Meg Collett's Blog, page 5

Preview of “Little Girls and Their Ponies”

My upcoming release, “Little Girls and Their Ponies,” is a literary fiction novella. It comes out on 12/8 and will be FREE for the first few days. Here is the Goodreads link! I hope you enjoy the preview.

 

Chapter One

 

What is life exactly?

To Alice Montgomery, the answer to that question was pretty simple: Life was an F-350 truck and horse trailer zipping across West Virginia to rodeo after rodeo. Life was her father’s lame jokes as he drove, his awful taste in old country music. Life was her and Rosie running the barrels, fast as anything Alice had ever felt.

And then it just … wasn’t.

It’s funny; Alice didn’t remember the pain that well. The burning—the crushing and breaking—was all just a filmy haze that she might reach out and touch, as if it had happened to someone else.

Maybe it had.

The accident happened to the Alice Montgomery of old. The beautiful one. The one who always laughed, who smiled and danced and partied with all the hottest guys. The one who rode horses bareback at a gallop with no hands. The one who was fearless, who was caught up in the blush of youth and promise.

That’s who the accident had really destroyed. That terrible wreck had left her in this new Alice’s body, scarred and hunched, bitter and hateful.

A whole life transformed in a tiny moment—a moment she barely remembered, save for a few insignificant memories. Like the flash of white and the surprise she’d felt, as if accidents were tragedies that happened only in other people’s lives. Recalling the quick gasp of air that fluttered up her throat was easy; it was an instinctual reaction, like seeing a spider on the floor, only much, much worse. She’d flinched away as though it would make a difference.

The white tractor-trailer careened into her vision from the corner of her eye. It was going too fast to process, to think through. One second it was where it was supposed to be; the next, it was crawling into her lap, breathing its diesel fumes up her nose.

Their truck and horse trailer had flipped clear off the road, which she was told later was lucky. It was lucky. If there had been a wall or another car next to them, they would’ve been crushed, reduced to thin, jagged pieces of metal and bone. Instead, they skidded sideways and clear off the road, down the steep ravine, flipping side over side.

Those were details of the accident that grew fuzzier with time. But one thing never dulled: the screaming—not her own or her father’s, who was driving. The haunting sound came from behind them, from the horse trailer attached to their truck’s fifth wheel. Inside that metal box, the most precious thing in Alice’s life was screaming her pain, her death, her end.

And there was nothing she could do to save her horse, because Alice could only burn. And burn she did.

 

Chapter Two

 

Rosie’s scent was thick in Alice’s nose. It was familiar and comforting, all that was right in the world. With her fingers loose on the reins, Rosie’s mane fluttered up and tickled Alice’s knuckles as they rode across the dirt arena. Just a girl and her horse, kicking up dust behind them. Like second nature, easier, even, than walking, Alice’s hips rocked to her horse’s smooth lope. She tilted her head back and smiled up into the wind they created, the easy breeze that pulled the strands of her ponytail.

Alice jerked herself from the dream, tripping into consciousness with a spasm. Her breathing came in stuttering half-gasps, Rosie’s smell still hovering in her mind. She thought she felt the grit of dust against her teeth, the press of her well-worn leather saddle beneath her.

It was all right there and then… gone. Dead and gone. Only a dream to tear her heart anew and leave her confused and shaken because she had to remember all over again that Rosie—sweet, beautiful Rosie—was gone.

Eight months after the accident, Alice turned her face into her pillow and cried. This was the pain she remembered, the pain she’d never forget. It was bottomless, the deepest ache Alice had ever felt. Far worse than any skin graft or debridement during her burn treatment; she would take recovering from third-degree burns over thirty percent of her body any day of the week if it meant Rosie was alive again.

Alice had betrayed Rosie. She’d abandoned her. All her pain during and after the accident was nothing compared to the agony and fear in Rosie’s screams as she was tossed around in the back of the trailer, alone and broken in her last moments of life. To punish herself, Alice imagined Rosie lying back there, her legs twitching, her nostrils slowly flaring around her final breaths. The image was razor sharp against the edges of Alice’s heart, flaying the tissue into flaming, flapping shards.

Alice screamed into her pillow, the agony wrenching through her. She nearly suffocated herself as she tried to muffle the sounds. She tasted her own salty tears and the slime of mucus from her nose. This was her morning coffee, her curse to a new daybreak.

She should’ve died with Rosie. That would’ve been lucky. Not this, not this life. This wasn’t lucky. This wasn’t surviving.

Nearly an hour later, Alice managed to move. Her bedroom remained dark and undisturbed, the thick curtains pulled tight to ward off any errant sunlight. The door was closed and locked, her mother long since deciding it wasn’t worth trying to wake Alice at an acceptable hour. Ever-present music played softly from her radio, filling the room with whatever happened to be on the station. Alice didn’t listen too closely; she just needed the sound to drown out the silence.

Moving stiffly, she eased her long, thin legs over the edge of the bed. Even through her pajama pants, the misshapen outline of her right leg was grotesquely prominent. Her right hand, or what was left of it, reached for the lamp. Dim, soft light barely illuminated the path to the bathroom.

Her cane leaned against the bedside table, waiting for her. Using it as leverage, Alice pulled herself from bed and hobbled toward the bathroom. Inside, she’d taken out a few bulbs from the light over the mirror so that when she hit the switch, the light barely penetrated the little room’s shadows.

With her toothbrush and toothpaste in hand, her eyes found the mirror. She’d once been beautiful, the prettiest girl in high school and then later, her freshman year at community college. Her face had been permanently tan, setting off the summer sky blue of her eyes. Strawberry blond hair had framed her heart-shaped face. She’d once looked good in her tight Wranglers, her tank tops showing off her muscular arms.

Now, her therapist told her it was a good idea to spend a few minutes looking in the mirror every day, to grow accustomed to what she’d become. It wasn’t working. Alice averted her eyes quickly, but not before she saw the white-edged angry scars on her cheek, jaw, and down her neck, where they slipped underneath the edge of her T-shirt to trail down her ribs and hip, like a cancerous river that devoured flesh and shit scars. Her ear had been repaired to the best of the surgeons’ abilities. The right side of her mouth was ringed in puckered pink flesh, so that even when she smiled, she looked hideous. Not that there’s anything to smile about anymore, she thought as she tied her thin, frail hair back into a small braid.

With her left hand, she brushed her teeth, weakly spitting into the sink. Toothpaste ran down the ruined side of her mouth, which she dabbed with a towel. An assortment of creams and salves lined the countertop. It was the longest part of her morning routine to strip down and moisturize the burns along the length of her body. Her hand dipped into the unnatural valleys along her thigh and buttocks, where the flesh had been too damaged to save. She didn’t let herself think too much about it, and she certainly didn’t look down.

Once that was done, Alice made a slow circuit through her room, leaning heavily on her cane. The first stop was to unlock her door, signaling to her mother that she was awake. Then she went to her desk, turning on another dim lamp and the television to replace the noise of the radio. She picked up the remote and toted it back to her chair, her mind thinking of the reality shows on today. There might be a Real Housewives of Orange County marathon on.

If she was lucky.

She did a half-hearted round of exercises for her physical therapy while watching television. Her doctor had told her numerous times that if she would put more effort into getting stronger, she wouldn’t need her cane. But Alice didn’t go anywhere anyway, so it didn’t matter. Besides, she thought the cane complimented her new look quite well. There was a knock on the door.

“Okay,” Alice said, not bothering to raise her voice. Her mother would come in anyway; the knock was only a formality, as was Alice’s acknowledgment of it.

“Good morning, sweetie,” Laura chirped as she came in carrying a tray of food, her hand instantly going to the light switch when confronted by the darkness of the room. But the bulb had long ago been removed, and her hand hovered a moment before dropping back down to her side. She blinked into the darkness, letting her eyes adjust. “How did your exercises feel this morning?”

“Fine.” Alice set aside the embarrassingly slight weights and eased into her chair. Her mother set the tray on the ottoman in front of her.

“That’s good. You’re getting stronger every day. It’s so pretty outside, maybe later—”

“No.”

“Sure thing, sweetie,” her mom said so quickly that Alice barely even finished saying the word. Many things annoyed Alice these days, but the biggest nuisance was how hard Laura Montgomery worked to not annoy her daughter. “What if I pick up some pizza for tonight? We could watch a movie together. That new one with Ryan Gosling is in the Redbox. What do you say?”

“I’m tired, Mom. Not today.”

Laura bobbed her head, her smile plastic. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m going to the grocery store and the salon today, but I should be back before dinner. Is that okay?”

“Okay.” Alice lifted a piece of toast to her mouth and took a small bite.

“Remember to chew on the right side too, sweetie.”

“Okay,” she mumbled, toast crumbs dribbling off her lips.

Alice turned her attention to the television and zoned out to the sound of screeching, shallow women, who probably also cried themselves to sleep at night. Four episodes later, she surfaced, stirring in her chair and looking around. Someone was knocking on the front door, which was odd since her mom normally swung the door open before a potential visitor even had a chance to knock. Slogging through the memory of their conversation this morning, Alice remembered Laura saying she would be gone most of the day today.

“Alice?” Someone tapped on the glass of her covered window. Her new, easily accessible bedroom, which had once been the den, faced the front porch. The shadow of a tall man showed through the drapes. Panic rose up through her, freezing her in place until the man spoke again.

“Hey, it’s Matthew. Um, the veterinarian? I hoped I could talk to you.”

Fear turning to annoyance, Alice’s shoulders relaxed. It took her longer than most to get to the front door, even though she was only a few steps away. When she opened the door, she rolled her eyes at the lanky man with a honey-brown gaze and a too-wide mouth who stood on the other side of the screen door.

“I’m not the one with brain damage, Matt. I remember who you are,” she said, keeping to the shadows inside the entry. She’d known Matthew Weller since she was a little girl. He’d been the awkward, goofy kid in school, and time hadn’t changed him much. There’d been no reason to see him since the accident; she didn’t have a horse that needed his care. But she knew that he’d taken over his family’s large animal practice.

Matt shrugged. “Just making sure.” His lips twitched in an almost-smile, as if he thought he was funny. He gestured to the porch outside. “Can we talk for a second?”

“Mom will be home soon?” She spoke the words like a question because she didn’t know why he would need to ask her anything.

“Oh, well, that’s good.” The porch’s floorboards groaned beneath his shifting weight. “But I came here to talk to you specifically.”

“If it’s an unpaid vet bill or something…” Alice cleared her throat. “I don’t handle that stuff anymore. Mom does.”

“Gosh, no.” Matthew shook his head, waving his hands in the air, like unpaid vet bills were ridiculous. “It’s nothing like that.”

“So what is it?”

Her brisk tone made Matthew fumble his words as he said, “I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Let me clarify,” Alice said slowly. “I don’t understand why you need to ask me anything. Why can’t you talk to my mom?”

“Because it seemed more appropriate to talk to you about it.”

Alice frowned, her brows pulling together. The right side of her mouth puckered, so she quickly smoothed out her features. “Why?”

“Well,” Matthew paused, as if he hadn’t expected her to be contrary, “it affects you the most, I guess.”

“What question?”

He sighed, raking his hand through his mop of thick brown hair. “Shit, Alice. Cut me a break, okay? I want to talk to you about something because it wouldn’t be fair to you if I asked your mom.”

Matthew hadn’t been in her group of friends during school, and he’d gone to an out-of-state university for college. But Alice knew a few things about him, like he’d dated only one girl throughout high school and that he’d roped steers at rodeos on the weekends, where they’d crossed paths when she was there to barrel race with Rosie. He’d watched her a lot, like many boys had watched her, but unlike them, he’d always blushed when she caught him. He was a fixture of small towns: the local good guy, who’d marry a local girl and have a herd of adorable local babies.

Alice sucked in her cheeks, thinking, and her curiosity eventually won out. “Fine.”

Matthew opened the screen door for her, looking her straight in the eyes as she came out of the house, her cane thwacking against the wooden slats. Now she was the one who flushed and turned her face away. There were no shadows in which to hide on the porch, so she sat on the swing while Matthew settled on the edge of a rocking chair. It wasn’t safe to look off the porch; the barn and Rosie’s fields were across from the house, so Alice kept her eyes on the wall above Matthew’s shoulder.

“How have you been doing?” he asked. He glanced down her body, taking in her lumpy sweats and old shirt. It was impossible to hide the state of her face—the face that he’d once watched so closely.

“Okay.”

He nodded, clearly struggling for conversation, even though he’d come here with a purpose. Alice wished he’d get to it. “I thought about coming out a few times, but I figured your friends probably stayed over a lot. I didn’t want to intrude or anything.”

Her throat constricted. “Nobody’s come.”

His chin jerked as if he was surprised. “What? Brooke and Haley haven’t been by?” He laughed at his own question because, surely, her best friends had come to visit her since her accident. Anything else would be ridiculous.

It was ridiculous, Alice thought. No one came, and she never called or texted anyone. In truth, she was embarrassed by her life now. Somehow, she’d been the one struck by tragedy and left behind. Brooke was engaged, and Haley was at rodeos every weekend; Alice followed their bright lives with focused intention on Facebook. She poured over their pictures and read all their posts.

Once upon a time, she’d ruled over them, but now she was the overlooked one. They’d moved on with their glittering lives, and Alice barely managed to leave the house.

“They sent flowers,” Alice offered, trying to be nice, but even she heard the icy edge to her words.

The bouquet was a pathetic goodbye that decayed in the hospital room until her mom had thrown out the stinking, rotting flowers.

The corners of Matthew’s lips turned down, his eyes narrowing. “That’s bullshit.”

Apparently, he’d grown some balls too, Alice thought. She lifted a shoulder. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Oh, right. Well, you know that I took over the practice?”

Alice nodded. The smell of grass was starting to unsettle her as the surge of memories began to surface. Tucker, her border collie, trotted up from the barn, but she didn’t look at him until he was bounding up the porch and dancing in front of Matthew.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, scratching behind the dog’s ears as he talked. “So there was a case of animal abuse out in Forde County. I was the vet they called since their local one was on vacation. Anyway, some asshole had about ten horses and never bothered to feed or water them. The humane society took them, and they’ve been staying at the practice’s barn.” Matthew paused, lifting the brim of his hat to rub his forehead before he tugged it back down. “A few didn’t make it. It was bad, Alice.”

Alice had gone hollow. She nodded tightly again.

“This is why I wanted to talk to you. See, we don’t have the room at the practice. And we need the stalls for actual critical cases. These horses need somewhere to mend, a place where they can recover with some peace and quiet.”

His eyes drifted to the large ten-stall barn and fields next to them, but Alice kept her eyes glued to his face. She didn’t look, couldn’t look. Tucker settled at her feet, propping his chin on her bare toes. He used to chase her and Rosie across those same fields that Matthew was examining now.

“I need your help, I guess. You’re the only farm that doesn’t have other horses. These sick ones need to be under quarantine.” Matthew searched her face for a long moment, finally noticing the surge of pain he was causing her. He took in her tense shoulders and tight mouth with a shake of his head. “I don’t know… you were just the first one I thought of. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.” But her voice cracked. He stood up to comfort her, but she shifted away. “I can’t help you. I don’t—I mean, we don’t have horses anymore.” She gestured to the empty barn and wasted, overgrown fields. “We don’t do that anymore. I mean—”

“Alice,” he said, “you don’t have to explain. I understand.”

“Okay.” Her throat was thick, her voice barely more than a squeak.

He stepped back, his eyes falling under the shadow of his hat’s brim. “Sorry for bothering you. Do you need anything? Help inside or something?”

“I’m okay.”

He nodded briskly. “Well, I’ll see you later then. Thanks for your time.” With that, he hurried down the steps, his long strides carrying him quickly across the yard to his worn truck.

Alice watched him go, her eyes darting between him and the barn. Horses were the forbidden subject. The notion was too painful to even discuss because the only horse that mattered was dead. Alice didn’t have a pillow this time as the tears pricked in the back of her eyes. She remembered Rosie’s screams in the last few minutes of her life.

After the helicopter had taken her and her father away, someone had pried Rosie from the crumpled steel. They’d taken her body from the scene, and Alice’s mother had given the orders to dispose of it. Later, Laura told Alice that she hadn’t been thinking clearly; she hadn’t realized Alice would want —need—the body back. Her mother hadn’t understood why Alice had screamed and cried and tore apart her stitches.

She couldn’t help Rosie. She’d betrayed her in that. Her best friend had died alone, and now Rosie was gone, without a place to rest where Alice could visit her.

“Matt, wait!” she called, lurching up from the swing. Tucker sat up and barked. “Wait!”

Matthew spun around. “Are you okay?” he asked, hurrying back, like she might need him. But she’d finally looked over at the barn, and now she found that she couldn’t look away.

“I’ll do it,” she said, her voice breaking, a tear slipping down her cheek.

“What’s wrong?” He was on the porch and in front of her in two strides. He pulled her to him, like they were old friends, tucking her damaged face against his chest. “Why are you crying? I’m so sorry, Alice. I wasn’t thinking.”

Apparently, he wasn’t listening either. Alice huffed against his shirt, roughly swiping at the tear. The annoyance helped to clear the sadness away enough for her to speak. “Nothing is wrong. I’m saying I’ll help you.”

He stepped back, frowning. “No, Alice. I shouldn’t have asked you. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Good grief. I’m gonna help you. Why are you backing out now?” She scratched Tucker’s belly with her toes so she would have something to do besides look at Matthew. She didn’t want him to see the redness in her eyes and know that she was barely keeping it together.

“Well, I … I mean, will you be okay with that?”

“I’m not going to do the work,” Alice said quickly. “I have physical therapy and … stuff. I can’t.”

“Right.” Matthew nodded eagerly. “I’ll be able to handle everything between farm calls and appointments during the day. You won’t have to do anything.”

“No point in not using a perfectly good barn,” Alice mumbled, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

“It’s a real nice barn.” Matthew bit his lip. When she didn’t respond, he went on. “Can I bring them out tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll bring shavings and hay with me too. Can I walk down there now and check things out?”

“Sure.”

“Do you want to come with me?”

“I have to do my exercises,” she lied.

“Oh, right.” Matthew shifted his weight again. “I really appreciate this,” he offered, not knowing what else to say.

“It’s no problem.” Another lie.

They stood together for an uncomfortable beat of silence. Finally, like it was the brightest idea he’d had all week, Matthew fumbled for his phone in his pocket. “Can I have your number? I’ll text you tomorrow to let you know what time I’m coming.”

She rattled off the numbers quickly, ready to be back inside and away from the warm summer breeze carrying all-too-familiar smells. If she let herself, she recalled the exact pitch of Rosie’s whinny from inside the barn when she heard Alice coming down the drive. It was all there, all those memories, sneaking up on Alice.

She was so distracted that Matthew’s hug caught her off guard, and she actually hugged him back. Recovering, she pulled away. “Thank you so much for doing this,” he said, grinning down at her and sounding more genuine this time. He seemed less nervous when he treated her like someone normal and not like a broken toy.

“Sure.”

“I’ll text you tomorrow. Bye, Tucker.” He bent to pet the dog before he walked back down the porch steps, waving over his shoulder. She didn’t return the gesture because she was already hurrying back inside, screen door slamming as tears started falling again.

The post Preview of “Little Girls and Their Ponies” appeared first on Books by Meg Collett.

Big News for “End of Days” Series Fans

When I ended the End of Days series with “The Only One,” I knew Michaela and Gabriel’s story ended there. It was a point, I thought, that let readers use their imaginations to fill in what happened later. I knew, however, that Clark’s story wasn’t finished. I planned to wrap up his tale with a book sometime next year.

However…

Due to the nearly overwhelming outpouring of love and support for Clark’s story, I’ve decided to re-arrange my planned schedule for next year and start right away on Clark’s book. But for those of you who know and love Clark, you know he’s a little different. So I wanted to do something a little different for him too…

I’ve decided to take his story and make it a serial series called Days of New. What this means is that I will take what would’ve been three novels and turn them into shorter serials that are released every two weeks. I plan for nine serials at this point with the first releasing on April 6, 2015, entitled “Speaking of the Devil.” Like I said, they will release every two weeks after that.

Please note: I know some authors have abused this serial format in the past. They leave you hanging with awful cliffhangers and no resolution. Some readers think the serial format is just a way to take advantage of a reader’s enthusiasm for the story and make money off of it. I really, really, really want to set my serials apart from this standard.

I hope you will have the faith in me and know that I would never do this. While I like my endings to be thought-provoking and exciting and slightly cliff-hanger-ish, I will write each serial so that it is a little story in its own right. I hope to achieve a sense of understanding and resolution in each book while still cultivating a sense of excitement and anticipation for the next serial.

So, at the end of each book, there will be a pre-order option for the next book in the series. All pre-orders will be priced at $0.99. Full price upon release will go up to $1.99.

AND! As a gift to the fans and my newsletter subscribers, I will send out the first book FREE via email. It’s super easy to download and all that, I promise. If you would like to go on and sign up for my newsletter, here is the link.

Let me know your thoughts on this format! And if you have any specific things you want resolved or would like to see in the series, let me know that too! I love hearing from y’all, and this is really a series for the fans, so I want it to be as interactive as possible!

Love,

Meg

#hesback

Goodreads link here!

Cover for “Speaking of the Devil” will come in January! Expect awesomeness

The post Big News for “End of Days” Series Fans appeared first on Books by Meg Collett.

Fridays with Meg: My Outlining Process

The post Fridays with Meg: My Outlining Process appeared first on Books by Meg Collett.

Sale Announcement! 99 Cent eBooks!

“fakers”

 

a contemporary romance novel

 

99 Cent eBook on sale for a very limited time! Grab your copy now!

Kyra Aberdeen is a YouTube sensation. Her bubbling personality and fresh beauty capture the hearts of millions each week through her videos. But she’s just faking it. Because beneath the surface is a simmering darkness that threatens to pull Kyra under some days. She masks her depression with a sunny smile and bright laugh.

When Kyra moves to Canaan Island and buys her deceased mother’s childhood home, she is hoping to confront the lurking darkness that haunts her every step. But life never goes according to plan, and when Kyra meets her grumpy contractor, Hale Cooper, it seems he’s not going to make things any easier for her. Yet Kyra is drawn to him, to a man whose every emotion plays across his face as he feels it. But she’s never let herself get too close to anyone before, and she finds herself in uncharted waters.

If she lowers her guard and allows herself to love Hale, will the darkness creep in too?

 

SALE LINKS!

(sale price reduced from original price of $2.99)

Amazon US * Amazon UK * Amazon CA * Kobo * Barnes and Noble * Smashwords

The post Sale Announcement! 99 Cent eBooks! appeared first on Books by Meg Collett.

Sh!t I Learned Today: Publishing Contracts and Clauses to Avoid

When I first realized I wanted to be an author, I found that I was easily overwhelmed by the extreme learning curve I had before me. And it wasn’t just stuff you had to learn, but also execute every day after that. To keep from getting ulcers (jury is still out on that) I told myself that if I could just learn one new thing a day, I would be okay and I wouldn’t get so stressed out that I wanted to quit.

Well, that kind of worked. Ha! But I thought I would share some of the things I learned along the way on this blog.

So…

Sh!t I Learned Today: Don’t Read Bad Reviews!

 

When I first realized I wanted to be a writer (oh, when I was around nine years-old), I assumed I’d go the traditional publisher route. Really at the time, I had no clue about self-publishing, so pursuing an agent and then a publisher felt like my only option. But then I read David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital in 2013, and my mind changed. Below is the link for David’s Power Pack of GREAT how-to books for only $0.99, which I would highly suggest for anyone who hasn’t read these books.

The Indie Author Power Pack: How To Write, Publish, & Market Your Book

 

Self-publishing was my best option. Reading that book made me understand why I wanted to self-publish and why it was a good fit for me. But every now and then I get a little twinge for that agent/publisher/see-my-book-in-Barnes-&-Noble route. I even did a little Twitter pitch contest for New Leaf Agency.

Then I read The Naked Truth About Self-Publishing (great read! I highly, highly recommend you go buy a copy now if you haven’t read it), and I finally understood some of the reasons why a traditionally published contract might actually hurt my career. I’m not saying being a hybrid author with traditionally published books is bad. I just mean that some of the clauses in a standard traditionally published contract can be detrimental.

 

Do Not Compete

This is the big one that stopped me in my tracks. I’d heard of it before, but I never really understood. A ‘do not compete’ clause in your contract means that for a period of time (three months up to a year after signing a publishing contract) you can’t publish anything that would compete with the book you just sold to a publisher. Basically this clause means that while your traditional book is getting all fancied up to be released, you can’t release anything else via self-publishing that could make more money than the book the publishing house bought. Sucks right?

 

Joint Accounting

Joint accounting is another contract clause that really screws an author over. Joint accounting means that when you have a multiple book deal with a publishing house, you can’t earn out on book one until you’ve earned out on the other books in the series. This is apparently impossible to do unless you’re really a big-time author. Cough, Veronica Roth, Cough. ‘Earning out’ means that you’ve earned back the advance the publishing house gave you when you signed your contract. The advance is what they think your book is going to earn. You have to basically pay this advance back.

What you want is separate accounting, meaning that each book in your series can earn out on its own.

 

This isn’t a clause but it’s an industry standard that I found interesting

Amazon gives you 70% profit cut for a $2.99 book. The only other person taking a cut off your book is Amazon. I can live with that.

With traditional publishing houses and agents, you have a lot of people working on your book that needs to be paid. Your agent gets 15% right away. Then the publisher gets the next huge chunk, which leaves you with 25% of net. This is industry standard. Some publishing houses will even reduce an author to 15% of net. So if you sold a $3.99 ebook, you’re only making a nickel versus $2.79.

 

 

If your book is so popular or if you’re becoming a big deal, you could probably negotiate these clauses away. But for someone who really wants a traditional published deal from the get-go, think about these clauses and whether or not you can live with them. If so, great! If not, welcome to the dark side.

The post Sh!t I Learned Today: Publishing Contracts and Clauses to Avoid appeared first on Books by Meg Collett.

Fridays with Meg: My Editing Process

Hey everyone! Here’s my first YouTube video! But I’m also going to use this as my blog post today too. Here’s a look into my editing process. Leave a comment and let me know what yours is!

 

 

The post Fridays with Meg: My Editing Process appeared first on Books by Meg Collett.

Sh!t I Learned Today: Scrivener

When I first realized I wanted to be an author, I found that I was easily overwhelmed by the extreme learning curve I had before me. And it wasn’t just stuff you had to learn, but also execute every day after that. To keep from getting ulcers (jury is still out on that) I told myself that if I could just learn one new thing a day, I would be okay and I wouldn’t get so stressed out that I wanted to quit.

Well, that kind of worked. Ha! But I thought I would share some of the things I learned along the way on this blog.

So…

Sh!t I Learned Today: Scrivener

I seriously thought about entitling this “Scrivener, you bastard,” but I didn’t think the SEO would be too good on that.

You know you’re a writer when…you make a lame SEO joke.

So anyway, on to Scrivener! If you’re like me, you’re a little behind on the Scrivener train. You hear people talk about it (like Veronica Roth and other famous authors aka the mirages), but you’ve never tried it for yourself, because…um…Word. But then you start seeing it more and more. Maybe you use it to make ARCs for bloggers so that you can send out ePubs and mobis. So you’re using it a little but not full-time. And then everyone just won’t shut up about it, and you realize that Word sucks balls.

Why does Word suck? Have you read my introductory Smashwords formatting post? I’ll be doing a full post on “how-to” later (let me know in the comments if this would be something you’d like!). But let me just say that Word does a lot of little nasty things that are super obnoxious. To get a clean HTML for an ebook, all those little obnoxious things need to go away.

I’m reading Write. Publish. Repeat by Johnny Truant and Sean Platt. It’s really good, and I suggest you start it right away. They also talk about how amazing Scrivener is.

So I’ve done it. I’ve gone full-time. I moved over my current finished product for editing and my work in progress (WIP) project for actual writing. It was scary…but I did it.

My main hold up was the fact that I didn’t understand Scrivener’s saving process. I backup my files a lot. And Word was just more familiar for that. But Scrivener auto saves like literally every two seconds. I’m not misusing ‘literally.’ It actually saves every few seconds. And then you have the option to create a backup destination (I chose a new file in DropBox), where the project will save to every time you exit the program. You can also manually backup the project, and it takes roughly 5 seconds.

 

I kind of digressed up there, but I want this post to be about is the basics of Scrivener. What do you need to know now to start using it?

1. You need to download the free trial. Here is the link. This is an actual day free trial. So since I used to only use Scrivener for ARCs, my trial has lasted like four months, because it only counts the days that you actually use it.

2. So now you need to start a new project. That’s easy. Just open Scrivener and say a “blank” new project. Now if you like me, and just moving over a few chapters of a WIP, I just copied and pasted. You can import Word files. I haven’t done this yet.

3. The tricky part that you need to focus on as you’re copying and pasting is the binder. WTF is the binder, you ask?

 

 

The circled part is the binder. Now look closely. I have folders named “Opening to II.” This is just how I choose to separate my WIPs. That’s opening to inciting incident. Inside that folder, there are four chapters. When you copy and paste a chapter at a time into the right folder and the right page inside that folder, the name will change to the first sentence of the text. Just double click and change it to the chapter title. I don’t think this is a big deal, because when you compile, you can add in chapter numbers and omit the way those pages are already named. This is just simpler and more organized for me. What is a big deal is that each new page or “text” is a chapter when you compile. So you need to separate them out from the beginning.

*To create folders, you can click a little folder icon down at the bottom of the page. To add pages inside a folder, there’s a button right next to the folder one. You can also add them from the top of the screen (it’s a green circle with a ‘+’ sign inside it). It is important to note that how your folders are arranged in the binder is important to how your ebook compiles. See how my folders are all aligned to the far left? And the pages fall just slightly to the right underneath them? This is important. You can drag and drop the folders into the proper position, or you can right click and say move “left” or move “right.” This took some getting used to at first.

 

4. If you look further down in the binder, you also see “Research.” Here, I just dragged and dropped my extra files, like my outline, cast of characters, description, etc. You can also put covers and inspiration board in here. All of which I took advantage of. When you compile your book, you can just pull the cover from inside the project file.

5. Okay, so I think that basically covered how to get started writing in Scrivener. These are just the very basics that I’ve learned. Obviously, we will all need to learn more so that we can get all fancy and stuff. But the next important thing to know is compiling, because that’s the sole purpose of using Scrivener for me. I have to have a way to make ebooks. I’ve used Scrivener to make ARCs before, but I believe it also has the ability to make final version ebooks, which is exciting for me. So on to compiling. This part kinda sucks, so hang in there with me.

*P.S. there are a lot of good YouTube tutorials on compiling, which is where I learned how to do this.

6. Click “compile.”

 

 

7. Now you need to choose what type of file you want. I’m choosing the ‘mobi’ option.

 

*****One thing I do want to point out. And if you are reading this while creating an ebook, you might have already run into this problem. When you first download Scrivener and first try to compile a mobi, it will tell you something about requiring KindleGen to do it. If you look in the picture above, you will see ‘KindleGen’ at the bottom on the left side. The directions when you click on that are pretty self-explanatory. It’s just a zipped file that you have to download and show Scrivener where it is. Super easy.

 

8. The next important part is choosing the contents, which you can also see in the above picture. You can see I have a title page, copyright page, and then the chapters. But look to the right. See ‘pg break before’? We need to click some of those boxes to create proper chapters and page breaks. We also need to click ‘include’ so that those text pages actually show up in the ebook. This is how I clicked them. You don’t need a page break on the “story” folder.

 

9. See how I didn’t click ‘story’? So now click on ‘cover’ to the left. This is where you will add the cover. It has to be in the project files, which is a bit odd. You can’t just pull it from another place on your computer. The cover needs to be 800×600 pixels.

 

10. Now on to ‘meta-data, which is a required step for mobi files. Here’s what all I filled in.

 

11. So now you just hit ‘compile.’ It’ll let you choose a place to save it to. And then it will start compiling. You have to wait a minute until another pop-up comes up saying that it’s done.

 

Now you should have a complete mobi file saved in your computer folders! What I do next is immediately check the file. I use the “Kindle Previewer,” which you can download easily here. This is really an invaluable tool when it comes to checking your files, because it mimics the exact way a Kindle will show your book. You just go to ‘open book’ and pull up your newly created mobi file.

You also need an epub previewer. I use Adobe Digital Editions 3.0, which is also free.

 

 

Okay! So hopefully this helped. I’m really excited about all the possibilities that Scrivener holds for us. I’m excited to figure more stuff out, which I’m sure I’ll share here. Yay Scrivener!

 

In the comments, let me know if you use Scrivener to create your ACTUAL final ebook file versions. I’m interested to see if the HTML is actually clean enough to pull this off!

 

The post Sh!t I Learned Today: Scrivener appeared first on Books by Meg Collett.

Sh!t I Learned Today: Bad Reviews and Kathleen Hale

When I first realized I wanted to be an author, I found that I was easily overwhelmed by the extreme learning curve I had before me. And it wasn’t just stuff you had to learn, but also execute every day after that. To keep from getting ulcers (jury is still out on that) I told myself that if I could just learn one new thing a day, I would be okay and I wouldn’t get so stressed out that I wanted to quit.

Well, that kind of worked. Ha! But I thought I would share some of the things I learned along the way on this blog.

So…

Sh!t I Learned Today: Bad Reviews and Kathleen Hale

 

Okay, fellow authors, I’m going to ask you to put on your superhero cape, because this post is likely impossible.

Bad reviews. We all get them right? I mean, it’s the nature of the beast. Not everyone is going to love what you write. You shouldn’t strive for everyone to like your book. Cause that’s just madness. So how do you deal with the bad reviews?

I’m sure a lot of y’all have heard about the Kathleen Hale Guardian article about her “lightly stalking” a person who left her a one-star review. If not, you can check it out here. It’s caused quite a stir in the blogging/author community. Now whether or not this reviewer was a troll or whatever, is besides the point. And whether or not Hale is off her rocker is another point.

Neither are points I’m going to be making in this post.

The point I will be making is that you shouldn’t read bad reviews. Or if you do, you should have your superhero cape on.

I read most of my Amazon reviews, because Amazon is where I sale most of my books. I want to make sure I’m seeing what potential customers are seeing. As an author, really the only control you have over reviews on Amazon is clicking them as “helpful” or “not helpful.”

I think it goes without saying that you should never, ever comment on a review, right? Never do it.

So while I do read Amazon reviews, I normally avoid the one-star or two-star reviews. I only read them if I know I’m having a good day or if I know I won’t care. I read them with the mindset of laughing at myself. A recent bad review said that the main character in my End of Days series was a weak, whinny person. When I read that review, I laughed. Because I was like, ‘you know what? Michaela kinda was a total twat.’ She had weak, whinny moments. She was never an easy character to write. So, I agreed with the bad reviewer and I could laugh at myself and Michaela.

Do I love Michaela? Yes. Did I write her to having weak moments where she breaks down and loses it? Yes. I wanted her to be real and honest even though she was Heaven’s General. She struggles. And I liked that struggle.

But I still totally get that she can be a twat. So hahahhahahahahaha bad review. I agree.

You keep the power over the bad reviews if you let yourself laugh about them.

Now on to Goodreads.

The only time I ever read reviews on Goodreads is if one of my beta readers posted a review over there for a book not released yet. Other than that, I never, ever, ever read reviews on Goodreads.

I feel like some people are a little harsher over there, and they post reviews that they would never post on Amazon. I also think Goodreads is a mine field for trolls and assholes.

As a reader, I love Goodreads. I love marking my progress on books I’m reading. And listing these books as ‘read’ and those books as ‘to read.’ It makes my inner OCD self very happy.

As an author, I avoid it like the plague. I only post books on there for readers like myself to enjoy. I do not peruse it as an author. Too much bad juju.

Now, I love reviewers’ opinions. I’m really happy that they can freely post them on Amazon or Goodreads. I’m not discrediting their notions about my books or books in general. Go for it. Hate my book? Post that bad review.

I hope you’ll agree with me here. We write to tell our stories. Primarily, we write for ourselves. Bad reviews come with the territory of telling our stories, but it’s our right as authors to not care about them. To write anyway. To tell our stories anyway.

I wish Kathleen Hale could have felt this way before she got so worked up and stalked someone. I wish trolls didn’t exist. I wish people didn’t feel the need to tear one another down.

But they do.

So our only power is to choose to overcome them or embrace them. That’s our superhero cape.

Reviews don’t define our stories. Maybe Amazon makes it seem so. So does Goodreads. But reviews are only people’s opinion about our books. We lose control of that when we publish. The only thing that defines our story is our motivation to tell it, to write it, to hopefully make someone’s day better for reading it.

Everyone else can suck it.

The post Sh!t I Learned Today: Bad Reviews and Kathleen Hale appeared first on Books by Meg Collett.

Sh!t I Learned Today: New Author’s Books Sold

When I first realized I wanted to be an author, I found that I was easily overwhelmed by the extreme learning curve I had before me. And it wasn’t just stuff you had to learn, but also execute every day after that. To keep from getting ulcers (jury is still out on that) I told myself that if I could just learn one new thing a day, I would be okay and I wouldn’t get so stressed out that I wanted to quit.

Well, that kind of worked. Ha! But I thought I would share some of the things I learned along the way on this blog.

So…

Sh!t I Learned Today: Analyzing 9 Months of Books Sold

Let me start this post by saying one thing: I majored in Economics, but I’m AWFUL at analyzing numbers when it comes to my own business. So if I fumble through this…I’m sorry. The struggle is real.

Okay! So let’s start with a table of numbers all over the place, shall we?

Total Books Sold
116
180
146
240
114
280
363
128
105
1672


Fakers
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
17
17


EOD KU/KOLL
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
4
4
8


End of Days Box Set (70%)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
10
2
12


TOO (70%)
 
 
 
 
 
0
58
56
35
149


The Only One (35%)
 
 
 
 
 
51
36
1
1
89


TLO (70%)
 
 
 
35
24
16
43
55
34
207


The Lost One (35%)
 
 
59
13
0
61
22
1
1
157


THO (70%)
65
34
3
0
0
0
0
0
0
102


The Hunted One (35%)
51
146
84
192
90
152
204
1
11
931


The Hunted One (FREE)
0
0
0
0
0
0
5042
2396
3231
10669


 
Jan
Feb
March
April
May
June
July
Aug
Sept
Totals

 

So before we all have a stroke…

The vertical column is all my books and the percentages of royalties I received from them. So for each book, I have 35% (for $0.99 sales) and 70% (for $2.99 sales). I also have a free column for The Hunted One. I also abbreviated.

The Hunted One = THO

The Lost One = TLO

The Only One = TOO

End of Days Box Set = EOD

And then the KU/KOLL is the Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Online Lending programs, which the End of Days box set is enrolled in.

Hopefully that column makes sense now.

The horizontal column is obviously the months since I started publishing. I started in January with my first book in my paranormal series (End of Days). September is the latest month that I have data for.

This post is also about books sold, not book sales. I’ll only be looking at the quantity, not the dollar amounts.

Here we go…

 

January

I released The Hunted One on January 19th for $2.99. Then almost immediately did a flash sale for $0.99. I’m actually pretty happy with these release numbers (although I should have just released at $0.99). I know they aren’t amazing or anything, but my goal was to sale 50 books. I believe I had 116 books sold, because I gave away a lot of ARCs and pre-release copies to literally anyone who wanted to read the book. Some might think this hurt my sales numbers. Maybe it did? But I had a good amount of reviews on Goodreads before the release and on release day. In my opinion, by giving away copies, I generated a decent amount of awareness for a debut book by a completely unknown author.

 

February

I did another sale of The Hunted One, which I promoted pretty heavily. Hence the increase in the 35% numbers.

 

March

So in this month, I had another release on March 27th. It was the second book in the End of Days series, The Lost One. I release TLO at $0.99 and lowered the price of THO to $0.99 to supplement the release. I had more sales of THO than I did of the new release. I think this is pretty typical for a series. A new release always promotes the previous book too. This is pretty cool because it means that by having a new release in the series, I found 84 new readers, who will hopefully want to get the second and third books too.

 

April

I did a Book Gorilla ad for THO this month, which sold about 31 books (didn’t pay for the ad). I also had a Pixel Scroll and Bargain eBook Hunter ad that ran for two days. I was trying to find a good place to advertise. Moral of the story: Don’t use Pixel Scroll or Bargain eBook Hunter. Or at least, I didn’t have much success. I also did a Book Sends ad at the end of the month, which sold about 35 books. This ad spiked me higher in sales and ranking than my release of TLO. At the very end of the month, I had an Ereader News Today ad, which sold around 68 books. I really, really like Ereader News Today, because your ad always pays for itself. They only charge you based on the number of books you actually sale.

 

May

I played around with more advertising sites. Not much to note here. By this month, THO was set permanently at $0.99.

 

June

The Only One released on June 30th for $0.99. Once again, sales of the first book in the series spiked. TLO even sold more than the TOO new release. I did a Kindle Book Review and Digital Book Today ads to promote the series, but the sales were minimal. And the ads were expensive. But I did do a big Facebook event/party for the release. I got donations from other authors and my street team helped me host the event. It was pretty big, and helped promote the book’s release and the entire series.

 

July

So now things get interesting. THO became perma-free on July 28th. On that day, there were 1797 downloads, 1799 the next day, and then down to 1082 downloads the day after that. As you can see from the totals, July was my best month in terms of books sold, but this is due to the fact that the entire first part of the month, THO was still $0.99. I did see a noticeable spike in sales of TLO and TOO (both at 70% royalty) in accordance with the free price setting on the 28th.

THO hit the #71 spot overall in Amazon’s free store.

So now the big question is: Will I sale more books (TLO and TOO at a higher price point – $2.99) because THO is perma-free?

**If you subtract the $0.99 books sold from this month, I only sold 101 books at the $2.99 price point.**

 

August

For me, it was pretty obvious that the large amount of free downloads coming in from THO helped the sales of TLO and TOO in August. I had the box set release this month, but I didn’t do a lot of advertising or promotion of it. From the beginning, I knew the box set wouldn’t be a huge seller, because I’m not going to sell three full-length books for $0.99 or something crazy like that. So I priced it at $4.99 from the beginning.

Also, by having a top ranking free book (THO), some advertising sites picked me up for free. Which was awesome. I think this helped keep sales of TLO and TOO up there.

 

September

So now we get to the meaty part. I had a release, but it was a contemporary romance and nothing related to my previous paranormal books. I released it at $2.99, which I think hurt my sales a lot. The release of Fakers was pretty dismal, but I’m going to do another post about that.

Back to the End of Days series. By looking at the sales of TLO and TOO, you see they dropped a bit. But I didn’t do any advertising or much promotion this month for this series (focusing on the release of Fakers and took some time off). So those sales were purely reflections of the free price of THO.

September looks like my lowest month of books sold, but it wasn’t my lowest in terms of sales. Because the books I did sale were in the 70% royalty cut.

 

 

This is nine months of books sold. It’s crazy to look at a chart of this information after living through it each month. I know these numbers are probably pretty low compared to some authors. But I’m proud of them. I think for a new author releasing books in a paranormal niche genre, I did pretty decent.

I think it’s still too early to answer to question about THO being perma-free and helping sales of the rest of the series. I’m sure I also left out some promotions and stuff I did in certain months. So my analysis might not be completely spot-on.

But I wanted to do this post so other new authors can compare their numbers to mine. When you’re just starting out and releasing new books, it feels like your all alone on this deserted island. It’s hard to find posts that talk about books sold in the beginning (at least from normal authors, whose sales didn’t explode right away). I hope this post will help someone to feel a little less alone. Hopefully someone will be able to compare their sales to mine and gain something from the information.

 

 

The post Sh!t I Learned Today: New Author’s Books Sold appeared first on Books by Meg Collett.

FAKERS Release Day!

fakers
by meg collett

 

Genre:

Contemporary Erotic Romance and Women’s Fiction

Description:

Kyra Aberdeen is a Youtube sensation. Her bubbling personality and fresh beauty capture the hearts of millions each week through her videos. But she’s just faking it. Because beneath the surface is a simmering darkness that threatens to pull Kyra under some days. She masks her depression with a sunny smile and bright laugh.

When Kyra moves to Canaan Island and buys her deceased mother’s childhood home, she is hoping to confront the lurking darkness that haunts her every step. But life never goes according to plan, and when Kyra meets her grumpy contractor, Hale Cooper, it seems he’s not going to make things any easier for her. Yet Kyra is drawn to him, to a man whose every emotion plays across his face as he feels it. But she’s never let herself get too close to anyone before, and she finds herself in uncharted waters.

If she lowers her guard and allows herself to love Hale, will the darkness creep in too?

 

 

 

 

 

BUY LINKS!

Amazon

Amazon UK

Amazon CA

Barnes and Noble

Kobo

iTunes

Smashwords

Meg Collett lives deep in the hills of Tennessee where the cell phone service is a blessing and the Internet is a myth of epic proportions. She is the mother of one giant horse named Elle and two dogs named Wylla and Mandy. Her husband is a saint for putting up with her ragtag life.

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