C.L. Raven's Blog, page 22

St. David’s Day

Happy St. David’s Day! To celebrate, Soul Asylum is FREE! A gothic novel set in North Wales, by Welsh authors and a Welsh cover designer. There’s so much Welshness sheep are magically appearing everywhere and dragons are perching on rooftops. So get Soul Asylum exclusively from Smashwords here and enjoy a free entry into a Welsh asylum. If that hasn’t enticed you, watch the trailer here done for us by Fireclaw Films. Still not convinced? Join us at the launch in Cathays Cemetery here.

The Saints are coming.

We have a special announcement to make – we’re quitting the writing business and taking up bank robbing. The pay is great and if we fail, we’ll have free board. Only kidding. Though our psychologist has asked us to work on a Plan B if/when the writing fails, and so far, this is our top suggestion. Admittedly, it’s not a great one, but we’ve been too busy to come up with a more workable plan.

On Friday it’s St. David’s Day in Wales and we want to celebrate it. We’re not sure how the other countries in the UK celebrate their patron saints’ day, (apart from St. Patrick’s Day when suddenly everyone is Irish and Guinness is drunk aplenty) but here in Wales, St. David’s Day is huge. There are Eisteddfod’s held all over the country and Cadw allows you free entry into every castle. In school, Eisteddfods are celebrated by dividing the whole school in four ‘houses’, usually red, blue, green and yellow. In primary school, we were in green house, in high school we were in blue. For some reason in primary school, red house had way more members than any other house, so always won. We suspected cheating was afoot. Everyone then does stuff that earns them points for their house, such as winning competitions involving drawing, writing, putting on plays, etc. In high school in year 7, we wrote and put on a comedy sketch involving Cinderella and Daz washing powder. There was also glitter. We don’t think we won. We blame the stuffy establishment. Plus our main competition had girls dressed in skimpy outfits. We never stood a chance. Originality and humour just can’t compete with short skirts and boobs, no matter how boring their performance was.

Anyhoo, so to celebrate St. David’s Day and to keep in with Cadw’s free castle entry scheme, we’re going to give everyone free entry into a Welsh asylum. No, we’re not committing you (we tried, they wouldn’t let us), we’re going to give away Soul Asylum FREE on Smashwords. It’s a book set in Wales, by Welsh authors, with a Welsh cover designer. It couldn’t be more perfect. It will only be free on Smashwords, not Amazon, seeing as when we tried to make Gunning Down Romance free on their site for National Short Story Week, they refused to join in with the festivities. And seeing as the book is hardly flying off the shelves, we might as well give it away. If you already have it, feel free to download it and pass it on to a friend.

So help us celebrate St. David’s Day by supporting poor, talentless Welsh authors before we end up in a Welsh asylum like Phineas Soul. But remember – night is when the screaming starts.

Protection Racket

We are probably about to commit career suicide but seeing as it’s not exactly a successful glittering career, there won’t be many people at the funeral. We can always change our name. But for those who know us well, you’ll know that we would be prepared to sacrifice everything we’ve worked hard for for the sake of our principals and what is right. And we’re aiming big. We’re going after the giant that is Amazon. We know we’re never going to slay this giant and will probably lose our lives on the battlefield but we’re drawing our swords anyway and running in with battlecries. It’s how we roll.

Yesterday we released Bad Romance, the follow up to Gunning Down Romance. Or, at least, we tried. We uploaded the file to Amazon at midnight. At 6am they emailed us saying they wouldn’t publish it until we’d filled out the contributors section – we’d already put our author name in and it doesn’t say the contributors section is mandatory – so we did this and saved the file, thinking as they’d already processed it, it would be a matter of quickly amending the file and publishing it. How wrong we were. NINETEEN hours it took them to release the bloody book. So once again, we had a book launch without a book. Thank you Amazon for fucking up yet another launch. Last time they put Soul Asylum up on their site at 9am but wouldn’t let anyone buy it until 2pm. If they think ruining our launches will make us fall in line and become obedient, they clearly don’t know us. That behaviour will cause us to rebel even more.

We knew something was wrong when Ryan texted at 8:15am to tell us to stay calm if the book didn’t go live for a couple of hours. He’d experienced the rage from Soul Asylum’s first hand and doesn’t cope well with our rants. After 19 hours, even we can’t maintain our calm. But did we rant, swear and brutalise Amazon like we did at Soul Asylum’s launch? No. After 4 terrible book launches, where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, we’ve now become resigned to the failure. So we spent the day incredibly despondent instead. It’s a good job we are seasoned in the art of depression! The Darkshines opened their painful, numbing arms to us and welcomed us back.

So we’d like to say this – Amazon, fuck you.

We are sick of Amazon treating Indie authors like shit and we are not going to sit back in silence. Most of you have probably read our ranty post about their tax system. While they now pay international authors electronically, did they let authors know about this change so they could change their settings and avoid a cheque charge? No. They put a tiny announcement in the Help section. Who visits the Help section once you’re set up? We only found out about it through a contact of someone on Twitter. See Amazon doesn’t seem to like authors very much and they appear to hate international authors even more. Smashwords on the other hand, pay by PayPal, like every other website. But Amazon don’t own PayPal so won’t use it. It’s not beneficial to them.

So after the 19 hour upload to Amazon, how long does it take to put the same file on Smashwords? Five minutes. We’re not kidding. In that time they convert it for sale across ALL e-readers. Five. Minutes. They also pay authors higher royalties on the cheap books. If you want to change your pricing, go right ahead, it’s your book. Hell, download your own book for free, after all, you own it. Amazon will not change your pricing. You also have to pay to download your own book. If you want to make your book free on Amazon and you’re NOT in KDP Select, forget it. If you’re not in the club, you’re not getting any benefits. Even if you tell Amazon the book is cheaper elsewhere. Even if you get all your friends to tell them it’s cheaper elsewhere, they won’t do it. They will not be dictated to by some nobody. But if THEY want to make your book cheaper, they will. Without telling you. Without ASKING you. It’s your book, why should you be involved in this decision?

Which brings us on to KDP Select. This is Amazon’s lending library. People can borrow your book for free. Except it’s not really borrowing because they never give it back. Basically they’re downloading it for free. And do you get paid each time this happens? LOL. Of course not. Amazon have a pot of money which they distribute between the authors in KDP Select after a period. Except when more authors join, does the pot increase? This is Amazon remember. They have increased it ONCE in the year we’ve been self publishing. Think how many authors have joined since then. We refused to sign up to KDP Select for one reason – Amazon demands once you’re in, you make your book exclusive to them for THREE MONTHS. If your book is already on another site, you have to take it down or they won’t let you in. We hate being forced into things so if anyone tries, they have  a fight on their hands. Getting us to do something we don’t agree with is the equivalent of stealing food from an angry badger. Can you imagine if libraries allowed you to stock your book with them providing you only sold through Waterstones? There would be outcry. But Amazon can get away with it. Why? Because they’re the online equivalent of a Mafia protection racket. And if Amazon want to sue us for libel on that statement, we have this to say – prove us wrong. What happens in protection rackets? You pay them money and they don’t trash your shop and destroy your livelihood. What happens with Amazon? Play by their rules and they won’t take your book off their site. We’re not joking. Why do authors put up with this? Because it’s Amazon. It’s the biggest bookseller. Everyone goes there. Smashwords is so much better for authors but hardly anyone knows of its existence. But sorry Amazon, we have swords, we can protect our own damn shop.

But what is pissing off most Indies is the reviews. Indie authors’ sales depend on reviews. If Amazon suspect that you are an author or in any way connected to a book, they will pull your review off other authors’ books. We’ve had reviews pulled off our books. Our writer friends have had their reviews taken down. Writers are readers. The two are conjoined. If you COMPLAIN that they’ve taken your review down, they tell you they suspect you have a financial connection to the book and they warn you that if continue to complain, they will remove the book from their site. Bear in mind, this isn’t your book, it’s someone else’s. They are basically saying ‘shut up or we’ll punish this innocent person.’ Protection. Racket. We read other peoples’ books, we know a lot of writers and read their books and if we want to leave a review, they will take it down. Because of ONE traditionally published author. RJ Ellory. He wrote glowing reviews on his own books and  terrible reviews on other writers’ books under a fake name. So now Amazon is punishing EVERY writer.

If Amazon read this, they will probably remove our books and ban us for life. But we’re not going to hide. In fact, we’ll tag Amazon in this post so they can find it. We’ll fight them alone if we have to. Most people will probably say ‘then leave Amazon, if you don’t like their terms.’ But this is where the protection racket side kicks in. It’s so hard to make a living as a writer. Without your books being on Amazon, you can kiss goodbye to your career. Which we’re probably doing now. Unsuccessful career, we’ve enjoyed you. So we’ll give you a kiss to remember and hope there isn’t a bounty on our heads.

Amazon, this is for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO9Lj0T93Xk

Under the covers

We are so excited at Casa Raven! The cover for Bad Romance is so fresh off the press we scalded ourselves opening the email. And here it is! We love it so much we want to rip it off the screen and run around clutching it to our chests and laughing manically. It’s done by the jaw-droppingly talented Ryan Ashcroft of Fireclaw Films and this cover is even more special because it marks the one year anniversary since Ryan started doing book covers. His first one being Gunning Down Romance, the first in the Romance is Dead trilogy. Bad Romance is the second book in the series and is released February 14th – 3 disturbing stories about falling in love. And Trey from Gunning Down Romance makes a chilling return in Still Life. Has Sol survived a mannequin fate to see another Valentine’s?

If you’d like a high quality, low priced book cover, book trailer or logo, check out Ryan’s website http://www.fireclawfilms.com/

Robbing Hood

Whoever said ‘tax doesn’t have to be taxing’ has clearly never dealt with the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. Or his modern counterpart – Amazon. Our battle with tax was long, bloody and we trooped away from the battlefield exhausted, craving a Red Bull and dragging our muddy victory flag behind us. For those who missed our great tax adventure with the IRS, you can find it here. We thought we were done. We’d planted our victory flag on our battlements and showboated with the best of them.

We should’ve guessed Amazon would be plotting a second attack.

On Monday we finally received our first royalty cheque from Amazon USA, almost a year after we started self publishing. This is because British Amazon pay us electronically every quarter. American Amazon will only pay us once we’ve made $100 by the paying quarter and they will only pay us by cheque. We don’t have American banking numbers but despite having International banking numbers, this isn’t good enough. If you’re a ‘foreign entity’ Amazon USA don’t want to know. We stroked the cheque in wonderment then were quickly dashed in the face with cold water, the ice cubes hitting us in the eyes. They’d taken $44 tax off us. We’d gone through all the hassle with the IRS, obtained our EIN number, filled out the W8-BEN form to stop them taking our tax and they took it anyway. We’d danced through their traps and hoops and they still shot us in the arse. We donned our hooded cloaks, fetched our children’s archery set from the Gimpics and vowed to stage the biggest tax retrieval since Robin Hood first slipped on a pair of tights.

But flights are expensive so we emailed them instead.

While we waited for them to respond, we went to our bank to pay the cheque in, only to be told foreign cheques below £100 had to be sent off for ‘negotiation’. And we were going to be stiffed to the tune of £6 for the privilege. This was a currency exchange, not a terrorist standoff! £6 for them to release the hostages! Or in this case, our money. It’s hard enough making the royalties go high enough to get paid and now we will be charged £6 EVERY TIME Amazon USA pay us. But if the value goes above £100 we have to pay £12! Might need to take up bank robbing as a hobby. But that will probably come with charges too. We sobbed and shrieked and started throwing things like demented chimpanzees, causing an awkward silence to descend on the bank, broken only by the embarrassed cough of the pensioner behind us.

Today Amazon emailed us back. Did they throw themselves at our mercy and beg for forgiveness for stealing our tax? No. They said they didn’t have a W8-BEN form for us in their records. By now our fury was so great, Mars emailed NASA to enquire about the pulsing glow that was illuminating the Milky Way. That form was sent to them in September. Our mum posted it while we were off hunting ghosts in Cornwall. And our mum is the super reliable kind. Clearly Amazon have lost it and are too embarrassed to admit it. So we have now filled in another form and have to post it. Not email. Doubt they’ll compensate us the 87p postage. In the meantime, they’re withholding our tax. They’re slow enough to pay their own taxes but are bloody quick to hold ours to ransom.

And amongst all this we decided it was time we registered with HMRC for British tax. We don’t earn enough to pay tax but we are now registered as self-employed so we can do self-assessment. Joy. Admittedly, the only reason we signed up wasn’t out of fear of the Government finding out about us and sending the Inland Revenue after us (we live just across the street from the tax offices so can’t exactly hide), it was because we found out we can claim stuff on expenses. We got carried away planning all the printers, laptops, ink, paper, pens etc that we would buy with the Government’s money. A shopping spree in Staples was on the cards. But mum informs us they’re not just going to pay for everything we want. Then it’s false advertising, because due to the recent expenses scandal, we were under the impression we would be able to charge them for a duck pond and floating island, like a Conservative MP had done. Sorry Peking, the ducky jacuzzi will have to wait. She was looking forwards to her feathers being bubbly fresh.

So if anyone knows the whereabouts of Robin Hood, text him. We may have to join his band of outlaws when we seize our tax. Raven Hood the movie. Tax is about to get Gothic.

Ghost Writing

 We are pleased to announce that our very first non-fiction article has been published by Haunted Digital Magazine! Check it out here it’s about Woodchester Mansion, which we visited for the seventh episode of season 1 of Calamityville Horror.  There are tales of a headless horseman, a floating coffin and American soldiers haunting the property. Sadly we didn’t have Johnny Depp helping us to track down this elusive horseman. One day…

We’ve never considered non-fiction as an avenue for our writing. Mostly because we’re not experts in anything (except getting lost and drinking Red Bull). We’ve attempted a couple of articles before that sucked worse than a perforated vacuum cleaner. They were so bad, we didn’t even submit them to the anthologies we’d written them for. They are languishing on the hard drive, never to be opened again. So when Haunted Digital Magazine approached Calamityville Horror and asked us to write four articles based on family hauntings, we panicked. Then we had a great idea – we’d write them as though we were writing a blog post. Our blog is non-fiction and we hope funny, so we figured if we pretended we were writing a blog post, it might turn out ok.

You’ll have to read it for yourself to see if it worked. (Page 116)

To say we were surprised to be offered the articles is an understatement. We thought the only requests we’d get through Calamityville Horror, was to cancel the show, or appear in court over the constant piss-taking of Most Haunted and friend of the show, Derek Acorah *Disclaimer* Derek Acorah has never even heard of the show, let alone befriended it.

So, for the next three issues (crossing talons it goes that well) we’ll bring you articles on family hauntings. Surprisingly, these are quite hard to come by, so we have expanded it into properties that have so many ghosts, they could be classed as a family. In the next issue, due out end of February, we return to the place where this show first began – Ruthin Gaol.

Winter Gimpics

In the summer we were so inspired by the Olympics, we decided to host our own. The Gimpic Games. Basically, the Olympics for idiots. The only rule of the Gimpics – there ARE no rules. Cheating, sabotage and blatant disregard for safety were not frowned upon. In fact, they were actively encouraged. In the Gimpics, there are no medals for coming second or third. Winning is the only thing that counts. The summer events included sand dune sledging, sand wrestling in inflatable sumo suits, archery with children’s archery set and Nerf shooting. This weekend, it snowed. And so began the Winter Gimpics.

And this time, it’s dangerous.

Sledging was naturally going to be the first event. But the M4 was closed so the sand dunes would sadly not be featuring in the Winter Gimpics. Caerphilly Mountain was also closed. It seemed the Government had heard of our sporting endeavours and was trying to sabotage them. They can keep their health and safety rules. We have medals. As we saw swarms of families and teenagers heading up Rhiwbina Hill, where we were planning on competing, we decided we needed a new slope. Castell Coch provided us with the perfect one. There’s a steep incline up to the castle and due to the snow, they’d closed it. What was even better, was we were alone. So the contestants from Kingdom of the Blood Skulls (Lynx), the Pirate Islands (Cat), Jerkuania (Ryan), enthusiastic newcomer, United States of Lesbonia (Neen) and official Gimpic mascot, Meg, (Neen’s gorgeous Border Collie) traipsed to the top of the slope.  It was fun. There were spills, tumbles, collisions and snow. Then we discovered that the end of the slope was not only the fastest, it had a tight curve you had to negotiate. There were more crashes than banger racing and after running the contestant from Jerkuania off the track, the contestant from the Pirate Islands was crowned the winner, winning her first ever Gimpic medal. The contestant from Jerkuania called for drugs testing. The can of Red Bull found at the scene wasn’t enough evidence for a conviction.

the contestant from the Pirate Islands takes out Jerkuania

The next day, the snow had hardened into slippery ice. So we returned to the slope, minus the contestant from Jerkuania who was feeling rather precious after ignoring Government advice to stay indoors and embarked on a night of heavy drinking. But the Gimpics obliterate the weak and feeble. There were medals at stake. The contestants from KBS, PI and USB abandoned the higher, safer part of the slope and raced on the lower, faster, more dangerous one with the curve. This time we were racing three abreast and were without the voice of caution that usually comes from Jerkuania. Dangerous doesn’t quite describe this high speed event. With three of us racing and the ice causing steering problems, there were collisions aplenty, with contestants ending up sledging off-road, into bushes, over rocks and having to avoid the mascot, who seemed to be working against KBS. The only way to brake was to put your hands on the floor. And there was only one way to stop – smash into the gate at the bottom.

our track

Only the strong and the foolish compete in the Winter Gimpics.

the contestant from the Kingdom of the Blood Skulls

In fact, the event was so jaw dropping, a group of spectators gathered behind the gates to watch us nearly kill ourselves. This kind of behaviour is usually only seen in teenage boys, not 3 29 year old women. The spectators must’ve thought we were extreme sports enthusiasts. Nope. We’re just gimps with sledges. After the exhilarating thrill of travelling at high speeds with no way to control or stop the sledge, there was only one way to crank up the danger.

Go down head first.

this is how we stop

Seeing the gate hurtling towards our faces was terrifying. As was being unable to get out of other contestants way, leading to a few crash landings. There were injuries aplenty – Neen smacked her face on the gate in a new Facial Features Braking System test. Cat smacked her knuckles on a hidden rock, had friction burn on her arse from sliding along exposed tarmac, bruised her knees and developed a swelling on her elbow from the tarmac. A total of 10 bruises were later found on her. Lynx came out of the sledge more times than any other contestant and picked up a grand total of NO injuries. The other contestants are calling for drugs testing.

We now plan to go ice skating. Neen is a roller derby girl (Go Tiger Bay Brawlers!) and is bound to win. We haven’t been ice skating for over 15 years. We fully expect tumbles, broken bones and gashes from the skates. And that’s just from fighting over who goes first!

We asked Magic 8 Ball if we would finish the Winter Gimpics alive? Its response? “My sources say no.”

Winter Gimpians

Gunning Down Bad Romance

We promised you a competition and now it’s time for its grand unveiling.

St. Dwynwen’s Day (the Welsh Valentine’s Day) is on January 25th. Instead of the Valentine’s tradition of giving such uninspired gifts like roses, chocolates and teddy bears, which quite frankly have NOTHING to do with beheading a saint, on St. Dwynwen’s Day, the tradition is to give love spoons. The handles of the spoons are carved with different things, each with a different meaning. In the olden days, guys would carve them for their partner. Nowadays you just buy them from a shop.

Anyhoo, to celebrate this and the forthcoming release of Bad Romance, we’re giving away 3 love spoons. For those of you who’ve read Gunning Down Romance, these feature in the final story, The Black Kiss and they’re not used for stirring soup. We’ll also be giving away copies of Bad Romance when it’s released.

In Bad Romance, one of the protagonists from Gunning Down Romance makes a return. To win a love spoon, you have to guess who. Comment below with your answer and if you’d like to give a reason why you think it’s your chosen one, feel free.

If you haven’t read Gunning Down Romance, here are the links. You have a week!

Amazon.co.uk 

Amazon.com 

Smashwords 

Look Who’s Talking

Ever get the feeling that your characters are really the ones in charge? That wouldn’t be so bad, if the character is question wasn’t a sociopath. You just can’t reason with them. You try saying no to them and the next thing you know, you’re hogtied in their basement praying their Torture Tools Activity Kit hasn’t arrived yet from Amazon.

When we started writing Still Life, the second story in Bad Romance, we knew there was something not quite right about it. Then this voice said ‘what are you doing? That’s MY story.’ We ignored them and carried on. But they wouldn’t shut up. ‘That’s my voice you’re using.’ We denied it – ‘it’s an unnamed character with their own story. Besides, their profession is completely different from yours’. But they wouldn’t stop. ‘Look at it. It’s similar. Listen to the voice. It’s mine.’ They were right. We now had a dilemma. Do we stick to our original plan of the unnamed character – the artist-  or do we surrender and allow this character to return?

We surrendered. Now we’re glad we did. They were right. Of course it was their story, their voice. We just didn’t realise at the time, but the more we looked at it and entertained the possibility of bringing them back, we knew we had to. After a bit of tweaking, the character is firmly established in the story and we know it truly does belong to them. We were foolish to think otherwise. Hope this doesn’t mean we’ve fallen under their spell. We’re meant to be the ones in control here.

You’re probably wondering who the hell we’re talking about. Well, we’re not going to tell you.  Before you throw stuff at us, we have a good reason for keeping it a secret. St. Dwynwen’s Day is January 25th. It’s the Welsh version of St Valentine’s Day without the teddy bears, wilting roses from the garage forecourt and heart shaped bog roll. The tradition on St. Dwynwen’s Day is for a guy to give his girlfriend a love spoon, with each symbol having a special meaning. Actually, he’s supposed to carve it himself, but those days are as dead as Dracula. For those of you who’ve read Gunning Down Romance, you’ll know the significance of the love spoon and the fun way D used it. Well, it was fun for her. Her lovers might say differently. So to celebrate St. Dwynwen’s Day, we will be giving away a love spoon, along with a copy of Bad Romance, when it’s released. We’ll be running a contest, using this character we’ve talked about.

All will be revealed.

*Disclaimer* C L Raven accept no responsibility for love spoon related injuries but photographs of said mischief will be required for the fan club.

D-Day

Lately we seem to be aiming for extremely tight deadlines. When we say tight, we mean one week. One week to come up with a story, write it then edit it to death. The first story we did this for was BlackJack for Rebecca Fisk’s blog. In case you missed it, click here. We didn’t have a deadline for it, but we wanted to get it to her as quickly as possible, because we were already working on 5 other short stories. The second story that had the short deadline was Memento Mori, for Elena Jacob’s blog. You can read it here . This one actually had a deadline of 5 days. Both of those stories are 1000 words, so they didn’t take long to write or edit. But they were a challenge – we’d never written flash fiction and now we had 2 of them. Challenge accepted!

This new one is different. We’ve only just found out about an anthology, Black Apples, which wants gothic fairytales, with edgy fairytale princesses, 3000-10,000 words. Our first thought was ‘Once Upon a Nightmare’, our horror Red Riding Hood story from Disenchanted. Then we read the dreaded words ‘no reprints’. Bugger. We desperately wanted to get in the anthology. We belong in gothic fairytales! But we had 8 days, no story and no idea what to write. And we’d struggled filling the 10 slots in Disenchanted. So what did we do? We decided to write another fairytale. We figured Cinderella, Snow White and Beauty and the Beast would be the most popular as they are princesses. So we picked Red Riding Hood. We’ve always preferred this one. Maybe ‘cos her happiness doesn’t involve marrying a prince. But could we do something different to ‘Once Upon A Nightmare’? Within five minutes we decided she should be a witch, the big bad wolf is her familiar, a she-wolf named Solstice and the wood cutter is a witch hunter. Boom. Then Cat switched on the laptop and started the story.

In just under two hours, we’d written 1200 words then stopped ‘cos it was getting late. By late afternoon yesterday, after the iguana had his bath, Lynx finished the story, at just over 4000 words. We squeezed in two edits before Zumba last night and another one this morning. Now the story is 5000 words long. We have 6 days ’til the deadline. Our biggest obstacle? The damn title. And as soon as that deadline hits, we have a month to polish and format the stories for Bad Romance. And start on the trailer. Ooh there’s another deadline for the end of the month. And we turn 30 3 days after Bad Romance is released so really need to look in to hiring a bouncy castle. We’re also in the middle of writing our next article for Haunted Magazine and have to squeeze in a 10 hour round trip to visit the location…

Hello, Tesco? Red Bull to go please.