Editing and KDP update…

My problems with Amazon’s KDP site seem to be fixed, and I’ve been able to upload edited versions of A Frosty Girl’s Cure, Sandy Morrison and the Pixie Prohibition, Saving Gabriel, Thicker Than Blood, and the Peter the Wolf omnibus edition. If you don’t follow me on Twitter to know what the drama was, I couldn’t click on any of my book links on the KDP site without 404 errors, and not even my account page would work. I kept being advised to use the Contact Us form, and that wasn’t working either. I had to resort to going to Amazon and chatting with a customer service rep to have them pass along my problems to the KDP staff, and even then their first email back advised using the Contact Us form. Oy. But we got it sorted out, and my catalog is now updated to make my recent releases cleaner and closer to typolessness. (Totally a word. I just made it up, but it’s okay. I’m a writer. That’s what we do, make shit up.)

I also got to talk to someone at Kobo about my problems uploading the omnibus, and it turns out I’d somehow saved the file as normal HTML instead of filtered HTML in Word, resulting in a bunch of compile errors in the epub file. I saved the file again and it uploaded without problems.

So now I’ve covered all of my most recent releases, and what’s left in my editing queue is the new stuff. I’m not ready to work on any of these just yet, mainly because even if I do get the books ready to publish, I can’t afford to pay cover artists yet. Once I can afford to buy a cover, I think my next release will be the third Tobe White book, Adventures In Trolling. My other project is Third Wheel Romance Blues, but I’d like to research a manga series referenced in the book before I attempt revisions on it. Which also will require having some funds free, and for now, I just don’t have the cash to spare.

I’m in a weird place as far as writing goes. The muse is hot to write a story, but I’m not interested in it. This has not stopped her from pitching the book with random scenes. But I’m not biting for two reasons. The first is my typical complaint that what she’s aiming for won’t sell, but the other is that this idea is practically a retread of Peter the Wolf, sans the magic elements. For this reason, I’ve dubbed her project Peter the Wolf Lite, and I’m not biting.

It’s not like I don’t have other writing projects that we could be working on. we’ve got the last zombie era novella to write, a third Sandy Morrison book, a fourth Tobe White book, and a sequel to Saving Gabriel. All of these projects are more appealing to me, but until the muse settles down and stops wandering, I’m not going to get much done.

I suppose there is an upside to this. With the muse and I hitting an impasse, I’m free to read some books and make a little progress in my TBR pile. I only need to finish reading one more book to reach my goal of 25 books on the Goodreads reading challenge, and two books will get me up to my number of read books from last year. It’s unlikely that I’ll hit 32 books, which was my number in 2010, but I’m happy about my numbers because this year has a lot more 4 and 5 star books than last year, when I hit a long string of 2 and 1 star stories.

Speaking of Goodreads, I went over my list of books in the system, and several have earned a number of ratings with no reviews. These generally range from 3-5 stars, with the occasional 2 or 1. I just want to say how grateful I am to the folks on Goodreads who read my books and left a rating. Even the lower rankings say “Okay, I read your crappy book,” and it helps me feel a little less lonely knowing I’m not just shouting into the void.

That’s just about it for this report. I will mention that I started reading Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys, and it is very good. How good? I’m already 200 pages in with no desire to read the other books I have open. It’s so good, I’m going to skip working today to read more. My only complaint is, there’s still no release date for the sequel, The Dream Thieves, here in Italy, and I may be forced to order the book from Amazon UK. (And this is how you can tell I’m a book addict. Even being flat broke, I’m considering buying more books online.) So you can expect that to be my next book review, and unless something goes horribly wrong in the other 250 pages, expect a glowing review.

Until next time, thanks for reading my stuff.