Brynna Gabrielson's Blog, page 3

Ding Dong Merrily on High

Hello friends!

I've been horribly inattentive to this blog for too long. I dearly apologize. Life just keeps getting in the way, and also I didn't have my computer with me for a whole week and I simply can't type a prolonged post on my iPhone. Autocorrect would wreak havoc and it would be embarrassing for all of us.

Anyways, IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME! Can't believe how quickly these past weeks have gone by and wow, now it's December. I just tried to hang fairy lights in my window, but I do not have a near outlet so must procure an extension cord before I can consider myself decorated. I also have barely done any shopping and have yet to bake a single slice of shortbread - needless to say I am ill prepared for the season. However, I do have a rockin' playlist of awesome Christmas songs to get giddy over, and I've procured a few Christmas movies to watch - so all is not lost!

On the book front Starkissed has been doing alright. I released the paperback a couple weeks ago and have sold a massive 2, yes that's right, 2 copies! I hope it will pick up at some point. Just so you know, the paperback is very pretty. I like to look at the interior and marvel at the crispness of the font. It would make a fantastic Christmas present (wink, wink) for someone you love.

Ebook sales are doing alright. Because of the 99 cent sale last month sales did a bit of a jump and I surpassed my end of year goal of 3000 copies a whole month early! Very excited.

I've been reading a bit more these past couple weeks too. For anyone looking for a good YA book (who's already read Starkissed of course) I'm absolutely enthralled with the Divergent books by Vernoica Roth. There are two out now - Divergent and Insurgent and the third should be out next year I think. I'm just in the middle of the second and am in love. Amazingly well done. If you liked the Hunger Games then try these, seriously.

Alright, must do some more chores.

Brynna

The kinks are smoothing out!

While it's not perfect, there are still some issues with categories and the search of the book, Starkissed can now be purchased in PAPERBACK at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com! Celebrate! You can order through the links below. I haven't tried shipping to Canada yet, so if you are Canadian and try and there's some issue, let me know.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Starkissed-Brynna-Gabrielson/dp/1479294764/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

http://www.amazon.com/Starkissed-Brynna-Gabrielson/dp/1479294764/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1345810806&sr=8-3

And if any of you are so inclined, it would be great if you could click on the links above and LIKE the listing. The button is up by the price. You just need to log into your Amazon account I think. And feel free to share on Twitter and Facebook and anywhere else you may desire.

Because of the issues loading the paperback I've extended my 99 cent sale through today. So if you haven't got your copy yet, get on it!

Not much else to report. I hope everyone has a lovely weekend and doesn't freeze to death (or if you're in England - get blown or washed away by the icky storms, though I think they're done now).


LATER,

Brynna

Quick Bits!

Just a quick update. I should have posted this earlier today, but was busy with very important tasks such as getting my haircut!

Starkissed is on sale this week! For just a few days you can get it for $.99! Where you may ask? Well follow the links below.

http://www.amazon.com/Starkissed-ebook/dp/B008XGUI4G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1345810806&sr=8-3&keywords=starkissed

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Starkissed/book-TsHPRWeS8U29JGVUJg64fA/page1.html?s=eNk5JvI_7UiD9FIvQ5jl9Q&r=1

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/214242

And for those of you in the UK - it's on sale at Amazon.co.uk too!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Starkissed-ebook/dp/B008XGUI4G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353459621&sr=8-1


As for the promised paperback! It is available now, however there have been a few hiccups with the release. It's not linked to the Starkissed Amazon pages yet, and it has published under Miss Brynna Gabrielson instead of Brynna Gabrielson - oops! However, it should hopefully be fixed soon! However, if you'd like to buy a copy now instead of waiting for Amazon to figure things out go to the link below!

https://www.createspace.com/3992800

All I have to report today! Tell everyone you know about the sale. Hopefully over the next few days Starkissed will continue to climb in the Amazon rankings and sales will get better and better!

Brynna

TOMORROW!

So, good news! The proofs of Starkissed arrived yesterday. Well actually I think they arrived a few days before, but I only got home yesterday to see them! So what's the verdict? Well they are BEAUTIFUL. At least, in my humble opinion. Except for one little thing. The cover image was a bit darker in print than on screen, so the colour of the title font doesn't stand out as much as I'd like. So I've changed that! Don't worry though, I'm not going to order more proofs because I'm fairly confident that the title will look smashing now.  As for the rest of it, well the interior is just...lovely. Most people probably won't notice or care, but my word, the font is so pretty and CRISP and the paper is so creamy and beautiful and the entire thing just makes me feel amazing because I DID IT!!! The whole thing. I designed the cover, wrote the blurb, designed the interior, wrote the fricking book. This thing is me, in print. I'm actually really proud of myself. I always dreamed of holding a book I wrote in my hands. Sure I once dreamed it differently, there was a little Penguin or Harper Collins logo on the back. But I don't care anymore. Because it's my cover, my writing, my font choices...I totally get the whole CONTROL part of self-publishing now. It's lovely.

SO...drumrollllllllllll...Starkissed will be available in paperback TOMORROW!

Exciting right?

I knew you'd just be leaping up and down.

And to celebrate, guess what! The Starkissed eBook is going on sale!!! For three days only starting tomorrow Starkissed will be $.99!

So get ready people. November 20th things are getting awesome!

See you tomorrow!


Brynna

No No November

Slowly but surely I'm starting the whole writing process over again. I'm currently trying to decide between two novels - one is a kind of side-a-long to Starkissed and the other is more New Adult (recently emerged genre that kind of hovers between YA and Adult fiction - characters are generally in late teens, early twenties and the content is far more 'grown up'), about a girl who goes away to university in England (wonder where I got that idea...). I really love and hate each concept right now, so it's been a bit of a struggle to figure out which one to take forward. I will write both eventually, but I hate having to pick just one to focus on. I simply can't do two at a time though. So that's where I stand on the new book thing. I hope hope hope I can get a bit more inspired over the next few weeks and really be in it by mid December.

In other news a few bits and bobs to report. Sales of Starkissed have slowly inched past 2500 copies. Sales have really really really dropped off this month, especially within the past week actually. I'm hoping things might pick up over Christmas, but who knows! If however you read Starkissed and liked it, do tell people! Word of Mouth is the author's best friend. I'd love to hit sales of 3000 by the end of December, but at this pace it doesn't seem likely.

I'm pretty sure the proofs of the Starkissed paperback are sat at my house back in Oxford right now, so if I get home tomorrow, look at them, and like what I see - the paperback should be available for purchase sometime this week! However if there is something wrong, it might be a little while longer. I will keep ya'll posted. I really hope I can set it free this week though!

Oh and this is kind of neat - a few months ago I submitted my design for the Starkissed cover to this blog's ebook design awards for August. Anyways, I completely forgot about it and only remembered today. So I went and took a look and Starkissed didn't win (not that I thought it would) but it did get a nice little comment from the blog's author. Take a look here. Just scroll down - the titles are in alphabetical order.

Hope everyone is having a nice November. It's COLD here. And damp. Not my favourite. But there have been a few gorgeous days to enjoy. Rory and I went down to the sea last weekend and stayed in this wonderful little town called Lyme Regis. The weather was beautiful and we had an awesome time wandering about. Even caught a showing of Skyfall (which was great).

Anyways, must be off.

Brynna

Updates!

Happy Saturday people!

Not a ton to report on today! But a few tidbits!

First off - Starkissed is now available in the Sony Reader Store! To be honest I'm kind of shocked. It took over two months to make it. I'd given up hope weeks and weeks ago and figured it was never going to happen. But low and behold. Anyone with a Sony Reader wanting to pick up a copy, you can find it here. Anyone interested in helping out, it would be awesome to get a few reviews posted at the Sony store!

Second good news, sales of Starkissed have almost hit 2300 copies! I'm pretty sure it will make it there by this evening, or tomorrow morning at the latest. My goal is to make it to 3000 copies by December 31, so I'm well on my way. Unfortunately sales have slowed and my ranking has dropped in the Amazon store. But the silver lining is that sales are actually climbing in the UK Amazon store. In October I sold twice as many copies as September, and I've sold a nice little handful so far this month. The numbers aren't the same as the American store, but it's still quite exciting! I'm even ranked in the top 5000 on Amazon UK right now, which is awesome. I've never been that high there!

And lastly, the paperback of Starkissed is getting close! I've ordered the proofs from Create Space and they should be here in a couple weeks. Once I've looked them over to make sure they're okay, I'll release it. Then paperback copies should be available via Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in the very least, as well as the Create Space online store. For those in Canada, I'm pretty sure you can order it from Amazon.com - but if there's mad shipping costs or something, I may work something out with my dad and send him a bulk order and then have him distribute to you (of course I'm assuming most of the Canadians reading this are family and friends  - though if you don't know my father I'm sure we can still work something out, lol). The list price is going to be $10.99. I know it's a bit high for a paperback, but unfortunately with print on demand it makes the per copy cost a little higher than I'd like.

Anyways, that's about all the news I have to share right now! I hope everyone is enjoying their November's so far. The countdown to Christmas is in full swing. Decorations are going up all over city centre, commercials are popping up, and I'm starting to panic. YAY.

Soon,

Brynna

Just around the corner...

Hey all!

Good news, I've productive this week! I know, how abnormal for me right? And what have I been up to you may wonder? Well getting Starkissed ready for PAPERBACK! Yay! It's actually been a lot of work. I've gone through the manuscript and re-proofread it. Sadly found a bunch of errors I missed the first six go arounds. I'll probably update the eBook with the changes very soon! Sorry to those who have endured the typos. Next book I'll have someone external proofread, I promise.

Anyways, I've redone the entire interior and designed a new cover. The eBook cover, which I still love, was kind of hard to translate to a print cover because of the spine/back. Anyways, I actually really like the print cover. It looks simple but fun. I'm still using the same cover image of the couple. Anyways, once my proofs have been dealt with I will debut the print cover here! SOON! Very soon! And then soon after that you'll be able to buy Starkissed on Amazon in print! Which is just the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it?

Anyways, I hope those of you who have been waiting for the paperback are excited! Not long now!

Must get back to being productive!

Brynna

Midweek Madness

Hello world,

Can you believe that October is already almost over? Didn't it just start last week? I'm freaking out a little. How can time go by so quickly? Especially considering I really need time to kind of slow down and let me take a breath. For those who aren't aware, I'm living in the UK on a student visa which expires in January so I'm madly trying to find a job that will sponsor me. But time is running out a little too fast. November will be here in minutes and I'm sure it will just slip through my fingers and then it will be December! Scary thoughts.

The good news is that sales of Starkissed have finally surpassed 2000 copies. It did so a couple days ago, but I haven't had the time to sit down and write out a proper blog until now. It's a pretty wild and awesome milestone and I'm excited to see the next thousand go by. I'm hoping by the end of December. But we'll see! Keep telling your friends and random strangers to buy! Great idea for a Christmas present - buy someone an eBook reader and buy a copy of Starkissed for it! lol.

I still haven't had a chance to start writing my next book yet. I'm going to VERY soon I promise. It's just been a very busy month. I still haven't really been home much at all. Tabi left a week ago and I literally left her at the bus and caught the train to Rory's. Then we headed up to Manchester for a couple days and I've been at his since. I rented a car for us to drive up to Manchester in as he's been out with a broken leg and I'm hopeless driving his standard car. I reserved a Yaris but they ended up giving me an Infiniti M35h, this amazing lovely car. It's totally kitted out with all these awesome features. I'm talking electric seats (also heated), reverse cameras, parking sensors, BOSE stereo etc. It's amazing. Unfortunately it has to go back tomorrow. It's been a blast driving it. Most importantly it's helped me get used to driving over here on the left side of the road on the left side of the car.  Now just to apply that to driving a manual car...we'll see how it goes.

Anyways, that's literally all the excitement going on in my life so I'll stop writing for now!

Love ya'll

Brynna

I'm back!

It's been a long time since my last post! Am so sorry to those who have been checking and waiting for another update. It's been a crazy busy few weeks and I've really just not had any time! I handed in my major project on September 27th which was a crazy terrifying moment! When I had it printed it was massive. Was required to submit two copies as well, so had to have two sales/marketing plans and two reports printed. In the end it cost something like 60 quid!

Anyways, the weekend after handing in I didn't even want to look at my computer. I went out on friday with some folk from the MA to celebrate, then headed down to Rory's for a couple nights. Then on October 1st my best friend Tabitha arrived from Canada and she's been here the past couple of weeks. We've been super busy seeing all that we can see before she heads home. We did two days in London and saw two musicals (Rock of Ages and Billy Elliot), we took a train to Cardiff for the day, spent a day touring Oxford, spent two nights in Brighton, then three nights in Wiltshire by Rory's. Then we just got back last night from spending two nights in Bristol where we saw another musical (The Lion King). She's leaving on Wednesday so got to fit in as much visiting time as possible as we have no idea when we might see each other again!

Anyways, incase you're wondering about the whole writing thing, I'm going to start drafting my next project next week and hopefully leap head first into it by the start of November. I'm still not sure which book I'm going to work on next, I'm considering a few options.

In the meantime, Starkissed is still selling, although not nearly as rapidly as it did last month. Things have cooled off quite a bit, though I'm still seeing alright numbers. Last night I surpassed 1800 copies sold which is pretty fantastic, seeing as yesterday was the two month anniversary of release! I'm hoping to hit 2000 by the end of the month and gosh it would be lovely to hit 3000 by the end of the year! We'll have to see how things go! I must admit it's been a little sad to see my sales drop. I'm now ranking in the 4000/5000s in the Kindle store...not a bad place to be at all. I just miss seeing Starkissed in the early 2000s. Silly me. Two months ago I thought I'd be lucky to sell 75 copies in a month, and these days I sell that in three nights! I am just being silly because I am so grateful for how well it's done and it's so amazing to see people reading it and liking it. Someone posted a five star review on Goodreads yesterday which was lovely!

As well, once things cool off and my life slows a bit I am going to start getting ready to release in paperback, hopefully by mid-november to make the Christmas rush. It involves recreating the entire cover and adding a spine and back cover, then reformatting the actual manuscript. Not sure how long it will take me. Hopefully it won't be too bad. I'll be trying to do that next week!

Anyways, I should be off. As we've been away a week there is no food and I think Tabi might be starving. Bad host I am.

Updates soon I promise!

Brynna

The day has come.

So tomorrow is the big day! I'm going to wake up and head down to campus to print and bind my Major Project, and then follow that up with ACTUALLY HANDING IT IN. Yes, that's right. I am done. DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE. Well mostly, like I said it's not printed or handed in yet. But in just 12 hours it will be out of my hands. I'm both ridiculously excited and tremblingly terrified. Handing it in means I don't have to spent all day every day worrying about the damn thing, fixing every little mistake I can find and adding new strokes of mediocre brilliance. But then again, handing it in means that I can't fix it anymore. I can't think of fantastic new things to add in the middle of the night and add them. It will be gone, out of my hands to be weighed and judged by, well actually I'm not sure who will be marking it. Probably my advisor, but not sure who else will be.

I'm terrified people. But so excited. I've got celebrate somehow tomorrow. Even if it just means going into town and having an ice cream. Or maybe a nice burger at GBK...I don't know. Either way, tomorrow is a momentous day. It's the end of my MA. Which is also scary.

Tomorrow I become a has been student. Coming soon is the "where do I go from here?" panic. I'm starting to apply for positions, but haven't had any bites yet. Hopefully something will turn up and I can get this whole living my life thing rolling.

Okay, this has probably been one of my most manic posts to date. But oh well.

Oh and guess what finishing my major project means?  I can start writing again! I'm not sure what novel to get going on, but I'll be spending the next few weeks thinking hard about it. My best friend Tabi is visiting from Canada for two weeks, but once she heads home I'll be getting going on my next manuscript. Can't wait.

Okay, okay. Time to go to bed.

Tomorrow!

Brynna