R.J. Blain's Blog, page 42

Grave Humor was nominated for ReadFreely’s Best 50 Indie Books of 2020! Voting is live.

Dear humans,

The female has a migraine. She requires light to see, but the light stabs at her eyeballs and upsets her stomach. We have begun therapy treatments, which involve purring and covering her face with our warm, fuzzy bodies. She mumbled something about needing air, but we think this is an exaggeration. She stopped complaining. She seems to still be breathing for the most part, so we feel we have taken the appropriate course of action.

If you can spare a minute, and you have not...

Upcoming Book Faire, plus general news from the trenches!

Dear humans,

The female is going to be turtling for the rest of this week. She has a lot of work to do and not nearly enough time to do it in, and honestly… when she isn’t doing the work, she wants to play with the new phone the male got her for the holidays. She likes it very much! It is big and it is blue and it does things she likes!

Things she likes that she has done on it so far: read books.

Basically, it’s a very expensive camera that is also an e-book reader. Because she didn’t h...

Re: the Letter to the Readers after Flame Game

Dear humans,

It has been brought to our attention that at least one reviewer wishes they had been warned about the ‘scolding’ at the end of the Flame Game.

Okay. We’ll bite, since it was brought to our attention that this seems to be the case.

Here is the letter to the reader. And since we’re here anyway, we’ll unpack this letter to the reader:

It boils down to “Please don’t ruin something good because you’re unhappy the female writes more than funny books.” While the female woul...

The Flame Game has released! (Plus other news from the trenches.)

Bailey and Quinn are back for one last action-filled adventure!

A corrupt police chief is on the loose, and it falls to Bailey and Quinn to put an end to him before he finds some way to weaponize the spreading rabies virus, create yet another batch of potent gorgon dust, and otherwise wreck Bailey’s happily ever after.

With a pair of orphaned gorgon whelps to care for, more animals she can shake a stick at, and her husband’s determination to make the world a perfect place for her, Bail...

The Future of Audiobook Production. (This is bad news, folks. Sorry)

Dear humans,

Thanks to several decisions by Amazon (who owns Audible), until future notice, there will be no more audiobooks produced. We’re sorry, but the current terms Amazon has opted to implement means readers/listeners can, without penalty, return audiobooks at their whim without the author being paid.

In fact, we’re charged the amount of the royalty we should have been paid.

Here is a very good summary of the problem.

As such, it’s no longer fiscally feasible to produce audiobo...

The 2020 IAN Book Awards Results are in… and the underdog pen name is Outstanding!

Outstanding is such a fun word, and given her way, the female will use it relentlessly today.

We can’t really blame her.

The IAN Book Awards, hosted by the Independent Author Network (which is vetted by the Alliance of Independent Authors, which the female is a member of), has announced the winners of this year’s awards!

The Run Around by Bernadette Franklin has been named Outstanding (heee, outstanding, outstanding!!) in the romance category, while Blood Bound by R.J. Blain has bee...

Outfoxed has released!

Dear humans,

Outfoxed has released! (For those who want to get straight to the chase, here are the links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple Books.)

The female has survived through another book. This one is a wild ride, and we hope you enjoy it.

Because we can, we has some cool commentary from Cool People who have read the book, including the most marvelous Faith Hunter!

The heroine is tougher than nails and adorable all at once. The storyline is fast-paced and intricate. Th...

Bonds (Susan Copperfield) won the 2020 Kindle Book Review Awards (Science Fiction/Fantasy)

The Kindle Book Review Awards Peekture! You can read more about the award and winners here. ( https://www.thekindlebookreview.net/2020-kbr-winners/ )

Pictures speak louder than words, hoomans! We are very amused that Bonds unseated Blood Bound. This comes from the department of “We really hadn’t seen that coming!”

The female had done a very good job of convincing herself she had no chance in hell of winning. Then, when the results were announced, the female was reading the red bolds to...

A Q&A Session! Fun, Games, and Something a Little More Serious. . .

Dear humans,

We recently opened the readers’ group on facebook to some question and answers, which are below. We’re also going to answer some questions we made up because we feel like it.

Get ready for a wild ride, because here we go!

Tina asks, “Do you use pictures of characters or places to help you write? I’ve seen a few authors that use a picture/mood board collection to help them with their stories and characters.”

We, the Kitties of the Management, say, “We love pictures. T...

New Client from Hell Release Date

Dear humans,

The female has successfully navigated through the waters to have the preorder for Client from Hell moved to July 27, 2021. This allows her to do important things including not work herself to death, sleep, breathe, make food at the appropriate intervals, and not have a heart attack from stress sometime in January.

Thank you for your understanding.

Step one: add some gasoline.
Step two: light a match.
Step three: watch the devil’s house burn.

As far as plans go, Sandra Moo...