S.J. Pajonas's Blog, page 118

THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE Is Now Available!

I’ve been waiting for this day since I dreamed up this series poolside last summer! THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE is now available! I’m excited to bring this series to you all. I hope you enjoy your time with Mei, her mom, Yasahiro, and a whole new cast of characters in Chikata, Japan.

Teaser Tuesday: An Excerpt from THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE

Today, I’m going to share an excerpt from THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE, one that goes with one of the teasers I made and shows off the budding relationship between Mei and Yasahiro. Yasahiro is a successful chef at a hot new restaurant in Mei’s hometown. I’m sure at first glance, you might think he’d have an ego the size of China and look down on anything simple or banal. But really, he’s sweet and down to earth, and Mei finds that out through the course of this book and the next. He can lose his temper, but it usually comes from a place of love. Just wait till Book 2 when Mei needs even more help than usual.

Sunday Update – March 27, 2016

Hoo boy, you know when you’ve had a doozy of a week when you can’t even do the normal everyday activities you usually do. That was this past week, for sure. Several crazy things happened…

First, our kitchen renovation began. Last weekend I only popped on the blog to let you know that I was beat and couldn’t update due to moving out of the kitchen. I could not have been more tired on Sunday evening! We spent the whole weekend cleaning out the old kitchen, moving everything to the basement, and setting up our temporary kitchen there.

Then Monday, the workers showed up and got started. They tore out our sink and a bit of the cabinets and moved that to the basement so we’d have our sink down there too! Basically, we have a full kitchen in the basement except for a dishwasher. It’s not the best to cook in because there’s no ventilation, though. So even boiling water is a pain because it makes the whole space humid. But it’s better than nothing.

On top of the workers here, my youngest woke up sick on Monday morning with a fever and cough AND my husband had to fly out for a “quick” trip to London! So I was left at home with the sick kid, a kitchen remodel, and then the oldest had her 9th birthday on Tuesday amongst all the chaos.

Demolition started on Wednesday and it was a day of banging, nails squeaking, stuff being thrown in the dumpster outside. And me and my sick kid were cowering on the couch the whole time. Lol. No joke, it was intense. But my husband made it back home on that Wednesday and I caught a little break. The youngest was fever free most of the day and could go back to school on Thursday.

Then Thursday came and the oldest woke up tired and cranky. “I don’t want to go to school!” I take her temperature and she’s fine, so I send her to school. My husband stayed home from work this day, recovering from jet lag and taking all his calls from the kitchen table, so I went to Panera. Ahhhhh. Silence. I knew it was noisy at home because they were installing a header in the kitchen and cutting out the wall for the sliding door, and I was glad to eat some regular food and get work done. Then my phone rings at 12:30. THE SCHOOL NURSE! My oldest is running a high fever that came on really quickly and someone had to come get her. Sigh. I called home and sent my husband, then I finished up my lunch at Panera, went to the drug store to get meds, and came home, back to chaos.

Wow. WHAT A WEEK. This is why I haven’t updated here. All I’ve been doing is editing Daydreamer 2, getting random other stuff done, and tending to sick kids. I’ll miss Easter at my in-laws, too. Boo.

Besides those videos and photos I shared above, here are other things that happened this week…

I de-stressed a little by listening to my podcasts and coloring. I barely exercised this week because of all the upheaval and it showed in my mood.

Man, I really needed this glass of wine!

Anyway, wow. I’m beat after this week. I’m hoping this coming week is a lot better, my kids are healthy, and my routine is back to normal. Coming up on Tuesday, an excerpt from THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE, and then the launch day on Thursday!

Teaser Tuesday: Painting

One of the things that I always do with my characters is that I give them a creative pursuit, something for them to love besides their usual everyday work. Mei grew up always wanting to be a painter. She saw herself as an artist full time with a studio and everything. But a teacher she had when she was younger sapped her of all her confidence and she gave it up to pursue business in an office in Tokyo. Except that didn’t work out either, and now she was back home, utterly defeated. I know I said I was going to write a cozy mystery, I really wanted to. And in a way, I did. But ultimately, these books are about Mei and her journey to find something (and someone) in life to love. She just happens to help solve mysteries along the way!

When Mei finally returns to painting, after hemming and hawing about it for the majority of the book, she is overcome with the urge to paint one of her most horrifying moments in life. I love this moment because even when she’s at her weakest, she can still summon the strength to get on with her life. I love writing her character and I’m looking forward to many more books spent with Mei.

THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE is now available for pre-order. This cozy mystery series set in Japan will delight and entertain you, for sure!

Sunday Update – March 20, 2016

I hate to do this but I’m in the middle of moving everything out of my kitchen in preparation for the start of a kitchen renovation tomorrow and I’m just too busy and exhausted to update the blog today.

Real post to come either later this week or I’ll do a double update next week! Wish us luck! I’ve never lived through a big remodel and we’ll be without a kitchen for two months. Yikes. It’s gonna be crazy!

When Nothing Works…

Well, folks, remember that blog post I wrote last fall about moving to Amazon exclusively for a while and trying it out? The experiment is over and it was a resounding failure! Who’s not surprised? I’m not!

But once again, because I like actual evidence that something is not going to work for me, I’m glad I did it and I can walk away knowing what the outcome would be.

Let me start off by telling you how it worked and how it ended. When I switched all the books over in September into KDP Select and therefore into Kindle Unlimited, my goal was to make as much in pages-read (borrows from Kindle Unlimited) as I had been making on the other vendors and hopefully find new readers. It was also my hope that ebook returns would diminish, as it was my theory that those people who bought, read, and returned Kindle ebooks were people who were Kindle Unlimited subscribers and just didn’t want to pay for books.

The first few months, September through the end of November, were pretty good. I was getting plenty of pages-read, new sign-ups to my newsletter, and even a new review or two (not many, but a few). Then everything began to plummet. Sales nosedived. Pages-read dried up. December and January were some of my worst months ever. EVER. And the few pages-read I did get were worth less and less. I didn’t know what was going on, but at the time, I attributed it to the fact that I must suck and no one wanted to read my books. I feared the worst. I was thinking about pulling all my books out of KDP Select, one by one as they finished off their contracts, but I thought, “Maybe it’s just a dry spell and things will perk up later?”

So, I hit February with everything I had. I had a sale on SUMMER HAIKUS and I spent $95 on ads for it. I would have to sell 135 copies to break even, and I had hoped I would make it. I figured even if I sold half that and had pages-read, which the ads would give me exposure for, I might break even. I then made REMOVED free for a few days and paid $75 for an ad for that, hoping that the downloads would lead to some sales of the rest of the series and maybe some pages-read for that too.

Unfortunately, all my efforts did not pay off. Instead of making money in February, I lost about $150 which I don’t think I’ll get back now. I only sold 36 copies of SUMMER HAIKUS and got about 5 full reads’ worth of KU pages-read, so I didn’t even make back half of what I paid.

Which is a total shame because I’m not really in this writing thing to make bank and be a best seller, but I also can’t operate at a loss for several years. I need to at least break even.

While this loss was disheartening, I figured pages-read would pick up with time and I’d be at break-even by the end of the year. I told myself, “You can make it to the end of the year and re-evaluate then!”

Then the scam scandal of Kindle Unlimited hit and suddenly everything began to make sense.

I’m going to quote directly from Selena Kitt on this but please read her whole blog post on this matter because it is very enlightening.

Except Amazon didn’t want us to know one important thing – they lied to us.

They have no idea how many pages a reader actually reads.

Let me say that again, just so you don’t miss it:

AMAZON HAS NO IDEA HOW MANY PAGES A READER ACTUALLY READS.

Wow. A little bit of karma coming back at you with these scammers, Jeff Bezos?

Because Amazon has been scamming authors in the KDP Select program all along.

They decided to pay us by “pages” read, when in fact, they can’t count actual pages read, and they can’t time how long a reader actually takes to read those pages (last time I checked, no one could read 3000 pages in less than two minutes…)

…

In KU 2.0, they weren’t paying out $1.30 a borrow to scammers who created their little “scamplets” and borrowed them in their little circles anymore. (Or to those nasty erotica writers who’ve always written short stories for readers who want to buy them… they clearly deserved to be punished for their dirty minds and “selling sex” in the first place, right? /end sarcasm)

That’s great, but… before the KENPC cap was very recently instituted, the pages you could get paid for per-read were unlimited. Which meant that anyone could release a “book” of unlimited length in KDP Select (these scammers are putting garbage in their books – foreign translations, articles from Wikipedia, just words for words’ sake) then put a link at the front of that book that jumped to the back – and voila. A $100 download in one click. I’m not kidding. I know authors who have told me they’ve seen these scammers bragging about getting that much per-read before the KENPC cap.

Even when they put the KENPC cap of 3000 on it, with the payout last month at $0.0041 per page read, that meant the maximum payout was $12.30 per download. Still not too shabby. Especially if you have lots of scammer friends to borrow your book and just click a link to read to the end – and push up your rank in the process.

KU 2.0 is far worse, in terms of scamming and money lost, than KU 1.0 ever was.

It turns out that huge scam books have been climbing in the ranks, netting a whole bunch of the pot used to pay Kindle Unlimited authors like me, and pushing us all down while they’re at it. They had been climbing in numbers since the beginning of December and now they’re out of control. Little authors like me just aren’t getting seen anymore. In the beginning, before KU was full of scam books, I was getting some visibility and gaining new readers. Now, nothing.

I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointed I am, both in myself and in Amazon. I felt I was making the right decision by giving Kindle Unlimited a try for my whole catalog, when really, I should have taken a step back and watched to make sure first. I made a huge error and now I’m paying for it. I figured, “Nothing is working for me so I’ll take the plunge and try this.” That is the absolute last time I make that kind of decision. From now on, all books will be published on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and Kobo. I am still considering Google Play. As each of my books comes out of their time in Kindle Unlimited, I will make them available on all vendors. THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE is already there. REVEALED is making its way out to vendors as I type this. REMOVED will be there at the end of the month. All the Kami No Sekai short stories will be out of KU in April. Everything else comes out in May. I have written to Amazon and asked to be pulled from Kindle Unlimited because I do not believe they have held up their end of the publishing contract, but they refuse, which I expected. So, now I wait.

I just want to reiterate that my only goals in publishing my books are (1) to entertain readers and (2) earn back what I spend on publishing. I write because I want to write and I always will, but publishing is a business and I have to now make a very hard business decision.

I have cut back on my publishing schedule for this year considerably in the light of this first quarter failure.

Here are upcoming publishing dates (dates subject to change)

March 31 – The Daydreamer Detective

May 12 – The next Kami No Sekai short story

June 16 or 23 – Relaunch of the Nogiku Series with all new covers and box set

July 7 – The Daydreamer Detective 2

September 8 – Another Kami No Sekai short story

November 10 – Hopefully a new scifi series first-in-a-series novel

December 10 – Fantasy Novella (in association with The Complex series)

ETA: Until I’m 30-60 days from publishing, I will not be setting up pre-orders anymore on Amazon (other vendors will vary). If you want to know when my books publish, please subscribe to my newsletter.

I have scaled back my publishing schedule this year to accommodate my new smaller budget and make time for writing articles for places that actually pay me. I will then use those funds to pay for covers and editing this year.

But the good news is that I plan to keep writing A LOT. I hope that even though I cut back on publishing, I’ll be creating a backlog of work that can be published if things kick up! So all is not lost! Just gotta think on my feet and be flexible as I always am. Thanks for bearing with me.

Teaser Tuesday: Farm Girl

Farming and tending to the land is still considered to be a good life in Japan, if it goes well for you. For those that struggled, they left their land in the country and moved into the city looking for more work and a better opportunities. Yep, there’s actually a lot of abandoned farm land in Japan, just sitting there, and the governments (both local and national) are trying to figure out what to do about it.

Mei’s mother, though, has been both shrewd and fortunate. She wanted to keep the land and farm it herself, plus she took every yen she’s ever made and reinvested it (which is going to bite her in the butt in Book 2). Growing up, Mei wanted the modern life of the city, mobile phones, computers, etc. She didn’t want to be a farm girl. But here she is, back home, no money and no job, and she’s picking sweet potatoes with her mom again. She IS a farm girl, even though it’s the last thing she wants.

But coming to terms with her past and using that knowledge to work towards a real future is her goal for the whole series. Here she is at the beginning of her journey, hands dirty in the fields and all her dreams dashed, but with each new book we’ll watch her grow and find her true calling.

NOTICE: I’ve decided not to put THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE into Kindle Unlimited. It will be available on iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo as well! B&N link to come! (They are so slow).

THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE is now available for pre-order. This cozy mystery series set in Japan will delight and entertain you, for sure!

Sunday Update – March 13, 2016

I am having one of those whiplash weeks. The kind where everything is going along swimmingly and then I get sideswiped by a Mac truck (metaphorically speaking). My neck comes out bent the wrong way and I was blinking into the bright lights saying “What happened?” over and over again. Yep. That was my week. Coming this next week on the blog? A post on how faith can be so easily lost or misplaced, and how my ability to make decisions on a moment’s notice will ultimately save me from myself.

This was a week I should have written into my planner, but somehow after Tuesday, I completely forgot! It was a beautiful week of weather. I worked out at home on Monday so I could watch the last episode of Downton Abby (cried buckets), walked in the park both Tuesday and Wednesday, Thursday I went to the gym, and Friday I shopped at Whole Foods, made it to Panera to hang out with my buddy Amy, and then got called back to home by the school nurse for my youngest. Thankfully I took her to the doctor right away and the doctor determined that she was fine. Phew! I won’t go into details as it involves female body parts. Lol.

All week had been easy though I could feel that something was brewing in the publishing world then I got hit hard with it on Friday and Saturday. I have sent email to Amazon and I’ll see if they write me back. I haven’t heard a peep about my email to them, which either means they’re going to ignore me or they sent my correspondence up the chain of command. We’ll see. Like I said, I’ll compose a blog post for Wednesday or Thursday. I want to give them time to respond first.

What else happened this week?

Something knocked me on my butt last Sunday and I was running a fever, so I sat and proofread all day. Thankfully it was the weekend and my husband could take care of things.

I got lots of outdoor reading time in! It was lovely to be in the sun. I can’t wait for summer!

Took my youngest out for ice cream (Italian ice for me!) on a day when her big sister was at a birthday party.

Took the time to color and think…

And even some time to knit! Yes, I’m still working on this project I’ve been working on for a year and a half. Persistence will pay off, I’m sure of it!

So, like I said, a blog post later this week on publishing shake-ups and then a new Teaser Tuesday for THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE!

Teaser Tuesday: Contradictory Nature

In THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE, Mei is going through some big life changes. She’s 26 and fired from her third job in five years. She doesn’t know what she wants to do or where she wants to be, and she feels like a huge failure. I remember being 26 and getting laid off from my job, only having enough in my bank account to make it through one more month in New York City. I was scared and I wasn’t sure if I had the skills to get a new job and make a go of my life there. I had been dating my husband (then boyfriend) for a year and I worried that I would have to move back home to Michigan and leave him. Luckily, it didn’t turn out that way, but it was a close call. But having to move back home is still a recurring nightmare for me, believe it or not!

I’m sure Mei will feel the same about her life when she’s ten years into her future, but in this book, she’s struggling with her failure right before us, and one of her biggest failures was painting. She loved painting but everyone told her she sucked at it so she gave it up. Now that she’s home, she’s thinking about picking it back up again, even with all the criticism in her head. She’s a very contradictory person, sometimes flip-flopping on an issue several times before settling into a groove. When she stands in front of the canvas, her desires are the opposite of everything she’s ever lived for. But at least she can acknowledge that!

THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE is now available for pre-order. This cozy mystery series set in Japan will delight and entertain you, for sure!

On Kindle and Kindle Unlimited
Don’t have a Kindle? Learn about my ePub Exchange Program.

Sunday Update – March 6, 2016

Late Sunday Update today because we all went to the dine-in movie theater to see Zootopia together! It was super cute and fun, and I really loved the mystery. My youngest was a little scared at certain points of the movie, but she sat on Daddy’s lap and was okay. I think we should do the dine-in theater more often! It was a much better experience than any other movie I had gone to.

I had another crazy week this past week. Monday, I took off to the gym while the cleaning ladies came, then the whole rest of the day went by in a blur. Tuesday, I posted another teaser for THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE. Wednesday was super busy. I worked out, went to the chiropractor, and finalized the kitchen cabinets with the contractors. Thursday, I was supposed to go out and meet up with my writing buddy, Amy, but a whole host of things got in the way. My contractors needed to move things around in the basement and garage to make room for their desks and work tables, then tree cutters came and blocked in my driveway!!

Sigh. I ended up rescheduling with Amy for next week. Friday morning we woke up to some snow that was gone by sundown, and I spent the whole morning looking at tile for the kitchen.

But the good news is that I also got some work done. I wrote up 80% of my posts for my blog tour and I’ve been brainstorming for this novella I need to write this month. I’ve also been thinking a lot about the next DAYDREAMER novel and the third book in the series. Lots of thinking!

What else happened this week?

I got to wear one of my new LuLaRoe t-shirts! I’m excited about all the new clothes I have that I can wear this spring and summer!

I walked first thing in the morning and it was so nice to be out and have all my exercise in before 9:30am.

The paperback proof came for THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE!! I’m seriously excited to see it in paperback as the cover looks really great.

My space leggings came!! I’ve been dying to own these and now they’re mine! ALL MINE!!

And my husband and I have picked out the these hexagon tiles for our backsplash. They’re expensive but will look really awesome.

I’m not sure what will be on the blog but the teaser on Tuesday, but we’ll see if I can come up with anything! Have a great week!