Erica Lindquist's Blog, page 8

Lily Quinn #2 out for beta reading

I sent out the second Lily Quinn novella, All’s Fae in Love and War, out to beta beta readers this afternoon. I’m back to chewing my fingernails off while we wait to see if anyone likes it. In the meantime, I’ll attempt to busy myself working on the third book.

Sorry I can’t post this update with the new cover yet – Gwynn is still working on it. But trust me, I’ll post her lovely artwork as soon as I have it in my grubby little typing mitts. AKA hands.

I live in the United States, so happy Independence Day! Today, we celebrate freedom with BBQs and fireworks and trying not to light shit on fire. And sending smutty novellas out to friends crazy enough to read it. It’s filthy, as usual, and I’m not going to end up in jail for that. Yay!

Miss Rose early release

Miss Rose is live on all platforms today! I know we said we would release it on July 11, but it’s done. So… why the hell not!

As you probably already know, this is our first Severine title, the pen name we’re using for our erotica. I can’t speak for Aron, but I’m really, really nervous about this. We’ve been writing smexy stuff privately for years, but now it’s out there for the public to consume.

As always, if you enjoyed the book, please leave a review on your favorite ebook retail’s site. I can’t tell you how important reviews are to authors and readers alike. And if you didn’t like it… well, go ahead and leave a review anyway. I just won’t be as excited to read it.

And in case it needs to be said, Miss Rose is NOT FOR MINORS. It is sexually explicit, full of both naughts words and naughtier acts. Enjoy!

New feedback

One of our beta readers confessed to me today that he couldn’t finish The Hangman’s Cross. It was too dark and pushed too many buttons for him. I apologized and promised that the next book I sent him to beta read would be a happier, lighter one. I think I can deliver on that.

I’m not surprised that this happened. When I send The Hangman’s Cross out to the beta group, it came with a big long list of trigger warnings – abuse, rape, child endangerment, torture and more. Hangman’s Cross and Burning Noose are probably the darkest things we’ll ever write. George RR Martin we are not, but there were times working on these books that I felt pretty uncomfortable or cried. I’m not sure if being one of the authors makes me more or less sensitive to the contents.

The Hangman’s Cross won’t be for everyone. Some readers won’t like the darkness and some won’t like our take on religion. But for us, these books were about saying something that was important and resonated deeply with us.

Some books are written for fun, some for money, some for art and some to explore. They’re all worth writing and they all have their audience that will love them. They’re all beautiful.

Apparently

Back in… I don’t know… 2010 or so, my Amazon Associates account was shut down. California tax law had done something to piss Amazon off or something, so all of us in the Drought State were out of luck. I sighed and moved on.

But then a friend was looking at opening a shop for some cool practice weapons he was making. I told him about Amazon Associates, but that he couldn’t use it in California. He shrugged and said that was fine, so I moved on again.

Then he wrote me this morning to tell me that California is no longer on the Amazon no-fly list! I can use Associates again! I had to sign up all over again, since my old account was still shut down from before and I could find no way to open it up again.

Yay! Every dollar that our books can earn is one dollar closer to making writing our full-time job.

Ouchies… but in a good way!

I just got my first major feedback on The Hangman’s Cross. And I have to say, it was a punch in the stomach. The beta reader couldn’t finish the book. She had to bail pretty early on, in fact. After three drafts and hundreds of hours of work… I wanted to cry.

But I didn’t! I took a few deep breaths and talked to her about why, what was bothering her about The Hangman’s Cross. And you know what? I found myself nodding along. None of those things were my intentions, but I could absolutely see where the problems were coming from. It still made my stomach hurt, but it started feeling a little better and I thanked our beta reader as many times as I could without her smacking me. She just made the most wonderful, important contribution to our book.

Critique is hard. It’s hard to give and it’s hard to take. My books are my babies. Every one of them is a massive investment of time and emotion. But it was hard on our reader, too, to look me in the eye and tell me she didn’t like what Aron and I had written. She was afraid of hurting my feelings, but I’ll never be able to thank her enough for telling me what I needed to hear.

So tomorrow – or tonight, if I have some time before bed – I’ll start on the fixes. Because one of the great things about a book (especially a self-published one with no release date) is that when I fuck something up, I can just cut it and try again until I get it right.

Miss Rose is all done

I have enough writing files on my computer that I have to divide them up into “future”, “in progress” and “finished”. Yesterday, I got to move Miss Rose from “in progress” to “finished” and it felt good.

It also felt a little sad that it’s over. I started the first Miss Rose story a long time ago, just as a personal project for Aron. It was fun, strange and a little embarrassing. Mostly fun, though. Aron liked it enough that he was excited when I told him I had a second story. And so the project was born… But I’ve already talked about that before.

What’s been amazing is the response from beta readers and editors. It’s been unanimous – they liked it. Not just as naughty stories, but as an introduction to bondage and sexual dominance that isn’t like… well, Fifty Shades. Yes! Mission accomplished! Even if no one buys the book (you can preorder it now for the July 11 release), I feel like we did what we set out to with this book.

We’ll see if I still feel this good when the first reviews come in!

Mad Max: Fury Road

In spite of a very long week, Aron and I stayed out late last night to go see Fury Road. When we got home, it was nearly 1 am, but I wasn’t ready to go to bed. I was too wired.

At the risk of damaging to my nerd cred, I have to admit that I was never particularly a fan of the original Mad Max movies. So when the new one was announced, I shrugged. I really didn’t care. Aron was excited, though, so I said that I would go with him to see Fury Road when it came out.

But as previously mentioned, it had been a long week – a lot of stressful things happening to close friends – and I was exhausted by Friday night. I didn’t really want to go out. Anywhere. I pulled up the IMDB page for Fury Road and was an astonishing 90/100 at the time, though. And I’d heard both glowing and damning commentary on the female characters in the movie.

Aron promised that I wouldn’t need to think at the theater, so I agreed to go with him to see Fury Road. Holy carp! It was amazing. It felt very much like the old movies. There was a similar color palette and aesthetic, including a lot of bondage wear, though I didn’t catch any assless pants on screen. I’ll watch for them next time. They sped up the footage a little in a lot of places, too. Not as much as in the old Mad Max movies, where it was necessary to make the cars move fast, but enough to evoke the slightly frantic, jittery feel of the original films. There was a wonderful sense of a ravaged world, too, and a strong sense of the barbaric cultures that have arisen in the time since everything went to hell.

And the action. Holy fuck. It started right out the gates and only slowed down a couple of time. Even then, the pause was just long enough for me to catch my breath before it was time to throw the cars back into high gear and roar on with the story. That story was simple – fighting over resources. Just like Road Warrior. Different resources, this time, that invited more thought and critique of their treatment. (I’m trying not to post spoilers, okay?)

I’m not a car girl, but I adored the vehicles in Mad Max. They were fun, crazy and often clever. I was excited to see each new trick as it was brought into play. There were a few questions I would have liked answers to, but I didn’t catch any gaping plot problems and it rarely affected my immersion. While I give the female inclusion and characterization two big thumbs up, I would have liked to see some racial diversity in the cast. It’s pretty blindingly white.

I had a couple more personal squee moments. There’s a huge, lightning-filled sandstorm that made me think at once of Whisperworld. And at one point, Max asks Nux if he’s a “black thumb.” In the context of Mad Max, he means a mechanic, but I still grabbed Aron’s arm and grinned while I pointed emphatically to the screen.

More fun. A bunch of the audience showed up in costume, which made Aron and I wish we had thought to do that same. I’m sure I could have wrangled up some assless leather pants…

All in all, Mad Max: Fury Road was a great movie. I highly recommend it.

And also, there was this guy.

A new record

May 9 was our first BookBub promotion. We’ve never run one before because A) we’re terrible marketers and B) BookBub is pretty competitive to make it into. But Anvil of Tears managed to get a spot and we had 20,000 downloads across Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple. We peaked at #6 on the Kindle free list.

Wow! That was amazing. We’ve never had so many downloads! Other titles – mostly the other Reforged books – saw a dramatic spike in sales, too. Enough to pay for the BookBub listing! The whole thing was far more successful than I’d hoped and you can bet we’re going to try again soon.

Thank you all!

The finish line!

YES! Wow, nothing beats this feeling.

I just finished the third draft go The Hangman’s Cross, which is more or less the version that will go out to beta readers in May. Aron’s still filling in chapter 35, which I will then need to coauthor and edit, but then it’s time to let someone else read this thing and get reactions.

“Nervous” doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling of releasing The Hangman’s Cross into even this limited audience, but neither does “excited.” This was our most problematic manuscript to date. And that’s saying something, considering I discarded 100 paged of In the House of Five Dragons and two partial drafts of Sword of Dreams. I had to do an entire extra draft of The Hangman’s Cross, but I think it’s been worth the work. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I feel like after all the blood, sweat and tears (mostly tears), we finally ended up with exactly what I wanted.

I can’t wait to show it to you all.

Another Hangman’s Cross update

Just another quick post to let you know how we’re doing on our next book. I had started first revisions on the second book of the duology, The Burning Noose, but felt like there were just too many unresolved rewrites in The Hangman’s Cross. So against my instincts, I backtracked and started��all over again editing and rewriting Hangman’s Cross.

At first, it was a god-awful slog. It took me days to rework a single chapter and I despaired of ever getting these books into a readable state. But bit by bit, I’ve reconstructed the manuscript to bring it closer to our vision. Now I’m 100 pages in (out of 266) and finally��feeling the flow.

It’s growing easier with each passing chapter. I’ve got a better handle on the story and the characters now, which has better equipped me to mange their stories. I still don’t know if anyone��else will like it, but I think we’ll manage to craft a book that Aron and I will be proud of.

I’m hoping to have The Hangman’s Cross into the hands of beta readers before the full scorch of summer hits us. Wish us luck!