Tracy Cooper-Posey's Blog, page 15
February 4, 2023
My First Kickstarter…and it’s a doozy
Have you figured out yet just how much fun Kickstarter campaigns are?
We’ve been backing quite a few campaigns recently — all of them for authors releasing a new book. Only, you get way more than just the new book.
Here’s an example. I backed a Kickstarter that closed in late January — they successfully funded, so yesterday, I got all the goodies that came with my tier. For around $80 CAD (just under $60 USD), I got:
A 5 book set of science fiction short stories (110 stories)A 4 book set of crime short stories (100 stories)6 Fantasy anthollogies3 fantasy novelsAnd $1,200 in writing classes.They’re all brilliant goodies, but the last one really thrills me, for the authors who ran the Kickstarter really know how to write (and the process of improving one’s writing never ends).
Last month, Taylen Carver, one of the SRP authors, had a Kickstarter that funded (Taylen writes “straight” urban fantasy).
And this month, it’s my turn.
I’m currently working on the next book in the Scandalous Family – The Victorians historical romance series. And the Kickstarter is focused upon that series. But there’s way more goodies and bonuses you can get. There’s a dozen different tiers and ways of backing the campaign, and lots of add-ons, too.
Plus there are stretch goals. This is where, if the campaign is funded to a certain level, everyone gets the stretch goal bonus. And this is how I ended up with $1,200 in writing classes with the campaign I backed last month.
His Outrageous Proposal is the book that the campaign is focused upon. It’s book 4 in the series. And the Kickstarter campaign is the only way to get hold of the book, as it won’t be released in the general bookstores until June this year.
There is a tier to just get His Outrageous Proposal (and it’s discounted, compared to full retail). But you might want to check out the other tiers as well, especially if you’re new to the Great Family historical romances.
The Kickstarer pre-campaign page is here. There’s not much to see right now, because the campaign doesn’t go live until the 6th. But one of the things you can do there is sign up to be notified when the campaign goes live.
February 2, 2023
Free Romantic Suspense stories to scoop up and read
Over a year ago, I put up a flash fiction RS story on the site. Deadweight is part of the Dead Again story world. It was up on the site for a grand three weeks.
Then Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine wanted to buy Dead Drop, also part of the same story world, and I had to pull Dead Drop down from sale. Which also meant, for one reason or another, I had to pull down Deadweight and the bonus story that pops up at the end of it, Dead End.
The only problem? AHMM takes over a year to decide if they want a story or not.
So I have only in the last week heard that they want neither story, which I see as a blessing in disguise, because now I can put all the inter-related stories back up for you guys to access and read.
Which is what I’ve done.
These are all part of the Dead Again story world. You can read them (all except one) without having read Dead Again, but if you read Dead Again first, then they’ll round out the story, the characters and their back histories, and wrap everything up in a neat bundle for you.
Deadweight is a very early story prequel, and very short. You can read it on my stie at https://tracycooperposey.com/deadweight-part-1/ .
Dead End is a short story that follows on from Deadweight, featuring the same characters — you’ll find the information about how to acquire it at the end of Deadweight.
Then there’s little cameos and bonus scenes sprinkled through the emails that deliver Dead End to you.
Next in story time is Dead Again, which is a full novel you can get here.
Dead Drop is a sequel to Dead Again, and this is probably the only story you should not read if you haven’t read Dead Again yet. There’s a massive spoiler in there. (And writing the book description and trying to avoid that spoiler was a tough nut to crack!). Dead Drop is currently only available on my publisher site, Stories Rule Press. Details here.
So, lots of stories, story fragments and bits and pieces to work your way through!
Enjoy.
January 30, 2023
This Month’s 20% Off Sale has Started!
As usual, the Stories Rule Press sale runs for the last two days of the month + the first two days of the month, and gives you 20% off absolutely every story available in the bookstore, including already discounted books, boxed sets, pre-orders, the lot.
The coupon will only work on Stories Rule Press.The coupon expires at midnight MST on February 2nd.You can use the coupon as many times as you like between now and expiry.You can pass the coupon code on to friends and other book lovers.There is no upper limit to how many books you buy with the discount. If the book is in your shopping basket, it will be discounted.To take advantage of the sale, head over to Stories Rule Press and start browsing here: https://storiesrulepress.com/shop/.
D72M2UD8 is the coupon code. Copy this and add it to the coupon box when you checkout.
And enjoy!
Tracy
January 26, 2023
Australia Day
I’m a citizen of both Australia and Canada and today is Australia Day, although by the time most of us in the northern hemisphere gets to read this post, Australia Day will be over in Australia.
Nevertheless, I’m pausing to acknowledge my birth country, of which I am still inordinately fond–especially the beaches, which I miss terribly.
Have you migrated to a different country? Do you still celebrate your birth nation’s feasts and holidays?
Personally, I will be celebrating Australia Day by eating toast and vegemite. 
January 12, 2023
What do you do when the creators of your favorite stories misbehave?
When The Mists of Avalon came out in 1982, I was right there at the bookstore to grab my copy. A story about King Arthur? Count me in.
I read the book, loved it, and put it on my keeper shelf. There was a TV mini series made of the book and I watched that, too.
Then, a few years later, I learned that Marion Zimmer Bradley was a serial abuser of children, which sickened me to the core.
I haven’t read the book since, nor any of her other books. I just can’t bring myself to it. I’ve never bothered trying to replace the copy of The Mists of Avalon that I was forced to leave behind in Australia, when I moved to Canada.
One of the authors I worked hard to re-acquire when I got to Canada was Desmond Bagley, an English author of classic suspense thrillers published between 1963 and 1985. I had all his books, in Australia.
But I wanted ebooks this time around, and it took a while for them to be re-issued as ebooks. So there was a long period of time when I didn’t get to read Bagley at all.
Then I obtained a copy of Flyaway, which was a favorite for its descriptions of travelling across the Sahara. I settled in to read it, and found myself gob-smacked, a quarter of the way into the book, when the hero of the story hit his wife to shut her up.
I haven’t gone back to the book since. I didn’t finish it. I couldn’t.
And I was appalled that I didn’t remember this scene from earlier readings. Why had it not stuck in my mind, outlined in neon?
What Do You Do When Authors Misbehave?I actually don’t have any easy answers regarding this relatively modern quandary for readers and consumers of stories. It doesn’t help that I’m an author myself.
Prior to the Internet and indie publishing, traditional publishers would do their best to make sure their authors presented the most pleasing face to the public. Indiscretions were tucked away, scandals given a moral spin, and photos were airbrushed to death.
Now we live in a culture of full disclosure and cancelling, #metoo and more. The lives of authors and creators can be disclosed for the world to see, voluntarily or not, and with dirty laundry included.
Which leaves us, the readers and consumers of stories, with a judgment call to make.
I do wrestle with the issue.
Should we judge the work of creatives who are flawed and human by how they conduct their lives? Or should the work be considered in isolation, purely for the quality of the story itself?
And if we consume stories created by authors with serious moral flaws, such as Marion Zimmer Bradley, are we rewarding the authors for their faults? How much of that dark facet of their nature influences the fiction they create? And do we want to financially support that dark nature?
And how far do you take that judgment? I’m an author. And I have some weaknesses and bad habits of my own. If you learned that I was once a prom queen and you hate prom queens, would you stop reading my stories? Would you feel obliged to not read them?
Time is also a factor, here. Desmond Bagley’s Flyaway was written when standards were different. A man hitting his wife, if she provoked him, was sometimes considered justified (and oh, how that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, just typing it out!). Clearly, Bagley thought it was a perfectly acceptable action by the hero of the story. So this was a moral standard he held.
Should I judge his work and refuse to read it because of morals he held over thirty years ago, that are out of touch with modern ideals?
Or does he get a pass because he was writing in a different era?
It’s a difficult issue, isn’t it?
I ran into this wall in 2018, when Harvey Weinstein was arrested and charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual abuse. I was horrified by the stories that came tumbling out about him, revealing a man with a brutal nature.
My quandary was that he was one of the executive producers of Lord of the Rings, only my favourite movie trilogy of all time, ever. It even squeezes Star Wars out of the top spot, for me.
I actually had to sit down and think it through. Should I stop rewarding him financially with his 1.2% of the gross by refusing to consume the movies?
It isn’t as though the man had any creative influence over the movies. (Although I found out later that he did have some influence — by whispering to Peter Jackson about some actresses being “trouble”, he prevented those actresses from being considered for roles in the movies.)
Weinstein bank-rolled the trilogy, in part, but Peter Jackson resisted his creative directions, refused to squeeze the story into just two movies, and more.
When the #metoo revelations were made public, Jackson also went public with how much he had resented Weinstein’s heavy-handed meddling. An orc was created based upon Weinstein’s less than attractive visage, as a reverse homage to the man.
And in the final credits at the end of the third movie, while everyone else got line drawings of happy events in the movie, Weinstein got dark orcs in the background:
So does that make it okay to watch the movies, knowing that Weinstein’s influence was minimal?
And do I replace my nearly-dead CD set with a newly remastered set and put more pennies in the man’s pocket?
I still haven’t come to a decision about this.
I still watch the movies every Christmas, and will likely continue to do so, simply because the story has had such a huge impact to my writing career. But buying a new copy of the movies…well, I just don’t know.
There are no easy answersI suspect that for me, and for you, a judgment call will need to be made on a case by case basis. And how I judge and decide could be completely different to where you end up.
I simply stopped reading Marion Zimmer Bradley altogether.
Bagley, I approach on a book by book basis, and proceed with caution. I’ll probably never read Flyaway again, nor the follow up book that featured the same hero, Windfall. The hero is not a hero in my eyes, anymore.
I’ll have to get back to you about Lord of the Rings, because I’m still trying to sort that one out. Plus, do I stop consuming any Miramax movie? Weinstein had far more creative input into the movies his production company bankrolled, than he managed to wield over Lord of the Rings (thank goodness!).
Where do I draw the line?
Where do any of us draw the line? Should we even be holding the personal flaws of creatives up for judgment at all?
You tell me.
December 30, 2022
This month’s 20% off Everything Sale has Started
As promised and hinted at in the last few days, the 20% off Everything sale is here.
Here’s this month’s coupon code:
C5EGXASW
The coupon will discount everything in your shopping basket by 20% when you apply it to the promotion code window as you check out.
The coupon will only work at the Stories Rule Press store.
You can use the coupon as often as you want, until it expires at midnight MST on January 2nd.
You can also share the coupon with other readers.
Everything in the store is eligible, including boxed sets, books on pre-order, anthologies, books that are already discounted. Everything.
To take advantage of the discount, head over to the Stories Rule Press bookstore and start browsing.
And enjoy!
Tracy
December 29, 2022
One more deal about to die – vampire time travel romance
It’s the end of the year, when a lot of things come to an end, too. One of those is the pricing for the Kiss Across Time series.
At the start of the COVID19 pandemic, we dropped the prices by half on a handful of series, for everyone was stuck at home and no one had money to buy books.
But now the pandemic has shifted to an ongoing chronic disease, it’s time to return pricing to its normal, too.
The Kiss Across Time series will return to full retail pricing on January 1st, so you have a couple of days remaining to take advantage of the discount pricing.
Better still: If you wait until tomorrow, you can use the 20% off coupon sale that starts tomorrow, to get the series at an even cheaper price.
Enjoy!
December 28, 2022
If you like paranormal romance and/or RPGs…
I’ve been learning a lot about Kickstarter lately, as Taylen Carver, one of our SRP authors, has had one of their urban fantasy series as the focus of our first Kickstarter project. And while I was browsing through some of the great deals you can find on Kickstarter, I came across this one, which looks amazing.
Joanna Mazurkiewicz, a self-professed Harry Potter nerd, has written a paranormal romance series that has great covers, and looks super interesting..
The project has a ton of bonuses and goodies, and stretch goals, too.
Check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joannamaz/the-witching-hour-series-special-edition-hardcovers
December 24, 2022
Last Days for this Free Historical Romance, and a more
Some quick updates and notices before the holiday fun times kick in. These have deadlines, so I wanted to draw your attention to them.
His Parisian Mistress goes back to full retail tomorrow
Today is the last day that His Parisian Mistress, Book 1 of the Scandalous Family – The Victorians historical romance series, is free on all retailers, including my own site. As of tomorrow, it goes back to full retail pricing, everywhere.
You can pick up a copy directly from me, here, or you can head to your preferred bookseller, here.
Taylen Carver’s Urban Fantasy Series deal is shutting down
If you like your urban fantasy “straight” as well as the romance kind, then check out fellow SRP author Taylen Carver’s Kickstarter project, where you can pick up every title in their urban fantasy series, Magorian & Jones, plus a bonus story, too.
The Kickstarter shuts down in 72 hours, so this is a last chance to take advantage of the deal. Details here.
Watch your email inbox tomorrow!If you’ve been subscribed to my email list for more than a year, then you can probably guess why you should be watching your inbox tomorrow. If you’re new to my list, then you’ll find out why…tomorrow.
Either way, I’m hinting now, so you don’t miss the email.
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That’s it for quick updates. It’s Christmas Eve. I hope you all have a fabulous time tomorrow and throughout your holiday break.
Enjoy,
December 15, 2022
An Overdue Update
Before I get into the meat of today’s post, a short public service announcement:
His Parisian Mistress, which is book 1 of the historical romance series, Scandalous Famiy–The Victorians, is for today and only a few more days free on all booksellers, including Stories Rule Press.
Get your copy on Stories Rule Press
(which is really me in publisher disguise)
Get your copy at your favourite bookseller
Plus, the two other books (currently) available in the series have been discounted by 50% for the duration of this short term promo.
And back to the regularly schedule program:
The Booboo from Hell
I’ve been remiss, quite by accident.
As you might have intuited from my Bookfunnel News emails each morning, I have had some health problems lately.
Everyone whom I thought wanted to know how I was doing I have been sending updates on my progress via direct emails and on Facebook.
But I overlooked putting an update here on my blog. I was blind to the oversight until I received a few puzzled emails from readers who get my BookFunnel emails (with their enigmatic references), but do not do Facebook.
As my health issues are impacting the release of books, this post will give you all the nitty gritty details. Going forward, I will keep you posted, too – but not as frequently as I update on Facebook.
I have been struggling with back and neck issues going back to mid-2021. My chiropractor said it was pinched nerves, and he did provide relief. For a while.
In January 2022, I slipped on ice while shovelling snow. I didn’t fall, but the sideways slip cranked my neck, and I felt something crunch. My chiropractor tried to work on the new pinched nerve but it was far, far too painful. For weeks I was in constant pain, ate pain-killers like candy, and slept a lot. I spent most of my day in my recliner, too.
Doing anything at all became a problem. I couldn’t lift my arms, especially if I was holding something even moderately heavy. Bending to empty the dishwasher was agony.
I suffered through this for months, while my chiropractor tried to adjust everything and give me some relief. Somehow, I kept my writing up. I didn’t miss any deadlines, although I was close, once or twice.
My family physician took a battery of tests, including an x-ray of my back. Which is when we discovered I had three vertebrae with compression fractures (i.e., my back was broken), and nearly a dozen broken ribs.
I figured I had broken everything when I fell off my garden shovel in May, but my doctor disagreed.
My pain did not subside. I was still chewing pain killers like candy. Getting out of the chair was agony. Getting out of bed in the morning was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I hyperventilated and shuffled along until the first pain killers of the day kicked in. By now I had progressed to using a cane to get about.
Around this time, I also started to notice that parts of the left side of my face was numb. The jaw, and up to my temple. This was, I presumed, a complication from the pinched nerve in my neck, which had never been resolved, and for which I was still getting severe headaches and pain.
Because of the fractures, it was presumed I had severe osteoporosis, but when I had a bone density scan, we learned I only had mild osteopenia, not even full osteoporosis. And so the mystery continued.
One of the tests results showed a high degree of proteins in my urine, which concerned my doctor, so she referred me to a nephrologist (kidney specialist).
The kidney specialist phoned me herself the next Sunday morning, and asked if I’d ever heard of Multiple Myeloma (MM). My voice shook as I asked if that was some type of cancer. She said it was a cancer of the blood and bone marrow, which produces excess white blood cells – a useless kind of cell that crowds out the hemoglobin, and leeches calcium from bones. Which might explain why my spine and ribs were spontaneously breaking. She referred me to the Cross Cancer Institute.
I started to research MM and my research was sobering, because I was showing every classic symptom that MM sufferers go through.
By the time my appointment at the Cancer institute arrived in the last days of September this year, I was braced for the diagnosis. The oncologist confirmed that I had MM, and the gargantuan machinery that is the Cross Cancer Institute swung into gear. Suddenly, I had a chemotherapy schedule, training to complete, and dozens of blood tests. Multiple doctors, pharmacists and their assistants were phoning me to walk me through what came next.
I happened to mention to one of the doctors, a hematologist, about my numb face. I had mentioned this to many doctors in the past, but all of them dismissed the numbness as a side effect of the pinched nerve, which confirmed my own suspicions.
This doctor, though, paused and frowned. “That doesn’t sound right,” she said. She went off to look at the battery of x-rays they had taken of my entire back just that morning. (I have had so many x-rays taken, lately, that I’m surprised I don’t glow in the dark.)
The x-rays were inconclusive, because the vertebrae in the neck are very hard to see, typically. The jaw and skull hide them.
But the hematologist got stubborn. “Then we’ll do a CT scan,” she declared.
It took four people to help me lie down flat on my back in the scanner. I was in agony, but had to lie still.
The CT scanner showed what the x-rays had not: The C1 vertebrae, the one just under the back of the skull, was fractured and curling in on itself and pressing against the spinal cord.
I wasn’t allowed to move, after that. They fitted me for a neck brace and wouldn’t even let me sit up to have it put on. They eased it onto my neck while I remained lying down. Then I was transferred to the biggest hospital in the city, and referred to a neurosurgical team.
I had emergency surgery two days later, and the team inserted titanium alloy plates, rods and pins into my head and neck, to prop up my neck and protect the spinal cord, which the C1 vertebrae could no longer do.
I came home from hospital ten days later. And two days after that, learned I’d brought COVID home with me.
I had had major spinal surgery, a cancer diagnosis, lost nearly 60 pounds because I had no appetite, and now COVID…and it still hadn’t been quite two weeks since I’d first visited the Cross Cancer Institute.
I had trouble focusing or paying attention to anything, once I got home. It took a good couple of weeks for me to even be able to focus upon text on my computer screen. I was taking opioids, now, not just Tylenol, and sleeping always seemed like a better option.
It was a miserable few weeks. I used to be able to sit on the ends of my hair. Now, thanks to the surgery, my hair had been shaved at the back of my head and the rest had to be trimmed to just above my shoulders. I had an open incision up the back of my head. And I still couldn’t get out of the recliner without help and a lot of pain.
I also started chemotherapy in that time. Luckily, I had no major side effects, for I had a lot of other issues to deal with.
Writing fiction, in that time, came to a grinding halt. I could barely process emails, and felt tired after clearing out my inbox.
About three weeks after returning home from hospital, I eased myself out of bed one morning and got dressed (which required sitting on a chair, and taking breaks in between donning each garment). I put on my shirt, and my hand brushed the back of my head.
My hair was wet.
The surgical incision was weeping.
We dashed to my nearest Emergency Room, for infections when you’re doing chemo can be life threatening.
The ER confirmed my surgical wound was infected, and immediately put me onto an antibiotic drip. Eight hours later, they referred me to the ER of the hospital where I had the original surgery. And nine hours after that, the ER admitted me to the hospital itself.
The next day I had yet another emergency surgery. The neurosurgeon who had completed the original surgery would have to reopen the wound, and clean out the infection.
They took swabs of the infection while they were cleaning it out, and would analyze them to determine which bacteria had infected me. Those tests can take up to ten days, so I remained in hospital until the bacteria had been identified, and a more specific antibiotic could be prescribed.
The infection was deep enough to be classified a bone infection. The tests showed that the bacteria was a mild one (there are some life threatening bad boys out there), but I would have to undergo six weeks of IV antibiotic treatment.
They installed a PICC line. This is a permanent IV that is inserted into your upper arm, and is threaded through the larger veins in the arm and chest, to deliver antibiotics to the big vein near the heart. It simplifies the delivery of the antibiotic, as normal IVs clog up in a couple of days, and my forearms and the backs of my hands were nearly all black from bruises caused by IVs while I was in the hospital.
Then I was sent home, again.
This time, I recovered more quickly, because after tapping into the expertise of everyone who spoke to me in the hospital, including hematologists, orthopaedic surgeons, general physicians, infectious disease doctors, physiotherapists, pharmacists, occupational therapists and nurses with decades of experience, I experimented and learned something vital: Sleeping on my side, which I had done all my life, was aggravating my broken ribs and probably wasn’t helping my fractured spine, either.
So I made myself sleep on my back, with the bed slightly raised (because lying flat was agonizing). And within a few nights, the permanent pain around my torso, that flared from chronic to acute with every little movement, had eased enough that I could get out of the bed in the morning, and not hyperventilate with the pain.
Mark bought me an incline pillow, so I could continue to sleep on a “raised” bed on my back, at home. I’m still using the pillow, and now I’ve progressed to the point where I sometimes forget to grab my cane when I move around the house, and I can get through the day with only one dose of Tylenol, and no opioids.
I visit the IV clinic each day to get my antibiotics, and will until mid-December. In the meantime, because chemotherapy and antibiotics are sort-of polar opposites, my chemotherapy has been put on hold.
This might have been an issue, but when I consulted with my oncologist, he said that in the mere 10 days I had received chemotherapy before I landed back in hospital, my response had been so positive, that the proteins in my blood were down to just above normal.
Without chemotherapy, those numbers will start to climb again, but they will linger at the low level for a few weeks, which is enough to complete the antibiotics course (which is important) and not suffer any negative impact from delaying chemotherapy.
It also means that when I do get back to chemotherapy in late December, it’s likely I will respond just as well, and the chemotherapy will be successful.
Also on the positive side, my kidneys have settled down and are functioning just below normal. The slight negative is a result of the cancer, which will self-correct as I go through chemotherapy. The nephrologist (who was the first to mention the C word) has said she doesn’t need to see me anymore. My kidney functions can be monitored by my family doctor.
In the meantime, because I’m nearly pain free and far, far more mobile than I have been for months, I am back to writing fiction.
Which is part of the reason I’m writing this post. My production schedule has been completely disrupted. I’ve missed release dates and I’m whole books behind where I would have been, had I not gone through these multiple crises.
Although I’m writing once more, I’m not yet back to my previous level of output, and it’s possible I’ll never get back to that hyper-productive level ever again.
So, books you’ve been looking forward to will be delayed. I’m sorry about this. I hate letting you guys down. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t like to publish my production schedule, and get your hopes up about upcoming books. I preferred to announce a new book once it had been written. Because life tends to throw wrenches when you least expect them.
My plan is to finish every series that is yet unfinished, which includes Adelaide Becket, The Endurance, Project Kobra, Scandalous Families—The Victorians, Kiss Across Time, and Once and Future Hearts. I won’t be starting new series until these are almost done.
As I have done until now, I won’t announce release dates until I’ve actually finished the book and the release is guaranteed. This avoids disappointing you, and takes pressure off me. I can complete books as fast as I can manage, instead of sweating out a deadline.
And that’s where things currently stand. I’ve glossed over a lot of detail (such as losing all my hair with the second surgery – they buzz cut everything). The updates on FB have more in them, but I don’t want to swamp your inbox with emails about this. If you can access Facebook and you want more detail, check out my public page there; https://www.facebook.com/TracyCooperPosey. Or if you’re a member of the Hangout group, you’ll find the same updates there.
So, stay tuned. If you don’t want to miss news about releases, consider subscribing to my email list (and if you’re reading this post inside an email, you’re already subscribed).
I’m happy to answer questions if you have ‘em. Comment below, or reply to the email.
Cheers,
