Christina Bauer's Blog, page 73
February 3, 2016
New Description for CURSED!
In Cursed, the main character of Elea was no exception. I wanted her to basically grow up in chains. She had other ideas.
Elea wanted to run her own farm and do her own thing. I fought her for a while and lost, big time. So, here’s the latest on the description for CURSED, which will be available at the end of March 2016 on iTunes, Kobo, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. Hope you like it because Elea certainly does!
CURSED (Book 1 of the Beholder Series)
Most days, Elea couldn’t care less about having Necromancer magick. Who needs to conjure skeletons and sprits when you’re a farm girl? Elea only uses her powers to speed up chores and scare off suitors.
Everything changes when the evil Necromancer Tsar curses Elea. Now, Elea has five years left before she burns as a ghost, tortured for all eternity. They say there’s nothing she can do, but Elea disagrees. She decides to embrace her Necromancer powers, train as a magickal assassin, and kill the Tsar… All before his curse kills her. Impossible as it may sound, Elea thinks she has it in the bag, but then everything goes horribly wrong.
That’s when a handsome mage named Rowan steps up to help. Elea wants an ally, but she doesn’t need all the mixed-up feelings that come along with Rowan’s crooked smile.
An assassination mission is no time to fall in love, but Elea’s heart may have other ideas…
You like?
And in case you forgot, here’s the cover again!
Guess what? Since you’re awesome and read to the very bottom of this, I’ll tell you that sample chapters of CURSED are going up on iTunes on February 15th…along with an exclusive on how the cover was made! I’ll keep you posted!
The post New Description for CURSED! appeared first on Ink Monster.
January 26, 2016
On Publishing…6 Free Things That Promote The Shit Out Of Books
In the interest of sharing best practices, here’s some of our secret sauce. Like all things that actually work (for me, anyway) the sauce may look free, but involves a shit-ton of hard work. Huzzah!
Here goes…
Tip #1. Get a blog and a URL for that blog.
OK, I don’t know how exactly our web site guru did this, but we got set up with blogs on wordpress and special URLs for each one. Mine is http://inkmonster.net/blog/category/christina. I know what you’re thinking…hey, I blog. But…Unless you have that magical URL and put it places, then you’re doing it wrong. Sorry. More on that later.
Tip #2. Get an author page on Goodreads
So millions of people go to Goodreads. It’s awesome. If you don’t have a page there yet, get one. It’s also free. OK, here’s the part where your blog URL is important. Load that puppy here:
Now, we get to the good stuff. When that URL is loaded into your profile, your blog posts are automatically shared with all your friends and followers on Goodreads. Sweet, right? It shows up in their update feeds and they get an email, too. How cool is that? And did I do dick to make it happen after I set it up? No! Here’s a sample of how sweet it looks…
Look how pretty! Look how free!
Tip #3. Get your profile on Author Central
You can do the same damned thing at Author Central for Amazon. More pretty!
Free Amazon promotion to their millions of readers. Nice!
Please note the ‘follow’ button on this page. The idea is that your followers will get alerted to updates, but in practice, that doesn’t happen unless Amazon invites you to do an update for some reason. Whatevs. People still check out author pages all the time and the blog posts get lots of views for free. Free, I tell you!
Tip #4. Put that blog URL in both those places
Did I mention that you need to load your blog in both places? You do. Also, you need to actually write in your blog. This is harder than it sounds. I do once/week.
Tip #5. Link new books to both of those places
Both Goodreads and Amazon won’t automatically link your new books to your author page. You need to do that manually by searching on the book and linking it in. Once your publisher puts through the cover and metadata, the books should show up automatically…for you to link manually. Clear as mud?
Tip #6. Get twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts
These are also free. And guess what? If you blog once a week, you have at least one Facebook post, tweet or instagram thingy to go around. And make sure you always ask to get emails for your newsletters on all your stuff.
PROTIP: You’ll also need the ‘get short URL’ feature from WordPress to use when you’re posting blogs or the URLs get long.
And one last best practice that definitely costs you money…
BONUS TIP. Lazy? Get Hootsuite and Campaign Monitor
Posting all this stuff to social media is still a huge PIA. I suggest hootsuite to schedule posts on Facebook and Twitter. Basically, when you’re in the zone, you load up all your posts and let them run later. Campaign Monitor makes it easy to publish good looking newsletters, too.
Bottom line? Setting up all the ways to share your blog is a pain. But once it’s done, all you have to do is come up with weekly blogs and hey, it’s like free marketing money!
More publishing blog posts:
Why we love iBooks
We’re getting a CRM!
Ink Monster in Publishing White Paper
What I know about being a data driven publisher
What I know about ebook Publishing
The post On Publishing…6 Free Things That Promote The Shit Out Of Books appeared first on Ink Monster.
January 13, 2016
Maxon is FREE!
–Amazon
–Barnes & Noble
–iBooks
–Kobo
BONUS: The promotion is listed on Freebooksy today, but the FREE-ness lasts through February! Now check out the pretty picture Candace made for me…
The post Maxon is FREE! appeared first on Ink Monster.
January 8, 2016
Thoughts On… Kylo Ren, Latch Key Kids, and Being a Parent
Spoiler Alert!
For those of you who haven’t seen Star Wars Episode Seven, there’s a character named Kylo Ren who’s been getting some flack for being, well, not exactly a tough guy. As we know the backstory today, Kylo Ren (then Ben) went to jedi camp, met a dude named Snoke, and decided to join the dark side of the force. And for this, his parents were devastated.
So, this brings up issues for me. You see, I’m a member of Generation X. Our baby boomer parents were the self-proclaimed ‘me generation.’ Mind you, I’m not talking about a handful of parents thinking about themselves from time to time. This era created the so-called Latch Key Kids, children who got to and from school, made their own meals, did their own homework, and then put themselves to bed…All without parental help or supervision. In our generation, if you left camp to follow some guy named Snoke, your parents turned your bedroom into a hobby space and that was about it. No, I am not kidding.
Now, I get where the Baby Boomers were coming from. Many of them were children of first or second generation immigrants. Their parents talked funny. Dressed funny. They made meals with overly pungent odors. No one wanted to be like their visibly [Irish, Polish, Italian, fill in the blank] parents. Everyone was on a mission to discover who they were. The ‘me’ generation was the result. I can handle that.
And I understand my peers who now care so deeply for their children. We are determined that there will never be Latch Key Kids in our collective houses, and for that, I think we are all awesome. We had to define ourselves as well, but without a whole media circus to lead us on the journey. For that too, we are, once again, totally awesome.
But, as Kylo Ren discovered, there is a dark side. I found it out when my son was diagnosed on the autism spectrum at two years old. His first year of life, my kid was top of his milestones. By the age of two, he’d lost all speech and most eye contact. It’s been a long journey for all of us to bring him to where he’s happy, talking more, and connected with others. He’s an amazing and loving child who is the light of our lives. To reach that point though, I had to toss something from my mind—and this was my baggage, not my son’s. It was my idea of who he would be.
Here’s what I’m thinking. As a group, we Gen X-ers know that we’re pretty awesome. We also think we know what’s best for our kids. We encourage activities and friends to set them on the finest path ever. All that can backfire, however. What if your child doesn’t want to be an extension of you? What if they’re too young to choose their own path yet? What if the reason why we’re seeing so much depression in the under twenty-one crowd is that they’re being asked by people they love to be someone they’re not…And they have no clue who they really are anyway. That’s fucking depressing, and I’m not even a millennial.
At least, my fellow members of Generation X and I had the joy of knowing that our parent’s generation were, by and large, selfish assholes with martinis and latch keys. My parents sucked, your parents sucked, everyone’s parents sucked. I knew, like, one girl in high school who was best friends with her Mom. Everyone looked at her funny. I can’t imagine the pressure that kind of friendship must bring to bear. :::shivers:::
Long story short, although I used to raise my eyebrows at Kylo Ren’s angst, I now think I understand it a little better. He doesn’t want to be a good jedi. He wants to be a badass. And honestly, did you see Luke at the closing scene? I wouldn’t follow that guy into a Piggly Wiggly, let alone on a journey of self discovery. At least, Snoke has a master lair that included technology of some kind. And setting aside the whole genocidal aspect of the dark side of the force, why shouldn’t Kylo Ren choose who he wants to be? Indeed, why shouldn’t we all?
Keep wearing black and being yourself, kid. Just lay off the light sabers.
The post Thoughts On… Kylo Ren, Latch Key Kids, and Being a Parent appeared first on Ink Monster.
January 5, 2016
Thoughts On… Where To Find Good Books
Let’s face it. Nothing’s worse than a reading slump.
So, in the interests of sharing best practices, here are my favorite places to find new books that feed my brain…
iBooks
iBooks is what I consider curated content. In other words, the iBooks team work their butts off to find authors that are fresh, original, and about to ‘break through.’ I can say this from experience because they took a risk on promoting Becoming Alpha by Aileen Erin when she was a first-time author. My trick is to go to the categories page and see who they have in:
Romance
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Young Adult
Finding good books is as much an art as a science and the iBooks team does a great job.
Choose a category, open a world of fresh new authors and books!
BookBub and Freebooksy
There are a lot of book newsletters out there. As I said before, I’m a fan of hand-curated content. Both BookBub and Freebooksy are selective in who they accept. Their teams do a great job of making sure that the featured books are interesting and cool.
Freebooksy now promotes across retailers, which is awesome.
3. Goodreads
Hands-down, this is my top place to go. I have a short list of all-time favorite books where, every so often, I go to Goodreads and check out their “Readers Also Enjoyed” section. There’s always something cool in there. Always.
I also look at the equivalent on Amazon, but that doesn’t seem to work as well for me for some reason. I suspect it’s because the Amazon algorithm takes my personal browsing/buying history into account, which is a mess. I look into all sorts of books and genres as my ‘publisher self’ versus my ‘reader self.’ You don’t want to know the strange things I get recommended (hint: on occasion, it has included dinosaur porn!)
On a personal note, when is Grace Draven launching the sequel to Radiance?
4. Goodreads Friends
I also get TONS of great ideas from my friends on Goodreads (I’m talking about you, Carol!) Plus, it’s a lot of fun to see what people thought of the books that I’ve read, and vice versa. The bottom line? Goodreads is all-around awesomesauce.
5. Blogs, blogs, blogs
There are so many in the category that are killer, but here are some that are top of mind:
Maryse’s Book Blog
Functioning Insanity Reviews
Urban Fantasy Investigations
Literary George
So there you have it…my secret weapons in the war for finding new books to read. Hope you found some of them useful as well!
Enjoy this? Here’s some other random stuff that I blog about:
Shit I Swore to Do When I Grew Up
On being a chick who does shtick
Why Alan Lee is Awesome
Which Lord of the Rings is Best?
3 Reasons Why Tolkien Is The Bomb
Thoughts on Lawrence of Arabia
An open letter to the French guy I met in Geneva, Switzerland
I have a thing for William Powell
An Open Letter to My Brain
The post Thoughts On… Where To Find Good Books appeared first on Ink Monster.
December 30, 2015
On Writing: Tips & Tricks for World Building
So, in the spirit of sharing best practices, here are some of my favorite tips and tricks for world building…
Tip #1…
Pick a language base for the groups of people in your world
OK, so I got this one from Tolkien. Language drives so much of a world, it isn’t even funny. How a character speaks gives you a structure for their name and the places around them. Plus, it can also help inspire their history as well. In Angelbound, the Thrax were partially based on ancient Roman gladiators, so their language was Latin. In Maxon, the Elementals were based on the Finnish language. There were also elements of the Kalevala myth in there too, which is a Finnish classic. So far in Beholder, I’m using Swahili and German.
PRO TIP: Google Translate is awesome here. There are also about a million web sites for baby names by culture.
Tip #2…
Make Pinterest boards for key characters and places
It’s also important to have a Pinterest board of cool stuff that you find inspiring in general. For me, that board is hidden. My public boards are here. Sarah J Maas has some cool boards that you may want to check out as well.
PRO TIP: Visit Pinterest if you haven’t already.
Tip #3…
Use a writing tool like Scrivener
This allows you to organize research, move chapters around easily, and in general be a badass. You won’t realize how much you’ve been craving it until you give it a try. I put all my ‘world bibles’ (lists of names, places and descriptions) in here, too.
PRO TIP: Check out Scrivener here.
So that’s it…my favorite tools and tricks. Hope you found them helpful!
Like how I blah-blah-blah about writing? Be sure to check out…
Writing Sci-Fi and Fantasy Stuff
My ultimate enemy
On writing voice
Why it’s OK to suck
Kickass worldbuilding articles
Writing action scenes
Writing softer scenes
Best freaking writing set-up
Everything I know about writing I learned from Liz Lemon
On bad reviews
On ‘The Process’
The post On Writing: Tips & Tricks for World Building appeared first on Ink Monster.
December 23, 2015
ANGELBOUND Giveaway & Sale!
Great news: Angelbound has been selected for a sweet promotion at Kobo! Now through January 4th 2016, you can get Angelbound by moi and Becoming Alpha by Aileen Erin for only $1.99 each…that’s half off!
Want more goodies? Then enter our Kobo is Awesome Celebratory Ink Monster Raffle. You’ll have a chance to win some kickass prizes, like:
Any Angelbound book you want
Any Alpha Girl book you want
This cool planner thingy!
Click below to enter and Happy Holidays!
PS Links not working? Cut and paste this monster: https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/33870edf12/?widget_template=55f70ccb0e6eaee8318e2421
The post ANGELBOUND Giveaway & Sale! appeared first on Ink Monster.
December 15, 2015
Book Review: ROCK CHICK by Kristen Ashley
The post Book Review: ROCK CHICK by Kristen Ashley appeared first on Ink Monster.
December 8, 2015
On Publishing…We’re Getting a CRM!
:::bounces in chair:::
Here are three reasons why I can’t wait for this stupid dashboard to get built.
1. No one has done this before (at least, I’m pretty sure they haven’t)
I’ve used Salesforce a ton for my day job in high tech marketing. So, I called on them for Ink Monster as well. I asked the sales rep to check if salesforce were being used by any other publishers to assign goals to authors (what’s called a quota), track results against the same, and calculate ROI for promo programs. I got a big ‘no’ from the rep. He was about to cry because he thought he lost the deal. Was he ever shocked when I got super happy! I love building new worlds, and for whatever reason, my brain counts operational systems in this category. Go figure.
2. We’ll get control over our business
Here is some of the cool stuff we will be able to do:
Set goals per author/book/series
Track actual sales and promo campaigns against those goals
Compare trend data to actual sales
Calculate costs versus sales (ROI) for each of the above
3. Dashboards are pretty pretty!
They have little charts and graphs that automatically update themselves and come in cute colors. I mean, what else in life is so much fun? I ask you!
Not our dashboard but so pretty, pretty!!!
So, that’s it for now. I’ll keep hitting the refresh button on my dashboard tab and if you want to kill time, check out more of my blog posts on publishing. Huzzah!
More publishing blog posts:
Why we love iBooks
Ink Monster in Publishing White Paper
What I know about being a data driven publisher
What I know about ebook Publishing
The post On Publishing…We’re Getting a CRM! appeared first on Ink Monster.
December 2, 2015
On Writing…What I’ve Learned About “The Process”
Process Insight #1. It’s always easier to stall than write my manuscript.
Email? Let’s write them! Blog post? Have I ever got a good idea! The tricky part is, sometimes I honestly need a little cognitive break. I do a little something-something online and when I come back…BOOM! I’m ready to go. So it’s tricky to tell what’s a real time killer versus a needed break. In the end, I err on the break side because I’m the boss of me and I can do shit like that.
Process Insight #2. I always fight with my characters. Always.
When I outline a book, I inevitably start with a big idea about what I want to do with the character. When I actually get into things, that character fights with me to be who THEY want to be. I battle with them for awhile, and then I give in. That’s when the character stops being my idea and starts being a little entity inside my head that interacts with their environment and does their own thing…within limits. That’s when I know I can run with the manuscript. Examples:
I originally drafted Myla from Angelbound as Monica and wanted her to be frail and frightened. I know. She kicked my ass on that, big time.
Maxon from Angelbound Offspring began as a rogue who slept and fought his way through life. He stayed that way, but he wanted his story to start later, as in after he gave up on all the rogue-ery.
Portia (also from Angelbound Offspring) was hella passive in the beginning. I had her as little more than a prisoner. She wanted to be a fighter, but with knowledge instead of swords. Aaaaaaaaaaand she got her way.
This feels about as good as it looks, which is to say, shitty.
Process Insight #3. Pinterest is a Key Part of My Worldbuilding
I need to visualize parts of my world, and my Pinterest boards are an important part of that. This can also become a sweet time suck (see insight #1).
Some of my 100+ Pinterest boards and 5000+ pins. I have a day job too, believe it or not.
Process Insight #4. I write a lot of stuff that I chuck. And I mean, a lot.
I did some analysis on old drafts (see insight #1) and found out that I chuck about four chapters for every one that I keep. This is super satisfying when the battle with my main character is over (see insight #2) but not too fun in the meantime.
Insight #5. There is nothing better than being in “The Zone.”
Once the character is set and the plot is humming, I hit “‘The Zone.” It’s usually about three-fourths of the way through the first full draft. It’s a lovely place where the words flow. I can write on the drive-thru for Starbucks or on the Boston T. I wake up early like it’s Christmas again and I’m five years old. Once I’m up, I write until my eyes hurt from strain. Only they don’t hurt really, because the book is finally flowing and that’s awesome.
So on that happy note, I’ll close off my insights and get back to writing. Stalling time is over!
Like how I blah-blah-blah about writing? Be sure to check out…
Writing Sci-Fi and Fantasy Stuff
My ultimate enemy
On writing voice
Why it’s OK to suck
Kickass worldbuilding articles
Writing action scenes
Writing softer scenes
Best freaking writing set-up
Everything I know about writing I learned from Liz Lemon
On bad reviews
The post On Writing…What I’ve Learned About “The Process” appeared first on Ink Monster.
