirty years ago I was reading not only D. E. Stevenson stories, but Miss Read stories, and several similar American stories as well. 

So, with that longwinded introduction out of the way, what will my Project 2026 novel look like? In my first tease about this novel, I said that the inciting incident is that the narrator has been charged with preventing, or at least delaying the publication of the memoirs of his great aunt. She had lived a rather scandalous life in her youth, one that involved a wide variety of serious and important people in the present day. Her son, the narrator's boss, fears that the publication of her memoirs might cause some of these important people to get upset enough to shove a spanner in the gears of his promotion within the government ministry he is employed at. 

This great aunt had decided, in order to get away from all distractions, write her book in a remote family-owned lodge in a setting inspired by the north woods, vacation lakes, and Scottish highlands. Her son is also genuinely concerned about her being up there with only her maid, so sending our narrator up there with her is not entirely selfish. In any event, the result is another "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" story like my first book, A Summer in Amber. During his summer, in the north woods, the narrator will meet more characters that eventually lead to investigating and solving an age old mystery from the distant past. Romance, or rather, romances in this time, will be a feature of the story as usual, but with a little different twist. In short, the usual ingredients.

That, anyway, is the over-arching ethos for my Project 2026 novel - a long summer holiday with a mix of romances old and new, old history and mysteries from the past to be explored. In my next piece on the project, at some point in the future, I'll talk more about some of the other influences that, like spices will be stirred into the pot plot, especially a few songs. 

The Saturday Morning Post Year in Review

It's time to look back on my reading for 2024. I have no set goals in reading. I go with the flow. Quite a few of the books I picked up because someone else liked them. Others were sparked by an interest of mine. And well, I did have all those Cadfael books on my shelf... So what did I end up reading this past year?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

So How Many and What Did I read?

It looks like I started to read 53 books in 2024. This compares to 108 books in 2023, and 40 in 2022. I think it is a very reasonable number. The fact that it is half of what I read in 2023 can perhaps be explained by the fact that I also wrote two novels this year, so I had less time and need to read this year, since I had my own stories to fill my time. I also read a number of long books & non-fiction books that take more time to read. But hey, a book a week ain't nothing.

Of the 53 books I started, I did not finish 5, this compares to 15 DNFs of the 108 in 2023 and the 15jk of 40 in 2022. A good year in reading, in other words.

As any regular reader of this series will easily guess, Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael historical Mystery series was the highlight of my 2024 reading. I read 11 of them and they were all good, with most scoring A's. I think that on rereading my criteria, it describes these books to a T. As a writer, I tend to value writing rather heavily in how much I enjoy a story, and while these books aren't "witty" they are written in a clear, yet, atmospheric style and recreates the time and the characters in my imagination. I can't ask for more than that, especially for characters that I enjoy spending time with.

My most anticipated book Jasper Fforde's Red Side Story turned out to be a shade too dark for my taste, but not the disaster that a sequel to one's favorite book could be - always a real danger. I still did give it an A grade as it had all the writing elements I liked, it was just the story that I was far less fond of.  He promises a third book, but I'm not holding my breath. The fact of the matter is that I consider Shades of Grey a standalone book, its sequel not the real story, since I have a strong feeling that in compressing two books into one a decade later, he changed the direction of the story.

The fantasy The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo is the only non-Cadfael, non-P G Wodehouse, non Jasper Fforde book that earned an A from me, though a A-. I recently read her other two books. As you can see, they were not quite as good, (reviews coming) but interesting. I'll certainly read her next one.

So, here is the list of books I read this year, with its Saturday Moring Post issue number and grade. As you can see, you'll be reading reviews of my 2024 books into February 2025. Which is probably good, as I doubt I will be able to find 52 books to read in 2025. We'll just have to see.

My 2024 books (52 Books) (And one TV serial)

Blog Post # - Title - Author - Grade

89 The Ghost Bride  by Yangsze Choo  B

88 The Night Tigerby Yangsze Choo  C

87 Summer of theDanes by Ellis Peters A

86 Miira by A CFlory B

85 Rivals in theCity by Y S Lee C

84 Joy in theMorning (Jeeves in the Morning) by P G Wodehouse B+

83 The Potter’sField by Ellis Peters  A

82 The Traitor inthe Tunnel by Y S Lee  C+

81 Celia’s House byD E Stevenson C+

80 A Spy in theHouse by Y S Lee  B

79 The Ops RoomGirls by Vicki Beeby C+

78 The Riddle of theSands by Erskin Childers A-

77 The Heretic’sApprentice by Ellis Peters A-

76 The Confession ofBrother Haluin by Ellis Peters A

75 Return toParadise by James A Michener DNF 28%

74 A New WorldBegins by Jeremy D Poplin C+

73 RevolutionarySummer by Joseph J Ellis B+

72 The Hermit ofEyton Forrest  by Ellis Peters A

71 The Rose Rent byEllis Peters A-

70 Three Men on aBummel by Jerome K Jerome B

69 Miss PettigrewLives for a Day by Winifred Watson A-

68 Three Men in aBoat by Jerome K Jerome B

67 To Say Nothing ofthe Dog By Connie Willis C

66 Raven in theForgate by Ellis Peters A

65 Fusiliers byMark Urban C

64 A World onFire by Amanda Foreman  B

63 The Fall of theHouse of Dixie by Bruce Levine  B+

62 Fateful Lightningby Jeff Shaara  B

61 The Smoke atDawn by Jeff Shaara   B

60 Gooseberry byMichael Gallagher  C

59 Gods and Generalsby Jeff Shaara  C+

58 An ExcellentMystery by Peters Ellis   A

57 The Garden ofEvening Mists by Tan Twan Eng   DNF20%

56 The Fox Wife byYangsze Choo   A-

55 Bride by AliHazelwood   B-

54 Major Pettigrew'sLast Stand  by Helen Simonson   DNF26%

53 The Summer Beforethe War  by Helen Simonson  C+

52 The SmallBachelor by P G Wodehouse  C

51 Junkyard AFractured Stars Novella by Lindsay Buroker  C

50 Divots by PG Wodehouse   B+

49 The Pilgrim ofHate by Ellis Peters  A

48 The Devil'sNovice by Ellis Peters  A

47 Damsel inDistress by P G Wodehouse  B

46 The Girl on theBoat (AKA Three Men and a Maid) by P G Wodehouse  A-

45 Jill theReckless (AKA The Little Warrior) by P. G. Wodehouse A-

44 (movie) Fall Out Amazon Prime 8 part season one C+

43 North of theTension Line by J. F. Riordan  B-

42 Red Side Story byJasper Fforde  A

41 Shades of Grey byJasper Fforde   A+

40 Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd  C+

39 The SanctuarySparrow by Ellis Peters  B+

38 11/22/63 byStephen King  DNF (pg 131)

37 Shogun byJames Clavell  C+

36 Remarkably BrightCreatures by Shelby Van Pelt   DNF12%

35 The Leper ofSaint Giles by Ellis Peters   A

The Numbers 

A+   1

A     10

A-    7

B+   4

B     9

B-    2

C+  8 (one of which is Fallout, the TV show that I review)

C    7

DNF 5 

Ten of the A's were contributed by Ellis Peter's Brother Cadfael books, who was by far my most popular author this year. I have only one more omnibus to read. I will be sad when I finish it. I don't have the faintest idea how I will replace her books, as they were my go-to books whenever I didn't have anything on hand to read.

All in all it was as good reading year.

My Year as a Publisher 2024 Edition.

My prediction and my sales numbers

Last year in this post I predicted: "Unless my Apple audiobooks do a lot better than I expect, I don't think 2024 will come close to 2023 in terms of sales. Book sales always decline over time." My 2023 sales were a record 18,928, thanks to the unexpected, and inexplicable, success of The Girl on the Kerb on Amazon, and thus, would be hard to beat. For comparison, the year before, in 2022, sales were 13,779, a sales record at that time as well. So how did I do in 2024?

Drum roll.

14,970 books. Though down by more than 4,000 copies from last year, I'm still  very pleasantly surprised with that number. Better than I expected, though there were some reasons. See below.

The details

This was the year I went almost all in on using Draft2Digital as my distributer. I moved all my books over on the 1st of January, from Smashwords - except those on Smashwords itself - and submitted my books to Apple to be converted to audiobooks. The conversion stretched out over the year, with three books still not converted, for some reason. In July I unpublished my books on Smashwords and had then republished them on the Smashwords store via D2D. And in October I unpublished my books in the Kobo store via D2D and submitted them myself to Kobo. I've talked about all of these moves in previous posts, so I won't repeat the reasons and results of all these moves here, except to say that for the most part, all of the moves had positive repercussions.

My sales on Smashwords thru July 2024, when I switched to D2D were 131 ebooks

My total sales on D2D ended up being approx. 3,321 (I don't quite have the final total when writing this.)

Apple ebooks accounted for 1,160  of those sales, edging out Amazon as my second largest ebook sales outlet. For reverence, I sold 775 books on Apple in 2023 via Smashwords.

2D2 Audiobooks on Apple accounted for 1,175 in sales. Well, as it turned out they did pretty well, once they became available. As you can see, adding Apple audiobooks basically doubled my sales on Apple.

Smashwords sales (via 2D2) were 664 ebooks 

Barnes & Noble sold 239 ebooks

Various other D2D outlets accounted for 83 ebooks

Kobo I've been distributing to Kobo directly since October 2024, my sales in the last three mounts amount to 91 ebooks. Comparable to B&B so far.

In order to get all my work on Amazon as audiobooks, I broke up my two massive books, The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea into a six book series since they were too long for Amazon's auto-narrated audiobook program. I also sell them that way on Kobo as well. I have also priced the first books in my three series at $.99. 

My total sales  on Amazon were, 1,012

Ebooks, 976, most were the 2 free books,

Paper books 22

Audiobooks 14 

I earned $356.13 on my Amazon sales in 2024 I spent less than $100 on books and mailing for my beta readers, my only expense.

Last, but far, far from least, my sales on Google. It was steady as you go, for Google.  

Total Google sales amounted to 10,415 books

Ebooks sold, 5,055

Audiobooks sold, 5,360

Just as with Apple, audiobooks slightly outsold ebooks, providing half of my overall sales.

All in all, 2024 proved to be a solid year, performing better than I expected, though not a record year. I should note, however, that I did release two novels in this year and new books always drive sales.

All that said, my sales, now including audiobooks, are not much more than twice my sales of my first year, (via Amazon and Smashwords only) with only three books released, compared to a catalog of some 20 books these days. Take away Google and audiobooks and my ebook sales would've been half of my first year ebook sales. Yikes! As I have mentioned in the past, it is getting increasingly harder to sell books outside of the mainstream. I owe my continued success to several factors,

1. My competitive pricing.

2. Having built up a modest readership starting in 2015 back when it was far easier to do so.

3. Having written and published twenty books over the last almost ten years. I can't explain how I did that. I also published two new books this year. All these books mean that I have a good sized back catalog to offer any new reader who happens upon one of my books and likes it to explore.

4. Having explored new markets, including adding Google early on, and jumping on audiobooks when they became financially feasible. 

 Well, looking ahead, if I recall right, 27 April 2025 will mark my 10th anniversary as a publisher. I enjoy what I'm doing now, but maybe after ten years I should shake things up and try something different. I'll be considering what, if anything, in the next couple of months. If I do nothing stupid, I would expect to see similar results to this year, as I do hope to publish at least one novel in 2025 - my "Project 2026" book a little early. We'll see. Stay tuned.

I would like to thank all my readers for making this year another good year for me. I hope that in my own little way, I made 2024 a little better for you as well.

AND I HOPE ALL OF YOU HAVE A GREAT 2025! GOOD LUCK!

The Saturday Morning Post (No.82)

 

I put a hold on this book after reading A Spy in the House, the first book in The Agency series, and lo, and behold, it became available on the day I finished Celia's House. This is the third of the four book series featuring Mary Quinn, undercover agent of The Agency. I haven't read the second book, but since this was an ebook from from the library. i.e. take it or get back in line, I guess I'm reading them out of order. So, let's see this entry lives up to the modest promise of the first installment.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Traitor in the Tunnel by Y. S. Lee  C+
Like the first book, this is a penny dreadful sort of novel, with several loosie-goosey plots lines that sort of resolve themselves. In this installment, our hero, Mary, has been placed in Buckingham Palace  to work as a maid in the royal household in order to discover who is stealing a number of semi-valuable items from the palace. Then there's the murder of a toff in a Limehouse opium den, who happened to be in the company of the Bertie, the Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria's oldest son. While this incident must be hushed up to the general public, Mary is in a position to learn that the opium-addled alleged murderer has the same name as her father, whom she had thought was dead, lost at sea. Could it be? She must find out, and so sets out to investigate both the murder, the murderer, in addition to her assigned mission. As well as another mission involving her sometimes-boyfriend, and a sewer tunnel under the palace. There is a lot going on in the story, all rather loosely tied together.
Mary Quinn is an engaging character who dares almost anything. I noticed that I often questioned the wisdom of what she dares to do, when I have a feeling that I never would have, if the hero was a male. I guess it's a touch of sexism when you find yourself thinking a woman shouldn't be doing dangerous/foolish things that a you'd have no trouble imagining a male doing. Or maybe you think a woman would just know better. Just a random observation. 
This story lost points because it uses one trope that I really dislike. And that trope is, in Victorian era stories, including Queen Victoria, and/or Albert, and/or in this case, Prince Bertie, as active characters in the novel. It really bugs me how often authors like bringing historical royalty into their stories. I don't know why, except maybe to add some glamor to their story? In this story we have both Queen Victoria acting uncharacteristically, at least in my opinion, and poor Bertie, doesn't fare well in it, though I can't say how historically accurate his portrait was.
All that said, I guess I'll read the other two books when they become available. They get a passing grade, mostly on the writing and characters, certainly not on their plots.
Next week, a special edition listing all the books I read in 2024... Stay tuned.

Happy Holidays!

 

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE TO EVERYONE, WHATEVER AND HOWEVER YOU CELEBRATE! HAVE A WONDERFUL TIME!