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Last Time: Cover for the World Companion

I put together a few with blue-toned backgrounds. I’ve basically decided to go with one of the following, which includes versions close to those you have seen before plus the blue versions. I know which of those I like least, but I will be interested to see whether you all have the same opinion. Judging from prior cover posts, you will not have the same opinions as me or as each other! Opinions are ALL over the map here. This does at least mean that whichever cover I go with, probably it will appeal to some people and probably almost no one will really detest it with a passion, and honestly, that may be as good as it gets for something like this.

So, here. Please disregard all previous numbers that might have been applied to one or another cover. I’ll label the covers here and these are the official numbers.

Version 1

This cover remains one I like personally. I will remind you again that against a pure white background, the cover shows up a bit better than it does here. However, obviously it shows up the least well of any of these versions. Note that one commenter on Goodreads preferred the cover without “The” in the title. That is something that is easy to change, so the above is a version that doesn’t have “The.” I think I might agree that this is better, but I’m not sure.

Version 2

I get what some of you mean about the color of this cover not really matching the colors of the image. But to me, this actually does look fine. The contrast in colors doesn’t strike my eye as problematic. I like the texture. I don’t mind suggestions to find other colors with a similar texture, but those comments are not in line with Canva’s offerings. If I had seen other colors with a similar texture, I would have tried them. I scrolled past plenty of covers, I assure you.

Version 3

I rather like this color, but I don’t think I prefer it to the two above. Note that the heavier black border on the top and bottom is VERY STUBBORN on this particular cover. I can’t get it to change to the lighter double bar as on the two version above. Taking off “The,” yes, no problem. Changing the borders and frames, no.

Version 4

This very dark blue is the ONLY plain blue cover I could fine after a considerable amount of time scrolling. Maybe I like this. The pale lettering pick up the bluish snow color almost as though deliberately colored to match.

Version 5

This is one of two backgrounds I used that offered an image rather than a plain background. Stars are not inappropriate, obviously. A coniferous forest is not wrong either, given that we are thinking of the winter country. Also, the bluish tones of this background do, to me, match the bluish tones of the central image. I am going back and forth with whether I like this. In some ways, I feel the background image detracts from the overall cover. But I like the colors.

Version 6

I’m not crazy about the way this cover shades to white at the bottom. Obviously I shifted the image down to reduce the white space. I like the Moon, but that does, perhaps unfairly, emphasize the Moon over the Sun. I mean, this World Companion isn’t just about the winter country, obviously. On the other hand, the Moon is important and we are, after all, looking through the eyes of an Ugaro during the primary trilogy. What do you think?

Here’s a second try at Version 6, this time with a smoky border at the bottom to help define the lower edge of the cover:

Version 6b

I like it better with some kind of border, any kind of border, at the bottom. But the gray doesn’t exactly match the blue above, and there’s no likelihood I could match that blue. What do you all think? Also, I can’t seem to get rid of the thin line above the bottom frame of the image. Not that I couldn’t try harder. But it’s not wanting to go away.

ONE MORE, LAST ONE

Version 7

Every time I go looking for a frame, I’m unable to find the kind I used last time. Often, the frame can’t be copied from one version to the next because trying screws up the rest of the cover — I could try to explain what goes wrong, but suffice it to say that this turns out to be more difficult than one might expect, and let’s leave it at that. But I found this smoky black bar, which I rather like. However, I don’t think I like this color of green as well as the green of version 3

Items on which I would like your opinion:

A) “The” in the title, yes or no?

B) Do you prefer all the text above the image, as shown in versions 6 and 7?

C) And of course, which version(s) do you prefer? Feel free to rank all six. For me, it’s tough, it really is. I would tend to go:

1, 6, 2 or 5, 4, 3, 7 — yes, that is a tie for third place for me.

Even though I personally like Version 1, I do think this pale color is probably not as sensible a choice as something that will stand out better on a white background.

This is the LAST cover post for this book unless something very different occurs to me. After this, I will stop vacillating and pick one and stick to it.

Meanwhile, someone here … I don’t recall who and don’t think I’ll take time to look it up … but someone suggested that a neat thing to include in the World Companion would be an Ugaro story told the way men tell it and then told the way women tell it. That’s a great idea, and though I may or may not do it, I’m turning over ideas for that. In TARASHANA, Ryo tells the story of how the Little Knife was created, do you remember that? That might be a good choice.

However, I do have to think of a good story about that. Definitely a neat idea, though.

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A splendid Twitter thread about celebrities and chickens

Seriously, you must click through and scan down this thread. You will love it, even if you are not interested in either celebrities or chickens.

Met gala as chickens

Nicole Kidman as a frizzled silkie pic.twitter.com/HTIDnvAkLh

— Tove Danovich (@TKDano) May 1, 2023

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Would you turn the page?

This is the latest of Rhamey’s “Flog a Pro” posts at Writer Unboxed. I’ve linked to them here from time to time because it really is interesting: Here’s an unidentified recent bestseller: Knowing nothing about this book, would you turn the page?

Let’s take a look at this particular first page:

Adelaide Hills, South Australia

1959

New Year’s Day

And, of course, there was to be a lunch party to mark the new year. A small affair, just family, but Thomas would require all the trimmings. Unthinkable that they would do otherwise: the Turners were big on tradition, and with Nora and Richard visiting from Sydney, neither frippery nor fanfare was to be skipped.

Isabel had decided to set up in a different part of the garden this year. Usually, they sat beneath the walnut tree on the eastern lawn, but today she’d been drawn to the stretch of grass in the shade of Mr. Wentworth’s cedar. She’d walked across it when she was cutting flowers for the table earlier and been struck by the pretty westward view toward the mountains. Yes, she’d said to herself. This will do very well. The arrival of the thought, her own decisiveness, had been intoxicating.

She told herself it was all part of her New Year’s resolution—to approach 1959 with a fresh pair of eyes and expectations—but there was a small internal voice that wondered whether she wasn’t rather tormenting her husband just a little with the sudden breach of protocol. Ever since they’d discovered the sepia photograph of Mr. Wentworth and his similarly bearded Victorian friends arranged in elegant wooden recliners on the eastern lawn, Thomas had been immovable in his conviction that it represented the superior entertaining spot.

My immediate response: Oh, a toxic family forced together in a lunch party, wow, how fun.

My second response: My goodness, her own decisiveness is intoxicating, really?

My third response: She is into tormenting her husband in small ways, I guess.

All put together, this is not just a NO, but a GOOD LORD NO.

This novel was number two on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list for April 23, 2023, says Rhamey. Well, of course I don’t look for book recommendations at the NYT. I get plenty of book recommendations, far better tailored for my personal tastes, from all of you right here. But I have to wonder, do people in general REALLY like this book? Have they liked other books by this author? Were those books also centered on indecisive, ineffectual protagonists involved in toxic family relationships?

Of course, the story might get better. I don’t even know what genre this is. Maybe it’s not literary fiction. Maybe it’s a thriller or horror and everyone but what’s her name … Issbel, right … is going to be dead in twenty pages. That might be more interesting!

Oh, hey, while on the subject of thrillers and horror, Sarah Beth Durst has a brand new supernatural thriller/horror type of book out, The Lake House, just dropped a few days ago.

Now, I don’t love everything by Durst, but I DO love a lot of her books and I always feel she’s worth a try. I I have one of hers on my actual physical TBR shelves because everything about it appeals to me, but I haven’t managed to read it yet … oh, it’s only been three years, that’s not bad! I’ve been busy! It’s this one:

Isn’t that a splendid cover?

But this new title, The Lake House, this one strikes me as maybe coming from the same place as a different novel of hers, Lost, which I liked a lot. This is completely different, don’t get me wrong, I just feel that it’s pushing some of the same buttons. There were some odd supernatural elements to that one, kind of edging on horror, but not really. I would very much have liked a sequel.

This one seems a bit like that to me. Here’s the description:

Claire’s grown up triple-checking locks. Counting her steps. Second-guessing every decision. It’s just how she’s wired—her worst-case scenarios never actually come true. Until she arrives at an off-the-grid summer camp to find a blackened, burned husk instead of a lodge—and no survivors, except her and two other late arrivals: Reyva and Mariana. When the three girls find a dead body in the woods, they realize none of this is an accident. Someone, something, is hunting them. Something that hides in the shadows. … Something that refuses to let them leave.

Now, this is the kind of setup that I like for a thriller/horror type of novel, especially one where I feel it’s not that likely to end in blood-soaked tragedy. All the reviews talk about how the friendship among these girls is centered, which is important to me and also makes me feel like it’s unlikely any of the girls are going to actually die. I think a reviewer would have mentioned that, especially if the friendship is central and then one were killed.

If you click through and read the reviews, be careful, because one of the reviews is like, Here, let me tell you the whole plot, wouldn’t want you to actually be surprised by any plot twists! As a side note to this extensive digression, let me just add, that is not a great way to write a review. I’m sure mileage here may vary, but all I want to know is that these three girls arrive at summer camp, they discover everyone is dead, someone or something is stalking them, and there’s a supernatural element. That’s it. I don’t want to know anything else.

Anyway, I’m giving this one a try, and MEANWHILE, back to the bestseller featured in Rhamey’s post. That is Homecoming by Kate Morton.

And my goodness, that is a lovely cover. Just lovely. I’m practically in morning that the story inside that cover is apparently all about toxic family relationships. What IS the book about? Here’s the description:

Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most baffling murder investigations in the history of South Australia. Many years later and thousands of miles away, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for two decades, she now finds herself unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and is seriously ill in the hospital. At Nora’s house, Jess discovers a true crime book chronicling a long-buried police case: the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959. It is only when Jess skims through its pages that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this notorious event – a mystery that has never been satisfactorily resolved.

And I’ll be darned, that IS a thriller/mystery type of novel! I would NEVER have thought so from the opening page. NEVER. Suddenly this is a much more coherent post than I expected, because I’m actually juxtaposing two books that are both in the general realm of thrillers and mysteries.

I wouldn’t have thought so from the cover either! I think this is an EPIC FAIL for the cover, which to me looks like a literary fantasy cover or a magical realism cover but DEFINITELY NOT a thriller/suspense cover. Maybe you all disagree?

Let me lean into the contrast in this post by looking at the first page of Durst’s book. Here it is, and would you turn the page?

Clair excelled at three things: ballet, homework, and identifying all the ways there were to die in any given situation. Like now, on this boat. She couldn’t stop thinking about how easy it would be to be knocked off the side, hit your head as you fell, and drown.

Less likely: being guillotined by a fishing ine.

Also unlikely but still possible: being pierced by shrapnel if the engine exploded.

She fidgeted with her life jacket, touching the three buckles in rapid succession, until she felt reassured they were secure.

I hate boats, she decided.

She also hated airplanes, particularly the minuscule prop planes that felt as if they’d been assembled by a five-year-old with unfettered access to glue. That had been the other option for the trip to the Lake House — itty-bitty prop plane. There were no roads.

What do you think? I think this is VASTLY more engaging than the first page of Homecoming. Words can hardly express how much more appealing this is. Clair has issues, fine. She might be one-dimensional, but I expect she, and the reader, will discover hidden depths. I expect by the end of the story she will worry a lot less about things like boats and planes. The writing itself is far, far more fun. There is, thankfully, no hint of toxic family relationships. They might be there, who knows, but (a) probably not, I bet Clair’s family is worried about her anxiety; and (b) regardless, the reader’s face isn’t being shoved into those toxic family relationships on the first page.

Okay, I would definitely turn the page of Durst’s book, and unless I knew it was a suspense/mystery, I would never turn the page of Morton’s book.

Only in mysteries can you easily get away with starting in a pov that is not the pov of the protagonist, and with any luck the protagonist of Homecoming is FAR more appealing than what’s-her-name, I still can’t remember … Isabel, right. But I have to ask: Why would the author of a thriller, a suspense novel, or a mystery WANT to start in the pov of an unappealing, unengaging person who is stuck in an unappealing, unengaging luncheon party for family members she doesn’t like? Why would you do that to yourself? If you’re going to shift into the pov of someone more appealing later, then why open in a pov that the reader is so likely to detest? Is that because you’re going to kill the protagonist at the end of the chapter? That doesn’t sound like it happens in Homecoming, btw. But even if that’s the plan … how about not doing that?

I’m tempted to open up half a dozen mysteries that start with the pov of the murder victim, look at the opening of the second chapter, and ask myself whether that wouldn’t have been a fine place to open the story.

Meanwhile!

I do not have time to read The Lake House or anything else. I am proofreading No Foreign Sky. I’m proofreading on my phone, and right away I can tell that this format change has been enough to make me see the text far better. I’m highlighting and making notes directly in the ebook on my phone and that is also useful.

No Foreign Sky drops in a mere 14 days! I have to have the final version loaded in 9 days! AAAGH. Thus, no time for anything but very fast and intensive proofreading.

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Monday Update: Dedicated Proofreading

Welcome to May!

That’s the Vanhoutte spirea at my mother’s house, the waterfall of shrubs that came from cuttings of a plant my grandfather planted for my grandmother lo these many years ago. I always admire these tough, dependable shrubs very much. This year, they’re late because we’ve had such a cold spring.

You know what, I used to get up at 4:30 AM, give Keya a pill, begin my day, and often settle down and open my laptop by six in the morning. I could get so much done before I went to work!

Now, I get up at 5:00 AM, which is still early, but at least doesn’t start with a four. I mean, this time of year, 5:00 is practically dawn! It’s morning, almost anybody would agree. (Would almost everyone agree? Anyway, it seems solidly like morning to me.)

Then I do stuff with the puppies. I carry the big two puppies outside, deposit them in the semi-puppy-secure spot under the deck, go in to clean up the puppy room — not much cleanup, yay, they are trying hard to be housetrained, pretty impressive at six weeks of age. Then I put softened kibble down for Leda’s puppies and transfer them from the playpen to the puppy room, where they can have so much more space and learn to move away from the den to do their business. Then I bring the big puppies in and put softened kibble down for them, which the blenheim puppy is MORE THAN HAPPY TO EAT. I watch for a minute and then hand-feed the tricolor puppy some of the soft kibble. Then I take them out again. Then I bring them in again. Then I feed the adult dogs, including Elli, who is staying with me again for a month. Then I take the two big puppies out AGAIN and then let them loose to run around in the living room, making a firm mental note to look down before I take a step.

This takes about an hour, what with one thing and another.

Finally the big puppies are ready to fall asleep and I put them in the playpen and THEN I can go on with my normal morning.

At least they still sleep for a good long time before they wake up. And nothing bothers them. Lights on or off, they don’t care. Electric mixer, they don’t care. Food processor, they don’t care. This is the plus of raising puppies right adjacent to real life: they get totally blasé about all sorts of normal life things.

Anyway, this puppy thing does not help get work done in the morning.

“Getting work done,” for a lot of last week, did not involve getting out my laptop. Because I sent the most correct, updated version of NO FOREIGN SKY to my phone and I have been reading it in that format, and it is INSANE how many little tweaks I am making. Like about one every other page, something like that. I am not finding many actual typos, but I have found eight, so that alone makes re-reading it worthwhile. But I’m just stunned at how different it is to read the same book on my computer screen vs in paper vs on my phone. I now really believe that some authors find it helpful to read a book out loud when proofing. I’m not going to do that, but I certainly believe it’s got to be effective.

Anyway, finished that this morning. Correct the tiny handful of typos, make the huge number of tweaks, and I will re-load the corrected version tomorrow, probably. I can make changes for the rest of this week. I think next Wednesday is the cut-off date. The final version must be loaded by then.

If you subscribe to my newsletter, you ought to get that today — not sure when Mailchimp sends out a mailing — so you should have a chance to read chapter one and a bit of chapter two if you wish. I hope you like it! Preorder for the next two weeks and then, as you know, the book will appear magically on your Kindle on May 15th. It’s in KU, so we’ll see how it does there. I may or may not take it wide depending on pages read. I may run a promotion for it using the tools available in KU before I make that decision. In fact, it would probably be sensible to leave it in KU until INVICTUS drops and then decide, as I may be able to cross-promote them. Not sure. They’re so different, even though they’re both SF and involve space ships and things.

Anyway, NO FOREIGN SKY ate my week, but I will be moving on shortly. Not sure what I will pick up. I was really into INVICTUS and found it difficult to put down last week. But I would like to finish the draft of the (apparently pretty long) story that will go in the Tuyo World Companion. It would probably be more sensible to pick up the latter. We shall see!

Meanwhile, here is Morgan, who really (REALLY) likes to mother Leda’s puppies. She will probably decide they are big enough that they do not need her sometime this coming week. But they are just under half the size of her puppies, and she just loves little ones, so she is much more interested in these puppies right now than her own.

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Almost May, Wow

My goodness, do you realize it is April 28th? Where did April even GO?

Quick reminder:

NO FOREIGN SKY is out MAY 15th.

The preorder price has dropped to $4.99. That will be the price for the rest of May. On June 1st, I’ll raise the price.

Thinking about preordering the book? Then subscribe to my newsletter, which will include the entire first chapter and (it turns out) a snippet of the second chapter. This is a whopping 12,000 words, which I hope does not bother the newsletter delivery system, but wow, I have never sent a really long newsletter before and this one is certainly really long. Anyway, that should certainly give you enough of a look at the book to decide!

If you’ve already read it, then the week it goes live, I’d appreciate it if you would mention the book on social media and/or to friends who might like it. Ditto if you read it in the first couple of weeks it’s out; I’d definitely appreciate a brief review and a mention here and there.

Somewhere later in June or July, or who knows maybe August, I’ll probably run a sale, but this book won’t be offered for free because there is very little incentive for me to drop the price to zero as this book is not part of a series. I may never set it free. It will be in KU, though, so that is kind of the same thing if you happen to be enrolled in KU.

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Uplifting fiction

This caught my eye, even though I would prefer “uplifting fantasy.” I’m probably not going to be all that interested in “uplifting fiction.” Still:

17 Uplifting Books Out This Spring

Sometimes the best thing a book can do is make you feel good. This spring has many such titles coming out, from a romantic comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld called Romantic Comedy to books about bookstores, comebacks, and more. 

A RomCom called Romantic Comedy! That is funny. It reminds me of Scalzi’s Star Trek parody called Redshirts.

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, with the chance to serve on “Away Missions” alongside the starship’s famous senior officers.

Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to realize that (1) every Away Mission involves a lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s senior officers always survive these confrontations, and (3) sadly, at least one low-ranking crew member is invariably killed. Unsurprisingly, the savvier crew members belowdecks avoid Away Missions at all costs. Then Andrew stumbles on information that transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

I should mention, I listened to Redshirts in audio format, which made the repetitive sentence structure and dialogue tags as annoying as fingernails on a blackboard until I managed to quit focusing on those aspects of the prose. Here’s my post about dialogue tags, which I wrote partly because this book made me notice the role of sentence structure in making dialogue tags obtrusive.

But back to the topic: Uplifting fiction! Sure, what do we have here?

Romantic Comedy

Sally Milz loves her job as a comedy writer on the late-night show The Night Owls, where she skewers all things love and romance in her sketches. When her average-looking (and admittedly geeky) coworker Danny begins dating a beautiful, famous actress, Sally writes a skit about how frequently such a phenomenon occurs for men — but not in the reverse. Pop star Noah Brewster’s guest appearance on the show throws off all of Sally’s preconceived notions about relationships, and might change her mind about swearing off love, especially when it’s found in unconventional places.

This sounds fine, but you add too much comedy to your romance and it starts to strike me as overly silly. What do we have besides RomCom?

Well, there’s this:

When Jasmine Blooms

This retelling of Little Women is filled with heartbreak and hope. Celine’s beloved daughter, Libby, passed away two years ago, and the grief still hasn’t subsided. When she unexpectedly wakes one morning living in an alternate reality without the husband and children she knows, she must learn to process the trauma she’s faced and find a way to the life she really wants to live.

Wait, this is uplifting? How is this uplifting? To live your best life, the life you really want to live, all you need to do is ditch your family? Is anyone else recoiling at this idea?

Here’s the full description from Amazon:

It’s been two years since Celine lost her daughter Libby. Desperate to escape her grief, Celine throws herself into her work, determined to be the strong, capable woman the world believes her to be. But there’s no fooling her family. A shocking intervention brings an impossible choice: confront her grief or risk losing the family she still has. Reeling, Celine wonders what her life would have been like if she’d chosen her first love instead of her husband and avoided this pain altogether. Celine wakes the following day and is shocked to realize that what-if has become reality. She’s with her high school sweetheart, her daughters aren’t quite her daughters, and her home is being rented by the daughter she thought she’d lost forever. As she reconnects with Libby in this parallel world, Celine is forced to face the problems in her real life: her unwillingness to move forward, the tension that’s always rocked her family, and the hard truth that not everything can be fixed by a mother’s love.

Okay, this isn’t quite as awful, given the “daughter she’d thought she’d lost” is now back in the picture. But overall, this book continues to look like the opposite of uplifting.

I’m now suspicious of this entire list. Whoever chose the books for it, not sure we have the same definition of “uplifting.” I’m going back to the list now to look cautiously at the rest of the entries and see if anything actually looks appealing. Let me see … all right:

Once Upon a Tome

Oliver Darkshire is kept busy by his job at the Henry Sotheran Ltd. bookstore, selling and preserving first editions of rare books. The bookstore has seen centuries of history, and the books and people who enter leave indelible marks on the building and its workers. Readers say this colorful, captivating book is a tribute to reading as well as to unique bookstores. 

I think this is narrative nonfiction. It looks much more appealing than an alternate world where your family isn’t there except for your deceased daughter.

Oh, this is another RomCom, but it does sound like fun:

The Love Wager

Hallie and Jack don’t feel connected romantically on their disastrous first and only date, but they bond enough to decide to help each other find true love. While sharing their misadventures in the dating world, they grow to lean on each other through any situation, and even make a bet on who can find true love first. But an upcoming wedding leaves them no choice but to attend as dates, and they have to pretend to be a real couple without ruining the valuable friendship they’ve developed.

This is a great setup, a friends-to-lovers romance. Here’s an excerpt from a review at Amazon:

I liked that Hallie has her stuff together and that it was clear from the beginning that Jack was attracted to her. I’ve been on a roll of books with heroines that either had self esteem issues or were being discounted in some way, so it was refreshing to see these two interact without some subtext that the heroine should be thanking her lucky stars that the hot hero was paying attention to her. … Hallie and Jack’s story felt very real as it progressed from attraction, to friendship, to more, while never losing the friendship. My favorite thing in rom-coms is when the intimacy is established even without sex; when it’s there because of closeness, familiarity, and because the hero/heroine genuinely like being around each other and have fun interactions. The way everything played out made sense. Yes, they could’ve communicated sooner as they started realizing their feelings, but it made sense why they didn’t. It wasn’t a forced lack of communication to move the story along, as happens so many times in rom-coms; it was a genuine desire to be careful because they were becoming best friends and didn’t want to ruin that. I also liked that the potential conflict was always there, and was addressed, but wasn’t unnecessarily drawn out.

I like a lot about this description. The female lead has her stuff together, check. (I hope the male lead does too.) Attraction to friendship to romance-while-keeping-the-friendship, check. No forced lack of communication, check. Conflict not unnecessarily drawn out, check. This is the sort of review that makes me want to give the book a try. I think I’ll pick up a sample. Just ignore how little I’m reading right now and how long it may be until I actually read anything. Maybe I’ll be in the mood to try a romance or two soon.

All right, I have to say, a good many of the remaining books on this list do not look uplifting. In the throes of traumatic grief, seriously?

FINE. What I would actually have preferred: Uplifting Fantasy Novels. Let’s try to find THAT kind of post. All right, here, from Tor.com

17 Optimistic Fantasies to Brighten Your Reading Life

A) The Goblin Emperor. Good choice, promising beginning.

B) The Face in the Frost. Never read it, sounds good:

A wizard named Prospero (not that one) teams up with his old friend, the adventurer Roger Bacon (OK, maybe that one), to confront an evil power attacking their kingdom. They know going into the fight that they’re outmatched, but what else can they do? Bellairs’ story, like all of his work, juggles truly effective horror with quirky humor. The book gives weight to both elements, owning up to the terror that would come with a fight against evil, but also never wallowing in that terror to the point of overwhelming the humanity of the book.

C) The Copper Promise. SAA, never read it, sounds good:

Williams’ novel combines some of the tropes of grimdark, e.g. mercenaries, torture, and tragic backstories, with some of the higher ideals of sword and sorcery. Best of all, it treats what could have been a slog through brutal battles as a lighthearted adventure. This bright tone, combined with a biting sense of humor, make the book fun as well as epic. The fallen knight is more complicated than we think, the swordswoman-for-hire is as handy with snark as she is with a sword, and… what’s this? The main character’s arc is one of rediscovering his humanity after a horrible trauma, rather than a slow degradation into despair? Is it possible?

Lots of good ones on this list, many that I’ve read, some that I’ve had on my TBR shelves for ages, others that I’ve never picked up but might now. Click through if you wish, and see if you agree with these choices! I think I mostly do. Also, now I think maybe I ought to read Little, Big, which I have had in paper on a shelf for years.

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Survey of self-published authors

Here are some interesting survey results. I’ve only taken a cursory look at this, but I believe these numbers are supposed to apply to self-published authors who are making a serious attempt to succeed at building writing into a career, putting at least half their working hours into writing and related activities.

This is based on a broad survey targeting whomever wanted to answer survey questions on this topic AND spent about 50% of their time on writing and related tasks. I would assume the numbers are biased toward people who are doing well, because those are the people most likely to fill out a survey. But I don’t KNOW that; it just seems likely. Nevertheless, the numbers seem reasonably plausible.

The average (mean) income of self-published authors in 2022 was over $80,000.Some 28% earned $50k+ and almost a fifth ran six-figure publishing businesses.Almost half of the respondents (43.8%) reported over $20k revenue.Almost a quarter had not yet started to earn, bringing in between 0 and 1K.The median income of self-published authors was $12,749. 

So something like a fifth below $1000 per year, another fifth above $100,000 per year — very wide spread, which of course we knew. Mean of $80,000, about 40% over $20,000 per year, median about $13,000 per year.

The difference between the mean and the median tells us that a significant number of self-published authors surveyed are making A LOT over $80,000. It’s the “fifth” that are in six figures that must be pulling up the mean, and “running a publishing business” strikes me as something that should be chopped up into pieces. Any writers who are publishing a significant number of works by other people as well as their own ought to be in a different category from authors publishing only their own works. Maybe they are; as I said, I did not look at any of this in detail, just glanced over the linked summary.

The difference between “about 40% earning over $20,000” and “median $13,000” is interesting. The other 60% must be way below $13,000. Of course that includes the quarter of respondents who are not really earning much at all.

More than 2,000 authors have surpassed $100,000 in “royalties” from Amazon KDP in 2022. 

That doesn’t surprise me at all. If you have a million people fairly serious to very serious about self-publishing, then 2000 people represents 0.002 or 0.2% of those people. If anything, that sounds low. Maybe only 100,000 people are fairly serious; that would put the percentage of those authors earning above $100,000 at 2%, which seems plausible.

Many authors now run thriving businesses on their own websites, through direct sales, crowdfunding, and patronage from readers.

That sounds like a fair bit of trouble. You have to do a good deal of work to run a Kickstarter, and doing weekly or monthly content for Patreon would be worse. I mean, unless you have a knack for writing short stories fast or whatever.

Selling books directly wouldn’t be particularly annoying. I wonder how many readers would like to buy signed copies? Even though I don’t have any particular setup to do that , I’m certainly happy to sign a copy of anything and send it to anybody who asks. I mean, in case you wondered.

Author Brandon Sanderson made crowdfunding history publishing by independently publishing four books through Kickstarter, securing a record-breaking $41m (his goal was $1m).

I think we all heard about that.

The Pulitzer Prize, the British Book Awards and the Commonwealth Book Prize (amongst other major literary awards) are now all open to self-published authors.

I’m not sure we had all heard about that! I hadn’t.

Books by indie authors account for 30-34% of all e-book sales in the largest English-language markets, as reported in Publishers Weekly.

I would be stunned if it were any less. I’m actually surprised it’s not more. If you add in Kindle Unlimited, I bet it’s more — maybe a lot more.

A study by FicShelf found that women wrote just 39% of traditionally published titles, but 67% of self-published titles.

Well, of course. That’s the huge emphasis on romances in self-publishing. I mean:

The Smashwords annual ebook survey shows how self-published romance ebooks dominate the ebook market. In short, the romance genre accounts for a staggering 87% of the top 100 bestsellers on Smashwords and their aggregators. Should I repeat that number? Eighty-seven percent! The number must make all romance authors smile. While it is impossible to compare this data with sales of self-published romance novels on Amazon Kindle, one could make a logical assumption that romance probably also dominates Kindle ebook sales.

And here: about 40% of all fiction titles are romances.

I wonder how many guys are writing and self-publishing romance under a female name? I bet quite a few. I would actually really like to know (a) what proportion of “romance authors” are actually scammers with ghostwriters and clickfarms, and (b) whether Amazon is EVER going to slam that loophole shut.

Also, looks like about half of all bestselling romances, SF, and fantasy are now self-published. That doesn’t surprise me either.

Okay! While on the subject of self-publishing:

Have you heard of Publisher Rocket? If you are self-publishing, you probably have; if you’re thinking of self-publishing, it’s an interesting service. It costs about $100 for a lifetime subscription. I have just poked at it a little so far, but I hope it will be useful. It looks like it may be. Among other things, it will take a keyword phrase, such as “space opera” and show you what searches that phrase actually occurs in, such as (among lots of others), “space opera military SF” or “space opera adventure” or “space opera romance free” and it will show you, among other things: (a) how many titles currently use that keyword phrase; (b) the average price of those titles; (c) how many people search on Amazon for that particular phrase per month; (d) how competitive that keyword phrase is — that is, how hard it is to get your book noticed if you use that phrase.

For example:

Space opera –> 38,000 competing titles –> average price $13 –> 5500 people per month search for that phrase –> highly competitive keyword phrase.

Space opera military science fiction –> 18,000 competing titles –> average price $3 –> fewer than 100 people per month search for that phrase –> medium competitive keyword phrase.

Space opera adventure –> 26,000 competitors –> $4 –> fewer than 100 people per month –> highly competitive keyword phrase.

Space opera romance free –> 330 competitors –> free –> 6500 people per month (isn’t that interesting?) –> medium competitive keyword phrase.

Space opera exploration –> 7800 competitors –> $5 –> fewer than 100 people per month –> low competitive keyword phrase

Space opera cherryh foreigner –> 336 competitors –> $9 –> fewer than 100 people per month –> very low competitive keyword phrase

It would never have occurred to me to put author or series names into keyword boxes. But not only can you do that, apparently it can be quite useful to do that. You can put as many words as will fit into each of the seven keyword boxes KDP offers you (this was not obvious to me; someone had to tell me you can fill up those boxes). You do not need to put in keywords that are already chosen as categories, such as “Science fiction.” That means one box can be “space opera adventure exploration military battles” and the next can be “friends family “romance free” “enemies to allies” aliens” and the next can be “piper fuzzy cherryh foreigner chanur” and so on.

I wonder how much difference keywords can make? Not sure, but various people (David Gaughran) suggest they can be very important. You are also, it seems, supposed to make an effort to put useful keywords into the book description. Fine. I added a line at the bottom of the description for NO FOREIGN SKY that uses the terms “space opera” and “adventure.” Can’t hurt, might help. Have I mentioned I dropped the preorder price? It might drop further, not sure, but it won’t go up higher than $4.99 until June, maybe not until the end of June.

Anyway, still gotta poke at Publisher Rocket some more and maybe adjust the category strings for various books.

Meanwhile! I’ve finalized the newsletter that will go out May 1st, including adding the entire first chapter of NO FOREIGN SKY. It doesn’t copy with correct formatting, so I had to go through and add a line between each paragraph and the next. Have I mentioned this is a pretty long first chapter? So that was somewhat tedious. Done now, and scheduled, whew! That’s a nice checkmark on my Stuff to Do list.

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One more time: Cover comments?

For simplicity, let’s call these covers 1, 2, and 3.

Cover 1

***

Cover 2

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Cover 3

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It seems to be VERY DIFFICULT to get borders on the sides. I’m serious. Every frame and border, the sides vanish as you move the frame into place. I have no idea about that and, once more, I’m going to reiterate that my patience for this is running low-ish, so I’m feeling that putting borders on the top and bottom is good enough. BUT I am glad to try a greenish background. What do you think?

Canva mostly wants to put a picture of some sort on the background. I’m having to scroll past a million cover images to find the blank ones that are basically plain colors.

Again, against a white background, the palest color does show up better. I grant, it’s never going to show up as well as a darker background. If enough of you say you prefer a darker background, I’ll bow to your collective wisdom, especially because to be honest, I pretty much do like all of these about equally.

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Please comment on the cover

I’m glad early commenters think the basic cover idea looks good! Please pick one. Comments regarding background color and borders are fine — that’s exactly what I would like — but let’s just please note ahead of time that I reserve the right to not spend fifteen hours trying to get Canva to produce a particular type of border when it REALLY does not want to do that.

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A somewhat horrifying view of cats and cat domestication

Cat Psychology & Domestication: Are We Good Owners?

From my title combined with the title of the linked post, I bet you can guess that the answer is: (A) Possibly we’re not overall doing great as cat owners. (B) More surprisingly: cats may not have been domesticated as vermin-killers. (C) One horrifying part: the real reason cats may have been domesticated. (D) A second horrifying part: we may be de-domesticating cats, with the cost of that de-domestication paid by the cats.

The linked article is REALLY long, so click through if you are interested and have PLENTY of time. But it’s certainly interesting and thought-provoking. It’s based on a book called Cat Sense by Bradshaw.

Let me provide a tidbit from the linked article that addresses each point above:

A) Are we good owners?

…cats’ emotional needs are still the cause of widespread misapprehensions. Cats are widely perceived as being far more socially adaptable than they actually are. Owners polled for a recent survey said that half of pet cats avoid (human) visitors to the house; almost all pet cats either get into fights with cats from neighboring houses, or avoid any contact with them; and half of the cats that share households with other cats either fight or avoid one another.1 Research confirms that cats find such conflicts highly stressful: they experience fear during the event itself, and anxiety in anticipation of the next encounter. They are constantly hypervigilant through cues we are unaware of, such as the odor of a rival cat. Chronic anxiety can lead to deteriorating health and may reduce life expectancy. Unfortunately, we do not know enough about how to mitigate this situation, made worse by the ever-increasing number of cats kept as pets.

How many of us really try hard to ameliorate the boredom and stress experienced by indoor cats?

Based on Bradshaw’s advice, I tried a number of things:

I replaced a noisy box fan & put rubber vibration-absorbing pads on the bottoms of all the fans/air-filters/⁣dehumidifiers/⁣computers (unclear efficacy);

I bought a Feliway cat pheromone diffuser spray (no apparent benefit and the Feliway-sponsored studies left me skeptical);

I bought a large water bowl to encourage drinking and … moved his feeding station to a more hidden corner;

I bought two ‘puzzle treat’ balls, simple and complex, to put dry food or treat bits in for him to play with (a big hit, although use must be strictly rationed to avoid triggering cystitis again, and the simple treat ball, which was an empty sphere, turned out to be far too easy to get treats out of6);

I bought 2 ‘cat condos’ which are cubes similar to cat perches (which he frequently sleeps on although again I don’t know how much difference that makes);

I got red/blue/⁣purple/⁣green laser pointers off eBay to supplement the wand for playing chase (initially highly effective but he quickly lost interest & I think limitations of cat color vision may make some colors much less effective7);

I got a Sphero Mini (cool toy but he remained afraid of it so after a year I gave it to my sister for her ferret); … [snip]

The vet, during the next visit which went poorly (as usual: Volk et al 2011/⁣⁣Volk et al 2014)9, gave me a 3-pill sample of gabapentin10 to try during relatives’ visits or future appointments (when I tried one dose, it made a little difference but not a lot, so I reserved the remaining 2 for the next vet visit, and 2×100mg turned out to be much more effective although the visit was still difficult for both of us); a

and I replaced the opaque cardboard/foam insulation around the cat-flap with an acrylic sheet from Lowe’s I cut to fit so he could more easily watch outside while laying on the window ledge.

I also began periodically putting him in the cat carrier and carrying him around either by hand or in my car to try to gradually reduce his aversion to it.

One particular success was using ‘videos-for-cats’: I had a hard time getting him to pay attention to the computer monitor long enough to realize that it was displaying videos of birds, but when I turned on the sound, he noticed and instantly became addicted.

Of these, the most worthwhile changes seem to be the wet cat food, puzzle treats, cat condos, videos-for-cats and exposure therapy.

In total, this owner took more than a dozen substantive steps to try to improve his cat’s life by reducing the boredom and stress of daily life and also reducing the stress of going to the vet. How many of us have done this much? I bolded the most useful tips in case anybody would like to try this video-for-cats thing, which I have never heard of.

B) The common assumption I shared, that cats were naturals for domestication because they are such good vermin exterminators, is apparently not well-supported as there were many alternatives, some superior to cats in ways. Instead, Bradshaw suggests that the key to their domestication may be—and this is speculative, I should caution—their essentially arbitrary role as popular sacrifices, requiring countless ‘catteries’ attached to temples, and at least millions of sacrifices on a scale staggering to contemplate: … We will never know how many cats were sacrificed this way. The archaeologists who discovered these sites wrote of vast heaps of white cat bones, and dust from disintegrating plaster and linen blowing across the desert. Several other cemeteries were excavated wholesale, and their contents ground up and used as fertilizer—some was used locally, some was exported. One shipment of cat mummies alone, sent to London, weighed nineteen tons, out of which just one cat was removed and presented to the British Museum before the remainder were ground into powder.

Mummies, by the way, do not weigh very much. They are desiccated objects.

C) While on the subject, let me also draw your attention to this paragraph of the linked article:

Kittens have a much shorter window of plasticity than puppies, who can tolerate lack of human contact for up to seven weeks with any harm, but by that point, kittens have already been damaged. … Similarly, kittens raised as litter-mates will get along closely, as indicated by things like grooming each other or laying touching another or happily eating side by side; while cats who met as adults will rarely or never do those behaviors no matter how cordial. And kittens raised with friendly dogs will be fine with dogs in the future, which is not something which could be said of all (or even most?) cats who encountered dogs as adults…

Not everyone realizes that kittens MUST BE SOCIALIZED VERY YOUNG or they do not get properly socialized at all. When I picked up those two adorable stray kittens last summer, they were about five weeks old, which is very young to separate from the mother BUT NOT TOO YOUNG TO BE SOCIALIZED. That is in fact the ideal age to socialize kittens. They hiss; you ignore that and pick them up, cradle them securely, pet them, and put them down again one zillion times a day. Two days later they are no longer hissing. Two days after that, they are coming to you for attention. If you don’t get this done before seven weeks, it does not work properly and the kitten’s ability to socialize to humans has most likely been permanently impaired. This is something to keep in mind when adopting kittens.

Cat respiratory viruses are a major killer in kittens and therefore some shelters keep kittens separate from each other and avoid handling the kittens and you know what that does? It crushes socialization, which cannot be made up later. In my opinion, it’s much better to risk kittens getting sick and dying rather than permanently stunting their socialization.

Also, always get two. Either littermates or age-mates. It’s very unlikely you can get two unrelated adult cats to ever be buddies the way littermates will be. Two kittens are four times as cute as one, and half as much trouble as the exercise and entertain each other. Two kittens, every time.

Moving one: Here’s an interesting point I never thought of, though it’s obvious:

D) Where do cats come from? Given that we sterilize almost all our pet cats and hardly buy from cat breeders, pedigree or otherwise, they must come from somewhere.

I don’t know where my family’s two cats or my cat came from, beyond “the animal shelter”; my neighbor’s cat was definitely a feral cat’s offspring; my aunt’s cat was from a pet cat’s litter but almost certainly had an at least semi-feral father; on the other side of the family, my uncle’s farm cat was definitely a semi-feral cat tolerated for its assumed pest hunting; more pointedly, as far as I know, no one within two degrees of separation of me has ever bought a purebred or pedigreed cat, while I can offhandedly recall 10 purebred dogs (and counting) which were bought specifically from dog breeders and 3 or 4 of which were even registered. (I eventually asked my grandmother, “has anyone in our family ever bought a pedigree cat, or from a cat breeder at all?” She could think of no examples either over the last century, but agreed that there were at least a dozen dogs bought from breeders.) Those dogs definitely were not accidents or fathered by stray feral dogs. I do not know how much reproduction feral cats account for or how much de-domestication it is responsible for, but it does seem like it could be a lot, and could be enough to drastically slow any domesticating process or even reverse domestication. …

… I acknowledge that Ragamuffins might be too dog-like for many people, but I do not think that things like stressing oneself to death via cystitis or being terrified of strangers are intrinsic to cats’ appeal, nor do I think any owner actively desires those things, and it should be possible to improve social skills & plasticity & anxiety while preserving the things we value about cats, like their perennial curiosity, watchfulness, clever trial-and-error, enjoyment of playing chase, purring etc without having to keep their problems like exploding kidneys or adult cats’ inability to befriend. …

… “if a dog breed were as unhealthy, neurotic, unable to adapt, and stressed out by interaction to the point of routine life-threatening kidney failure, as normal cats are now, buying such a dog would be considered more immoral than buying a pug or English bulldog is now”; and so on. But because they are cats, it’s taken for granted and just the ‘catus quo’. (“Oh cats—isn’t it so funny how cats spend all that time staring out the window? Or won’t stay in the same room as the family dog? Or hide whenever someone visits? Or pee in your bed? Or bite you for no reason? Adorable!” No. No, not really.)

Basic conclusion of the linked article: cats are barely domesticated, possibly less domesticated than pet rats and definitely less domesticated than those Russian foxes; and lots of people do not know how to handle cats and routinely subject their cats to unnecessary, accidental, repetitive stress. And every problem currently experienced by cats may be getting worse, as shy feral and half-feral cats are by far the cats that are permitted to reproduce.

Wow.

An interesting and certainly thought-provoking article. It’s made me think differently about how and where to get a couple of kittens in the future, something I very much would like to do eventually, when I have fewer dogs.

Image from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/users/olgaozik-11...

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