Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 54

I’m sure there’s an explosion due, really

Still no word from Kobo on my books. Or, they’ve sent two emails, but both are pretty much worthless for me right now. The first on day four said, “We are sorry your book is missing. Can you confirm that it’s still missing?” I could, and did, and I wrote back a reply to this effect. On day five I got back: “We are sorry your book is missing, and our techs will be investigating this error.”

Worst launch in a while, let me tell you.

Over on Twitter, I’m working on this plan of share and share alike. I got a list of tweets from other writers and indie publishers, and I hit those messages up frequently. In between I tweet links for other people as they come up in the stream, so I’m sharing maybe 30-40 tweets with other artists and authors. This isn’t counting all my gabbing with other people on Twitter. I’ll talk to anyone, provided they’ll give me the time of day. But so anyway, all this sharing of links means that when I post a link or three for my own stuff, I have really good odds that someone, somewhere is online who I’ve shared for. And they see a link and go “I’ve had a lot of retweets from her, so why not pass this along?”

And I got numbers from the blog bookstore telling me that there are people showing up to look at the books. This tells me that the hook I’m using in my tweets works to draw in traffic. But despite the nice cover, a blurb put together with help from a blurb doctor, and a visit with a paid editor, Roll the Bones has sold one copy in four days.

This is not the worst launch ever. That would be NINJAWORLD. Which didn’t sell anything for a few weeks. It’s sold 2 copies since then. Roll the Bones has sold 20 copies including preorders, while NINJAWORLD has sold 3. So, yeah, not the worst launch ever. But still pretty bad.

Yesterday, I got up and found two copies of Bran of Greenwood and the Scary Fairy Princess had sold while I slept. I hadn’t advertised it. It has no cover, and is a brain fart, a DnD porn with a morally ambiguous cast of tomb raiders. But okay, it sold two copies, so that was a good day.

So this morning I get up, and I’ve sold all three books in the Campaign trilogy on Amazon. And that’s three books, which is one more book than I sold yesterday. So, this is still a pretty good day.

But holy cheez whiz, people, do you know how frustrating it is to spend a whole month advertising that a book is coming out, and the two worst things happen in opening week? One, the book doesn’t even come out on one of the stores. Two, where the book is available, no one trusts me enough to buy it. I thought I’d have to worry about bad reviews, but first to get reviews there has to be somebody to read the book and complain “It stinks.”

I cannot complain that I’m not getting any sales, because I am getting sales. Just not on anything I advertise. This freaks me out, how the tweets that I send out that people RT for me, that does no good. I can get 500 people to look at the book in a few days. I could only convince 1 person out of 500 to buy the book. Of those 500, another five randomly bought some other book I sold. At another bookstore.

I know. This is the nature of the game. Getting a huge number of new impressions to try and find that one person willing to give my story a shot.

Which is why I want to talk about Wattpad. I decided that I had a few PG-13 titles that I could highlight over there, stuff that hadn’t ever sold so well, and stuff that I wanted to get out to more readers. Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies has had 1,660 readings at this point, so people showing up to start it are coming back for more. It’s had twice as many readings as my other novels on there, and twice as many votes and comments. It briefly made it to the top 100 in paranormal fiction.

That felt pretty good, but it also reminded me how no one was commenting on The Sole Survivors’ Club. Then a woman picked up the story and went through the first seven chapters in one night, leaving some lively comments on each chapter. She also voted on all the chapters as she read them. She’s enjoying the story, and I’m enjoying her enjoyment, joyfully. I can only hope she enjoys the rest, because I’m going to be crushed if she gets to the end and says, “That ending was shit. Not the shit. Just shit.”

This brings me right back to this crazy thought that what I prize far more than money is feedback. It’s knowing I created a reaction in my reader strong enough that my work made them want to comment about it. I know a lot of readers feel I should just be happy hearing the ka-ching of another purchase, but just buying a story doesn’t mean you got around to reading it. Hell, I’ve got stacks of print and ebooks that I’ve bought and meant to read, but haven’t yet. Others, I tried and was only a few pages in before I decided to toss them.

Being bought isn’t being read. It’s hard to tell if someone has read a book they buy until they’ve actively sought me out to say, “I read your book.” And I’ve come to realize I don’t need a proper review. Sometimes just getting that tweet or comment on Wattpad is enough. Or that vote over on Wattpad.

Over on Kobo, where I had like 4 customers in my opening month, 3 came back to leave a rating. (Two 5s and a 3, not bad.) That kind of rating doesn’t have to include a review to be a helpful note to me. It says, “I read your story, and I thought it was a 3.” And even that kind of feedback is nice. It tells me that the people who downloaded my work read it, and they thought about it enough to want to leave a score. And three out of four buyers leaving feedback is really good odds, since on Amazon, I get a lot of sales, but few ratings or reviews. Over on Amazon, I get one review or rating for twenty buyers.

And poor Sandy gets refunds on Amazon. There’s no survey from Amazon for refund requests, so I’m hoping that their requests were caused by the file having mistakes or formatting issues. That’s because I’ve uploaded another mobi file with fewer mistakes and a cleaner format now that I’ve been through the chapters making edits while looking over Wattpad posts. So if the corrected book still keeps getting refunds, I’ll know it wasn’t the mistakes in the story, it’s just the book that readers object to. And that will be sad, because people who make it through the story for free seem to be enjoying it. I can’t imagine that just asking for money will somehow make the story discomfiting.

The refunds were a form of feedback, people were trying to read the book, but found something wrong. It was either a mistake or the book having a girl with a penis as the main character. I got rid of more of the mistakes, so continued refund requests could very well be that people just don’t like reading about trans characters. In which case, I can shrug and keep trying to find readers who buy Sandy’s book, don’t ask for a refund, and liked it enough to leave a review.

Why? Cause that’s the numbers game I have to keep playing. Some people fill out lottery tickets. I fill out tweets and blog posts with links to my tickets. Last month, I put out a few hundred tickets, and I got back twenty-one answers. One of those answers was “I’d like to buy them all at the same time, please.” I got a few new reviews. I got a few more ratings. The month just started, and I’ve already got 5 sales.

But ugh, I’ve had an ugly launch week for Roll the Bones. Sure hope Kobo finds my wayward book and gives it a thorough beat down before putting it out on display.

Anywho, the moment that happens? I going to do some kind of pathetic begathon to raise sales numbers on Kobo to something higher than “Sad.” I’ve got five sales from Amazon in two days, so I figure I ought to be pulling in at least half those numbers on Kobo. But this is of course assuming that Kobo has the book in stock. Which they don’t yet, so this is for now a moot point.

So, I’ll end this sales report and ramble and leave you people alone for a bit. Will probably have a few book reviews up in the next week or so. I been reading a lot. Helps keep me calm, in theory.

Well that went badly…

Go ahead and ask “How did launch day go, Zoe?” Badly. All things considered, it went very badly. It’s ironic that I gave two days as the release date. Despite putting the files on Kobo’s server on the 28th (their time) and giving it a publishing date of the 30th, the book is still not up on the servers. Last week when I realized I’d forgotten to upload The Life and Death of a Sex Doll to Kobo, the book was online roughly seven hours later. This is now well past 72. Still no book, and no clue of when it will come out. Yep, that’s a problem beyond my control. Well…poop.

Maybe their server had a momentary nervous breakdown. Maybe they had a sudden surge of books to take in from many publishers, and I’m in a really long queue. But whatever the reason, Roll the Bones was not on Kobo on either of the launch days.

Before I go on, I want to say, there were 19 copies that went out to people who “pre-ordered” through the indiegogo campaign. So based on preorders, this has actually been one of my better launches.

But, despite having the files up on Amazon (Thank you Amazon; you were right on time) and my blog bookstore for both the launch dates. There was only one sale from the US. Well, and one more purchase of the first book, bringing it up to five total sales for the month. (Not bad when taken in with the other books that also sold. Got 20 July sales on Amazon worldwide, and then there was that one nice fan who requested copies of all my books, and who added a tip to his payment.)

On my blog bookstore, I’m able to see page views for the store links, and both the 3-book combo zip and the epub version of Roll the Bones have a LOT of traffic, but no sales. The traffic, I’m attributing to the number of people who’ve already shared links on Twitter. If anything, I have a good network of people willing to share my stuff when they see it. I’ve improved my visibility a lot lately, but still have yet to find a way to break into any new reader markets.

Finally, on Kobo, I’ve had two sales, and I think two people have tried my free stories. (There may be more, but there’s no way to tell when free stories are taken on Kobo. I only know about these two because they said they had on Twitter.) I have a three-star rating on one freebie, a five on another freebie, and a five-star rating on Confessions of a Zombie Lover. Kobo has a map that shows where books were sold to, and I had one sale in the US and one in Canada. (And thank y’all for buying copies, and for rating them. That was mighty awesome of y’all to do that.)

So, as you can see, it wasn’t exactly a bad month for me, and when you add in the fact that I did an editing job for 10 days at a rate of 70 euros a day (56 after taxes, but I ain’t complainin’ about paying my share) this month has been extremely good for me.)

Conversely, I was good to other people, and I used some of my cash to hire another cover artist for a book that isn’t even done yet. I bought a number of books, ebook and print, and both pro and indie. I got a few music CDs, again, pro and indie. I’ve even bought a CD from an indie band in Austin, and I’m having to wait on international shipping. (Which should take about two months) But boy I’ll bet my MP3 player’s “Smart” DJ will be stumped. “I don’t…who are these guys? I’m sorry, I can’t make a playlist with this.”

When I’m given cash in August, I’ll be able to pay my editor to cover the last bit of what should be a fair rate for her services on Roll the Bones. I already paid $50 while the Indiegogo campaign was in progress, but not on the site. So I figure another $150 should get her up to the $555 she was asking for. This way, when she goes to work on Thicker Than Blood, she will be suitably motivated to want to finish it and turn in corrections. =^D

So, you can see I’m trying to put a positive spin on everything else, but man, what an ugly book launch. I’m not saying it woulda gone better if Kobo had published the file on time. At best, I might have expected one more sale. There were no lines of people waiting for that book to come out. The were people willing to visit the store and browse the basics. Just not many buyers…okay, any buyers.

Um…hrmm. Oh, right, the other stat that interesting to mention to end this on a positive note, is a nice number from Wattpad. For a couple days, Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies shot up the rankings to join the top 100 paranormal stories. For a day it hovered at 87, and then it dipped to 57. Then it went back up and I think it’s 158th now. It’s had 1,400 readers and still counting, so I have at least accomplished that much and got some new readers.

So in conclusion, July wasn’t a bad month. But man, those last two days sucked a bit. Better luck next month, I hope.

New release: Roll the Bones (Peter the Wolf Book 3)

Yes, it’s finally release day for Roll the Bones (Peter the Wolf, Book 3) and Amazon has my book available in the US Kindle and UK Kindle stores already. I’ve also got a DRM-free  epub on my blog store, and if you haven’t bought any of the series yet, my blog store has a zip combo with all three books for $6.99, saving you a cool $4.98 off the cover price for buying the collected series altogether. You’ve seen the cover, so check out the blurb:

Eighteen-year-old werewolf Peter Holmes saved his sister; for five years, a brutal harpy enslaved and tortured Heather Lupita to feed off her pain. But the monster’s price for her freedom is high: Peter must kill a particular vampire–but which one, the harpy won’t say.

Peter gets his first hint just how hard it’s going to be to kill his target when he’s forced to face off against a “training opponent,” a vampire child who beats him. Worse, other vampires ambush him and leave him close to death.

With help from a witch, allies in the FBI, and his own unique abilities, Peter must heal from his wounds, train for his ultimate fight and figure out exactly which vampire he must kill. If he fails, the harpy will take Heather back to spend the rest of her life in unimaginable torture.

___

Right, that’s the basic pitch. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to Twitter to try and drum up a few sales. Whee, release day.

Ebook review: The Gorelets Omnibus by Michael Arnzen

EDIT: This is a short review, innit? Well here’s the dealio, yo. (Yo.) I am no poet, and thus I am about as reliable a reviewer on poetry as a devout nun is likely going to be an expert on the best hardcore bondage porn. So while I can say that I’ve enjoyed what I read, that does not make me qualified to talk about things like verse and flow, or use big words like iambic pentameter (Tru Fax: I had to look that up just to make sure I was thinking of the right words, and I was totally misspelling it. (Thanks, Google!)) My point is, I can’t tell you about the mechanics of what I read. All I can say is, “I liked it.” And I did. So, yeah.

Okay, here’s my very short review:

Well…this is a book for people with a taste for the macabre. Lots of gruesome visual imagery mixed with absurd ideas and situations. If you like horror or bizarro fiction, you’ll like this. If you don’t, this could leave you a bit green in the gills.

I give The Gorelets Omnibus four stars and recommend it to horror fan looking for a little (bacterial) culture.

Guest Post: Marissa Carmel

You plan, God laughs.  This is the story of my life.

There are ideals and expectations I assume everyone has; whom you will marry, what your career will be like, where you will raise your kids. And yes, I had all those ideologies in my head, except mine were more like, have a career, don’t get married and absolutely no kids.  Boy was I wrong. Today I am married with two kids, and living in a state I only passed through on occasion. And my career? Well let’s just say, I have more than one, and I never saw that coming.  Who needs more than one career? Apparently me. To make a long story short, I started my first career as a logistician, yawn, I won’t bore you with the details. The second career came shortly after.

I’ve always loved to write. Always. My imagination constantly runs away with itself, and I am without doubt following it. My best subject was creative writing. So when I would write, it was primarily for me (or a good grade). As time went on though, I found myself imagining more and more and wanting to create, but my life was so busy, and what would it get me anyway? Until one day my mother- in- law dropped a bomb that would change my life. She was talking to one of my husband’s cousins who was complaining about getting her college degree (she was already married with 4 kids. Yikes. I’d be complaining too.) And my MIL, the wise woman that she is simply said, honey, time is going to go by anyway, so you might as well do it. Well, it felt like the sky fell on me. The advice wasn’t even directed at me, but it resonated. I started writing that night. And never stopped.

My husband once asked where my creativity comes from, and in return I asked him if he ever heard voices in his head.  His reply, I needed to see a shrink. I told him a keyboard and a curser is the best therapy. I have always loved the supernatural, thanks in part to my mom; Charmed was one of our favorite shows to watch together and still is.  So when I started writing, it only felt natural that it took on a paranormal feel. But I didn’t want to write about vampires or werewolves or really anything that had been done. I’m like that; I always tend to steer towards the opposite of popular and then proceed to make fun of it. So I started researching, and brainstorming, and concocting my mix of love, humor and emotion. Liv was already an entity in my head, festering. I’d often imagine a dark haired girl with amethyst eyes, suffering and alone. When I finally established who she really was, and what kind of supernatural elements she would possess, (an Empath-someone who can feel the emotions of others- with active abilities) I asked myself, what would it be like for someone like that to carry the world’s emotions? Torrential I thought. What would it be like for her to fall in love? Even worse than torrential.  The story evolved rather quickly after that, but I didn’t rush it.  It took me a little over a year to write, over two years to edit. I learned a lot about my writing style during that time, developed my voice and really tried to give it a life-like feel.

So here I am almost four years later, a husband, 2 kids, and a home in what feels like a foreign country; a daytime career and a nighttime career, all jumbling together, fighting for a piece of my time. Go hard or go home, my husband and I always joke, if we have a story, it needs a theme and that is it.  I wouldn’t change it though, not for anything. Life is nothing, if not a venture – (I have no idea who said that).

Bibliography-

Marissa Carmel has been writing since a young age and although it has always been for personal enjoyment, she finally decided to breakout and share her imagination with the world. She hopes that her universe is as fun and intriguing to her readers as it is to her. Marissa Carmel is originally from NJ but moved to Maryland several years ago, she enjoys reading, writing, and catching up on her DVR library. She is currently working on the sequel to iFeel, Gravitational Pull, which she hopes to release sometime in 2012.

Book Blurb-

Lust. Anger. Hate. Desire. Love. Happiness. Joy. iFeel.

Liv Christianni is isolated, alone, tortured and withdrawn, saddled with the torrential downpour of the world’s emotions. Accepting of her providence Liv has lost all hope, until one day fate steps in and spins the course of her life like a spiraling top. Hunted by a Spirit Stalker, Liv is forced to gain control of herself and her surroundings, threatened by the touch of her immortal love; she must find a way to survive both physically and emotionally as her reality is shaken up like dice on a Craps table. Can she find the courage to accept her true self? Can she love unconditionally cognizant of the condemning consequences? Can she rise from the ashes to become the person she was always meant to be?

Funny, witty, real, and poignant, iFeel rips into your soul, and sets your emotions on fire.

If you are a fan of Charmed or Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries or The Secret Circle this series is for you!

Excerpt-

I direct my anger towards the mocking bottles of crazy pills settled in the cabinet. I attack them; clearing all the glass shelves in one angered fit. Tiny orange bottles fly all around my white tiled bathroom, exploding an array of colored pills against the walls and floor. It feels like I am bombing my past; liberating my future and releasing myself from whatever binds me. I want to be free, and if that means destroying my whole apartment in the process to get there, I am willing to do that.

I can feel the rage course through my veins; my head throbs and my throat burns as I thrash at my tiny bathroom. All I can hear are the voices of people who mean the most to me, those who encourage me, those who support me. To my surprise, the loudest voice is the one who is farthest away. Justice’s words echo against the tiled surface, telling me to let go, to accept my fate, to be magical and not mental. It makes me miss him all the more, but what he said finally makes sense.

My breaths pulse quickly in my lungs, as if the air is thinning. I have worked myself up into a crazed frenzy to expel my true self. My enraged fit has resulted in a bathroom bloodbath, me versus myself.

And I won.

Purchase Links-

Amazon.com- http://www.amazon.com/iFeel-ebook/dp/B008AM5KBY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1340055387&sr=8-2&keywords=iFeel

http://www.greatmindsindependentpublishing.com/

Wattpad review: Windswept by Gwen Cole

This is a first for me, a review not based off of a book, or even an ebook, but off of a reading of an online story at Wattpad. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I was reading this, and my regular Twitter followers know I’ve been gushing about this series on an almost daily basis. But I know some of y’all blog followers don’t follow me on Twitter, and I wanted to do what I can to promote Windswept to everyone I know. Y’all know I don’t smooch butt for stories I don’t like. I feel like if I don’t give you honesty in my reviews for stories I don’t like, you might not believe I’m being genuine when I gush infectiously over something I adore. And let me tell you, I LOVED Windswept.

What’s it about? Well it starts from the perspective of Sam, who is a classic YA trope girl. Shy and unassuming, Sam is beginning to wonder if anything will happen to her life to shake things up. Which brings to mind the maxim about being careful what you wish for. Indeed, Sam meets a boy on the subway who draws her attention for reasons that are not clear to her. The story switches POVs between Sam and the boy, Reid, and we learn that he’s just as mystified by Sam noticing him, because no one else does. Once Sam and Reid get over their terminal shyness (which to me was cute as kitten wrestling), Reid begins bringing Sam into his world, revealing that he is a meta-human with a unique gift for teleporting. He is a drifter, and drifters have enemies who can slow down time, sliders.

Without giving spoilers, let me explain why I love this story so much. First is Sam’s parents. I’ve complained many, many times before about YA authors making parents who don’t seem to care or even attempt to act like real parents. Sam’s parents don’t show up often in the story for a valid reason, but during early scenes, just a few lines help to show that they’re good parents. As an example, Sam tells her mother after one dinner that she’s going upstairs to finish her homework, and her mother smiles and says, “You mean start your homework, right?” And yes, Sam hasn’t started her homework yet. This single moment illustrates how Sam’s mother knows her daughter well.

In another scene just a few pages later, Sam’s mother say she wants to go on a business trip with Sam’s father, but she’s not sure if she should, because she’s worried about Sam. Of course Sam tells her to go and not to worry. But what I loved about this short exchange is that same feeling of parental awareness and concern. Sam’s mother knows something is bugging Sam, but she won’t interrogate her daughter, even though she will comment over and over that she’s ready to listen. This is some great parenting, and some great character development that I feel is lacking in a lot of YA fiction.

The other thing I love about this story is how Sam and Reid get together slowly, and how they both have to strip off layers of emotional defense to get to know each other. Sometimes YA is frustrating because two characters just fall in love and the next day they’re a couple. This story takes a different approach, and it feels stronger and more realistic even with the fantastic settings.

Later chapters were VERY hard for me to read because Reid is captured and held prisoner, being bolted to a floor with handcuffs. Readers of my last review know how someone being bound against their will is a major triggering issue for me, so these chapters were very hard on me. During one point I was near tears and panting hard. It also didn’t help that Reid’s past had been revealed by that point, and this abuse added to his past almost broke my heart. But that’s the mark of great writing, making me feel something for a character so strongly that I wanted to hunt down his tormentors and kill them with my bare hands.

The story moves to a very tense conflict with some great twists near the end that close the story satisfactorily, but still leave the door open for a possible sequel. And make no mistake, if Gwen Cole wants to continue to explore the lives of Sam and Reid, I will gladly sign up for another book. I loved everything about this story, and even when the foreshadowing in early chapters allowed me to guess what would happen, I felt more pleased for guessing right than disappointed for things being too obvious.

Now, I have to say that as the story progresses, there are more noticeable typos and homophones, like phased instead of fazed among others. This is kind of a rough draft in places, but the mistakes were never so bad that I felt confused about what the author meant to say, and nothing was ambiguous or bad enough to throw me out of my reading groove. There were a few times when the story seemed to switch to present tense instead of past tense, but again, it wasn’t that bad, in my opinion.

Also, one of the closing twists in the story felt just a little too convenient to me. But this is minor complaint, and I can’t explain it without spoiling the story. And this is such a fantastic story that I wish everyone would give it a chance, even if they aren’t a fan of YA. In fact, if you were just signing up on Wattpad, and you were asking, “But Zoe, should I read one of your stories first, of this?” I’m going to point you to Windswept first. Really, it’s that good. I haven’t been this pleased by a story since reading John A. Lindqvist’s Harbour last year, and I really feel like it deserves more attention. If Gwen Cole gets this published, she can count me in for a copy.

So I give Windswept 5 enthusiastic stars, and I recommend it to everyone willing to give Paranormal YA a chance. Really, anyone thinking about writing YA should read this, because this is how realistic teen characters AND realistic parents are done right. So consider this my poking prod to get you to give the story a chance. I’m sure you won’t regret it unless you just prefer your fiction dreary and depressing.

Book review: Scripped by KV Taylor

What to say about Scripped without giving too much away? I really have to think on this because I don’t want to spoil this book for anyone brave enough to try it.

This was a hard book for me to read. Normally, if you see me read something slow, it’s because I’m having a hard time with some element or character in the story. It’s rare that I read slow because I’m “savoring the flavor.” But no, this book features not one, but two themes that trigger my personal problems. Many times I had to put my ereader down, clutch my chest and just think, “Breathe, okay?” Seriously, if I hadn’t already read and loved two other books from the same author, I’d have never made it past chapter 2 of this book.

Summing up the plot, Jonah Gray is an athlete in a dysfunctional family who leaves his parents’ cabin to get away from his arguing parents. In the woods, he stumbles across the Borderlands, the meeting point between our world and the fae world. He’s found by Sela, who is very eager to take him back to her town. Jonah is put under a spell that leaves him confused, and so he’s led into a trap, and into a life of being tied up and cut. And THIS is why I had so much trouble reading the book. Theme one that freaked me out was Jonah being owned as property, and having no control over his own life. Theme two is being tied up. Both of these themes are recurring, though I won’t spoil the story by saying why Sela is using him.

Eventually Jonah finds a way to leave the town, but he remains closeted in more meanings of the word than I can describe without spoilers. I hurt for Jonah, knowing personally his self-loathing and his sense of being a broken person for many years. I understood his feelings of being unworthy of love, and that sense of connection made me wish for something better to happen. But this is a horror story, and the ending is more in line with that dark genre than with my wishes for a happy ending.

So, this is rough book for me to get through, and I think saying I enjoyed it is perhaps a long stretch of the word. But I cared about Jonah so much that I couldn’t quit reading, and that to me says something about the quality of the writing. So I give Scripped 4 stars and recommend it to fans of horror and dark fantasy who are looking for an unflinching and ugly look at what happens when someone wanders off the beaten path and into the clutches of the fae. I’d just warn people with bondage or control issues that this book is very triggery. Like, I had to put it down and breathe slow to avoid risking hyperventilating from panic attacks. It’s still a powerful read, and I’m glad I finished it.

It’s a bit quiet…too quiet

Right, this will be a short post to let you know what I’m up to, and explain why there might not be as much bloggy rage from me in the next few weeks. The first thing is, out of the blue, I was invited back to the editing job for two weeks of fun news editing for great pay. And for once, that’s not sarcasm. I really do love working on this glass web site, and the news I edit is rarely boring. I think it also helps that the pay rate is awesome. Worth getting up in the morning for, really.

Around this same time, my muse came back, and we completed an episode of All Maid Up and another chapter of the Unnamed Werewolf WIP. I’d ask her for a name, but after two months of not hearing from the muse, I’ll try not to push my luck and piss her off again. If I can keep her placated, I might get at least on project completed before the end of the summer. Givewn my shitty production output this year, it’s not in my best interest to make her stomp off again right after she just got back. (>_>) But, I will say that she’s finally conceded that I was right, and the minor change I was suggesting helps to build tension in the middle of the book, where it was just about to turn way too fluffy and happy, like a gay version of “a boy and his dog.” And by gay, I mean way, WAY too happy.

So, yeah, if you notice I’m not ranting at you people for the rest of the month, it’s because I’m being distracted by people with lots of money, and by my muse, who suddenly loves me again. Oh, but there is a guest post coming up on the 25th for author Marissa Carmel for her book iFeel, so you won’t be entirely alone. And who knows? Maybe I’ll find time to come around and blame you for something else. (>_>)

Oh, right, I almost forgot. Kobo emailed me with news that their site for indie authors, Kobo Writing Life, had come out of beta, and I could now sign up for an account. So I filled out the forms and uploaded my books, and then I wondered if I could upload a book and make it free. So I emailed the support staff, and sure enough, that was allowed. So I uploaded my free books, and after I get some free time tonight, I’m going to format and upload another freebie to try and entice people to visit the new store. You can find a listing of my 34 titles with this link. I had to do a begathon on Twitter to get one book sold and see how rankings work, and for right now they’re weird. Like, I’m in the top 10 for some categories despite selling nothing. And the book I did sell didn’t change my rank one way or the other. So…yeah.

All right, that’s the news for now, so if you’ll excuse me, I have to go work on the news for someone else.

On Pride and Porno – A rant you don’t want to read

Sometimes when I’m about to have a “you people” rant, I hear Zoe Winters, AKA: the popular Zoe, clucking her tongue in shame at my antics and saying with a disapproving tone, “Zoe, this is not how you make friends.” But not this time. This time, the other Zoe is saying “Oh shit, just let me pop some popcorn. This is gonna be good.”

So, get this: publishers are about to unleash Pride and Prejudice and Porno. This is sure to be one of many “atrocities,” and Austen’s work and others will soon include “explosive sex scenes.” Why? Mainly it’s been touted because the popularity of 50 Shades of Grey now has publishers salivating over the corpses of dead writers who need to be sexed up. But in actuality, the problem goes way back before E.L. James wrote her Twilight fan-fiction.

Some of you people are already clutching your pearls and moaning “What is the world coming to?” Shut up. Did that offend you? Then let me clarify: shut the ever-lovin’ fuck up. You started the written world down this slippery sexual slope when you made Pride and Prejudice and Zombies a bestseller. You kept it going by buying Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and by making a bestseller of every other horror hack’s rape of a literary classic, and you supported the publishers as they went off the fucking deep end with bullshit like Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. You did this, by never closing your wallet, even if it was in your best interest to just sit something out for once.

I said this in shorter form on Twitter, but some of you may miss it, so it needs to be repeated. You people deserve this new trend of classic books with cum shots. You deserve it because you have no taste, nor any self-respect. As consumers, you’ll take any old shit so long as it’s “vetted by the big guys”. Your lack of self-respect and your taste for pure corporate shit is why Big Brother is a franchise. You’re the reason why McDonald’s has a few million to spare for buying out the Olympics and banning people from buying English chips this Summer. You’re the reason why we’ve got a fucking movie version of 50 Shades of Grey coming soon, because you never once close your wallet and have some fucking self-respect, or even an ounce of anything resembling decent taste.

But, this won’t stop some of you hypocrites from whining, “Why is this happening?” Because you can’t take the blame for the shit you buy and supported. And don’t look at me. I never bought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or any of the corpse humping titles that followed. I didn’t promote them, talk about them, or offer the publishers any sign that I wanted more of their bullshit. But I knew even then, these would all be successes, because y’all love the taste of shit.

Don’t ask “Why won’t the publishers support real art?” One, because publishers want safe bets, and your continued support of literary shit encourages them to take this less risky route; and two, because you wouldn’t fucking buy real art and the publishers would lose money on it. Why should they develop original talent or take a risk on genuinely edgy art when they can just dump shit on a dead author and pass it back to you for a huge profit?

So for once, shut the fuck up about how the publishers are at fault, because you told them their behavior is a-okay with your wallets. You told them with your dollars, “This is great, please keep going.” Because of you, we’ll get ass sex in Austen. Because of you, Sherlock Holmes will find a new way of interpreting Greek. And the worst part about this is, you’ll open your wallets and buy this shit too, guaranteeing us another round of porno clones all looking to hump dead writers. Don’t clutch your pearls and whine about what a world we live in. Own your shit for once, and admit that this happens because you never will take any risks on real art. You only buy shit, and you reward publishers for taking the easy way out. Don’t point at them without seeing the other three fingers pointing back at you. YOU DID THIS, AND YOU DESERVE THIS.

And by all means, boycott my cheap ass pop art. Heaven knows I never used any symbolism or allegory in my work. No, I just humped trends and tried to tell some dirty jokes at the expense of other writers. There’s nothing of value to be found in my art, just sex, sex, and more sex. Most of it queer, and some of it just sick perversions. So please, go on and boycott my shit while you voluntarily buy into Pride and Prejudice and Penis. But when we get to Of Mice and Men and Gay Sex, don’t you dare fucking whine about society’s slide into immorality. Because you greased the slide with your dollars long before publishers dug Austen and Doyle back up for a necrophilia bukkake session.

A religious rant

I went to bed early last night, so of course I’m up before the sun this morning. Last night I went off on a rant because Germany decided to ban circumcision, and Jews and Muslims got up in arms about their ancient right to slash their babies at an early age in order to mark them. Someone I normally respect said “but it’s Germany. Could there be any worse country to make this choice?”

You know what? I’m no fan of Germany, given that they have a judge who ignored EU human rights laws and the wishes of a child’s mother to have a trans child locked away in an insane asylum at the whims of a transphobic father. But no one got up in arms to defend that child, and no one seems to give a fuck about all the male babies being mutilated every day by these religions. In fact, no one seems to be all that concerned about male-dominated religions trampling the rights of literally hundreds of minorities under the guise of their “right” to freedom of religion.

You can’t call me anti-Jew or an islamophobe. As a transsexual, I’m called an “unclean abomination” to these faiths, and many of their most holy men would call for my death or imprisonment. These male-dominated religions are also Christian and Buddhist, or Hindu, and in all cases, they demand that the man always be in a violent position of power. Because if they are not, God, or the gods, will be very angry.

I’m fucking sick and tired of this bullshit. I believe in God, but I believe that were are a bacteria infecting one blood cell in the body of an ever expading God. I believe this is but one of many such bodies of gods, and that these gods do not concern themselves with our activities the way our organized religions claim they do. I believe that people have taken the religious text of their faiths, cherry picking these texts to justify individual excuses to hate and exclude everyone they do not agree with.

Religions came about as a way to convince people to behave and think of others, and yet, most modern people use them as excuses to behave like complete douchebags. It’s a personal narrative of “me, me, me!” They make death threats against women for opposing their rules. They abuse children; they strip minorities of their basic rights of self-determination, and they do all of this is the name of a deity they’ve never seen or heard.

People use religion to deny science. They use it to justify mistreating the planet as much as they mistreat infant children. I would sooner strip these men of their rights and tell them “No, you can’t cut your male babies’ penises until they’re old enough to decide for themselves if they want it.” I would strip them of their right to dominate girls and force them to cover themselves head to foot in fabrics. Because really, the truth is that even when little girls wear baggy hoodies and hide their gender under layers of cloth, men still molest them and violate their rights to self-determination. Then they tell the girls “It’s your fault for being born as the object of my desire. I can’t help that I’m a rapist. God made me incapable of controlling my sexual urges, and if you want to avoid this fate you’ll have to act more prudish and less slutty around me.”

This is the excuse that religion affords these men, be they Jew, Muslim, Hindu, or Christian. This is the covenant that men make with each other, that their violent patriarchal control of women, children, and minorities shall remain unquestioned, because they assert that they have a right to mistreat others. And if they should ever lose that right to abuse people, then God’s will is being tested. It’s not God’s will being set aside. It the mindset of men that patriarchy should cede power to a more balanced system of true equality. It’s the ignorant view that maleness is next to godliness, and it’s a perspective that needs to go away. PERIOD.

So I don’t give a fuck if it’s Germany telling the Jews not to slice babies or the French telling Muslim girls not to cover their heads. I’m sick of fucking organized religions asserting their right to indoctrinate victims at a young age. I’m sick of religions asserting their right to mark their children with surgical wounds, only to turn around and tell people like me that we’re sick for mutilating our genitals. I’m sick of religious people using their faith as an excuse to remain ignorant of their influence on our planet and on our societies. I’m sick of bible thumpers beating up people with their so-called “good books.” And I would happily take the right of religion away from them if it meant giving women and children the freedom of self-determination. If children could get away from abusive and oppressive fathers, or indeed away from ANY abusive situation, simply by saying “I need to escape,” then hell yes, I would call myself anti-religion.

Now, go on and boycott my ass for refusing to respect your back-asswards ignorant views. Go on and threaten me with violence because I do not support your right to call me an abomination, or to abuse your children and turn them into victims of Stockholm Syndrome. You go whine to your elected officials that your rights to be a patriarchal abuser comes over my human rights to self-determination. But don’t you ever fucking demand that I respect your abusive ways as a right. Because what you have is a privilege that you’ve abused and turned into an excuse to be ignorant motherfuckers for way too long.

And if you think this means you’re being persecuted, let me just ask you this: when was the last time we fed any of your ignorant asses to the lions?