Tag Archives: indie

Spark Tally!

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So how did your week wrap up?

More photo editing for me. Yesterday I redid the first chapter without text. Today I worked on the second chapter. Still no voice for the book, which is distressing. Maybe after I get the layout down the words will come.

I saw exciting news today that I wanted to pass on. Some of you may recall that I have a short story in the anthology A Kepler’s Dozen. The editors are doing a new collection!

If you want to read more about it, check out David Lee Summers Blog. I’m going to try to put romance aside enough to get one submission in, but it’ll be tough. I hope you guys submit too!

Here’s a clip to whet your interest:

Three years later, the number of planets has literally exploded and we find ourselves looking at a proverbial wild west. So, we want to continue exploring what Kepler’s worlds might be like by telling stories of the rugged men and women who either might explore those worlds, or might come exploring Earth from those worlds. The anthology is tentatively titled Kepler’s Cowboys and you can click here for the detailed guidelines. Submissions will open on June 15, 2016 and we’ll remain open until we’ve filled the anthology.

Tomorrow I’ll draw a name from the commentors this week to give away a $5 gift card to Amazon or Starbucks. Post your progress today for a chance to win. Whatever it is you’re working on. Like me you may not have a word count, but I’d love to hear about your project.

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Happy New Year!

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Yes, I am alive :) Sorry It’s been a month since I’ve posted. Julie was in town for a lovely long visit, plus the usual holiday stuff kept me away.

How is everyone’s writing going? Have you kicked off your goals for 2016?

I got together with my publishing team and plotted out what I’m publishing in 2016. Unfortunately, it’s all under my pen name so I can build up that audience and money. I do plan on writing more in the fairy tale series I started with Rapunzel: Stay at Home Mom, but I think I’ve mentioned that to do that the way I want will take a lot of money for the illustrations.

I will be publishing some fantasy romance under the pen name this year. If you’re curious about those stories, just drop me a line and I’ll tell you about them.

So what does that mean for Enchanted Spark? My plan is to do Monday blogs still. I have one about endings I’ve wanted to get up for awhile now and some blogs about what it feels like to be writing consistently. I also would like you guys to guest blog for me. There’s about half a dozen of you who post comments regularly. Some of the comments are real gems about the writing process, but I fear they get lost to the casual reader who skims through the main posts. So you can either raise your hand via sending me an email about a post you’d like to do, or you can wait for me to call on you like a teacher in class 😉 Seriously, though, I’d like this to become a blog where you guys contribute and it feels more like a discussion group.

When we plotted out what we’re publishing in 2016, Julie said that I had about three years worth of stuff coming out in one year. She’s right, but as an indie writer I think it’s really important to keep my name visible as much as possible. Being on the New Release list on some sites is a really good way to do that. That means I’m going to be writing a lot. I want to hit 15,000 word counts consistently each week. Something that helps me stay on track is bragging about how much I’ve done or shamefully posting that I’m still at zero for the week. So I’m bringing back mid-week Spark Checks on Wednesdays and posting Spark Tally every Saturday. I hope you join me! And if you’re new, please pipe in!

That’s all for today. Please post your writing goals in the comments below and come back Wednesday for Spark Check!

 

Spark Tally Saturday!

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Good Morning! I have a word count! I wrote 13,000 words this week! It’s a completed novelette, (I’ll call it VH) which I stayed up way too late finishing, editing and publishing. Yes, I’m crazy. I’ve had many late nights this week, doing what I can to expand my readership.

Last week I told you about the novel (I’ll call it TH) I’d just released having the best first day ever for me. It’s now had the best sales ever for me across titles in just the first week. TH made the best seller list at All Romance. It topped out at 30 and is barely hanging on at 48 this morning, but I can’t believe it was on there at all.

I knew even if the book had a great opening day, sales would slide. I had long planned putting out VH for free during the second week to attract more readers and hopefully upsell them the novel at the end. Well….I got greedy and released it on All Romance for $0.99. No sales the first day, so I decided to return to my original plan and put it up for free. I also discounted the first title in the series (MH). Within a few hours I’d made sales on both TH and MH.

I released VH Thursday night on Smashwords. There have been no upsales to TH or MH on Smashwords, but VH was downloaded a 100 times on the first day and it got a review. It got a five star review even. I was in shock. None of my books have ever been reviewed on Smashwords.

Smashwords distributes to several other venues. VH is not on any of them yet, but sales for TH started trickling in yesterday from the other venues.

I put VH up on Amazon yesterday too. You can’t open at free on Amazon, and I made one sale today for it :)

Last week I said my goal for the month was two sales a day. Last night I was averaging 5 sales a day! No matter what happens the rest of the month, I can be pleased that I already made my sales goal of 60.

But I have to keep pushing. I still have my serial story I’m doing, but I have no other specific plans yet for December and beyond. I need to fix that.

How did you guys do this week? I hope you got lots of writing done!

Indie Highlight: Tales of a Dying Star Book 1: Siege of Praetar by David Kristoph

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Seige of Praetar, available at Amazon, does a good job of drawing me in despite two out of the three sections being from a villain POV. I shouldn’t call the first POV a villain because really he’s just, a middle ranking military man who has totally bought into his corrupt government. He has two kids, he wants a third—he’s just doing his job. But I so wanted his shipmate to win the struggle in the first section. Kristoph skillfully made me see through the shipmate how out of control and evil the governing empire was.

The second section is my favorite though hardest to read emotionally. It’s from the POV of someone I really sympathized with: hard working woman, sick daughter, completely broke. To me the best part of the book is when her boss, a cog in the abusive government, helps her by giving her extra money for her sick daughter. Why does he do that? It’s never really answered, though we do find out a little bit more about him in the third section.

The third section is a great way to end the book because it ties the plot lines together while leaving so many unanswered questions. The POV here is definitely a villain. There is nothing to like about this man, and yet I kept reading because the story of the world was important to me. And I want to read the second book in the hopes that Kristoph will come back to a few things he left hanging.

I definitely recommend this story if you like science fiction evil empire stories and are looking for something short.

What indie books are you guys reading? Have any to recommend?