M.L. Larson's Blog, page 19

Why do people ruin perfectly good pie by putting a mountain of whipped cream on it?

Why do people ruin perfectly good pie by putting a mountain of whipped cream on it?

I still need to do the forests and the labels, but here’s an...

I still need to do the forests and the labels, but here’s an early look at one of the maps that will appear in Yggdrasil Book 1.

This one is Nidavellir.

ylfra:Northern Lights (by Ronel Reyes)

ylfra:

Northern Lights (by Ronel Reyes)

Library Thing

I think, depending on how the current one goes, I may not do any more. So far, I feel like I’m just giving out free books to people who don’t even want them, and that’s not really helping anybody at all. It doesn’t cost anything, and it’s only about five minutes of effort, but the amount of books I gave away on there, for the complete lack of return is uncomfortable.

Either way, I am going to start offering review copies through my mailing list. So if you want free ebook copies, that’s...

Just hit the button

I just hit the button and put the next two books up for pre-order on Amazon.  They're currently in the queue, and should go live by tomorrow. I'll put links out in my newsletter on Friday, and on my blog and site on Monday.  Newsletter subscribers can also win a chance to earn free paperback copies of each.

Nidhöggr

Múspellsheimr is a realm unlike any other, with suns that never set and lakes and seas of poisoned water.  When Fenrir and Jörmungandr take drastic measures to survive the realm’s intense heat, they in turn endanger the lives of a family of vengeful giants.
In a deal to retrieve the ancient magic to undo what was done, Jörmungandr puts his life on the line while Fenrir is sent out with the landowner’s eldest daughter.  But when the magic isn’t where Fenrir expects it to be, he is forced to race against time and face witches, undead spirits, and self-made gods to save himself and his brother.
Releases April 1st.
Valkyrja
When war breaks out between the elves and the men on Álfheimr, all the warriors in the kingdom are called to fight for their king.  As a jarl’s daughter, Hilde is amongst the front lines, prepared to fight for her king and her land against the invaders.  But it isn’t long before sides begin to shift and lines blur.  Soon, Hilde finds her tribe allied with the men, and fighting against the king.  Unsure where her loyalties lie, Hilde does the unimaginable and flees from battle to seek out any who might help guide her to the right path.  Even if that help comes at an unpayable price.
Releases May 1st.  

LibraryThing Giveaway

If you entered into my LibraryThing giveaway for Dwarf's Ransom, you should be receiving several notices in your email.  All files have been sent out to the email addresses provided.  If you do not receive an email from me shortly, please be sure to check your spam folder.

I'm kind of excited to see how this works out.  This is the first time I've used a third party to host the giveaway, and it's already been easier than using Tumblr.  Depending on how this goes, I may continue to do this for all future releases.  Or I may not.  We'll see.

Amazon and Kindle Book Categories

This is something that's been on my mind for a while, and have two different opinions on it. When authors upload and publish their books to Amazon, there are two ways to get the book into the author's desired categories. The first is selecting them manually, from a long list of options. The second is through using specific tags. Both options are under the author's complete control, and it's something I both love and despise.

When you upload your book to Amazon, one of the first things you do is select the categories it belongs to. Amazon only allows you to pick two from the list, which is not a complete list of all the categories on their Kindle store. For new users especially, this can be very confusing because the second way to list your book into categories isn't immediately clear until you go digging around in the KDP help section.

Authors can select subcategories and niche categories based off their selections in the list by using certain tags. For example, fantasy has a sub section for mythology and legends, which has more subsections for Greek and Roman, Asian, Arthurian, and Norse and Viking. It's not uncommon to go browsing through the Norse section, and finding Greek and Roman stories in there, because those subsections share a few tags. It can be a little irritating if you're looking for books about Thor, but if you don't care which gods you read about, it's quite nice. Once you get the hang of using tags on Amazon, getting your book into multiple niche categories is easy. It's great for the author, to get more visibility, and it's great for readers who tend to only stick to certain categories when they read. 

And because authors can choose where their book shows up on the site, it gives them complete control over who sees their book. Which is great, because it lets some books which might wallow in a niche category, unseen for years, gain exposure by being placed in a larger category with more traffic.  It's become a fairly common tactic used by erotica authors, since the erotica category is hidden in literature and fiction, rather than under romance where readers might expect to find it. You'll actually find erotica just about anywhere. Since shapeshifters are popular, you get a lot of erotica in fantasy. The fact that Amazon gives authors this ability to give their books more exposure (with risks, such as having your book adult-locked so it doesn't show up in searches) is great. This is a tough industry, so if you can find a way to get an edge over the competition, take it. 

But as a reader, this is the most irritating thing on the whole of Amazon. There is a LOT of erotica in fantasy.  Most of it is easy to tell, because the covers and titles tend to follow certain conventions. It's easy to scroll past, but if you want to read about shapeshifters, it can be fairly difficult to find books about shapeshifters that aren't erotica. 

So it's weird. As a reader, I don't care about all these billionaire bears and the women who tame them. Get out of my way so I can find stories about shapeshifters just fucking shit up for everything else. Go back to erotica where you belong. But when I'm in writer mode, I'm trying to find ways to do the same thing. I want my book in as many categories as possible, because it means more people will see it, and possibly buy it. I don't think there's ever going to be a middle ground on this either. Amazon will never implement a way to filter out erotica, since in theory, that filter already exists, and it's not a filter anybody wants to be put on. 

I love Amazon's category selection and I hate it. It just seems to depend on the time of day, and what I'm doing. 

Book Review - Dragon (False Kings, True Gods Book 1)

False Kings, True Gods: Dragon 
Eva Mae Ramble
Price: $0.99

My Rating: Three stars (out of five)

Review:

I like a short read, so despite the other review complaining this book was too short, I picked this one up to give it a go. But ultimately, I have to agree with them.  This book is the first of a series, and there is some promising world building in this one, but the entire story felt rushed, and almost breathless. We're hardly given the chance to know the characters for themselves. Instead, they all seem to be described from the points of view of the other characters. The characters whose names all blend together, because they're all so long. Everyone has a name, a surname, and a byname. Some even have more than one byname.  While I had little trouble keeping them apart during reading, I cannot recall a single name even moments after reading the story.

But the story itself does show some promise.  There's an evil king (more on him and what makes him evil) who's taken over the land like he's a Lannister in King's Landing, his wife, whose husband he had previously murdered, their daughter, and the boy their daughter is betrothed to. When the boy runs away, the king stops everything to fetch him, lest he get eaten by dragons.  The only reason he fetches the boy is because he's betrothed to the daughter.  It was one of the elements that seemed particularly rushed to me, if he's the evil king who's already taken over everything, it seems odd that he'd go out of his way to fetch a boy he didn't much care for to begin with. It seemed as if he'd wanted the marriage, but the boy's kingdom is one that already fell, so the marriage felt moot anyway.  But since we never get to see anyone's motivations without seeing them through someone else's eyes, it's difficult to know what he's up to, or why.  In fact, the only thing we do know about him is that he raped his wife for twenty straight days until she conceived their daughter.  Rape as a way to show how evil someone is has never been a trope that sat well with me to begin with, but the flippancy in which it's discussed, even by the ten year old daughter, was disturbing. And that was another thing.  The daughter didn't seem like she was ten, and seemed to flip between sides and opinions as quickly as I flipped pages.  I would have loved to see more of what that was all about.  It seemed like she might have been playing some long game, but with the shortness of the story, it's difficult to tell if that was the case, or if the author just lost the voice halfway through. There's also a strangely Christian slant to this book, which I'm not sure if it's intentional or not.  But it didn't ping me as being overtly Christian until the Lord's Prayer was said to Ra, which was odd. 
And there was the whole thing with the dragons at the end.  I picked this up entirely because it was a book about dragons, and there it did deliver.  A least in the final act. At first I was confused about how many dragons there were, and had to read a passage several times before just guessing that there were three.  I really wanted to see more of the boy and his dragon, and wanted to find out more about the dragons. They seem intelligent in this author's world, and I wanted to see how far that went. I kept wanting the dragon to say something, or to give some definitive confirmation that it understood the boy, but the story ended abruptly just as it started to get truly interesting. Everything just suddenly wrapped up in a strangely neat bow that I'm still not entirely sure I understand the logic of.   The rest of the series isn't out yet, and I can't say if I will in the future. However saying that, I do appreciate that it was written, and I love seeing European-ish fantasy with characters who aren't white. 
Check it out if you like Princeless and dragons.  It's a short read that definitely feels like there could be a lot more behind it.  Again, the premise is interesting, and it shows a lot of potential, but the rushed quality of it makes it feel like there's a lot missing to this story.

Bad Business: BlueHost

My current web hosting is crap, and I've been looking into transferring my domain elsewhere.  I had every intention on doing that tonight, but one wrong decision has ruined my night and made me sick. 

When I clicked on BlueHost, it was because it was on a list of hosts recommended by WordPress.  I went through, and the pricing and products looked good, so I ordered the smallest package, since I don't need much.  It was going to be $3 a month, paid in advance for a year.  And since I already have the domain name, that was an added savings right there.

So when I purchased it and went to initiate the transfer, I got blocked because my account wasn't verified.  Well, I thought.  I'd gone through all the hoops, hadn't I?  I checked my email to make sure there wasn't a link I missed clicking on somewhere.  But no.  I have to phone them to verify my account.  And they're nine-to-five, so I couldn't even do that.  I was kind of annoyed, and went digging through the options to see what else I could even do without verifying my account (answer: nothing).  And that's when I saw that instead of being billed $36, I was billed over $230.  Because not only did they charge me for extra time I did not order, but they added on extra packages I did not order.  Packages I specifically opted out of. 

And I can't even cancel, because they're not open.  I feel so sick right out.  I can't remember the last time I've been taken advantage of so thoroughly.  First thing in the morning, I'm calling and speaking with someone's supervisor, and I am not hanging up until I get a full refund.  I was willing to deal with being jerked around with the verification, but I will not do business with this company ever again.

New Mailing List

I have a new mailing list set up.  Anybody subscribed to the old one has already been moved over to the new service.  Subscribing is now simpler and does not require a Google email address.  You can subscribe either by using the form on this blog's sidebar, or by going to this page. 

Mailing list subscribers automatically get entered into drawings for free books and other promotions.  Five signed copies of Sky Treader will be given to subscribers on April 1st.  Other titles will be offered as they become available.