Leah R. Cutter's Blog, page 41
January 13, 2012
I'm an idiot
But ya'll already knew that, right?
My original plan for the year involved working on material already generated in some aspects. I was going to spend at least the first three months of the year merely rewriting.
The good news is that I recognized fairly early that this was a bad idea. Within three days finishing "Hell For The Holidays" I started getting twitchy that there was no new material on the horizon. I told myself to stick with the plan, though. I do want to get those novels out, I do think the work I'm doing is good work and worth the time and effort.
I also noticed that I was starting to get depressed. I told myself that it would be okay–I just needed to get into the rewrite.
In the past that advice worked. I was able to sink deeply enough into the rewrites that it scratched the writing itch.
However, my writing itch is no longer the same. A mere rewrite isn't good enough. So I decided to spend this weekend writing a short story (the next in the Hell series.) Then I'd work on the novel all week, and the short story again next weekend.
Then I heard about a call for submissions to an anthology. Tonight I wrote an ~3000 short story to meet that call.
I cannot describe how good I feel. There's nothing like this high. I needed this hit so badly. Make no mistake. Writing changes the chemicals in my brain. This was a hit. And I needed it.
So now it's time to revise the plan again. Because while I'm an idiot, I'm not that much of an idiot. Right now I'm aiming at a couple short stories a month, taking the time to binge write in between rewrites.
And this is merely one of the blessings that doing the Baker's Dozen challenge has given me–the sure knowledge that I can just sit down and write a short story in a day or a weekend. This is one step further away from "Writing As Event"–which is what having a strict writing time/schedule is for me. Instead, it's just writing, when I can, when I want to, when I need to.
And hopefully be less of an idiot about it in the future.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.
January 11, 2012
Lies, damn lies, and statistics
This is a very preliminary report about my epub sales for last year.
NOTES:
I won't have final numbers for Smashwords for 2011 for 6 months — so July.
I won't have final numbers for Amazon until at least January 15th (I think, though it may be 2-6 months as well for some of the foreign sales.)
So the most important number — that grand total at the bottom.
$97.04
I am aware that this isn't an earth-shattering number. It certainly isn't Jon Konrath numbers ($100,000 in the last three weeks).
Yet.
This is three months of primarily short fiction sales. I'd always heard that novels sell better, and that's certainly reflected in my sales.
Speaking of which — here are my sales to date:
And again, those important numbers: 44 short stories, 2 "long" stories (anthologies, etc.), 21 novels, 67 total sales.
The reason why I consider the novel numbers better, though they're smaller, is because I only had 1 novel available in November, 2 novels available in December.
Again these aren't crazy, time-to-retire numbers.
Yet.
One other thing — marketing. Ya'll have seen me tweeting about how I have all this stuff for sale, right? Or badgering people on Facebook? Or making endless posts? (Okay, the Baker's Dozen challenge I was making a post a week.) You haven't? That's because I haven't. Most of these sales are the result of 0 marketing. Just writing the next piece.
Speaking of which — web hits.
Normally my web site generates very, very little traffic. Maybe 5 hits per day. (I should probably keep track of my LJ stats as well — maybe this year.)
Days when I posted free fiction, and days when I announced the novels available as ebooks, those spiked to about 50 hits per day. I assume that at least a dozen of the Kindle sales came from those posts or my links — I can tell because I'm an Amazon associate, and if someone buys via one of those links I get an additional kickback.
What does all this mean? For me, I need to keep writing, keep posting, and not be impatient. Because honestly, this is an AMAZING start as far as I'm concerned. It's small, but it's just a start. First three months of a 10 year plan.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.
January 10, 2012
The Jaguar and the Wolf now available as an ebook!
I've completed the hat trick — all three of my traditionally published novels are now available as ebooks.
We know Vikings reached North America. What if one Viking ship goes down along the coast, into the Gulf of Mexico, and lands on the Yucatan Peninsula? This novel is told following two story lines: the conflicts between the two groups of humans, and the conflicts between the two pantheons of gods, Norse and Mayan.
Available on Barnes & Noble (Nook)
I did a heavier edit on this novel compared to the other two. Part of that was because the files I had didn't include the copy edits I'd received from the publisher. Part of it was because the language, in some parts, was just too clunky. I was using a lot of new language tools. I've used those tools for many years now, so am much better with them than I used to be.
The Caves of Buda was difficult for me to edit because that novel is so autobiographical. This one was even more difficult. I was very unhappy when I wrote this novel, much more unhappy than I realized at the time. After I finished this novel I wrote some short fiction, that when I look at now, I recognize I was literally screaming for help. This novel was the precursor to those. I wasn't screaming but I was yelling pretty hard. I don't know if that's obvious to anyone else. I hope it isn't. But I can see it.
So now I'm moving forward, with Clockwork Kingdom, a novel where I'm having fun and it's obvious. Yes, I'm doing heavy edits on it, but I think I'm making it so much better as a result. I'm aware of my voice and I think I know enough to leave that alone while making much needed improvements.
I keep thinking about writing original fiction again. And I will, soon. I may take time this weekend to do a few pages, just to keep my hand in, just because.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.
January 8, 2012
Baker's Dozen Anthology!
The Baker's Dozen anthology is now available!
Travel to cold Seattle and the see the world from the viewpoint of a private investigator who just happens to be a ghost, then go down to the creole fairy courts of Louisiana, learn the secrets of 9s and how the raven warriors take care of their own. Here are thirteen tales of fantasy and wonder, sweet and savory, to fill you up just right.
Tales include:
"Hell By Any Other Name"
"Magpie"
"True Vision"
"Slipping the Leash"
"Golden Charms"
"To Hell and Back"
"Hunting Ghosts in the Machine"
"Were-Teen"
"The Secrets of 9s"
"The Other Story"
"The Doom of Alokai Temple"
"The Third Raven"
"Hell for the Holidays"
Available on Barnes and Noble (Nook)
It feels incredible to be able to make this post, to have completed the anthology, all those short stories. I'm really proud of most of them. I know I did some very good work with them. I've gone through and edited all of them one last time. At some point I'll probably upload updated versions of the stories, but not this week.
I'm waiting until the third novel is available via Amazon before I make a general post about it, but it's currently up on both Smashwords and B&N.
I keep trying to edit "Clockwork Kingdom." I'm finding it very difficult, however, because my brain really wants to write the next short story ("High-Stakes Hell", another of the "Hell" stories. Yes, bluffing against creatures who don't feel passion like the living makes poker very interesting.) I'm not sure how to accomodate it. I'm not sure how to work on both. I'm afraid if I start writing the next story, I won't pay enough attention to "Clockwork Kingdom" and really, that novel deserves more. So I'm thinking about it, trying to make it all work and keep my writerly brain happy.
This morning I went to yoga. It's such a lovely way to start the day. This afternoon I have my first east coast swing dance lesson. In between I have house stuff and writing stuff and believe it or not, I've actually started my holiday cards (the new due date, for me, is the end of January.) I hope that ya'll are having as wonderfully relaxing and productive a day as I am.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.
January 7, 2012
Green is my love, that lives on bonnie hill
When you go to their web site, you have to fill in your name and phone number. Then they call you and set up an interview. I read through the Yelp reviews, a number of which complained of hard sell tactics.
However, I was really excited about talking with them. In December I'd been talking with another friend and how what I wanted was something like a "Girl Friday", but for social things — someone else to organize my social life and all I had to do was show up. This seemed like exactly what I wanted.
I was afraid that might be the case, but I figured it was worth at least going and listening to them.
The first big red flag was when the interviewer, an employee of Events & Adventures, told me, "You're so brave!"
Really?
I'm sorry, but give the name of the company that employs you, I would have expected you to match me, adventure for adventure.
Another thing — she told me that they do events for the masses. However, I may meet people at their events who would be interested in doing the types of things that I wanted to do, and could go off and do it with them separately.
Again, really? I'm paying you over $2000 in an annual membership fee, plus a monthly fee, plus the cost of the events, just to meet people who I could go and do other things with, as opposed to the events I was paying for?
The last straw was the calendar of events. Given the amount of money I'd expected something more special, as well as more interesting. If I was paying that much I'd really hoped on their list of events that there would be a couple of things every week that I'd want to do. Instead, there were only one to two things the entire month of January that I was vaguely interested in.
In the end, I walked away from what could have been a lovely service, if they were serving my kind of people. The general impression that I had was that they're catering to people who did cruises as opposed to independent travel. One of the things I read somewhere was that if you wanted to travel abroad but didn't want to travel alone, this was a good group. Sorry, but I *adore* traveling abroad alone.
So — back to the drawing board. I'm trying to cobble together a good social calendar for myself. I'm starting east coast swing lessons on Sunday, I have a group that I'm going to be volunteering with one a month, I have the knitting group that meets once a week, the writing group that meets once a week, plus friends I can do stuff with. And I'm doing the 3-day Susan G Komen walk for the cure again, which means training walks with lots of people, at least once a week, starting late summer. And I still go to yoga now and again.
That kind of looks like a lot, but I know there are times when I am still going to want to go out with people. Friday or Saturday nights, or Saturday or Sunday brunches.
Maybe starting in February, the first Saturday of the month, will be pot luck and game night. And I'm going to go see if I can find a hiking club too.
December 31, 2011
Wot I did — Wot I will do
I looked at my word count for the year recently and it blew me away.
–Walking Gods: 13,000
–Baker's Dozen: 84,000
Which means I wrote 97,000 words from July to December. Most of those words happened in the last 13 weeks of the year. If I include what I did at the start of the year, my word count is more like 120,000 words. Which, uhm, wow.
A lot of "life" happened this year. I made a lot of changes and did many, many. I didn't actually post any writing goals for 2011, though I think in the back of my head my goal was to write 3 novels. That didn't happen, but I had a very successful writing year.
For 2012, my goals are kind of a combination of writing and publishing.
–Finish the minor rewrites of Clockwork Kingdom, find an editor to go through it, and self-pub
–Redraft most of Zydeco Queen
–Finish Siren's Call
–Write a new novel
–Write some short fiction
The other novels will eventually be self-pubbed, but I don't know if that will happen this year or next year. I find letting a novel sit for a good long while gives me such a better perspective on it. So I may redraft Zydeco Queen and sit on it for 6 months, have first readers and an editor go through it and by that time it may be next year before I self-pub. But I intend to self-pub everything for a while, at this point. I am having far too much fun to try to work with New York. I may go back, I may not.
I hope that ya'll are having a wonderful New Year's eve, and have the best of everything in the new year.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.
December 25, 2011
Happy happy merry merry! New Fiction!
WOO HOO!!!!
Thirteen stories in thirteen weeks. And I had a blast doing it.
Hell For The Holidays
December 21st, 2012 hadn't been the end of the world, only the Great Unraveling. The veils between the Seen and Unseen worlds shredded and the living suddenly found out they weren't alone.
Andy had seen it all, done it all as a detective when he'd be alive. Now, as a ghost, he still works as a private investigator. This time, it isn't just Heaven or Hell, it's much worse: it's families and the holidays.
As usual, this story has been posted to my web site and will be available for free for a week. After that I'll take down the page. I will post more free fiction at some point. From the stats I've been keeping, on the days I post free fiction I generate 100% more traffic than I normally do. Considering I don't post very often, I find that astonishing.
I love this story, as I have loved all the stories set in this world. It's bitter and cynical about both the holidays and families, which I'm really not. It was fun to play at that extreme though.
This is the last story for this challenge. I feel incredibly satisfied. I suspected writing a short story a week wouldn't be that difficult, particularly given how quickly I can draft. I knew it would be fun as well, jumping from one cool idea to the next, playing with different voices and settings. I didn't know what I'd learn, but I knew I'd learn a lot, which I did. I learned a lot about the publishing process, not just the writing process.
Speaking of which, I will post this story to Smashwords, B&N, Amazon, etc. However, this morning, the sites are all slow. I figure it's all those people with new ebook readers playing around, as well as all the authors offering free books for the holidays. Maybe I'll do something like that next year. We'll see.
In the meanwhile, I'm going to go celebrate the day with my family. I hope each and everyone of you is having a fabulous day.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.
December 20, 2011
Changing your life
I have a couple of work friends who have been trying to get me to go to Burning Man in 2012, primarily because the experience will, "change my life."
That was why I decided I wouldn't go in 2012. Maybe 2013. But not next year.
When I sat down and thought about it, I realized that in the past 18 months I've done five things that have changed my life. At this point, I think spending a year or so on the same course, figuring out the new normal, would probably be good for me.
Will I go in 2013? Probably. At that point I'll be ready for another change.
1) Someone pointed out Dean Wesley Smith's series of posts on Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. I recall that they thought he was being an idiot, but the snippet this person provided didn't sound idiotic to me, so I went and read Dean's blog. I got angry, really, really angry, both at him and at myself for about a week, because I had believed so many of those myths. Eventually I got over myself and started learning. Which lead me to Kris Rusch's blog, The Freelancer's Survival Guide and that started me rethinking my writing career, what I wanted to do, how to achieve those things. That one link led mt to change almost everything about my writing career, changes that are continuing to happen.
2) I discovered Primal Blueprint. I had cut all grains out of my cat's diet, and the change in her was remarkable (coat changed from scraggly to bunny soft, and her energy levels went through the roof.) So the suggestion that I cut all grain out of my diet wasn't too far of a stretch. It has made an incredible difference in my health, in how I feel on a day-to-day basis. I wouldn't go back to eating grains. I'd probably starve first. So this changed my diet completely.
3) I moved to New Orleans for 6 months. This was something I'd done deliberately, because I knew I needed to change my life a bit more. It was a shifting of course, not as much of a change. But by being in New Orleans, I learned how to pace myself, how to both have fun as well as have discipline, how to have friends and still write. This probably produced the least dramatic change, but it had far reaching ripples (still has.)
4) I bought a house. I'm still trying to figure out what the new normal is in regards to being a home owner. I'm in debt again with a mortgage, which I don't like, but I love everything else. I have no regrets for buying this place. The house has brought about many changes — for example, I have a garden. I had no idea that I liked gardening, putzing around outside like that, but I do. Because I am outside in the garden, I then end up spending more time outside over all. That's just one small change that's part of an entire building worth of change in my life because of the house — not to mention the vacation rental I run out of the basement.
5) I took a class on self-publishing. This one & #1 could be considered one change (because the class was taught by Dean) but it really isn't. The self publishing class gave me the push I needed to start putting everything online. It became part of the whole writing career change, but I think of them as two separate things. By taking that class I've self-published 25 things (2 novels, 2 anthologies, and 21 short stories.) I'm not making a ton of money, but I see an increase every month. I'm getting lovely reviews for short stories I've never been able to sell. I've had a blast. I feel so good about my writing and my writing career.
So I think I've had enough changes for a little while. Not a long while. But for a bit.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.
December 19, 2011
Revisiting rescheduling
I don't know what hit me but it's bad. Didn't have any brain what so ever until about 4 PM today. Completely exhausted, took a 2 hour nap this AM, a second 1 hour nap this afternoon. Both times felt as though I'd just laid down for a minute and suddenly it's hours later. Could go back to sleep right now. Am staying awake for a couple more hours so I'll sleep through the night.
All the things I need to do before I leave for the holidays are up in the air (started getting sick yesterday afternoon, just thought I was stressed.) May end up taking the work computer with me because there are things I must do before the end of the year.
Of course, no writing today. Which really throws a wrench in things as well. I'm hoping tomorrow I'll be well enough for everything I need to do, that I'm only down for the day.
Still — really sucky day today.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.
December 18, 2011
Free Fiction! The Third Raven
Here it is — the twelfth story in twelve weeks: The Third Raven.
The raven clan takes pride in three things: the education of their children, the fierceness of their warriors, and how they care for their own. However, Pedrek, a retired raven warrior, finds a raven clan boy alone in a remote mountain village, ignorant of his heritage as well as cursed: looking like a dreaded half-breed, with one human arm and one black raven's wing. Can Pedrek break the curse and bring the boy into the clan? Or has he been too long on his own?
This story was inspired in part by the two ancient songs, "The Three Ravens" and "The Twa Corbies". Wikipedia page
As usual, this story will be available here on my web site for free for a week. Then I'll pull it down and post the last story.
One of the unusual things about this story: about halfway through I realized that I could easily set a novel in this world. Not necessarily that I would, but the world is so developed in my head. It's more complete than some of the other places I wrote about. If it was earlier in the challenge, say week three or four, I'd probably already be planning on writing another short story in this world. As it is, this is the twelfth story and I already have the next one planned. Still, I may revisit this world at some future date.
One of the things I paid attention to while I was writing this story was how I wrote it. As usual, there were scenes that I started wrong, that I had to run at more than once (by run at I generally mean throw away everything I've written so far and redraft.) When I'm writing by hand I recognize when I need to redraft a scene fairly early, generally within the first couple paragraphs, and almost always within the first page.
When I am typing a story straight to the computer I miss those warning signs. I keep pushing when I should just stop and redirect. I think it's partly because it's too easy to type and keep going, while writing things out by hand takes more effort, so when it's not going correctly it's easier to slow down.
Writing by hand doesn't mean I won't abandon a story, I did that during week two. But the warning signs are clear very early on.
In addition, I've been taking some notes about statistics, as well as what I've learned doing this challenge. I've had such a good time. I'll post about those later. Michael Stackpole just wrote a blog post about how much more fun writing has become since he's taken over the production side of things. I have to agree with him. I'm writing more, and I'm looking forward to writing more because I don't care if I'm writing sideways pieces that no one will ever buy. (And that's the other thing — people are buying them.)
My word count for the year isn't that impressive. I had a lot going on in terms of life events. Still, I got words onto a page and made them public and I enjoyed the process so much. And honestly, I think that's worth more than just about anything.
Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so here or there.
