Ksenia Anske's Blog, page 63

Writing through emotional highs and lows

Photo by Noukka Signe

This is a very timely topic, as I'm finishing 2nd draft of ROSEHEAD, my 2nd novel, next week, and while writing it I've been through emotional highs and lows, and very high highs, and very low lows. I even had to break in the middle and go get my son from Russia (long story short, Russian authorities wouldn't let him on the plane because of some documents being in English, so I flew out to get him) which caused me a very low LOW. You can read about it here. Warning. I...

Brain switching between a day job and writing

Photo by Eivind Hansen

Curious topic, eh? Never thought I'd write something like this, but I sold my soul to the corporate devil here recently, for real green money, and I'm actually having fun doing it, and the company is actually awesome, full of awesome people and ideas, yet I found this one interesting caveat to it. Just to get the facts straight, I only consult for one full Monday, 4 Mondays in September, so I can't vouch for how it feels when one works full time and writes in the eve...

Descriptions vs commentary, or what to edit and what to leave

Photo by Joel Robison

I have recently come across this very curious realization, while editing 2nd draft of Rosehead and reading every day, such books as Discworld series and The Cuckoo's Calling and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, as well as honestly trying to read a few indie books (just poked around on Amazon, reading first pages to see if the stories would grab me). One of my pet peeves is excessive descriptions, and most of my editing consists of cutting these, but what I discovered...

Navigating the curious maze of self-publishing platforms

Photo by Alex Stoddard

I've recently discovered an amazing number of self-publishing platforms and have sat down in horror, holding my head with both hands and staring at the wall, because instead of a simple choice of distributing my books everywhere (the plan was to postSiren Suicidesfor free, like,everywhere) I was suddenly faced with an impossible task of trying to decide where to do it, without knowing exactly what platform does what, and without having ample time to test each, to be...

Choosing what to read and how it will affect your writing

Photo by Joel Robison

I blog about writing a lot, but I haven't touched on the topic of reading in a long time, which is a pity, because reading is a huge part of writing. In fact, Stephen King said something along the lines of, if you don't have the time to read, then don't even bother writing. Or something like that. Anyway, this topic bubbled to the surface in the Twitterverse, as it usually happens, and I have realized that I actually have a particular reading strategy that I follow, d...

Donations make me more money than book sales!

Photo by Joel Robison

I've been reviewing my book sales numbers, to make sure I'm reporting every penny to the unemployment thingy (you're supposed to type in how much money you made when you file once a week - this week was my last), and was astounded to find that this year to date I actually made more money via donations as opposed to via book sales! Of course I tweeted about it, and Facebooked, and everything, and a bunch of folks asked me to blog about it in depth, so here you go. Today is...

Word count, or how long should your novel be?

Photo by Joel Robison

Per your request, I will attempt to shed wisdom on something which I'm still discovering for myself, namely, how long should a novel be? How many words? I don't have a specific number I'm adhering to in my novels, rather, a certain feeling I have gathered from reading books, primarily traditionally published. I would imagine this topic is more of a pressing issue for self-publishing authors as we have no team of professionals to rely on, somebody who can tell us how long...

Generating buzz around your book publication

Photo by Phillip Schumacher

People tell me that I have generated quite a buzz around publishing (well, self-publishing) Siren Suicides, my first trilogy novel thingy. To be honest with you, I had no idea I did, I didn't even specifically plan to generate any kind of buzz, I just blabbed about it on every corner, not to promote it, but to share everything that happened around it, because it was such a deep topic for me to talk about, to write about, to share. Now that it happened, now that I wr...

My adventures in Russia

Photo by Ksenia Anske

WARNING:This blog post is very raw, despite my best efforts to keep it prim and proper. Unfortunately, going back to Russia stirred up my past, and what follows contains a lot of emotional turmoil. If you're not up for disturbing darkness, I suggest you skip reading it.

People asked me to blog about my adventures in Russia. I was running today under the rain back to my friend's apartment where I'm staying in Moscow, thinking what exactly it is I will write about, and I kep...

How much it cost me to self-publish my book

Photo by Ksenia Anske

This topic bubbled to the surface recently, after I blogged about how to self-publish a book, or first 5 and second 4 circles of Hell. Namely, people asked me how much it cost me, specifically, to self-publish Siren Suicides, my first trilogy. And the answer is, it cost me $170. How is that possible? Well, let me tell you my story and let me outline the process I went through, and let me give you prices that people cited to me, and from that you can calculate a range of c...