I got a new book out…and I have some rants saved up

Having a new book out should put me in a better mood. If nothing else, having written two books in June should have helped. This month, I’m releasing book 2 in the Tobe White series, Fangs, Humans, and Other Perils of Night Life, and I wrote book 3 in the same series, Adventures in Trolling. Then right after I finished that, I wrote the second book in the Alice the Wolf series, the spin-off to the Peter the Wolf books. I was so stoked to finish A Wolf In Girl’s Clothing, although I did spend the last few chapters crying. (Really sad ending.) Alas, that happy feeling didn’t last longer than a day. Such is the life of an artist, I suppose. The longer you do this stuff, the less of a buzz you get out of finishing a rough draft.

Before I get to explaining why my mood sucks, I should show y’all the book blurb and cover for this month’s release:

Book 2 in the Tobe White series begins three years after the events in A Boy and His Dawg.

After moving out on their own, Tobe White and Keith Moon have settled into a quiet life of domestic bliss until five vampires stroll into the mall where they work. The coven is followed by a monster hunting militia, and choosing to side with the vampires, Tobe picks a fight with an unrelenting enemy eager to destroy him and Keith.

Forced to flee after their home is destroyed, Tobe accepts the vampires’ help in building a new life. But their first stop in Las Vegas pits them against other covens looking for fresh blood, and Tobe learns just how evil some vampires can be.

Both the vampires and the hunters hope to recruit Tobe, yet both sides are equally ruthless. Caught in the fight between the righteous and the wicked, Tobe tries to bluff his way to freedom, leading to one disaster after another. With every misstep, Tobe comes closer to losing his humanity. Even if he can overcome the corruption of his soul and avoid being used by both sides of the battle, he must answer a difficult question: what good is being right if it means losing everything he holds dear?

Despite some Twilight jokes, this second book is quite a bit darker than the first, with Tobe being pitted against monster hunters and some really evil vampire covens. You can find this episode on Amazon, Kobo, and my blog bookstore with Gumroad. It’s only $2.99, being a rather short novel. (Almost a novella, really.) And because this is a sticking point for some vampire fans, no, the vampires don’t sparkle without an application of body glitter. (Which they sometimes do when they go clubbing to make hunting easier, hence the Twilight jokes.)

I should have been pimping Tobe’s book in a blog post yesterday, except that even after I got the email from Amazon saying the book was available in the Kindle store, it wasn’t. I couldn’t even pull up the book by searching for the ASIN. It finally showed up with said search in the afternoon, but still can’t be found by the title or by searching using my name. Amazon is looking into it, and they’ll probably fix it in a day or two, but lately it seems like I can’t publish anything on KDP without something going wrong. The last three books have all had some problems on Amazon, but went through just fine on Kobo and Gumroad. But as Amazon is the only store where I get sales, this makes every launch a bit of a headache.

Not that it matters with the releases I’m doing these days. With so many calls for more diversity, you’d think a book featuring a gay black cheerleader would be snatched up eagerly. Totally not the case. I see dudes buying Orson Scott Card’s stuff or saying they will go see the Ender’s Game movie because they can overlook his homophobia and they have open minds, but it’s only open enough to read white dudes who are racist or sexist. For them, reading a queer author is just too open minded. This seems to be the case whether the book features straight characters or some gender/sex variant protagonist. I suppose it’s for the best, as if they did read me, they’d just get mad and claim I’m ruining their beloved tropes. But damn, I get tired of seeing pleas for more diversity. I’m like “You can’t find work much more diverse than mine!” And they’re like “No, we didn’t mean we’d read queers, LOL. We meant we wished white dudes would write people of color and mansplain race to us in a homogenized and non-threatening manner.” Well…all righty then. They don’t want actual diversity. They want token diversity so they can validate themselves as “color-blind.”

Let’s move on. I was already a bit down from the Amazon problem, and opening day ended without a single sale. So I checked my email in the hopes of getting anything positive, and then I found out my web host is shutting down. I JUST got my account a few months back, and already I have to go get another. So I have to go through the same hassles and headaches of moving the blog, possibly discovering that my next host is rubbish, or evil incarnate.

Which brings me to my next topic: I really wish people who aren’t creative didn’t throw “living the dream” in my face when I’m upset about creative projects not working out the way I’d hoped. I put out a book, and after a weak first month, yeah, I get a bit cranky. So I go on Twitter and someone not even following me invariably says, “Yeah, but you’re living the dream making your art. That should be good enough to keep you happy.”

Now look, every writer has different goals for their dream, but almost all of them want to be read/heard/looked at. I don’t know of any artist who wants to make art and have it be overlooked. When it comes to me, my dream is being able to make a living off my books. Not to become rich, or famous. (Or even Internet famous, though I do seem to be gaining some infamy for my big mouth and my checkered past.) I just want to have some disposable income because I can’t work a regular day job anymore. Hell, I can’t even walk my dog without needing a long lie down to recover. (Multiple sclerosis is a bitch, y’all. I don’t recommend it.) So it stings to know in advance that nothing I write is going to do more than recover the cost of the cover after a few months of constant begging. Some books don’t even do that. Add to this the headaches of vendor errors, the web host problems, and the frustration of seeing other indies boasting 75 five-star reviews when I can’t even get ten reviews at any rating, and then there’s nothing dreamlike about this gig.

I don’t even know why non-creative people think just making art is a dream come true. Anyone can do that. You just sit down, open your mind up, and boom, art happens. Whether it’s good art or not depends on how often you practice, but anyone can do that. No, the real dream is getting people to interact with that art, regardless of the media form used. No band sits in their garage making the first album saying, “Just making this is good enough, so we don’t want any fans.” They don’t say, “It’s okay if we never recover the cost of producing this album, because the important thing is, we made it.”

This DOES NOT HAPPEN anywhere except in the imaginations of non-creative people. To every artist, there is no worse nightmare than releasing their creative efforts and have it go nowhere. Artists want people to react to their stuff. They want to hear from people who tried their stuff. They want progress reports to know if that new technique they tried worked for their audience, or if it bombed and they need to let it go and try something else. Art that gets no interest or reaction is as useless and frustrating as kicking a wall. It accomplishes nothing and serves no purpose. It might even be harmful, or at least damaging to one’s self-esteem or creative drive.

“But Zoe, you’re wrong,” you say. “You’re living the dream by making art. Lot’s of people can’t do that.” No, they can if they tried. They won’t try, and those who won’t try also don’t have the empathy to understand that failing to garner an audience turns the dream into a nightmare. If you think that creating something and investing all your time and energy into it only to watch it flop is your dream, then seriously, people, you need to dream better. Because that dream you’re foisting on me as something you think I want is dreary as fuck.

*Takes deep breath* And now I will conclude this post on a semi-positive note. On the first of July, I said I hoped I’d get a review sometime in the month. Two hours later, I got this 4-star review for the second Peter the Wolf book, Dogs of War. When I posted this on Twitter and thanked the reviewer, they replied and said they were going to start book three, Roll the Bones, the same day. They then said they really liked my writing style and my characters, and I was all giddy and smiling. (Of course that doesn’t last long. Praise is like crack, and after a while the same dose doesn’t keep you bumped up for the same length of time. Also like crack, one hit is never enough. You’re always fiending for the next fix.)

The thing is, I want you to look at that review. Please, it won’t take long to read. Finished? Okie dokie.

Notice how it isn’t long or very detailed? Well it doesn’t need to be. Some folks think of making reviews as if it’s a 500 word essay for their English teacher. Most people hated doing those book reports, and with good reason. You’re forced to read a dull book, and then the teacher wants you to write about the book and its themes like you gave a shit. You’re not allowed to say “I hated this book because…” In those essays you get graded badly for writing anything resembling a personal opinion. With assignments like that, it’s no wonder people develop an aversion to making reviews.

BUT, you don’t have to write a review like that. If you read a book voluntarily without someone forcing it on you, I guarantee you the artist would LOVE to know what you thought. They don’t want a master thesis, either, and most authors won’t grade your reviews. (I say most because I’ve seen some indies who call even a tepid 3-star review “bullying.” And those authors are sheltered assholes who haven’t got a fucking clue of what bullying or cyber-bullying really look like.) I keep going back to a two-star review on Goodreads that said, “Awful, awful book” to point out that a review doesn’t even have to be a paragraph if you don’t feel like it. It still says to the author, “I read your stuff, and I acknowledge it happened.” (Although that three-word example implies: “And now I need to shower to get rid of this scummy feeling,” but I digress.)

And yeah, it did suck to read that three-word, two-star review. It felt a lot better to read that single paragraph four-star review. But both reviews tell me that the writing reached them enough to cause a reaction.

I wish more people would understand that reviews don’t have to be book reports. Maybe if more authors and publishers pointed this out and we could get readers over their aversion to reviewing, we could get the percentage of reader reviewers higher than the 5% it seems to hover at. Then again, when even big authors like Anne Rice is willing to sic her fans on a bad review, it’s no wonder readers decide to hide out and say nothing. (Much as I like most of Anne’s books, the woman is a grade A asshole, and what she did to that reviewer was way out of line.)

Anywho, what I’m getting at is, when you buy something from a creative person, your review means a lot more to them than you might realize. That’s true whether we’re talking about an indie band putting out their first album, or a writer like me publishing their 42nd book. Other people will look at your review and maybe think about giving that artist a chance. So don’t think of it as an essay (like this blog post has turned into). Think of it as a short status update telling your friends what you’re up to. It can be one paragraph, one page, or three words. The length and tone are up to you. But please, don’t remain silent after trying something new. Nobody benefits from you keeping your thoughts to yourself.

And that’s it for this post. I’ve slowed down my reading because I wask banging out 8-10K a day on Alice’s second book, which is why I haven’t had any new reviews up. I like to practice what I preach, and I’m really going to try and pick the pace back up now that I’m in between writing projects. I’d like to finish at least three books before I start my next book. We’ll see if the muse will leave me alone long enough to make that happen.

Gab at you later…