Cate Morgan's Blog, page 2

A Little Bit Country Giveaway (#freeromance #beachread)

FREE FOR A LIMITED TIME!

JUNE 21-25

Summer is officially here and the season of the light-hearted beach read has begun! If you’re in the mood for a sweet, fun romance then grab your copy on Amazon now!

GIMME MY BOOK!

SUPER SURPRISE BOOK GIVEAWAY!

So here am I, dropping a book giveaway –totally unscheduled and for no good reason other than I felt like it.

The first 25 people who make with the clicky get a FREE COPY of BRIGHID’S CROSS (Keepers of the Flame #1).

So for those of you who have considered starting the series but have been putting it off due to a lethally teetering TBR pile (I’m not the only one who has one of those, right?), this is your chance to get on the right side of the apocalypse.

And, hey–if you want to learn more about Aika and how she became a Keeper, don’t forget that her Origin story is also free!

Author’s Log: Done Book! (#amwriting, #ROW80)

Aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnd DONE.

*hyperventilates*

*dumps water over head*

*falls over*

RELIANCE is now (finally) officially out in the wild, y’all!

It took some mad-cap shenanigans toward the end there, but we did it! So, so happy right now. Also, RELIEVED.

I can’t even begin to tell you how proud I am of this one.

As a result, I only got about half the words I wanted to write done on KEEPERS 5, but I expect to be able to catch up this coming weekend. Then, on Sunday, the Tech Monkey and I will be joining the rest of the world in seeing Civil War for a much needed break.

I’m sure there were other things I wanted to tell you, but if there were it’s all gone clean out of my head at the moment.

IWSG: Control Issues (#amwriting, #ROW80)

One thing I love about indie publishing (and what I loved about writing for Samhain Publishing), is the level of control it affords me. This is hardly unusual; it’s a familiar refrain all across the indie community.

It’s pretty simple at the outset, at least for me. I break (develop) the story. I write the book. I revise the book. I edit the book. I write the cover copy and make the cover.

I add the book’s landing page to my website (i.e. give it a home). I launch the book and buys ads for marketing and advertising.

Write. Publish. Repeat. (Heh.)

These are all things I have glorious, unfettered control over. BWA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAA!!

Ahem.

But even here, in indie land where we have rope swings and band aids for when we scrape our knees, the control we have is only so much.

Other than by writing the very best book we can, other than by doing all the things we’re supposed to do to launch said book into the the wild, by doing the VERY BEST WE CAN IN THIS MOMENT RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, we have no control over how our work will be received.

Welcome to the creative life, y’all. It’s still scary, which is why it’s so important to have a support system in place. You can BETA the every-loving stuffing out of a book, collect critiques like Prince John collected taxes, and, essentially, EVERYTHING RIGHT, and still be playing to what appears to be an empty room. Maybe even the crickets aren’t all that impressed.

So I’m here to tell you–all cliches aside–LET IT GO.

All those echoes doesn’t mean you have a bad book, necessarily, Art is, after all, subjective, and everyone these days is a critic. But you can’t control how your book will ultimately be received.

So stop refreshing that Amazon page approximately 32 times per second. Don’t even look at your ranking, let alone obsess about them. Let the void be the void, while you back away from the precipice. That way lies madness.

Here, have some tea. *pat, pat*

Now. Here’s what you focus on instead.

Writing the next book. And the next one, and the next one. Keep up on changes and trends in the industry, but stop searching for that Golden Ticket that magically changes everything. There is no One Ring in the Wild West. All you can do is the best you can.

Keep writing. Keep trying. Keep your chin up, because the one constant here is that you are DEFINITELY not alone.

*drops mic*

 

 

 

Author’s Log: Super-Recalibratin’-Expialidocious (#amwriting, #ROW80)

Discovering you need two more chapters in your book is a terrible thing to realize in the midst of edits, ya’ll. Just sayin’.

In the end, it’s really no big deal. Reliance 1 will be out a week or so later than scheduled, but it will be a better book for it. I’m almost done!

In order for me to catch up on my production schedule (Thank you, Hamilton, for ruining my life in the best possible way), I’m going to need to crank out approximately 1,429 words per day, every day, for the next 9 weeks. So not too bad. My lunch hours will be occupied for awhile, anyway.

With that in mind, today I begin drafting Keepers 5. I’m having a wee bit of trouble trying to come up with cover art, but I have plenty of time to figure that out. The trick is to not become distracted by all the pretty pictures. o.O

I can, however, get a landing page with cover copy out. In addition, I’m working on getting the entire Blood & Steam series widely distributed with updated CTAs (Calls To Action), since I’ve pretty much utilized Kindle Select as much as possible. Waking Muse will also be getting the updated treatment.

Ad stacking on BRIGHID’S LOST worked well. Here’s how it went:

5 days FREE on Kindle Select

Day 1: 78 downloads

Day 2: 383 downloads

Day 3: 2,678 downloads

Day 4: 659 downloads

Day 5: 211 downloads

I schedule Ask David on Day 1, BK Knights on Day 2, and Free Booksy (the biggest spike) on Day 3. The idea was to make the Amazon algorithms see a steadily increasing spike, so I scheduled the ads in order of list size/efficacy. I left the last two days ad free because what inevitable happens is the first day’s ad downloads bleed over into the next day. So I built up a big, three day head and then let the tail drain out across the remaining days.

The end result is the BRIGHID’S LOST ended up at 125 in overall free Kindle books, #1 in Sci-Fi/Fantasy short reads, and #2 in Sci-Fi Romance. AND my first review as 5 Stars! YAY!

BRIGHID’S LOST (Keepers of the Flame #4)–FREE THIS WEEK!

Hey, Keepers! The fourth installment of Keepers of the Flame is FREE April 25-29!

Go get you a download on Amazon–quick! Before the Apocalypse arrives!

SPRT: Blabbity Blab 5:00pm EST

Hey, Keepers! I’m on the Self-Publishing Round Table podcast today at 5:00pm EST. Come say hi!

https://blab.im/sprt-self-publishing-roundtable-of-news-and-stuff-bnsdjw

Author’s Log: Slaying The Spaghetti Monster (#amwriting, #ROW80)

SUCCESS!!

Forgive my exuberance, but this morning I finally broke through an ongoing problem I’ve been having with formatting one of my books. It’s been months, y’all. MONNNNNTHS.

First, very few of my books are publishing on Apple. Mainly because they’re jerks and don’t allow outside links other than a website. (Also, if you have written a book about, or one that takes place on, a certain Big River (ahem), then they will apparently send drones to your house via iPhone from their nearest Starbucks and annihilate your computer. Be ye warned.)

(But I digress.)

My plan for awhile now has been to widely distribute the books I have exclusive with Amazon once I’ve reaped all I can from Kindle Select, etc, but Apple has been a significant problem in this endeavor.

I found that once I stripped any non-websitey links from my books and re-compiled, they have, without fail, been rejected almost immediately by Apple. This is been an ongoing problem, but only fairly recently.

See, there’s this thing now called “Epub Check” where your book goes through a Third Party Validation site required by Apple to enter their Hallowed Halls. And LADY TENNANT, the first book I tried this with, kept getting bounced like an underage clubber with a bad fake ID.

The site will helpfully tell you why your book failed…but not really. It will give you the error reason, and even a page number and error location–and then a bunch of Spaghetti Monster language that doesn’t make sense whatsoever. Even Google didn’t help. I’ve had folks who are veritable ninjas with the Java Script go “heh?” and “Does Not Compute”.

This morning, armed with iced coffee and my Irish fully up, I was determined to nuke the formatting and start from scratch. And then, bleary-eyed and teeth-gritted, I started going through the file frame by bloody frame.

Then it happened. As I ticking through the Compilation options in Scrivener, I clicked on something I don’t use and so never even looked at: Meta Deta.

And there, lo and behold, was a field populated with some random date formatting that looked AWFULLY familiar from my research into this Epub error.

I depopulated the field. I re-compiled. I uploaded the fresh file to Draft2Digital.

I prayed.

It worked.

HUZZAH!!!

TAKE THAT, SPAGHETTI MONSTER! I mean, APPLE!!

*falls over*

In other news, you may have noticed I updated this here website. It was about time, and the book list was getting so long I needed to separate them into their respective imprints, Speculative Ink and Heart-Linked. Also, I wasn’t getting a lot from page navigation on the old site, so this site (I think) is cleaner and easier to use as well as read.

In Other other news, once I finish updating my old book files at various distributors and continue to tweak my site, I can begin revisions on Reliance #1, a book I’m REALLY, REALLY  excited to release! This also means getting a sneak peak out to my Spec Ink newsletter.

Also, I’m going to be experimenting with Kindle Free Day ad stacking this week, using Keepers 4 as the guinea pig as it is nearing the end of its Select period. Then I’ll re-up for one more round and use what I learn to (hopefully) drive sales to the next book. By then I’m hoping to find out what’s going on with my publisher, Samhain. There are rumors of a buy-out, so best case scenario is they’ll give me the option of getting my rights back at some point.

Did I mention HUZZAH?

Author’s Log: Typeity-tyepity-typeity… (#amwriting, #ROW80)

This will be a quick one, as I don’t have a ton to report and I’ve been working on getting Reliance 1 out asap. I start revisions NEXT WEEK. Eep! O.O

That being said, I finally finished the cover and I LOVE IT. It’s definitely my favorite cover thus far:

And now I’m more excited than ever to get the book finished. IT’S SO GOOD YOU GUYS!

Author’s Log: Take A Break (#amwriting, #ROW80)

I haven’t been sleeping again.

Rather, I’ve been sleeping…kinda. I drop off into dreamland, and then I’m awake out of nowhere, wide awake and blinking blearily at a dark ceiling.

Well, crap.

I go through weird phases with my sleep cycles. Always have, probably always will as long as I have a day job to go to. My body seems to want to be up late into the wee hours, while my brain is wresting the Sandman’s sack from his cold, dry hands and pounding myself over the head with it in a desperate attempt to fall back asleep before I have to be, yanno, up.

What it seems to come down to is that I need to learn to relax. For someone without kids it feels like I’m still on the go-go-go.

Day job. Get the daily words in. Cover Art. Research. Marketing. Planning.

And, finding myself inspired by Hamilton, I’ve been trolling the call boards for auditions and workshops in community and regional theatre. Because while I’ve always missed being on stage, now I find myself needing to be on stage again.

It’s been close to twenty years, ya’ll. I don’t have the shape, let alone the time.  And, clearly, not the energy either.

I have a horrible time with over-commitment. I know this, and yet I keep on torturing myself with All The Things and More.

I need to slow down, folks. Smell the roses, preferably without sticking myself on a thorn. I can still get a novella out each month and keep my readers on a steady diet of my writing without breaking my neck. I know this.

So then why do I keep breaking my neck?

Imma stop breaking my neck, y’all. Because SERIOUSLY. o.O

*breathes*

*falls over*

And Now, For Something Completely Different:

RELIANCE, the first book in my new Sci-Fi Western series, is about halfway done. So far I’m really pleased with the way it’s turning out. I like the characters, I like the way the story is progressing. I am pleased.[image error]

I really REALLY like the way my cover proof turned out, though I’m still having trouble getting the typography the way I want and still be legible. Overall, though, I’d say it’s probably the best cover I’ve done so far. IT’S SO PRETTY.

*morphs into Animal*

PRET-TY! PRET-TY! PRET-TY! HAHAHAHA!!!

Ahem.

1. Complete and Release RELIANCE 1: Drafting.

I gotta say–there’s something magical about Sci-Fi Westerns (Firefly, anyone?). And though my dialogue isn’t quite as quippy (because who can complete with Joss Whedon?), but it’s really coming together. I’ve made a couple of adjustments of the Duh-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that-before variety, but that’s not unusual for one of my first drafts.

I love it when a plan comes together.