S.C. Green's Blog, page 4

Article on reverse harem in Villainesse

In the interest of shouting the awesomeness of reverse harem to anyone who will listen, I have written a wee piece about the genre for Villainesse – an online feminist magazine.

Check out the article here. Let me know what you think. If you want to read some awesome reverse harem, check out my Briarwood Witches and Nevermore Bookshop series.

Steff on Mark Dawson’s Self-Publishing Formula podcast

One of the coolest things I’ve been doing recently is writing and talking more about indie publishing and how I got to where I am today.

I’ve been listening to podcasts like SFF Marketing, The Creative Penn, and Self-Publishing Formula for the last few years. They’re a great way to soak up wisdom and inspiration from other successful authors while I cook dinner or do my workout. I had no idea that one day I’d be one of the authors interviewed.

It was my absolute pleasure to talk with James on the Self-Publishing Formula podcast about my writing journey, how I used to take advantage of my five-hour commute, why and how I’m writing reverse harem, and what I’ve been doing to sell more books.

You can watch on Youtube here, listen here, and if you want to grab the free book for writers I created called Unleash the Beast, you can grab it by signing up here.

Thanks so much for having me on the show!

Musings on Art and Legacy with Nick Cave and VengaBoys

A few weeks ago, I attended ‘Conversations with Nick Cave’ at the Auckland Town Hall. You may not be familiar with my Nick Cave obsession. If not – welcome. My name is Steff and I like writing smutty books, roast potatoes, and Nick Cave.

Cave has spoken at length about how the Skeleton Tree album release and tour have connected him with his audience in a way he’d never experienced before, and how – after the death of his son, Arthur – he realised how much he loved that connection. That’s inspired a couple of recent projects of his. In the Red Hand Files, Cave answers questions from fans on music, art, poetry, grief, chaos, life. He chooses the questions at random from the thousands of fans sending in for his thoughts. I can’t tell you how inspiring it is to have your hero/muse/person you deeply admire sharing their intimate thoughts and challenging their own assumptions in your inbox every week. I don’t always agree with everything he says, but I love the discussion.

The other way Cave has been fostering this communication between himself and his audience is with the intimate ‘Conversation with Nick Cave’ shows, where Cave answers questions from the stage in between playing solo, accompanied only by piano. I attended the Auckland event and, yeah … wow.

At the doors to the show the ushers randomly picked around 30 people to leave their assigned seats and sit up on the stage with Nick Cave. I am a bit jealous of those people, but also, they all looked as excited and overwhelmed as I would have felt if I’d been chosen, so I’m not going to hold it against them.

The show was equal parts irreverent and beautiful. I adored the spontaneity of it. He entered the room to a recorded recitation of the Steve McQueen poem that served as the opening credits for the film One More Time With Feeling. The line, “someone has to sing the stars, someone has to sing the pain,” gets me every time. I started crying and didn’t stop until the end.

“God is great, chances are
God is good, well I wouldn't go that far

I'm Steve McQueen the atrocity man
With my strap-on blood porn dream

But mostly I curl up inside my typewriter with my housefly and cry
I tell my housefly not to cry
My housefly tells me not to die"

He opened with The Ship Song. This intimidating, formidable man played his songs of beauty and lust and lies and pain and death and life, and in speaking he was quick of wit, sly of tongue, friendly, and also unable to tame his bullshit-o-meter when confronted with some of the more rambling or annoying questions.

Cave spoke about every person living two lives. The first life is when you are becoming the person you’re supposed to be – you’re learning and building and creating. It’s about the self. The second life is the life you enter after a great sorrow, a ‘luminous sadness’, and he said it comes to all when they’re older, but some much younger, and that this second life was different. The luminous sadness is about connection. He related many questions back to this idea of the two lives.

In the last question of the evening, he told the story of how he met his wife, Suzie. She walked past him at a fashion show and her beauty and poise arrested him. He couldn’t focus. He got her number from a friend and asked her out, which he said he’d never had to do before because “I’m in rock n roll. I don’t ask girls out.” Said with a wink. “That’s not how it works.” He took her out to dinner and had a wonderful conversation and too much wine. At the end of the night he called her a taxi and as she was getting in, “I did something that would’ve got me in a lot of trouble in these times. I kind of lurched at her and kissed her. Luckily, she liked it.”

Another conversation was about the transformative power of music. Nick recalled recording with Johnny Cash toward the end of his life and how the music was all that was keeping him alive. How he met Bob Dylan and wanted to ask him about the meaning of his favourite song but instead just mumbled at his shoes but then later decided it was a bad idea anyway because if Bob said it was ‘just a song’ or something he wrote while high that didn’t mean anything, Nick would be sad.

A teenage girl painted him a tiny picture and he let her come up on stage and give it to him. He said, “it’s actually beautiful. And SMALL. I appreciate that.” He then mimed people who come backstage at his shows and give him enormous ugly artworks.

And he played songs! The Ship Song (my favourite ever), playing the most stunning version of The Mercy Seat, West Country Girl, Far From Me, Mermaids, so many others. He closed with Love Letter.

Recently, a Red Hand Files reader pushed back on a question from the Brisbane event, where Cave stated that it didn’t matter to him what he left behind. “A body of artistic work, that has also had an enormous personal impact on the lives of many people – given meaning, comfort, joy and hope, and shaped their world views – is a legacy to be acknowledged and respected,” the fan countered.

Cave’s response has been deep in my thoughts lately. I could paraphrase it, but I think I’ll just quote his words.

“I very much take your point – my answer was dismissive and unhelpful. As you point out, it undermined the relationship with my work that other people may have. I’m sorry about that. I very much appreciate you writing in and pushing back against my statement.

What I should have said is that I am still actively engaged in the business of songwriting and doing everything in my power to stay afloat. This is not as easy as it may appear and involves a certain amount of self-deception. Part of that process is to occasionally affect a dismissive attitude toward my earlier songs, as if my best work is still ahead of me. How could I continue to write if I believed otherwise? Here, most probably, truth collides with necessity. We look to what ought to be rather than what is. The newly formed song needs all the support it can get to front up to the impossible weight of the hundreds of songs I have already written. Indeed, how can the new idea ever hope to compete with the deep attachment that people seem to have with those past and treasured songs?

I am dancing on water lilies when I write and one’s heritage can have a terrifying tonnage. I must remain one step ahead of the songs, optimistically hopping from lily pad to lily pad, and doing my best to ignore the great dark wave of work that is building up behind me. How many artists have we seen stop and turn around to look, only to literally drown in a pool of their own legacy?

I am sure a time will come – perhaps in the not too distant future – when I can sit back like some loony old patriarch and cast a weepy eye over my legacy, as they wheel me on stage to receive my ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’, but not this year, please, I beg you, not this year.

With Love, Nick Cave

I’ve been pondering this ever since, especially since I also attended another show this month – So POP! A 90s pop extravaganza featuring all the bands I listened to in my youth before Metallica showed me the error of my ways. Aqua, Vengaboys, B*Witched, Eiffel 65, Lou Bega some boy band called Blue… I went with some girlfriends and we danced and sang all night and it was fun.

But.

So POP cashed in on nostalgia, and for the majority of bands on stage, that meant looking back at hits that have long-since faded from the charts and careers that are well past their prime. B*Witched only had two original members. No one played new material – instead, they looked back or they looked to sing-a-long covers to keep the energy up.

I loved it. They’re great, fun songs. But Cthulhu help me that is what I become as an artist.

I think about Nick Cave standing on stage as ‘an aging rockstar’, throwing himself at the mercy of his audience and letting us catch him. I think about the two lives. I think about the fact that it’s what you do in life that must matters more than how you’re viewed in death.

Remember that the artists with legacies we remember were largely motivated by paying their bills. The paintings and sculptures of the renaissance – that we consider to be the height of artistic achievement – was made as work for hire in art “factories” where the master would manage a team of apprentices to create the works. They innovated materials and techniques out of necessity, out of the pedestrian need to see the rent paid.

I think about artists like Bif Naked and Melissa Marr and Lady Gaga and Francesca Lia Block and even Eminem, still pushing boundaries with their work, still growing as artists and surprising and challenging themselves even as their impressive careers loom ever large in the background.

Creativity burns in the veins like acid. You can’t just turn it off. There’s always more to do. I used to worry that if I used up all my ideas in one book, I’d have nothing left for the next one. But now I realise that cannot possibly be true. As soon as I finish a book, I start writing another. I can never entirely eradicate the acid. It’s always burning. And Cave is right, as soon as you turn around and look back, that’s when you drown.

Legacy is what you build by continuing the work. Legacy is that unique voice you lend to everything you do, that makes people recognise your touch even as you switch mediums or modes. You can’t think about what shape that legacy will take because you’re never done with the work, and you’re never around to witness your legacy.

The closest thing to a living legacy, perhaps, is hearing directly from your audience or from other creatives how your work has inspired them. But even that isn’t the same. Nick Cave inspires me, but I think no one will read my books to uncover his legacy.

One day, I want to be standing on that same stage as an older woman, facing down a new challenge in my second life, baring my luminous sadness to the world. My body will be aflame in creativity as a great looming shadow of work creeps up behind me. I will turn my back on it, and leap into the unknown. If I’ve done my legacy right, someone will catch me.

Post-scriptum: Birthday shenanigans

This is my supposed-to-be-weekly-but-I-always forget post of what I’m reading, listening to, and digging.

In my ears: The new Beast in Black album, From Hell With Love. It is so 80s and so amazing.

Reading: Because I’m in the middle of writing Pride and Premeditation, I am re-reading Pride and Prejudice to get the feeling right. I’m also still slogging through Deborah Harkness’ All Souls trilogy. The books are amazing, but they are so very, very LONG.

Writing: Pride and Premeditation, Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries book 3. I’m 14,000 words in, which is about 1/4. I’m also working on my presentation for the Canberra Women’s Writers Festival.

Watching: Brooklyn Nine Nine. Because we needed a laugh this week.

On the farm: I’ve been harvesting piles of tomatoes from the garden every few days, and making jars of tomato sauce and pasta sauce. My neighbour gave me piles of passionfruit, which I made into cheesecakes, and sapote, which I have no idea what to do with.

Tomorrow, our lambs go to slaughter. It’s always a sad day, but it’s important I think to be part of the food cycle in this visceral way. If you eat meat, you have to be aware that this happens and okay with it.

Loving: it’s my birthday! I am 34. That feels like a scarily-high number, but I think I’m going to like being 34. \m/ I had a birthday party on Saturday. It was quite small, but all the best people were there and we had so much fun and I drank so much cider. WHY SO MUCH CIDER WHY. I may have also given a dramatic reading of a sex scene from A Dead and Stormy Night, because apparently after copious amounts of cider I’m very suggestible. \m/ holiday plans – we are shooting paintballs at each other in tanks! And visiting the Jurassic coast! And staying in a library! And WACKEN! I cannot wait. \m/ homemade passionfruit cheesecake YUSS. \m/ It’s my birthday so I’ll have as many roast potatoes as I like. \m/ When you are hungover from drinking all the cider and your husband cleans the whole house and cooks your hangover breakfast :) \m/ Readers cannot stop talking about Of Mice and Murder! I think it was much better than book 1, and I am having so much fun with this series I’m not sure I ever want it to end. \m/ Ginanigans and Alestorm last week! Awesome show as usual, and great lake-times and chicken deliciousness with friends. “This soju tastes like nerds!” \m/ Plans and projects coming together for 2019 and 2020. I’ve got some insanely exciting announcements, but they have to wait, so I resort to the vague-posting. \m/ Bookshelves – they are getting stained now and they’re about 1/4 done. My office is now in the hallway – never a dull moment at our castle :)

That’s my week so far. What about yours?

New book out now: Of Mice and Murder

Read Of Mice and Murder now.

Join a brooding antihero, a master criminal, a cheeky raven, and a heroine with a big heart (and an even bigger book collection) in this hot new steamy reverse harem paranormal mystery series.

When the local Banned Book Club lose their meeting room, Mina volunteers to host the group at Nevermore Bookshop (against Heathcliff’s muttered protests, of course). Little does she know this old biddies book club is about to turn murderous.

First, someone poisons Mrs Scarlett, then members of the book club start dropping like flies. Who in the village will turn to murder just to stop people reading a few dusty old books?

Mina’s got to figure it out quick, or her beloved teacher Mrs Ellis is next to die. Luckily, she’s got Moriarty, Heathcliff, and Quoth to help. That is, if she can figure out her feelings for her three fictional men before the magical bookshop is torn apart by sexual tension.

They want her.

She can’t choose.

But maybe… she doesn’t have to.

The Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries are what you get when all your book boyfriends come to life. New from USA Today bestselling author Steffanie Holmes. Read on only if you believe one hot book hero isn’t enough!

Read Of Mice and Murder now. If you haven’t already read book one, A Dead and Stormy Night, you can grab that one, too.

3 days left to enter the Nevermore Bookshop giveaway!

Agatha Christie meets Black Books in this steamy paranormal reverse harem set in a cursed bookshop.

I like to celebrate the launch of a new series in style. This time, it’s you who will benefit, as I’ve been shopping online and have found lots of literary goodies you can win.

Let Heathcliff, Moriarty, and Quoth the raven melt your heart with this bookish swag pack containing gifts from all the main characters. From Mina, a beautiful notebook from Cultural Bindings. From Heathcliff, this stunning Wuthering Heights book scarf from Storiarts. From Morrie, this Sherlock Holmes cookie cutter from The Cookie Cutter Man. And from Quoth, this Poe candle from Werther and Grey. All this, plus a signed copy of the book and some New Zealand chocolate!

A second-place winner will also snag a paperback copy of the book!

OPEN INTERNATIONALLY. Prize is worth over $300. You can enter here, and there are lots of things you can do to gain an extra entry or two :)

Death rituals, arsenic poisoning, and guilty feminism: What I’ve been reading, Nov-Jan

Ever since I quit my day job (Feb 2017, yea-heh!), I’ve discovered how much more time I have for reading. I’m definitely not as fast as some of my readers who can plow through several books a day, but I read over 70 books last year and enjoyed pretty much all of them. Here are a few from the last few months that you might enjoy, too.

Cleo, Helen Brown

Helen’s son Sam begs them to adopt a tiny kitten. Helen agrees, hoping Sam will lose interest before the kitten is big enough to come home with them. Two weeks later, nine-year-old Sam is dead, and a black kitten named Cleo shows up on the doorstep of a grieving family and helps them to heal.

If you love cats and you want a good cry, then this is your book. I saw Helen speak at the Hawke’s Bay Writers Festival and she’s wonderful and hilarious and kind and so is this book. Read now.

From Here to Eternity, Caitlin Doughty

The second book by the Queen of the death-positivity movement, and just as fascinating as Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. Mortician Caitlin Doughty travels the world looking at different rituals surrounding death in the modern world.

Doughty describes rituals with a sensitive but close touch, creating an intimacy with death and mourning while also avoiding a relish for gory details. This book was infinitely fascinating, and it sparkles with Caitlin’s usual respect and thoughtfulness around all matters concerning death. It’ll get you thinking about your mortal remains. For me, it’s a re-read for sure. Read now.

Nine Perfect Strangers, Liane Moriarty

Nine strangers meet on a wellness retreat in the middle of the Australian outback. They sign a waiver that says anything can happen in the name of personalised treatment. But what have they signed up for?

Liane Moriarty is my writer ride or die. I will read everything she writes because she is brilliant. She writes books filled with characters you fall in love with who do horrible things or have horrible things happen to them. I feel like I know everyone in her books and they will make you laugh and cry and gasp. This book is no exception. Read now.

The Guilty Feminist, Deborah Francis-Wilde

Last year I read Clementine Ford’s Fight Like a Girl and, while it was powerful, I didn’t really connect with it the way I do with Deb FW’s Guilty Feminism. The book from the podcast of the same name explores our goals as 21st Century Feminists and the hypocricies and insecurities that undermine them. Deborah is one classy, hilarious lady, and the book is made even better by including the voices of other performers, activists, and thinkers who can speak from their own intersectional experiences.

What I love so much about this book is that it doesn’t waste time demonizing anyone or making you feel as though you’re not good enough or haven’t done enough or you’re not angry enough. Instead, it uses humour, joy, and practical actions to inspire us to make the world a better place for everyone. If anyone asked me, “what is feminism?” or “why are you a feminist?” or “what’s all this feminism malarkey about, anyway?” I’d give them this book. Easily one of the best books I read in 2018. Read now.

A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, Kathryn Harkup

Agatha Christie revelled in the use of poison to kill off unfortunate victims in her books; indeed, she employed it more than any other murder method, with the poison itself often being a central part of the novel. In A is for Arsenic, Kathryn Harkup investigates the poisons used by the murderer in fourteen classic Agatha Christie mysteries. It looks at why certain chemicals kill, how they interact with the body, the cases that may have inspired Christie, and the feasibility of obtaining, administering and detecting these poisons, both at the time the novel was written and today. 

I got this book originally for research, as I’m writing a poisoning case in Of Mice and Murder. I now know far too much about how to kill a person without being detected. Want to come to a dinner party?

This book is absolutely fascinating and my copy is already riddled with bookmarks as ideas for future books occur. Read now.

The Clockmaker’s Daughter, Kate Morten

Told by multiple voices across time, The Clockmaker’s Daughter is a story of murder, mystery, and thievery, of art, love, and loss. This book has all the gothic touches I adore – an artist tortured by love, plots and thefts and trickery, a crumbling house filled with secrets, a sweet protagonist (although honestly, she didn’t really do much at all). Flowing through the book is the narrative of the true protagonist, who – interesting for Morten – is a ghost. Morten usually hints at the supernatural but never directly acknowledges it.

Hugely enjoyable, although probably not my favourite Kate Morten. Read now.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

The possessive, wild romance of Heathcliff and Cathy is part of our cultural landscape. Wuthering Heights was the first book my husband ever recommended to me, back when we first started dating. He even loaned me his copy. So you see, it has a special place in my heart.

I needed to re-read it as research for my new series. Honestly, I don’t much like either Heathcliff or Cathy. The whole book is a haunting, tormented story of horrible people doing horrible things to each other. But damn if that woman can’t write! Everything from the setting to the poetic allegory is perfection. Read now.

Those are just a few of the books I’ve been enjoying. What about you? What are you reading right now?

Authors, here are 20 ideas for promoting your backlist

When I speak to writing groups about what it takes to become a full-time indie author, I like to give this number. “All it takes is selling 1000 books a month at $3.99 to make an average NZ wage.” It’s that easy, and that difficult.

If you’ve got 1 book out, selling 1000 copies every month is going to be really hard. But what if you’ve got 5 books out? Or 10? Or 30? Suddenly, that number stops sounding preposterous. Everything gets easier once you build a backlist.

For most indie authors, including myself, backlist forms a significant percentage of our income. I consider backlist to be any books that aren’t part of the series I’m currently working on. As soon as a series is finished and I release book 1 of something new, that previous series becomes part of the backlist.

Other authors consider backlist to be anything outside the 90-day cliff (the 90 days following publication on Amazon, when the algorithms stop giving you so much love). This might be useful to you if you only have one long-running series.

In 2018, my backlist sales were around 60% of my total book royalties. My backlist is wide, with thirteen Steffanie Holmes books, 3 box sets, and 4 S C Green books published on Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, B&N, and Google Play. Some of those books earned … not a lot. Witch Hunter netted $106.65 on Amazon for the entire year. But with so many backlist books, it all adds up.

You’re not screwed just because a book doesn’t earn $10k in its first month. I don’t think I’ve had a single title that’s done that. You’ve put the work in to create those books, so you might as well squeeze as much profit from them as possible. Ebooks are forever – they don’t go out of print.

As long as you continue to release great books and promote your backlist, you’ll eventually hit an income number that’s good enough for you to quit your day job.

Here are some ideas and techniques I use to get you thinking about promoting your backlist.

1. Create a backlist that funnels readers through your catalogue. By that I mean, think carefully about the branding of your author name and the way you do series. Readers are series-loyal first, genre-loyal second, author-loyal third. By creating huge, interconnected worlds and linking your series, and by writing tightly-branded books in the same genre, you make it much easier for readers to stick with your work.

Also, the longer your series, the more you can afford to spend advertising book one (as you’ll make that money back in sell-through).

2. Promo a backlist title once a month if possible. Throw $100 at sticking it into a newsletter. Use your KU free days or stick it on sale for $0.99. Drop it into a Kobo promotion if it’s wide. Run some FB or Bookbub ads. Try and do one activity every month to stimulate backlist sales.

3. Rebrand old work. When cover trends change or you want to try a new blurb style, rebrand a series and use advertising (FB ads, AMS ads, newsletters) to push it to a new audience. You don’t need to tell your current readers every time you get new covers – focus on using each rebranding to reach new readers.

4. Bundle backlist titles into box sets. Experiment with different box set sizes and lengths. You can bundle the first three books in a series, all books in a series, even a “series starter” set of the book 1s in all your different series. Try releasing limited-edition box sets – I do one in December every year, which is a combo of 10+ books with bonus content. It comes down January 1st.

5. If you’re running constant series 1 ads, give them a rejiggle every month or so. Stop the ads, tweak the audiences, refresh the copy, etc. This helps them to constantly find new people. There’s some evidence out there that CPC ads like AMS or Facebook go “stale” after a few weeks.

6. Apply for Bookbub Featured Deals. Always. I pretty much always have a book either being considered by them, in line for an ad, or I’m waiting for the 30 days post-ad to run so I can submit again. They aren’t as effective as they used to be, but for stimulating backlist sales they’re still hard to beat.

7. Got a FB reader group? Most authors focus all their conversation/promo in their reader groups on their current series. Remember that as more people join your group they probably haven’t read all your books, so try to introduce them to your other worlds and characters with fun snippets and games. (Here’s my reader group if you’re not a member – Books that Bite).

8. Ditto for your newsletter. If you don’t have a new release to send out one month, then let your subscribers know a backlist title is on sale. You’ll be surprised how many newsletter subscribers won’t have read all your books.

9. If you run an automation sequence for new subscribers, add emails talking about your different series and directing readers to the book 1s. Many of your readers won’t have read your other series, so give them a chance to rectify that!

10. Do you have a series that doesn’t sell as well as others, and you think it has a weak book? Consider a rewrite.

The first three books in my Crookshollow Gothic Romance series (Art of Cunning, Art of the Hunt, Art of Temptation) were the first romance books I ever wrote. They had flaws. Sooooo many flaws.

In 2016 I rewrote them, adding 15-20,000 words per book, including the hero’s POV, and just making the quality higher. It took me about a month to do all three, and it was worth it, as those are the lead-in to my longest series and biggest world.

11. Set up the backmatter in your books to push readers to buy the next book. I include the buy-now link underneath THE END – not on the next page. I always include an excerpt of the next book in the series or book 1 in a backlist series.

12. On your website, create a “series order” page. List all of your books in their series with their buy links, as well as notes about what each series includes and which series readers should try next if they enjoyed that one. Here’s my series order page. This is insanely useful and I link to it ALL THE DAMN TIME.

13. Release a novella, short story, or free short in that series world. This will often bump sales of the series, especially among your current readers. I particularly like writing alternative scenes (usually a favourite sex scene or emotional scene from a book, from the opposite character’s POV) as half the work has already been done, and readers LOVE LOVE LOVE ‘em.

14. If you’re wide, throw a backlist series into KU for 90 days as an experiment. If you’re in KU, take a backlist series wide.

15. Publish a backlist tie-in book/novella into a box set. Readers of the box set who want to know more about the characters/world will be funnelled into your old series.

16. Try not to get distracted by the shinies. By this I mean, try not to release book 1 of 5 different series and never get around to finishing them. When you do this, you lose the momentum that could see one of those series take off. Your backlist will be most effective if it contains series of 3+ books (5+ is even better), so try to focus on getting to that place first.

17. Consider other markets. Look for other ways to earn money from your backlist, such as releasing the books in audio, or selling subsidiary rights to a foriegn publisher (especially if a series has done well in a particular foriegn market). Depending on the type of books you write, you may be able to excerpt certain chapters to sell to publications, offer a publisher the right to serialise your work, create a graphic novel or play, or find other creative ways to re-package the content.

18. Hook into current events and trending topics. If you have a backlist book or series that touches on a topical subject, now’s a good time to get the word out. You might like to consider writing some pieces for the media or offering yourself as an expert.

19. Try a podcast. Many authors are using podcasts to reach their audience. You could start your own or reach out to another podcast about your backlist books.

20. Write the next book! The only way to consistantly improve your income and your backlist sales is to bring in new readers, and the best way to get those readers is with a new release! The more you put out new material, the more your backlist will thrive.

Although I spend most of my time writing my next book, I’m always thinking about how to promote and improve the books I’ve already written. Don’t neglect your backlist, because even the worst performing books can continue to bring in new income and readers.

What ideas do you have for promoting your backlist titles?

NEW RELEASE: A Dead and Stormy Night

My first book of 2019! And it’s the first in a brand new series. I’m so excited, you have no idea.

Multiple exclamation marks will be used in this post!

!!!

What do you get when you cross a cursed bookshop, three hot fictional men, and a punk rock heroine nursing a broken heart?

After being fired from her fashion internship in New York City, Mina Wilde decides it’s time to reevaluate her life. She returns to the quaint English village where she grew up to take a job at the local bookshop, hoping that being surrounded by great literature will help her heal from a devastating blow.

But Mina soon discovers her life is stranger than fiction – a mysterious curse on the bookshop brings fictional characters to life in lust-worthy bodies. Mina finds herself babysitting Poe’s raven, making hot dogs for Heathcliff, and getting IT help from James Moriarty, all while trying not to fall for the three broken men who should only exist within her imagination.

When Mina’s ex-best friend shows up dead with a knife in her back, she’s the chief suspect. She’ll have to solve the murder if she wants to clear her name. Will her fictional boyfriends be able to keep her out of prison?

The Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries are what you get when all your book boyfriends come to life. Join a brooding antihero, a master criminal, a cheeky raven, and a heroine with a big heart (and an even bigger book collection) in this brand new steamy reverse harem paranormal mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Steffanie Holmes.

A Dead and Stormy Night cover art.

!!!

That’s right, it’s a reverse harem mystery series set in a cursed bookshop. Think Agatha Christie crossed with Black Books. A Dead and Stormy Night is available now on Amazon, $3.99 or in KU, book 2, Of Mice and Murder, is up on pre-order, releasing Feb 22.

Steff at LitCrawl 2018

 

Wellington LitCrawl is different from any other reader & writer event I’ve ever attended before. In venues spread throughout the city, writers participate in quick-fire events for a traveling audience who are excited to learn about the hidden workings of our brains.

The festival encompasses two key components – the LitCrawl proper, which is a mad dash around the CBD on the Saturday night. Three streams of events featuring national and international authors of all genres and backgrounds are spread throughout bookstores, bars, event spaces, and cafes. Events are free to attend (Koha encouraged), and there’s a fab after-party where everyone can get drunk.

There’s also the LitCrawl Extended, which is a series of ticketed events stretching from Thursday-Sunday and enable patrons to experience writers outside of the madness of the main crawl.

The programme is a varied mix of literary and genre, diverse voices, the sublime and the vulgar, the seasoned writers and the emerging voices. It offers the audience a taste a writers they might not have heard of, as well as putting them up close and personal with their favourite voices.

I flew down to Wellington on Thursday night, and was collected by my lovely friend Emma to stay with her family. We had pizza and drank our way through a couple of bottles of wine, and I went to bed far too late considering the crazy weekend that lay ahead.

Friday

I navigated my way through Wellington’s bus system to a far-away suburb to meet the brilliant Elizabeth Heritage, who is my publicist. It was so cool to finally meet her in person! We had a great chat about books and feminism and my plans for 2019, and we ate lasagne and slices from the bakery next door to her house. I will definitely be back to visit next time I’m in Wellington, because not only is Elizabeth awesome, but that bakery is LEGIT.

After that I went into the city, had coffee with my friend and first ever flatmate Juliet, then met up with another friend Shane so we could go to the writing sexy workshop put on by Melody Thomas (creator and host of sex podcast BANG!) and Laura Borrowdale (editor of Aotearotica, NZ’s erotic literary journal). Despite poor Laura’s plane being late (she arrived halfway through the workshop), this was so much fun and it was great reading out terrible erotica excerpts and rewriting them to be actually sexy.

After the workshop, Shane and I headed to a party where there was a beautiful cat with a smushy face and a lion’s mane (Also some cool people, but I mainly remember the cat). I crashed about 11PM and went back to Emma’s to try and get some sleep before Saturday’s chaos begins.

Saturday

Today is main crawl day! I’m nervous because I’m involved in two back-to-back crawl events and one of them, I haven’t met with the other participants or planned anything. I get nervous speaking in front of people, and I need structure and a sense of to feel calm and nail the delivery, so this was stressing me out. We agreed to meet after one of the daytime events, but they didn’t find me and I didn’t have their phone numbers, so that didn’t happen and I spent most of the day worrying about it.

Turns out everything was fine and the event was awesome, but first – I went to things!

The F Word: Lizzie Marvelly. Lizzie is known as a musician who regularly tours the world, but she’s also a regular HeraldNZ columnist and author of The F Word: Growing Up Feminist in New Zealand. In conversation with Angela Meyer, Lizzie spoke about her experiences of becoming a feminist, of attending NZ’s most prestigious high school, of body image issues and mental health and just other awesome stuff. I enjoyed Lizzie’s personal stories, and definitely plan on picking up her book, but the content was Feminist 101, so I can’t say I learned anything new.

Emily Writes + (girl)friends. I adore Emily’s honest and hilarious writing on parenting and feminism and life, so I wanted to see her in the flesh talking about female friendship. Honestly, this wasn’t my favourite event of the weekend. Because all five speakers were close friends and a lot of their pieces referred to each other, I felt a bit like I was eavesdropping on a conversation, rather than part of it.

Of Mermaids and Mermen. Art critic and author Megan Dunn is writing a book about real-life mermaids and mermen. In this hilarious and utterly fascinating public lecture, she detailed the lives of famous mermaids, what exactly they do, and how you might become a merperson yourself.

All too soon it was time for me to primp and preen for the main crawl. I met Emma for a delicious Turkish dinner, then we made our way to my first event.

Emily Writes at Arty Bees



Crip the Lit: The Great Debate

Robyn Hunt and Trish Harris are two Wellington writers who are helping to raise the profile of disabled writers across New Zealand. Their Crip the Lit panel has been a popular event the last two years in the crawl. This year they decided to change things up and set up a literary debate. This year’s moot – There’s no such thing as a disabled writer. We are all just writers.

I was First Speaker on the affirmative team. Knowing that we were likely to lose, I opted for an irreverent debating style. As we arrived at the beautiful hotel where the debate would be held and I saw the room fill up with dozens and soon over a hundred people, the old nerves crept up. 

It went well! I had to speak too fast because the time limit was strict, but people laughed and even though we did lose, it was so much fun. What an amazing event with so many good points made on both sides.

Our debate was recorded and broadcast on Wellington Access Radio on December 3, the International Day of Disabled People. You can listen to the broadcast here. 

Killed Off with Annaleese Jochems and Elisabeth Knox



Killed Off panel

When the programme came out and I saw I’d be on a panel talking about killing off characters, I maaaaay have done a little Snoopy dance. This felt particularly relevant because I’d just released The Castle of Wind and Whispers, and a beloved character dies in that book. (I’m mean. I’m sorry).

My other two panelists – Elizabeth Knox and Annaleese Jochems – come from the literary end of the spectrum – so when I prepared some talking points I knew that I wanted to offer something unique from the genre camp. I spoke a lot about the heavy influence of the gothic in my work, and about the challenges of working in a fantasy world where it’s possible the dead can return to life. I also spoke about refrigerator women, and how I felt guilty because I have one in my book The Sunken.

Highlights for me was hearing Annaleese describe how she ‘meatified’ a male character prior to his death, in order to disengage the reader from his life, and Elizabeth reading out a laundry list of every person she’d killed off in her books. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak about something I’m passionate about – the idea of death culture and death ritual, and how through history the responsibility for this has passed from the female to male sphere.

After this event, I went for a drink with a friend. We intended to head to the after-party but by this stage I was well and truly done. Bed was calling.

Sunday

On Sunday I went to Fidels for breakfast (OMG breakfast burrito and salted caramel hot chocolate). I gave a two-hour workshop on self-publishing, and it was heaps of fun. I loved the room I was given with a HUGE screen for my cat memes, and people asked intelligent questions and I answered them without saying BEZOS IS OUR GOD ALL HAIL MIGHTY BEZOS, so that was good.

For lunch, Emma took me to a pizza joint called Tommy Millions, and I had what might be described as the best slice of pizza I’ve ever had. Can’t confirm, but it might be possible. After pizza, we made our own frozen yogurts. I don’t know what Eleanor Shellstrop was complaining about – frozen yogurt is brilliant.

Sunday evening, Emma’s lovely family made me a roast dinner, then we headed down to the Dead Ladies Show – a salon-style event where not-dead women celebrate the dead women who have influenced them. The acts ranged from hilarious to heart-wrenching, and I came away with new women heroines to look up. I especially loved host Penny Ashton’s poem to her grandmother, and Jessie Bray Sharpin’s talk on a kiwi adventuress, Constance Barnicoat.

I also came away full of dessert, because the lovely proprietor allowed Emma and I to bring in dessert from Midnight Express across the road. There’s nothing like drinking gin and enjoying baked cheesecake while learning about awesome dead ladies.

I had a ride to the airport in the morning with poet/comedian/performer/host/TV presenter/celebrant Penny Ashton, who is awesome people and kindly gave me her guest pass to the Koru lounge, so I got an epic breakfast and to hear about some of her work – which is so my kind of thing I’m probably gonna be front row at all her shows from now on.

Bats theatre.

After a short flight back to Auckland and a longer bus ride, I eventually got home to husbands and cats and my own bed. I believe I slept for 83 years. 

Thank you LitCrawl, and Wellington, and all the writers and readers I met. Whether I’m involved as a writer again (please? It was so much fun) or just as an audience member, I’ll be back next year for sure.

Photographers: Vanessa Rushton Photography and Fergus Haywood.