Today, I cleaned my room. Then I checked the status of Falling Stars on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, then checked to see if I’d sold any on Smashwords (I hadn’t) while I slept.
Then, I sat down to write.
It’s been one of those days when it’s been difficult to get something started, despite having ideas percolating in the back of my brain for a couple days. The characters weren’t feeling chatty, the words didn’t feel like they wanted to flow. So, after typing some pre-work scribbles from yesterday afternoon and confirming that I did not, in fact, have to show up at the store today, I headed for my local Starbucks for a pumpkin spice latte and a change of scenery.
Lo and behold, the Awakenings chapter 11 opener was written. Here’s a taste.
I hope that you decided not to go to the city. Something’s about to happen, something connected to that damn asteroid, and I just feel like it’s better that you’re with everyone at the university. Something—not someone—tells me that. I know you stopped believing her and believing yourself, but please, just believe me in this. The interview isn’t that important. If you walk away from her—from all of it—now, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.
However long that’s going to be remains to be seen.
Now, Chapter 10.06 went up today. Page hits have been down since last weekend for some reason, though I’m not certain why. Possibly has something to do with folks getting back into the swing of school, possibly the weather, possibly a piss-poor advertising spread the past week–any number of factors could be to blame. I certainly don’t seem to have the malware problem I was having before, which is amazing (apparently, stripped-down, recustomized versions of the WordPress main themes are helpful in that regard!). Hopefully, numbers will go back up again soon, but only time will tell. I know that there’s at least a small following for my little epic post-apocalyptic urban fantasy, and I think I can live with that.
I mentioned at the top of the post that I’d checked various outlets for sales figures on Falling Stars. For folks not in the know (ie, anyone not privy to my brain or my AIM name), Falling Stars is a novelette set in the same universe as Epsilon: Broken Stars. The story itself is just shy of 13k words, but the ebook release has the first chapter of Epsilon: Broken Stars attached to it. I’m actually really excited about all of this, because it’s my first ebook release.
I posted it to Smashwords and Amazon on Friday, then posted it to Barnes and Noble on Saturday (as of this writing, they’re still processing the file for listing in their catalog. My fingers and toes are crossed that Smashwords will accept Falling Stars for its premium catalog, which is distributed to other e-bookstores such as Kobo, Apple, and a few others. At 99¢, it’s a fairly affordable little read and I happen to think it’s a decent story to boot.
From the way things have been going the past couple days with Epsilon: Broken Stars, that may well be out in early October. Fingers and toes crossed–it depends on how much I can plow through in the next week or so and how quickly a couple able volunteers can proof-read the document for me.
I’m building my book portfolio, slowly but surely (and possibly faster than some new indie authors, too)! Publishing that first ebook was exciting and scary all at once, but I’m fairly pleased at the result so far…even if sales are next to non-existent. Hopefully, more friends in the facebook crowd will give me a hand with advertising! A huge shout-out to Erik of Dear God What Have We Wrought?! for his Facebook marketing of my work (I netted one sale out of that so far, thanks!). For those of you who’d like to give me a hand with that and don’t know how, it’s as easy as heading to the Smashwords or Amazon pages for Falling Stars and hitting the “Share” button for Facebook (in both cases, the button is on the right hand side of the page–on the Amazon page, it’ll be tucked under the “Read on these devices” box, and on Smashwords…well. Smashwords makes the share button pretty easy to find).
For now, though, it’s time for me to get back to the writing. Wish me luck!
