Random chit-chat

[Amy]

I'd just be oh yay another superhero film. Note the sarcasm...

[Amy]

I like them enough. But they're not my favourites. There's just a lot of superheroes and remakes at the moment.

[Erica]

I always saw Batgirl as a sidekick growing up, but my husband is a huge comic book nerd and changed my mind. Lol. I am pretty stoked about the new movie. I just hope they do it justice. I am a huge fan of the superhero movies right now though and can see where people who are not as into them would be getting tired about now. They all tie together so far so if you follow them, each new movie is like the next installment to a series.

[Erica]

I agree. They will have some educating to do in their trailers to get people interested. Though the demand for female supers in the US has been high recently so that may help. Especially following the heels of Wonder Woman's success. And, the Batgirl action figures have been flying off the shelves at the stores for months (regular stores not comic book) so that may have influenced their decision to make a Batgirl movie. Only time will tell if they are making the right decision or not. :)

[Amy]

Not been to the cinema in months. Costly. Not to mention uncomfortable.

[Amy]

I don't do people. In any case hardly anyone goes to the cinema any more so when we do go it's us and 12 other people.

[Erica]

I haven't seen a movie in theaters in 5 years...no way my kids would sit through one and when we get a babysitter we don't choose to spend the time in a theater. Will definitely watch it when it comes out on DVD though.

[Amy]

I can't begin to understand what your life must be like. Such trauma and heartache.

[Carole]

"bring us everlasting peace and blessings for the next 20 years." Amen.

You've had some terrible things, and I'm sorry you all had to suffer. It's hard to understand sometimes how this great universe works.

[Erica]

CeDany...I have been sitting here trying to come up with the right words to say, but there are no words. My heart breaks for you. I am so sorry for what you have gone through.

[Carole]

You are welcome, CeDany.

[Erica]

**hugs**

[Erica]

You have a very busy schedule. Best of luck! Your meal sounds like it was amazing!

[Erica]

Glad to hear you are feeling better CeDany!

[Amy]

Finally. 13 months after he died, my Dad's estate has been finalised. I have my inheritance, I have paid off my card and overdraft debts. The whole wondering if I'll need to drop everything to appear at the solicitor's office at a moment's notice at an inconvenient time has gone. I can schedule work appointments without worrying that I'll have to let anyone down because I'm expected somewhere else. It's been a long year. I feel like I can get back to being me again. Also, I'm petrified of falling into debt again.

[Erica]

I am sorry you had to go through that long and stressful experience and am glad to hear that everything is settled now. What a relief it must be to not have to wake up every morning worrying about that and to have your debts relieved.

[Amy]

Thanks Erica. I know it's not as traumatic as other things and even not as bad as other things I've been through myself but this one took its toll on me. I'm glad it's over.

[Amy]

Glad you're having a good day CeDany.

Mine's OK too. I've prepped another chapter of Missing Remnants for the Radish Fiction App. I'm very pleased with how the story is going.

I've found a group on here to announce it too.

I had a bit of work for my day job.

[Amy]

Radish - Yes, app based serialised fiction. You release an episode at a time and the idea is to leave each chapter on a cliffhanger so the reader feels compelled to buy the next one. The first three chapters are always free. There's a small charge for each chapter after that unless you set it to be free.

So Amazon, we need a new TV, ordered it Sunday night, it was dispatched Monday for delivery today (12th). Nope, they delivered it to the wrong depot and are now asking that we don't contact Amazon to query it until Friday 21st to report it lost. I'll give them the 13th. It's a Prime delivery. You do not need two weeks to honour it. Raises eyebrows and stamps foot.

[Angel]

Amy wrote: "Radish - Yes, app based serialised fiction. You release an episode at a time and the idea is to leave each chapter on a cliffhanger so the reader feels compelled to buy the next one. The first thre..."

Sorry to hear that Amy. Amazon can be so trying.

[Angel]

I'm sure I've said this on another thread in this group. Best wishes to your family and my condolences for the loss of your son. It seems we have something in common my ten year old son is autistic.

[Amy]

New TV arrived today. It looks in one piece.

So I emailed Radish to see about featuring in their front page as they tweeted about wanting sci-fi stories and I've written Missing Remnants. I received a reply today pointing me at the newsletter every two weeks of how to apply to be featured. It's in subjects. They recently had, for instance a "back to school" heading. Fair enough. I thanked her and said as soon as I saw a heading I could fit a murder mystery sci-fi serial in, I'd apply. With any luck out of this world or something might be featured.

[Amy]

Bound to be something featuring dead bodies...

[Amy]

Re the competition entry that's half price at the moment from the other thread: I told my husband last night that authors even have to pay to enter competitions. (Although I've entered one that didn't cost me anything.) He's the main earner so any money I spend would basically be money he'd earnt. At the moment there's no spare. Naturally he thinks the whole industry is unbelievable. Every time I tell him yeah but people spend this on that service he looks at me and says "that's a lot of money." I have a battle on my hands to justify the costs involved. If it was pre-recession, I wouldn't have a problem we had money then.

Funny old world. Of course, if I was earning the money I had back then I wouldn't have time to write. Ah well.

[Carole]

It's a cruel world, Amy, that way but your regular job loss of income was our gain. This has to pay off for you!

I thought about the charging. I spoke to the publisher at Publisher's Weekly about it- There are those people that have a lack of respect for "paid" reviews or contests. I understand that when you send to PW or LSJ - they cherry- pick the contestants and many get noticed for their covers or because they are being pushed by publishers and agents. Most of us don't have those perks and so if we want some sort of recognition- we have to use the ones that will provide it.
If people were giving out free entry for a contest- they'd be inundated with books. Everybody thinks their book is deserving. Most of these guys running theses sites are struggling too. They have to pay to stay up- I don't blame them. They need occasionally pay people to read- some use volunteers- but then they advertise your win.

I've won money with the Independent Author Network- which covered my entrance fee.
In the beginning- I added two contests into my marketing budget of each book. They usually won something which I was able to list on Amazon, put a pretty metal on the book cover and I think may have helped with my sales.

[Amy]

Oh it’s a weird world and I totally understand why they’d need to charge for entry-every book would be entered if they didn’t.

I suspect for me I’ll end up dying and then having a small following who discovered me after I died and said “yeah she was OK.” I’m sandwiched between 2 paranormals on Radish at the moment each with views in the 800s me with 1. It’s fine. It’s a new story. Two episodes are up. The third is scheduled for next week. I’m writing the 4th now. Once both books are finished I’ll have them covered professionally and on Amazon and start utilising the promo you can buy for Amazon books. I feel like I’m currently using Radish for file storage.

[Carole]

hahah. You crack me up.

[Amy]

Ah there’s thought. If we had it we wouldn’t have conversations about spending it. It would be there to be spent. The only reason he raises his eyebrows is because we don’t have it to spare.

[Amy]

I feel I haven't found my stride with Iridessian Haunts. Maybe it's the paranormal genre. Perhaps I need to blow something up...

[Carole]

hahaha

[Carole]

The laughing was directed to Amy. She cracks me up

[Amy]

Yeah thanks both. Fixed it. I attacked someone in authority.

[Amy]

With a ghost...

[Amy]

Works for me ...

[Erica]

I find most people want to use Skype, but I prefer Messenger for personal reasons. Both are good though.

[Mary]

Google Play Books is currently temporarily closed.

[Aislinn]

I have an account with Google Play. I got a special code through a conference. Unfortunately it's currently wasted on me, since I'm Kindle-exclusive.

[Aislinn]

No, sorry CeDany. It was just a special deal for people attending the conference.

[Amy]

I have done everything by the book for Radish. I've put all four of my books in the correct categories. I have even gone in and edited the covers of the two erotic books to remove the words in case they change their minds and start featuring those on the front page of the app. I have made sure my covers are exactly the size required by their system. And although they don't contain any bare body parts on any of them, I don't think the covers are crap. We'll see if I get accepted into any of the collections I've applied to.

[Carole]

Me too, Amy. I'm still navigating their site to see if I can do something to get noticed.

[Amy]

Thanks Alex, I suspect I need to remove my face and have a sex change before that happens, but we'll see.

Well, once your story is finished, Carole, no, there is nothing you can do with their site to get your story noticed. It's drops down in the list to be overtaken by the ones that are still being updated. All you can do is to draw people to it and you from outside and continually apply to be in a collection. But the collections aren't appearing when they say they will. I'm applying to everyone, but none of the ones stated for October have appeared.

Nate and Day is going to finish this week and I'm toying with the idea of removing both that and Modified which is now way down the list because they're up there for free and everywhere else they're published has a price attached. I've just increased the price of Modified from 99p to £2.99 as well following a conversation I had with authors on Facebook who stated that they wrote erotic novels of 20k words and charged £2.99 for them. They seemed surprised when I said mine was 99p at 86k words. Besides if I was ever going to do a promo for Modified I'd need to reduce the price to qualify in the first place, as many places only take discounted books, not ones that are just at a low price.

Sheesh it's a minefield.

[Faith]

Can I ask authors' views on a Radish strategy question? Is it better to wait until your complete, finished book can be uploaded? I see writers adding a chapter per week and I'm unsure whether that is a good idea, e.g. fast readers may be frustrated.

[Amy]

Faith wrote: "Can I ask authors' views on a Radish strategy question? Is it better to wait until your complete, finished book can be uploaded? I see writers adding a chapter per week and I'm unsure whether that ..."

Faith, I'd honestly upload a chapter a week. That's what Radish themselves recommend. If you upload everything all in one go you end up at the bottom of your category. One of the only ways to be visible on the Radish app is when you upload a chapter and your book then goes to the top of the list again. As soon as someone else in your category updates their book, you're bumped down the list. I have to scroll for ages to find Modified which was uploaded in it's entirety. The other three I have appear at the top of the categories once a week at the moment. But as soon as Nate and Day is finished which is this week, it'll be lost at the bottom with everything else that's completed.

Even if your book is complete, I'd still schedule the episodes to be released once a week or every few days just to keep it near the top of the list. Radish isn't designed for fast readers anyway, it's designed as a bite-sized reading app for people who only read a bit at a time. That appeared to be it's selling point when I joined.

[Amy]

CeDany wrote: "Just throwing this here, hoping that it'll go somewhere...

I use both Desktop of GoodReads as well as Android App of GoodReads.

Whereas, I can follow authors on Desktop, I've noticed that you can..."

I've got an iphone, so different app, but I can tell you that there are plenty of things I can do on the desktop with GR that I can't do with the app. The most annoying one is that I cannot edit posts on the app on the phone. And being a tiny screen using the desktop site via a browser on the phone is difficult on my eyes and fingers.

[Amy]

I typed up a reply to that CeDany but my laptop ate it. I’ve also dealt with Facebook hackers on my daughters account which I struggled to get shut down.

And followers? Well people that know me here and one or two people I know through work and long term friends have read what I’ve written. But that’s it really.

[Amy]

Radish collections got updated. Neither of my stories were featured. (Shrugs)

[Amy]

Thing is they won’t get any money from me. There’s only one person reading my books and that’s Carole lol. Maybe my covers are wrong. I’ve gone down the artist created type. The ones they feature are mainly photos and a lot of bare chests. I refuse to believe my writing isn’t good enough.

[Amy]

But but but they told me I had to do it myself. You’re the second person in two weeks who has said they’ve been told a librarian needs to do it.

There’s a thread in the librarians group you ask in there. That’s where they told me I had to do it. (Shrugs)

[Faith]

I applied to be a librarian but didn't hear back. I have read three books this year which are not on Goodreads and thought to add them. Since that, it occurred to me that the authors might not want them listed and star rated, so perhaps I should leave it alone.

[Amy]

Denise wrote: "Hi CeDany, Some authors can add books to the author page. The librarians won't change the cover, they'll just add it. Covers are never deleted on Goodreads. "

I think my first book is up to at least 4 covers now lol.