Tracy Cooper-Posey's Blog, page 8
November 9, 2023
Other Places to Find Good Books: Fiction Apps
This is Part Six of a series:
Part 1: Kobo
Part 2: Barnes & Noble, Google, Apple Books
Part 3: Ask an AI
Part 4: Smashwords
Part 5: Subscription Services
_______________
Fiction Apps are applications that you download and install to your phone or tablet, or that you can read on your laptop or desktop, if you prefer, and if the app has a browser-based site.
I have no experience with fiction apps at all, but I know a lot of authors who distribute their books to fiction apps.
Fiction app owners have a history of offering very bad contracts to authors — they don’t pay well, and the contracts are rights grabs. Many authors have managed to negotiate their way into better contracts, or just don’t care about rights grabs, and sign anyway, because fiction apps are super popular with readers.
To install a fiction app, use your application installer on your device to search for the app, then download and install it as you would for other apps. You can also find the app download links on the site, if the app has one.
Once you’ve installed, open the app, and you have access to a lot of lovely fiction.
There are some nefarious apps out there that install a lot more than just stories onto your device. So do your research and check with other readers before installing a new app.
Here are four of the more reputable ones.
RadishI’d love to know where the name comes from. I couldn’t find an answer to that question, though.
Radish have a website, to go along with their app. You’ll find them here. They are a successful romance fiction app, that also offers audiobooks. And the most popular of their fiction is super-steamy. You get most fiction in “bits” — roughly corresponding to chapters.
Some authors write and install a new chapter every week or day, releasing their story on Radish before compiling it into a full novel and releasing everywhere else.
Other authors work the other way around; they have already released their fiction on retail sites and then chunk it up and present it on Radish.
The app works on both IOS and Android, plus you can read on the site, via your browser. YOu can also download the app from the website.
iReaderiReader call themselves “a romantic storytelling platform for story lovers all over the globe.”
They also claim to have “countless” exclusive stories. You can certain explore for yourself. iReader is available on both IOS and Android.
DreameDreame has a website, from where you can download both IOS and Google apps, or log in and read your fiction in your browser. They appear to offer mostly romance and romantic stories.
InkittInkitt also has a site, here. Unlike the other three apps, Inkitt cater to more than romance. If you like to spread your reading diet across genres, you should check this one out.
Inkitt is available for IOS and Android, and both apps can be downloaded from the site.
November 2, 2023
Paranormal Women’s Fiction
Several months ago, on the Reader’s Hangout, there was a discussion about romances featuring older heroines. I ran a poll at the time, asking if readers would like to read romances that featured older women, as none of us is getting any younger. 
Here’s the results of that poll:
I took the results seriously, and have since been researching the book publishing market.
I’ve known about Paranormal Women’s Fiction (PWF) for quite some time, but never paid it any attention, because it wasn’t romance.
It turns out, I was wrong.
PWF does include romance…but that’s not all. It is a very inclusive genre that includes bits and pieces from a dozen other genres; cozy mysteries, mysteries, straight fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, fantasy romance, small town romance. Beyond witches and wizards, it can feature gargoyles, shifters, vampires, angels, hunters…virtually any paranormal or supernatural creature or occupation.
Not all PWF will include all these tropes and characters, but the one thing they all feature is older women as main characters.
So, think of the 1998 movie Practical Magic, but not the two younger characters played by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman–no, recall instead, the two aunts, played so fantastically by Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest.
PWF heroines are at least 40 years old, if not older. And they deal with… well, all the same crap that we deal with. Kids off to college, marriage issues, aging parents, menopause, adult kids, money issues, sagging…everything. Quite often the main character is going through a midlife crisis that puts a volcanic eruption to shame. There is a lot of second chances and a lot of starting-overs.
Plus, there is magic. Heroines in PWF are already aware of their powers or just coming into them. Or they have no special powers, but kick ass in the paranormal world, anyway (e.g. hunters).
Plus, many of the books have romances in them, too, and can be found mostly in the paranormal romance categories (but more on finding these books in a minute).
Anway, the more I dug into PWF, the more I realized that this is the perfect genre for me, for a new series featuring older heroines.
Paranormal Women’s Fiction isn’t an official genreThis is the interesting thing about PWF. You won’t find it listed as a genre in any of the bookstores, or your library catalogue. (Although there are reading lists for PWF on Goodreads — but those are pulled together by readers.)
PWF isn’t an official genre because it was “invented” by 13 authors, who got together, built a website, and defined the new genre for themselves, then went out and wrote hundreds of books that fit their new genre.
As they say on their site:
We are not inventing books with 40+ heroines. We are hoping to define a place for them amongst other genres.
There is a lot more to their definition of PWF, which is worth a read.
Now, a lot more authors are writing Paranormal Women’s fiction, as readers like it and want more.
I thought I’d throw my hat in with them.
I’ve just starting building the concept for a new PWF series, and plotting the first book. I’ll give you details as I have them.
But in the meantime, if PWF is brand new to you, you might want to check out some of the really popular books in the “category”…except where do you look?
Where to find Paranormal Women’s Fiction.On Amazon, a huge bunch of PWF can be found in the Literature & Fiction –> Women’s Fiction–> Fantasy. [here].
The next most popular place to find them is Science Fiction & Fantasy–> Fantasy–> Paranormal & Urban. [here]
You will also find some PWF in Fantasy Romance categories, and in Paranormal Romance.
In all these categories, you will have to sift through to find the PWF featuring older heroines.
For the other bookstores, you can find similar categories to explore.
However, possibly the easiest way to find PWF on any bookstore is to search using the term “paranormal women’s fiction”. This is because the genre was invented by authors, who make sure their books’ sub-titles and descriptions are all marked very clearly with the phrase, so that it comes up in a search.
Or Find and Follow the Favourite AuthorsThere are dozens of authors writing PWF — either that is all they write, or they have one or two series that are PWF. Or they started off in one genre (say, cozy mysteries) and switched to PWF. So part or all of a PWF author’s catalogue will be PWF.
It is easier to learn about new PWF titles by following the authors who write it. As PWF is not a formal, officially recognize genre by any bookstores or book authorities (such as the BISAC category codes), no one else will provide news of new PWF titles.
There is also a PWF group on Facebook, where authors can provide information about new releases and readers can talk about the genre.
Happy Hunting!
October 30, 2023
Site Revamp. It’s SO Speeeeedy, now!
A while back I mentioned that I was having site issues, and had to shift all the Stories Rule Press authors’ sites over to a new host.
The new host (Hostinger) has provided resources that make all the sites a lot faster, just by migrating over. But one of the issues I was having was that the expensive theme I had been using for nearly ten years — Avada — which was a delight when I first bought it — was slowing down the sites.
This gets a bit technical, if you’ve never run a WordPress site before. I’ll try to explain this simply. Avada has a built in page builder, that makes building fancy-dancy pages easy. You just have to drag and drop, and click off the options you want. It’s fantastic at building some amazing pages.
Only, every time you use the page builder, or any of the options that Avada offers, a humungous batch of ugly code is added to the page. Avada hides that code, so you just see the beautiful page. But if the Avada theme isn’t active, then all that ugly coding is visible to anyone who visits the page.
Plus, the more pages you have with this invisible glop of coding, the slower the site runs in general.
My old host service simply couldn’t cope with the code-heavy author sites. They weren’t a WordPress specialist.
Hostinger IS a WordPress specialist, but still, the sites were visibly slow to load, which isn’t good.
The only problem is: As soon as I use any theme other than Avada, I am forced to go through every single page and post on the site, and manually hunt down and delete all the gloppy coding that Avada left behind.
But…I had no choice. Sooner or later, I would have to do this. I did not want to be stuck with Avada forever.
And that is what I have been doing for the last few weeks, in my infinite spare time. I have been going through all the sites, swapping out the Avada theme for a very lightweight but powerful new theme (Astra). Then going through every page and post and deleting the ugly code that was now visible.
The site I dreaded doing the most was mine. This one. (If you’re reading this in an email, you can click on the subject line at the top, and read the post on the site, then explore a bit.
But I have finally finished it, and the site is so much faster than it used to be!
If you’ve never visited my site before, head over and check it out here. There are a lot of features there, including the Freebie page, which is the most popular page on the site.
October 26, 2023
Two Releases, Today!
I have two releases to tell you about, today.
First up, The Endurance Box Two, the second boxed set in The Endurance science fiction romance series, is now available in all stores, everywhere.
________
The second four science fiction romances in a unique series, collected together.
XENOGENESIS
Rex has never been worthy of Belen’s love. Can he change that?
Life aboard the Endurance is disintegrating—unemployment, inflation, crime and destitution, all ignored by the super-rich, including Rex Julyan, the wildly successful and most hedonistic man on the ship. When Rex meets an old Artificial Intelligence called Emma, she tells him there may be a way to save the ship, but does he care enough to try? For the woman he once loved, Belen Tirrell, is now the partner of the ship’s Captain, Antonio Tyler. She left Rex to be with him, long ago. Nothing would win her back now…would it?
JUNKYARD HEROES
How does someone afraid of their own shadow become a hero and win love?
Pint-sized Noa Doria and her “loser” friends help a stranger in trouble—none other than Haydn Forney. Haydn is the son of the most hated man on the Endurance, Fornell Acardi, leader of the psychotic Caver movement. Strife follows Haydn everywhere.
EVANGELIYA
He must choose between the woman he loves and the child he has always wanted…
Liya and Gelin have worked for ten years to find a way to live together, despite few resources and less hope. Then Gelin learns he has been selected to become a parent…and the other parent is not Liya.
SKINWALKER’S BANE
They can’t stand each other.
Devin Bronson has climbed from an abject childhood, determined to reach the pinnacle of the Endurance: the Captain’s chair. Association with the wrong people could destroy her hopes.
Adam Wary is a typical skinwalker, living hard and fast, for life can be short. When his friend Lincoln dies and leaves a message for Adam to give to a woman called Devin, Adam tries to deliver, to Devin’s horror. Lincoln’s message threatens Devin’s career and pulls Adam into the dark underbelly of the Endurance in search of the truth.
These four titles are part of the science fiction romance series readers are calling gripping, superb and fantastic. Written by award-winning SFR author Tracy Cooper-Posey, it is set aboard the marathon-class vessel Endurance, a generation ship a thousand years from its destination. If you like the smart, romantic SF of authors like Linnea Sinclair and Anna Hackett, you will love the Endurance series. Dive into this thought-provoking new romance series today!
__
This boxed set is part of The Endurance SFR series:
0.5 5,001
1.0 Greyson’s Doom
2.0 Yesterday’s Legacy
3.0 Promissory Note
3.1 Quiver and Crave
4.0 Xenogenesis
5.0 Junkyard Heroes
5.1 Evangeliya
6.0 Skinwalker’s Bane
7.0 Mongrels United…and more to come!
A Science Fiction Romance Boxed Set.
__
Praise for The Endurance Box Two:
The imagination of Tracy Cooper-Posey, along with her in depth and well detailed writing draw you in book after book.
Romance, action, tension and a look on sociology in a closed environment it’s really a great sci fi.
This series has such an interesting plot – a ship bound for a destination, a thousand years away.
Each book presents a different snapshot in time of a society evolving independently in space
I love the Endurance ‘world’, its people and the evolution of unexpected romances!
Each book of the Endurance series just keeps getting better and better.
I’m an Endurance series addict
This series is one of my favorites, I could happily read these stories again and again.
The author, as she always does, has magically spun four fascinating tales in this densely-detailed world of the Endurance.
_______________
You can pick up the boxed set from anywhere:
Buy from me at SRP
Buy from your preferred store
___________________________
The second of today’s releases is my cancer memoir, which is a bit of a change of pace from romance, I’ll admit!
But many of you reading this post (or email, if you’re on my email list) are indirectly responsible for the book’s existence, and I explain why in the book, and the blurb, below. So, thank you — you know who you are!
_______
Cancer is also a mental game…Because I am an author, when I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in 2022, I unintentionally lived through my treatment, the ups and (some of) the downs, in a very public way. Then something strange happened.
I began to get messages and emails from strangers. Lots of strangers. My posts and public updates, they said, were helping them deal with their own brush with cancer—as survivors, patients, caregivers, friends, family and, sometimes, as victims.
The public updates were necessarily short and severely edited. This book is an unedited chronology of everything I dealt with to arrive where I am today. Woven through the public posts are the raw facts and events I didn’t include in the updates. I’ve also included my hugely subjective opinions on some of the extremes cancer patients and their caregivers go through and how it changes you.
Looking for a different way to think about cancer? Try mine.
A Cancer Memoir
___
Praise for Tracy’s fiction and non-fiction:
Cooper-Posey’s writing is always brilliant.
Creative and Amazing!
I really love how original Tracy manages to be.
You’re an inspiration, so keep doing what you’re doing!
WOW, even in this stressful time you’re still on top of it.
Man you are so full of all kinds of information. As always, I found this very interesting and enlightening.
_________________
For today, Cancer Curated is only available for sale on Stories Rule Press. It is also available for pre-order on all other stores, and will be released in late January.
Pre-order at your preferred retail store
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Two Releases Today!
I have two releases to tell you about, today.
First up, The Endurance Box Two, the second boxed set in The Endurance science fiction romance series, is now available in all stores, everywhere.
________
The second four science fiction romances in a unique series, collected together.
XENOGENESIS
Rex has never been worthy of Belen’s love. Can he change that?
Life aboard the Endurance is disintegrating—unemployment, inflation, crime and destitution, all ignored by the super-rich, including Rex Julyan, the wildly successful and most hedonistic man on the ship. When Rex meets an old Artificial Intelligence called Emma, she tells him there may be a way to save the ship, but does he care enough to try? For the woman he once loved, Belen Tirrell, is now the partner of the ship’s Captain, Antonio Tyler. She left Rex to be with him, long ago. Nothing would win her back now…would it?
JUNKYARD HEROES
How does someone afraid of their own shadow become a hero and win love?
Pint-sized Noa Doria and her “loser” friends help a stranger in trouble—none other than Haydn Forney. Haydn is the son of the most hated man on the Endurance, Fornell Acardi, leader of the psychotic Caver movement. Strife follows Haydn everywhere.
EVANGELIYA
He must choose between the woman he loves and the child he has always wanted…
Liya and Gelin have worked for ten years to find a way to live together, despite few resources and less hope. Then Gelin learns he has been selected to become a parent…and the other parent is not Liya.
SKINWALKER’S BANE
They can’t stand each other.
Devin Bronson has climbed from an abject childhood, determined to reach the pinnacle of the Endurance: the Captain’s chair. Association with the wrong people could destroy her hopes.
Adam Wary is a typical skinwalker, living hard and fast, for life can be short. When his friend Lincoln dies and leaves a message for Adam to give to a woman called Devin, Adam tries to deliver, to Devin’s horror. Lincoln’s message threatens Devin’s career and pulls Adam into the dark underbelly of the Endurance in search of the truth.
These four titles are part of the science fiction romance series readers are calling gripping, superb and fantastic. Written by award-winning SFR author Tracy Cooper-Posey, it is set aboard the marathon-class vessel Endurance, a generation ship a thousand years from its destination. If you like the smart, romantic SF of authors like Linnea Sinclair and Anna Hackett, you will love the Endurance series. Dive into this thought-provoking new romance series today!
__
This boxed set is part of The Endurance SFR series:
0.5 5,001
1.0 Greyson’s Doom
2.0 Yesterday’s Legacy
3.0 Promissory Note
3.1 Quiver and Crave
4.0 Xenogenesis
5.0 Junkyard Heroes
5.1 Evangeliya
6.0 Skinwalker’s Bane
7.0 Mongrels United…and more to come!
A Science Fiction Romance Boxed Set.
__
Praise for The Endurance Box Two:
The imagination of Tracy Cooper-Posey, along with her in depth and well detailed writing draw you in book after book.
Romance, action, tension and a look on sociology in a closed environment it’s really a great sci fi.
This series has such an interesting plot – a ship bound for a destination, a thousand years away.
Each book presents a different snapshot in time of a society evolving independently in space
I love the Endurance ‘world’, its people and the evolution of unexpected romances!
Each book of the Endurance series just keeps getting better and better.
I’m an Endurance series addict
This series is one of my favorites, I could happily read these stories again and again.
The author, as she always does, has magically spun four fascinating tales in this densely-detailed world of the Endurance.
_______________
You can pick up the boxed set from anywhere:
Buy from me at SRP
Buy from your preferred store
___________________________
The second of today’s releases is my cancer memoir, which is a bit of a change of pace from romance, I’ll admit!
But many of you reading this post (or email, if you’re on my email list) are indirectly responsible for the book’s existence, and I explain why in the book, and the blurb, below. So, thank you — you know who you are!
_______
Cancer is also a mental game…Because I am an author, when I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in 2022, I unintentionally lived through my treatment, the ups and (some of) the downs, in a very public way. Then something strange happened.
I began to get messages and emails from strangers. Lots of strangers. My posts and public updates, they said, were helping them deal with their own brush with cancer—as survivors, patients, caregivers, friends, family and, sometimes, as victims.
The public updates were necessarily short and severely edited. This book is an unedited chronology of everything I dealt with to arrive where I am today. Woven through the public posts are the raw facts and events I didn’t include in the updates. I’ve also included my hugely subjective opinions on some of the extremes cancer patients and their caregivers go through and how it changes you.
Looking for a different way to think about cancer? Try mine.
A Cancer Memoir
___
Praise for Tracy’s fiction and non-fiction:
Cooper-Posey’s writing is always brilliant.
Creative and Amazing!
I really love how original Tracy manages to be.
You’re an inspiration, so keep doing what you’re doing!
WOW, even in this stressful time you’re still on top of it.
Man you are so full of all kinds of information. As always, I found this very interesting and enlightening.
_________________
For today, Cancer Curated is only available for sale on Stories Rule Press. It is also available for pre-order on all other stores, and will be released in late January.
Pre-order at your preferred retail store
Have a great weekend, everyone!
October 19, 2023
Other Places to Find Good Books: Subscription Services
Subscription Services
This is an informal series. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5.
It has been a while since I added to this series, but let’s check out another source of books: Subscription Services.
These are services that ask you to pay a flat monthly fee, usually quite low, and in exchange, you can read all the books you want that they have in their catalogue.
The most well-known of these services in Kindle Unlimited. There is also Scribd, and Kobo Plus. There are other, less well-known services, which I hesitate to mention because I can’t recommend them.
All subscription services must figure out a way to pay authors when readers read their books. How they pay authors, and how much they pay authors, must come to a total that is less than the amount of subscription fees they take in, or the model doesn’t work.
Therefore most subscription services pay authors very little per read of one of their novels. Author rely on readers reading a great many of their books as they don’t have to pay for them, in order to make money.
The model can be shaky, which is why only the much larger subscription services manage to do well, or to last long. Yet they all have their drawbacks.
Kindle Unlimited
Kindle Unlimited has thousands of books available, and all of them cannot be found anywhere ouside Amazon. That makes Kindle Unlimited very attractive.
This exclusivity is tough on authors, though, who must rely purely upon Amazon to earn their money. Therefore many authors choose not to go into Kindle Unlimited.
The books available in Kindle Unlimited are therefore…well, limited. Not every book in the world can be found there. After a while you might find that you’ve plumbed the depths of a particular category of stories and must wait for authors who are in the program to publish new books.
Scribd
Authors can offer their books for Sribd to include in their purely subscription only reader service, and Scribd will decide whether to include the book or not. This beccomes a problem if you’re reading romance. Scribd severely limits the number of romance stories on offer, because that is the genre with the “whale” readers, who read so many books in a day or week, that the fees Scribd must pay to authors quickly outgrows the subscription price the reader has paid.
So you will not find many romance titles on Scribd.
Nor will you find complete series. Scribd occassionally picked up one of my books to include in their service, and it was usually book 3 or 7 or so forth, in a series, when they hadn’t taken any of the previous books.
I never earned more than pennies from Scribd, and have stopped offering my books for their service. I know a great many other authors who feel the same way.
Therefore, the books on offer at Scribd you might find quite limited. But if you like reading outside romance, you may enjoy the books on offer there.
Kobo Plus
Kobo Plus is the second largest subscription service currently available in the English speaking world. Its greatest pro for authors is that it does not insist upon exclusivity. Authors can publish their books anywhere else they want to, plus pick up subsciption fees from Kobo Plus.
Not every author publishing on Kobo also puts their books into Kobo Plus, but a large number do (including me), and as more and more readers subscribe, more and more authors will be tempted to join the program, too. Therefore the books on offer via Kobo Plus include books that are not available via Kindle Unlimited.
—————
As you can see, the major problem with subscription services is the range and number of books they have to offer via that service. However, if you combine services, you will have a huge number books available to read. For example, if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited and Kobo Plus, you’re covering nearly every published book available, between them, and as time goes on, there will be less and less books not subscribed in one or the other.
However.
While the idea of a smorgasbord of free books sounds wonderful, if you do not read a great many books quickly, a subscription service might not be for you. For example, Kobo Plus’ monthly fee for US residents is $7.99 a month. The average romance book is $2.99. You have to read at least three books a month to make the subscription service worthwhile. If you are subscribed to two services, you need to read twice as many books in a month if you don’t want to lose money.
There are many readers who read that many books a day or per week. But not everyone is able to consume books in such large numbers. Buying books as you go might end up being more economical in the long run.
Do the math before you dive into the sea of lovely books just waiting for you to download them.
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October 12, 2023
First Chapters of CANCER CURATED
We’re only two weeks away from the release of Cancer Curated (hard to believe — that time went fast!), and that normally means running the first chapter of the book for you, here.
But Cancer Curated is non-fiction, and the chapters are kinda chopped up. Still, I’ll run a decently-long excerpt here for you, that includes more than a chapter.
Foreword
BY MARK POSEY
I have been married to Tracy Cooper-Posey for the better part of 27 years. I was with her every step of the way from diagnosis to first round of chemotherapy to the stem cell transplant to the final round of chemotherapy. Final round is a bit of a misnomer. One of the things we learned on this journey is Multiple Myeloma is a relapsing remitting disease. It is never truly cured. The best we can hope for is a long remission.
Many people have called her brave for putting her updates out in public like she did. I don’t think she thought of it that way at all. So many people kept asking, “What’s going on?” There was no way she could have answered each of them individually. (But I still think she’s brave.)
I suppose, to a degree, that’s my fault. I actually posted the first update. There were a bunch of people I had to tell personally—our kids, Tracy’s Mum, my parents, Tracy’s agent, Tracy’s writing partner, and several close friends. By the time I had at least attempted to get a hold of all those people, I was short on time and threw a post up on social media before dashing to the hospital. By the end of the day, that post had blown up.
Over the course of the last year, people have told Tracy that not only did they appreciate the updates but they were finding her courage helpful in dealing with their own trials and tribulations. Online culture being what it is though, Tracy’s updates were more well received if they were positive and upbeat.
Here, for the first time, Tracy pulls back the curtain and reveals what her face-off with Multiple Myeloma was really like, warts and all. With nearly 200 fiction titles under her belt, nobody could do a better job of articulating the thoughts, feelings and raw emotion of the whole experience.
She’s still being brave.
Mark Posey
September 21, 2023
Annus Horribilis x 2
In November 1992, Queen Elizabeth II described the year she and her family had gone through as her annus horribilis—her horrible year. And it was a doozy. All of Elizabeth’s children were caught up in affairs, scandals, divorces and other sensational tabloid events. Windsor Castle, one of the Queen’s favourite residences, was severely damaged by fire. And to culminate her year, Prince Charles and Princess Diana formally separated.
I’ve just finished going through all my journal entries and other documentation as I prepare to write this book. And I think I can justifiably claim that, stretching from May 2021 through to…well, right now, September 2023; this has been my annus horribilis. Times two. And a bit.
There are rumours and speculation surrounding Queen Elizabeth’s death. Official records state she died of old age, but Gyles Brandreth, in Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, claims she had a rare bone marrow cancer called Multiple Myeloma in the last years of her life.
Funny, that’s what I’ve got.
I’ll tell you a lot more about that in a bit.
A lot of people insisted I should write this book. As I am a writer, that seemed like a natural next step following the couple of years I’ve had.
I did a bit of research about memoirs, because I write fiction for my daily bread. Novels and non-fiction books like memoirs are two different species. I wanted to find out a little bit more about writing memoirs before I committed to writing my own. And I was shocked by the number of cancer memoirs already out there. Why would I want to add to that mountain of books?
There’s one very good reason you’re reading this book right now.
As I mentioned, I’m a writer. When my life skewed into nightmareland in October, 2022, I was unable to write at all, for reasons I’ll explain in a bit.
Yet my readers were waiting for the next book in their favourite series to be released. And all our friends and family were asking frantic questions about my situation.
At the time, I was in a hospital bed and couldn’t find my phone. The nursing staff had put it somewhere safe, I found out later, but as I couldn’t move off the bed, I couldn’t communicate with either readers, or friends and family.
So my husband, Mark, did something that set up a pattern that is the reason I wrote this book. It was pretty simple. He updated everyone—friends, family and readers—with a post on Facebook.
The outpouring of concern, empathy and warm wishes that came back to us was overwhelming. There were a lot of questions, too. But that simple post managed to reach everyone. Readers were braced for the possibility that my next book release might be delayed. Friends and family were informed about what had happened, too.
Several days later, when I was sent home from hospital (for the first time), I followed up with an update of my own, telling everyone what had happened to me and trying to answer some of the questions we’d got.
This time, the responses and feedback I got was even more overwhelming. But among them were a great many “thank you!” sentiments. Everyone was so glad to know exactly what was happening.
This set up the pattern. Ever since, I have been sending out updates via email and all over Facebook.
As the updates continued, I began to get long emails from people I didn’t know directly, who had come across my posts. Those long emails held their stories. People who had just been diagnosed with cancer themselves; and their fear filled every line. People who had survived cancer and were twenty years into the clear; and how they appreciated my candor in my updates. People who were caring for a loved one with cancer; and every sentence of their emails was filled with silent sacrifice, hard work…and fear. Then there were the people who had lost loved ones. Their emails and messages were filled with pain…but they were reaching out with the equivalent of a gentle hug, anyway.
All those emails and messages never failed to thank me for my public posts about what I was going through. And many of them said, in essence; “Your updates help me.”
There’s a maxim in marketing that says that for every communication a writer gets from their readers, there are a hundred more who feel the same way, who stay silent.
If that is true, it implies that my public updates have been helping a lot of people.
I don’t know why the updates help. I mostly just intend to let everyone know what is going on with me. Because I’m a writer, I also drop a lot of observations and side comments in there, too. If that helps people, then good.
But Facebook posts and private email are ephemeral. While I was prepping to write this book, I went back into Facebook, looking for all the updates I’d posted. I couldn’t find many of them, even when I scrolled slowly through my own archives one post at a time. Facebook appears to randomly delete older posts.
That settled the matter for me. I would write this book, so that there is a permanent record of the updates, along with a whole lot more. And if this book helps just one more person as they face their own challenges with cancer, be it as a patient or a caregiver, or simply watching good friends and loved ones go through the battle, then that is the single reason for this book to exist.
2021
The Faint Stirring of a Breeze…
May 22, 2021:
The pain in my side—told Mark about it. But as stretching or sitting very upright makes it go away, it can’t be my heart.
_________
This single line journal entry is where it all started, although it would be well over a year before I would recognize that ominous clouds had been gathering just beyond the borders of my senses.
Like the first stirring of a breeze late in the afternoon of a sweltering summer day, heralding the coming thunderstorm, that little niggle in my side was a sign…one I completely missed.
I am, as the French say, of a certain age. And I’m a writer, who sits at a desk all day long, and would rather read than exercise. Oh hell, I’d rather do anything but exercise.
Plus, I had spent the last eight years scrambling to write lots of books so that I could pay the bills. Actually, I was more driven than that; I wanted to avoid, above all else, the humiliation of having to find a day job. I have been writing full time since December 2015, and couldn’t stand the thought of having to go back to working for someone else.
So I worked very long hours, and didn’t spare a lot of time for my health…or anything else.
When I got the aching, stabbing pain in my left side, just below my breast, I naturally assumed it was my heart. That finally, ignoring my health was catching up with me. I was horribly overweight, my age was not going backward the way I would prefer, and everyone was talking about how sitting all day was the new smoking.
Only, when I straightened up properly, the pain went away. I didn’t think a heart problem could simply vanish by stretching. It didn’t make sense. As the pain wasn’t disabling in any way, I told myself it would either resolve itself, or I’d figure out what was going on in a few days’ time.
•
May 24, 2021:
Very bad night. Pain in chest wouldn’t shift. Laid wide awake in bed wondering if I was having a heart attack. Interesting how I bargained with god/Gaia/the universe—let me get through this and I’ll deal with everything I’ve been putting off; losing weight, getting active, eating right, taking care of little health stuff.
______________
I was smart enough to do something about it, after that.
I did not have a family physician at the time. Finding one who was taking on new patients was my challenge.
Most of the clinics I phoned did not return my call. The clinics that I did speak with were either not taking new patients, or the earliest new patient appointment they could give me was months away.
I booked an appointment with the clinic that had the shortest wait time; three months. And I kept looking for a physician who would give me an appointment sooner than that.
•
August 25, 2021:
Still having the pains in the chest. It feels muscular, but every now and then, I can feel my heart beating. I don’t know what it is.
October 30 2021:
Pain in my side/chest—left side of my left breast. Feels muscular, but also radiates to my back. Woke up with it.
______________
I decided to try a different approach.
Cancer Curated
My Public Face-Off with Multiple Myeloma
Cancer is also a mental game…
Because I am an author, when I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in 2022, I unintentionally lived through my treatment, the ups and (some of) the downs, in a very public way. Then something strange happened.
I begun to get messages and emails from strangers. Lots of strangers. My posts and public updates, they said, were helping them deal with their own brush with cancer—as survivors, patients, carers, friends and family and, sometimes, as victims.
The public updates were necessarily short and severely edited. This book is an unedited chronology of everything I dealt with to arrive where I am today. Woven through the public posts are the raw facts and events I didn’t include in the updates. I’ve also included my hugely subjective opinions on some of the extremes cancer patients and their carers go through and how it changes you.
Looking for a different way to think about cancer? Try mine.
A Cancer Memoir
October 5, 2023
Some quick housekeeping
In the last week or so, I’ve been having major problems with all the author sites at Stories Rule Press, which were hosted by a different company than the Stories Rule Press site itself, which requires specialized hosting, because of the store.
The host where all the author sites were housed culminated months of deteriorating service by going completely dark this morning (as I write this).
But I had already started making moves to get the sites away from that host a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been working pretty long hours, and managed to get all but two sites (both minor) from the host company before they went belly-up. I’ll wait to see if the host comes back online, or if I have to rebuild the sites from scratch (getting the domains back will be interesting).
I mention all this because I know of at least one reader who tried to access TracyCooperPosey.com right in the middle of migrating it to the new host and got all sorts of scary notices about my site not being “secure” and trying to redirect him away from the site.
This was simply migration hiccups. The SSL certificate that tells Google the site is safe can’t be installed until the site is fully migrated, which can take over 48 hours.
You might notice a few more squeaks and wiggles over the next week or so, as I’ll be working in the background to completely rebuild the site to make it lighter and faster. It’s already a bit faster than it was with the old host, with no changes, which is a sad statement about a service I have been using for over a decade….
____________
At the same time this week, because the universe didn’t think I was challenged enough, I also had a trojan virus invade my laptop. I twigged when the third site I’ve been using for years logged me out and insisted I re-log in…then wouldn’t take my password, insisting I reset and type out a password, not copy and paste.
I got rid of the trojan in a hurry, and managed to avert any major disasters, but I’ve also been cleaning out all my passwords and adding Two Factor Authentication to any site that will let me use it.
___________
And on a personal note; This week really has been a doozy. After twelve hours in the ER, I learned that my baby immune system caught a pneumonia bug somewhere, and I have either viral or bacterial pneumonia, which explains why I’ve felt like I’ve been dragging a house behind me every time I try to do anything for the last few weeks.
But I’m writing regularly — I know you’ll appreciate this news. I seem to have found the way to write despite the world caving in around me, which it certainly was, this week!
September 28, 2023
ADELAIDE BECKET’S ADVENTURES now available everywhere, plus one more book to tell you about
I don’t usually like to crowd in the items into posts — it’s too cluttered. By the time you get to the bottom of, say, five items, you’ve forgotten what was in the first.
But there is just two items today, and I simply couldn’t find a way to separate them out other than sending another email, and I like to keep emails short and few, these days.
ADELAIDE BECKET’S ADVENTURES now released everywhere.Today is the retail release day for the Adelaide Becket’s Adventures boxed set and omnibus.
Unlike my usual boxed sets, this one is also available in print from both me at SRP and at your usual print purchase points.
The first seven Lady Adelaide stories in one volume.As Europe draws toward war, an extraordinary woman steps into the arena. In Edwardian England, Lady Adelaide Azalea Margaret de Morville, Mrs. Hugh Becket, lately of the Cape Colony, was born the daughter of an Earl, but is now the widow of a commoner. She straddles two worlds, speaks fluent German, and can ride, hunt and shoot. Her talents draws the eye of spymaster William Melville, who recruits her to help him fight a shadow game with German agents both at home and aboard, as Europe heads toward an inevitable conflict…
A Historical Suspense Espionage Omnibus
The Adelaide Becket series.
1: The Requisite Courage
2: The Rosewater Debutante
3: The Unaccompanied Widow
4: The Lavender Semaphore
5: The Broadcloth Midnight
6: The Salinghall Error
7: The Indecent Agent
7.5: Adelaide Becket’s Adventures
…and more to come.
An Edwardian Suspense Espionage series
{Also see: Thrillers, Espionage, Historical, Novelettes}
Up until now, the set was only available on SRP. Today, it is now available at all retailers in both print (omnibus) and ebook (Boxed set).
Buy from Me @ SRP!Buy from your favourite retailer!Are You A Writer?Are you a writer, or aspiring to be one? You might find the other book that was released today (this one, just on SRP for a bit). This is a product of the information I have been compiling on the Productive Indie Fiction Writer blog for a few years now.
The Productive Indie Fiction WriterStrategies for Writing More, Earning More, and Living Well
Proven tactics from an author of 200+ fiction titles.
Is your indie writing business overwhelming you? Are you flailing, looking for the way to increase your revenue?
Are you constantly buying courses, watching webinars and wondering how to get ahead?
There is so much information available for indies that, often, we don’t know where to start or who to trust.
Dip into The Productive Indie Fiction Writer and learn how to deal with everything that comes at you on a daily basis. Get back control of your writing career not by adopting yet another system, or buying yet another expensive technological solution, but by going back to basics.
Get organized. Get a handle on your writing business…and your life.
Writing, Research & Publishing Guides | Publishing & Books | Authorship
The book is available for immediate purchase on SRP, in both print and ebook. It will be released on all other retail sites on December 28th.
Buy From Me! @ SRP!Buy From Me! @ SRP! In Print!Buy from your favourite retailer!
September 21, 2023
Cancer Curated: The Book I had to Write, Right Now
As I write this email, I’m sitting in my “office” (the recliner), and the air around me is redolent with the mouth watering scents of: 1) A big batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, 2) two crusty loaves of bread sitting on the counter to cool, 3) a batch of rhubarb-strawberry jam made from scratch, that my daughter is canning at the moment. All of that is topped off by 4) a batch of gingerbread granola that Mark is making for me to eat for breakfast this week, which is sending all the spiciness into the air — ground cloves, cinnamon, all-spice, roasting cranberries…
And it’s hours yet before dinner!
So let me tell you, instead, about my latest project. This one, I just had to squeeze into my writing schedule before I rolled up my sleeves and got seriously stuck back into writing fiction at my old rate (or close to it).
Cancer Curated
My Public Face-Off with Multiple MyelomaCancer is also a mental game…
Because I am an author, when I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in 2022, I unintentionally lived through my treatment, the ups and (some of) the downs, in a very public way. Then something strange happened.
I begun to get messages and emails from strangers. Lots of strangers. My posts and public updates, they said, were helping them deal with their own brush with cancer—as survivors, patients, carers, friends and family and, sometimes, as victims.
The public updates were necessarily short and severely edited. This book is an unedited chronology of everything I dealt with to arrive where I am today. Woven through the public posts are the raw facts and events I didn’t include in the updates. I’ve also included my hugely subjective opinions on some of the extremes cancer patients and their carers go through and how it changes you.
Looking for a different way to think about cancer? Try mine.
A Cancer Memoir
As you can see, it felt very natural to write this and it was also cathartic in a number of ways. It was definitely the book to write, right now. I was having trouble settling back into the fiction writing at my old speed of production, and Mark made the suggestion that I spend a bit of time writing this, instead — that you guys would understand. He figured; get it all out, then get back to fiction.
And he was right. I’m steadily writing fiction once more, after struggling for months.
Cancer Curated is available for pre-order everywhere (links below).
We’re releasing the book on October 26th on Stories Rule Press, my store, in both print and ebook.
And, there will also be a hardcover edition, only available at Stories Rule Press.
For now, only the ebook is available for pre-order, but the print editions will go up for sale a week before the release date of October 26th.
On all the other retail stores, the ebook is also available for pre-order, but won’t be released until January 25th. Similarly, the paperback edition will be available shortly before the release date of January 25th.
Buy Cancer Curated from Me @ SRP!
Buy Cancer Curated from your favourite retailer!
