Meljean Brook's Blog, page 5
September 18, 2014
Frozen is now available in ebook at…
I’ll send out a newsletter when it’s available everywhere, but until then I’ll update this post as the links become live.
Kobo
It’s also available in print at Amazon (and soon through other bookstores), and I’ll be matching it to the ebook soon (so that if you buy the print version, you get the Kindle version free.) The high price is unfortunately beyond my control. 
Other places that I’m blanking on because I’m tired. 
I’ll update this post again later today.
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August 27, 2014
THE BLOG POST OF SHAME (i.e., Where’s FROZEN?)
LETTING IT GO
Starting tomorrow at noon, it’s going to be on this blog … one chapter at a time.
It’s not a serial. It’s a cattle prod up my ass.
So here’s the deal with FROZEN: I’ve been trying to write it for almost two years now (not constantly, because there were other things like Guardian Demon and The Kraken King that I wrote in between, but I first conceived of this story two summers ago.) I actually really like the premise of the story, I like the characters … but for some reason, this novella has never just clicked the way it was supposed to. I’ve rewritten it so many times, it’s ridiculous. And each time, I ended up stalling, because it just wasn’t working.
Last week I told my BFF that if I didn’t finish by September 1st, I was just going to cancel it, because I *can’t* spend any more time on it. I just can’t.
So here we are, August 27th, and I’m actually happy with the new direction I’ve chosen. I look at the outline for my scenes (some of them already half-written because I pulled them out of the different rewrites — not ALL of it was bad) and I think: Finally, it’s coming together.
But I’ll be honest — as much as I want to finish, I’m tired of fighting with this story. So I find myself doing ANYTHING to not write it. Even though I don’t actually have very far to go! I know exactly where I’m headed! I’m just so burned out that I’m doing things like laundry and dishes and making covers in Photoshop just to avoid writing it. Which in turn makes me feel like shit, because I know many of you have been waiting for it a long time (since Fire & Frost came out last April.)
There’s one thing I haven’t tried, though — HORRIBLE PUBLIC SHAME.
So here’s the deal. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to post a chapter a day. I’m pretty far into the story; I just have to finish the second half. So basically I’m going to be writing against the clock and making sure that by the time the next chapter is due, I’ll be ready to post it. I’ve got a good head start, so I can do this, right?
Right.
If you don’t want to read it a chapter at a time (and unedited to boot) no worries! As soon as it’s finished, I’ll be pulling it from the blog to have it edited and then published (intro price of 99c). If you’ve already signed up for a review copy through my newsletter, you’ll be receiving the whole thing then, too.
I will be closing the comments for the individual chapters, because although public shame will spur me on, I know that nothing kills a WIP for me faster than receiving feedback (positive or negative) before I’ve finished. Feedback after the fact is great. During? Not so much. So don’t feel bad if I don’t respond to comments on Twitter or Facebook, either. I’ll probably make myself scarce from social media until it’s finished.
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August 26, 2014
Legends of Red Sonja’s collected edition is here! and Read-a-Romance Month
I know many of you were waiting for all five issues to be collected in trade paperback format … and that day is here! You can find it at your favorite local comic bookstore, or your favorite other bookstore. For more information about this collection, check out my Legends of Red Sonja page.
Amazon | B & N | Book Depository | IndieBound | Powells
Read a Romance guest post and Giveaway!
I’ve written a guest post for the Read-a-Romance-Month event … and there’s a giveaway! Don’t forget to check it out, along with all the other awesome posts (and giveaways!)
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August 17, 2014
FAQ: Pre-Order info for The Kraken King (the whole thing)
I’ve gotten a couple of questions about the compiled version of The Kraken King, because links have shown up at various bookstores. I haven’t seen any typeset pages or additional edits yet, but looking at the bookstore catalogs, it looks like:
Info for the print/compiled version:
Release Date: November 4, 2014
Length: 576 pages
Print Cover Price: $17.00*
Digital List Price: $9.99*
*This is the publisher’s price — your bookstore might list it at a different price.
Audiobook?
I haven’t heard there won’t be one, so I’m assuming it will come out on the same day as the compiled version.
Why is it cheaper at (name of bookstore)? Will it be marked down the same week of release?
RE: different prices at different bookstores — My publisher sets a price, but bookstores have the option to discount the book. For example, Amazon has been bouncing the Kindle price up and down. It was $7.99 a few weeks ago, then back up to $9.99, and now $7.99 again. So by the time you click this it might not still be true, but right now The Kraken King’s compiled novel is currently at $7.99 pre-order. Whereas at Barnes & Noble, the ebook has been holding steady at $9.99. Will that change? I really, really don’t know.
The Amazon price is not a publisher discount/sale (and I don’t really expect one because it’s coming out in trade format, and Berkley doesn’t discount many of those.) My publisher is listing the printed version at $17.00 (not the serial, which adds up to $16, but the entire book) so I’m not sure if this is just Amazon being crazy or whatever, but that’s definitely not what the ebook list price is. You might find the book for a lower price at different bookstores; neither I nor my publisher really have control over their internal pricing (this is why no agency pricing is great; it lets bookstores mark down the prices.)
RE: Sales — I know some readers worry that the book will be marked down significantly in the first week or shortly after release. I don’t expect Berkley to discount it the week of release, or honestly, anytime soon. They don’t do it very often and usually only for older titles in the series. As of today, the only book I’ve had on sale is The Iron Duke — and judging by Berkley’s typical sales/discounts, they would be more likely to put THAT on sale again than to put a new release on sale. So you should be safe with a pre-order.
Will there be a mass-market edition?
…probably? I don’t know, really. But if Berkley follows the same pattern as with previous Iron Seas books, there will be one about a year/a year-and-a-half after the trade version.
Will there be an epilogue story?
Probably not. I don’t have any plans to write one right now.
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August 11, 2014
Live Chat at 6:30 Eastern/3:30 Pacific!
Just a reminder that the live chat is today!
Come chat with Steampunk Authors Meljean Brook and special guestsBec McMaster, Karina Cooper, Delilah S. Dawson, and Kristen Callihanand get insights on steampunk, fantasy, alpha males, and sweet sweet giveaways.
Here is the link to the Facebook event page.
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August 5, 2014
Live Chat + Two Books and author insertion
First! Next week (Monday, August 11th from 6:30 – 9:30 Eastern) the awesome Jen Frederick is hosting a chat featuring…me! I’ll be chatting along with special guests Bec McMaster, Delilah Dawson, Karina Cooper, and Kristen Callihan, giving away prizes, and generally being my dorky self. Here is the event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/1446844262249512/ and the groovy graphic:
I hope you’ll show up! I’ll add more details and links to the chat on Monday.
Two Books and Author Insertion
In the past week, I’ve read Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes and Robert Galbraith’s (J.K. Rowling’s) The Silkworm. I liked both books a lot, but they both made me think about author insertion in different ways.
One thing that I’ve always liked about King’s work is the little Easter eggs he plants all over the place. Someone in a short story will be driving through Derry and see a clown, that sort of thing, or characters like Flagg show up as villains in different stories. All of horror novels feel kind of connected in the same literary universe…but Mr. Mercedes seems a little different, in that it takes place in our world rather than the King universe.
Anyway, at a few points, King makes little references to a possessed car (Christine) and a clown (It) — and had it been any other writer, it really would have been nothing more than a pop culture reference. But King is referring to his own work, of course, so it’s almost like an Easter egg but not quite.
I’ll admit — usually, this would piss me off. Sometimes when reading books, there will be a character reading a real book by some author, and thanks to the joys of social media, I happen to know that the authors are friends or something. Or even worse, the author inserts her own work. NOTHING jolts me out of a story faster than that. Seriously. I get irritated because it feels as if the author has sacrificed character and story to indulge in that moment of real-life insertion.
(And, yes, I totally get that this kind of thing can be an in-joke, or a fun little nod to a friend, and that the character might actually be a fan of that book. It might be a sweet gesture by the author. It doesn’t matter. I always feel as if, in that moment, I’ve been cheated, because something outside the story became more important than the story itself, and I just don’t trust the author as much anymore. That’s why, for the most part, I kind of don’t want to know too much about authors’ personal lives. Because the stuff I know sneaks in and then BAM! I’m not reading about characters anymore, but an author, and I didn’t sign up for that.)
In the case of Stephen King’s work, though … it feels a little different. Because his work is an inescapable part of pop culture, and I feel that there are two ways to approach that: to pretend it doesn’t exist, or to give a little nod. Like, if he was writing a book about kids going to prom and a character mentioned Carrie, I could absolutely believe that a character really did.
I usually think of this in terms of comic books. Superman is a part of pop culture. Batman is, too. But in-universe, these guys are growing up WITHOUT a Superman movie (then Superman II, III, VI, the reboot, then the other reboot) playing in the background. So there are substitutions in-universe. Bruce Wayne might have read comic books growing up, but instead of Batman, it’s the Gray Ghost.
It’s an odd problem to get around. What do you do when your work is so big that it’s part of pop culture, and to pretend that it doesn’t exist means that your setting (and its history) formed in a different way and without those references? It would be like George Lucas writing a book with a character investigating the murder of a guy named Darth Jones, set it in real-world 2014, and no one in the book ever comments on his name.
So if Robert Galbraith ever has Cormoran Strike come across a kid reading Harry Potter, I probably won’t throw the book. Because lots of kids really do read Harry Potter. Or if someone is described wearing Harry Potter glasses. Because I’ve seen that description a hundred times. It’s a recognizable thing.
If I know something personal about an author and it shows up, it’s hard for me to get past. If it’s something commonly known and part of pop culture, though? I guess I’m a lot more forgiving.
But that’s just as a reader.
Reading about writers when you’re a writer
Anyway, the plot of The Silkworm involved a writer and the literary community that surrounded him. Characters mentioned things like indie publishing, self-publishing, ebooks, romance novelists, reactions to reviews, and so on. All of it felt genuine to the characters who were speaking (and it’s not like I’m buddies with JKR, so I had no way of knowing whether any of these opinions were hers or not, which made it a lot easier to read them as the characters’) so everything below is not a comment on the book or its quality, but just some stuff that I was thinking of as I read it.
I have a difficult time reading about writers. (And a hard time WRITING them — a part of me didn’t want to write Zenobia as a heroine, because although I really loved her character, I don’t really like reading romances about authors, because the line between writer/character so often feels so thin. So I was all … unnnnnnngh.) I have an easier time reading about writer-characters in other genres, but there’s always still that unnnnnngh factor of “I hope I don’t find out anything about this author that makes me think they were writing about themselves.”
They say “write what you know” or whatever, but I imagine this is a problem for anyone who works in a certain field and then reads about a character in that same field, whether it’s a writer, chef, lawyer, and so on. If you know that the author is ALSO from the same profession, I think it’s natural (and hard not) to wonder how much of real-life is bleeding through.
Which can be both good and bad. The authenticity is good. Anything that takes you out of the story is bad (to me, anyway).
I don’t know what I’m going on about now. I guess, when it comes down to it, this is just a general plea to all writers: please don’t make the outside stuff more important than the stuff in the story. If it doesn’t fit the characters, please don’t add it, no matter how desperately you want to say it.
That’s what blogs are for.
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July 21, 2014
Defining Steampunk at Bitten By Books, a Kraken King giveaway, and a recommendation for a web hosting service.
Bitten by Books is having an awesome feature this month, in which they ask several authors and artists to offer their definitions of steampunk. Mine is up today, along with a couple of questions — come and join me!
YOU CAN WIN A COPY OF THE KRAKEN KING — ALL EIGHT PARTS!
I’m closing the comments here so that it’s clear you have to comment at the Bitten by Books post first, then return here to enter. Thanks!
For some reason I thought that I’d also set up a giveaway with that guest post, but I guess not! If you post a comment there, though, come back here and enter this handy-dandy Rafflecopter entry! You just have to comment there and click on the green button here! TO BE ELIGIBLE, YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO ACCEPT AN EBOOK GIFT FROM AN ONLINE BOOKSTORE. I’ll notify the winner by email.
WEBSITE HOSTING RECOMMENDATION
Also, special thanks to Jay at TechSurgeons.com — I’ve been having some serious issues with my site lately. Even before I hired him and his hosting services, he tried to help me work through my problems over Twitter and Facebook. Then I finally had a chance to take a few seconds and ask him to switch me over to his service, and it was completely painless. So if you’re looking for a great website host who will help you try to figure out why your site is getting hacked and throttled, or just knowing that he’s absolutely on the ball if any issues come up, check his site out.
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June 11, 2014
Authors Are Filthy Thieves! + the Iron Seas storyline (is there one?)
From Wikipedia Commons/Public Domain
There’s a guest post and giveaway up at Paranormal Haven! It’s all about how authors are dirty thieves (okay, so it’s really more of a where-do-you-get-your-ideas post) but there’s also a giveaway! You get a chance to win any one of the Iron Seas books, including The Kraken King! Stephanie also posted her review of Parts VII & VIII today.
And yesterday, I posted this question on Facebook:
Do you feel that the Iron Seas series is leading somewhere? Because I don’t have a series plot planned out at all; I just write whatever I feel like, and sometimes I pull in threads and characters from previous books, but I don’t have an overall goal beyond telling a fun story with each book (and hoping that I get to characters that we all want to read about, like the Blacksmith, Scarsdale, etc).
But I read something recently that makes me wonder whether readers are expecting a big lead-up (as in the Guardian series) to some big event.
Are you? (It’s fine if you are — I am mostly just wondering if I’m going to end up disappointing anyone if I don’t do … a THING. But I’m not sure exactly what that thing is for many readers.)
I worried that I’m inadvertently building up to some big showdown (like Michael vs. Lucifer). And I received a ton of great comments on both my personal page and on the fan page. I think the overall response was: Readers expect me to draw in threads and develop the world and its history, so that the setting feels like it’s living rather than static, but they don’t necessarily expect a big series-ending battle … and I’m glad, because I really, really don’t have a destination for this series in mind! Mostly I just go wherever I think will be the most interesting place to go next. Sometimes that will draw in details that I’ve mentioned in other books, and sometimes I’ll use familiar characters, but there might be other stories (like RIVETED) that stand almost completely apart aside from a few nods to the other books.
But it’s not totally random, either! So here are a few things that I think about a lot and would like to develop more in this series before I die:
To learn more about the Blacksmith (this is coming!)
To explore the guilds in London (started in THE IRON DUKE/THE BLUSHING BOUNDER)
To see what’s happening in Castile now that a revolution has been stirred up (started in RIVETED)
To set a story in Tenochtitlan (a city on a lake! and this is steampunk! lake = water = steam = OMG!)
To visit the Americas a little more, especially the lands beyond the European-settled east.
To set a story in the Ivory Market!
To revisit the smugglers’ dens and see how I can shake up the den lords.
There are tons of universities in the Far Maghreb! Inventors! Craziness!
Scarsdale. Mara & Cooper. Taka.
Will the Khagan ever fall? Will Temur Agha and Nasrin ever lead an army into the royal city?
To visit the mines in Appalachia, where so many people have been enslaved.
Scotland is cut off from the rest of Britain by a wall and I’ve never told that story!
A billion other things that will pop into my brain as I’m writing.
So this is all a very long way to say that sometimes the events in the books will be grand and epic and influence enormous numbers of people, and sometimes I’ll focus on a smaller part of the world, but I’m definitely not leading up to any one event.
Which is not to say that some big events won’t happen, either! Maybe I will tackle the fall of the Khagan, for example. I would just want to make sure that it’s done in a way that is still fun, and still a surprise. But the Blacksmith’s book won’t necessarily lead into THAT book, or any other book in the series, any more than RIVETED led into THE KRAKEN KING. The world is evolving … just not on a straight line. 
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June 8, 2014
What I’m Reading: Monsters, Revenge, Steampunk, and Tentacles
This is going to be a slow and long read. I love the legend of Beowulf, so that might have pulled me in, anyway — but Tolkien’s use of language is just so, so incredible. I won’t be reading this all in one go; I’ll be savoring it for a while, most likely.
Losing Control by Jen FrederickFor transparency’s sake — Jen is a friend of mine and I also made this cover.
I like putting books together, so this was my project today in InDesign — creating a print version of this novel, which is Book One of the Kerr Chronicles (a planned duology). And while I was formatting, I read it.
Jen typically writes New Adult romance and NA romantic suspense, and this is her first foray into contemporary. It’s a slow, sexy build with a hero who is a billionaire … and who isn’t a jerk! There’s also a heart-wrenching storyline involving the heroine’s mother and all of the reasons that the heroine is caught in the circumstances she is. I really love Jen’s modern voice, and that the heroine knows she’s doing some illegal stuff but doesn’t really apologize for it. She’s practical and never TSTL (though sometimes stubborn, but who can blame her).
Right now, you can read this for free as a serial via Jen’s newsletter (she’s releasing two chapters every day until June 16th, when the novel will be available for sale in ebook … and as a beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful print edition.) *grin*
Image totally stolen from Jeannie’s website.
Gunpowder Alchemy by Jeannie Lin
I’m about halfway through the first book of this steampunk duology (double duologies today!), which I’m reading in anticipation of a November release. So I won’t tease you all too much, except to say that Jeannie’s worldbuilding is so fantastic, and I just love LOVE the alternate history here. This is definitely going to be a book to look for later this year.
Squirm: virgin captive of the billionaire biker tentacle monster by Cari Silverwood
Okay, so really — this has a story behind it. I was dinking around on Goodreads and I scrolled past this cover and title, and I went directly to Twitter and said:
A part of me wants to give this book five-stars just because of the title. https://t.co/Z1GHxhlhzC
— Meljean Brook (@Meljean) June 9, 2014
And then, of course, I bought it, because I love LOVE good monster porn parodies (I know, I know!) And a few other people went and bought it, too, including Carolyn Jewel, who then promptly read it. And she said:
@Meljean @Limecello Hey! So far it’s not bad! Well written!!!!
— Carolyn Jewel (@cjewel) June 9, 2014
And I was like, Hurray! Because that’s all I want out of life — well-written and fun tentacle erotica. Then she wrote:
People, this is no centaur pr0n. I’m enjoying the hell out of this.
— Carolyn Jewel (@cjewel) June 9, 2014
Then I went to the author’s Amazon page and realized that I knew some of her work! She also writes a great BDSM steampunk series. But this one is:
A parody of everything great and weird in erotic romance that could be stuffed into one book without it exploding.
For some girls, one tentacle isn’t enough.
Having a bad day isn’t good but when Virginia Chaste has a bad day, she gets felt up by a tentacle monster. If it simply has to happen, let it at least be a billionaire and a hot biker.
Virginity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and her search for the Holy Grail of Erotic Romance, the ten inch purple-headed schlong, may have finally borne fruit.
Yeehaw! Playing hide the tentacle has never been so much fun.
How can anyone resist? So that’s what I’m going to read when I need a break from Beowulf.
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June 6, 2014
Where to find updates about my work (Where’s Meljean?)
One of the most important things I learned from the serial release is that I really don’t reach a lot of my readers — or perhaps they are following me on one social media site, but not another, so the updates they needed weren’t necessarily the updates they received. So here is a quick breakdown of all the places that I’m at on the web aside from my website, and what you’ll find there:
#1 – E-Mail Newsletter
I don’t send this out very often — typically only when I have a new release. This is the best place to find information about my work if you only need to know when the newest book is out. You can sign up for this here.
#2 – Twitter
Twitter is a mixed bag of content. All of my blog posts auto-tweet a link. When I’m not pimping a book, most of my tweets are replies to other readers and authors. Sometimes I’ll just post random stupid things, because I feel like it. For example, my first tweet this morning was:
Argh! #everydayistalklikeapirateday
— Meljean Brook (@Meljean) June 6, 2014
So if you don’t mind silliness mixed in with updates, Twitter is a good place to find me. It’s also a good place not to find me, because updates are often lost in the tweetstream. So unless you check my individual twitter account (https://twitter.com/meljean) page, you might miss some updates.
I always try to respond to replies. If you ever have a quick question and don’t feel like emailing me, Twitter is a good place to ask it.
#3 – Facebook
I actually have two Facebook accounts. One is my personal page (http://www.facebook.com/meljeanbrook) and one is my fan page (http://www.facebook.com/authormeljeanbrook).
My personal Facebook page is a lot like my Twitter account. All of my blog posts auto-post to my wall. I add stupid personal information and updates about everyday things. This week, the saga of my new French press has played out on my wall, along with links to new releases and a few reviews. I also said that if I ever wrote a MC romance, that it would basically be a 300-page fanfiction of this song from Grease 2:
So if you don’t want to know how many times I’ve watched this movie and how much I wanted to be Stephanie on that ladder, this probably isn’t the best account to follow.
My Facebook fan page is more book oriented and contains fewer personal posts (though I have been adding more, because readers have requested them. But although I will post about movies and such, I still haven’t been using it for my silliest updates. So if you don’t want to know that much about me, but still want to know about my books and book news, this is the best page to follow on Facebook.)
The drawback to Facebook is that the site limits the number of fans/friends who see each post. So if you want to make sure you get the updates in your news feed, please remember to go to the page and to select “get notifications” in the dropdown menu of the “Like” button. Otherwise, you might need to make sure that you visit the actual page (instead of just reading your newsfeed) to make sure that you’ve seen all of the updates.
I respond to almost all comments on both Facebook pages, and it’s also a good place to reach me if you don’t feel like emailing me.
#4 – Tumblr
Discarded Mara and Cooper cover #1
I have a Tumblr! … but it’s really not great for book updates, because I feel that posting that information on Tumblr is basically spam. So it’s mostly random fandom reblogs and a few other things. I will probably be posting about different works-in-progress (like this one about a discarded Mara & Cooper novella cover) over this summer, because I like to play with Photoshop and I plan to teach myself to use Flash. But this blog reflects more of my personal interests and less book info, so if you follow me on Tumblr, you’ll almost never hear about my book updates.
#5 – Goodreads
I have a Goodreads account, and my blog posts automatically feed over to it. I review books (badly) now and then. I don’t really talk about the books I don’t like. The last review I added:
Yeah. This is why I’m an author, not a reviewer. Reviewing is a lot harder.
–I think that’s everywhere!
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