R.J. Blain's Blog, page 19

Life-Debt has released.

When scavenger and hybrid fox Viva comes across a derelict in empty space, what she and her furry partner, Pandora, discover puts them on a collision course for adventure, fame and wealth—assuming she survives the experience.

Teaming up with the derelict’s living cargo isn’t wise, but the handsome stranger might hold the key to the ship and its many secrets. Add in some pirates out to profit from Viva’s living head, and she’s in for a wild ride.

Delivering the cargo to its rightful owner ...

Moving forward, moving forward, moving forward…

I’ve always tried to be transparent with my readers. I feel it helps other authors know precisely what they’re getting into should they decide to publish… and I feel it teachers readers there’s a LOT that goes into the 3-5 (or more) hours a book entertains them.

Today, rather than write, I did math. I did a lot of math. I math’d so hard my eyes crossed and I took a lie me down with Princess for thirty minutes to recover from the mathing.

The math basically worked like this:

I took only ...

If you want the Vampire of Montana in Audiobook format, you will need to use Audible. (And other stuff about how I will be writing moving forward.)

Due to unresolvable technical difficulties with my other distributor (their team is still trying to figure out what’s wrong with the file with no success), Vampire of Montana is only available for distribution at ACX. The audiobook should be “corrected” on Audible now. (No, I do not feel that my narrator’s usage of foal was incorrect, unnecessary, or anything like that. She had everyone use it because of Texas’s prevalence on the world stage, and frankly, it was a brilliant observation of the na...

A Sneek Peek of Old Secrets, some behind-the-scenes on Whiskers on Kittens, and DragonCon! Plus other (mostly important) news.

Greetings, folks. Buckle in, this post will be a bit long and all over the place. But first, a picture I took in Australia of a birb! I do quite love Australia’s birbs. So many, so nice! This birb was PINK. And we all know how I feel about pink.

Anyway, please do not edit, comment on editing, or do any editing type things in this post. Nothing here has been edited. And I mean NOTHING. This is out-of-the-box raw. If you don’t like that, look away.

You can preorder Old Secrets at the fo...

Why do I series hop? A tale of an author’s chaotic brain…

Photo: some flower found somewhere in Australia. (I want to say Cairns, but I’m not 100% sure.)

Fans of $x series (insert whatever your favorite series is) tend to get upset when they do not get the next book in their series right away. It doesn’t matter if the series is long or short, if it’s 2 of 3 books finished, 16 or 32 finished, or anything else like that.

Readers get upset when they are not given the thing they specifically want.

I’ve seen this trend time and time again. “Why...

I thought about just giving up this weekend.

Since Friday, I have been called a liar over how some people say foal like fowl/foul. To open up, thank you to those of you who say it this way who stepped up to confirm it’s a real accent. You’re appreciated.

I first heard it in Tennessee, where I lived for six or so months out of every year during my childhood after my parents divorced. I didn’t think much of it when the first person messaged me asking. I just confirmed that it was the accent used, confirmed the region it originated in, wit...

The Financials of Audiobooks (and why how I’m producing them will be changing.)

Yesterday, I was flooded with private messages on my personal profile because people did not appreciate that my narrator opted to use foal in a Texan accent. My proofers (both of them) are originally from Texas, so this sounded normal to them. I have booked to have the corrections/changes made to Vampire of Montana, but this spurred me to do some math.

People have called me a liar, because obviously, nobody could possibly ever have this accent.

Being called a liar after discussing with Tex...

Re: Audiobooks (Corrections for Vampire of Montana, future of Audiobooks)

This is not a happy post. I’m not even sorry about that. Not everything can be positive, and this is a problem. This is how I’m addressing the problem:

I will be having my audiobook proofer going through (paid, of course), to identify the time stamps for all instances of foals and correcting them, since clearly, it’s a problem. I’ve received plenty of messages in my FAMILY account all day about this, and to say I’m upset that I cannot have any basic privacy today is an understatement.

As a...

Doggone Mess is available in audiobook edition!

Single, female lycanthrope: check.

Bills to pay: check.

A bounty for the hottest single lycanthrope on the block: check.

As the sole holdout of the corporate buyout of her apartment building, Joyce Gray is determined to transform her stubborn pride into a masterpiece in order to stay off the streets. Dipping her hands into the dark world of bounty hunting would give her the funds needed to find a new home, somewhere safe from the wolf who’d infected her with the lycanthropy virus.

...

In Case You Missed It: Upcoming Books!

What is coming up next, you may be asking? You’ve seen all of these… except for one. That’s right, there’s a new book up for preorder! Right now, the preorder links are chaos, but you can scavenger hunt if you would like in the meantime.

As a reminder, Life-Debt is a cleaned up version of what was in Pets in Space 7, and all vendors excepting Amazon will receive a bonus short story about Viva and Delta!

And no, I will not be compiling the short stories from the back of the books into a col...