One, holy crap, a complete stranger actually read my book and wrote in to say she liked it EEE!. This does not happen to me very often at all, people. Faerie Blood hasn’t sold more than a few hundred copies to the best of my knowledge, and believe me, I’m still totally double-taking at the thought that people I don’t actually know have actually read it!

But with that in mind, O Internets, I urge you: if you loved a book, take the time to write in and let the author know. It doesn’t have to be effusive or detailed. It can just be ‘I really enjoyed your book, thank you so much!’ Even hearing that much is music to an author’s ears. We’re putting our darlings out there in the hope that somebody will in fact read ‘em, so any proof that they’re getting read? Gold.

And two, holy crap this complete stranger wants to read more of my work! Sure, it’s work that hasn’t actually been published yet, but in some ways that’s even more awesome. That’s taking an active interest.

So I’ve flung back a Facebook note to the person in question, and we will see where this goes. In the meantime, public mad props to Ghislaine for taking the time to write in!

All the rest of you? If you loved an author’s work, thank them. And if you’re an author, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that your readers are made entirely of awesome. Or that your beta readers kick up the awesome another order of magnitude entirely. Hug your beta readers today!

Final word count on this draft is roughly 110K, which puts me within the range I was asked for in Carina’s R&R. Quite a bit of old content has been taken out. Quite a bit of new content has been put in. And now I am going to step away from this book for a few weeks, before I come back for one last read-through to make sure nothing else is in desperate need of fixing before I re-query it back to Carina Press.

This, O Internets, is where you come in. Several of you out there have expressed previous interest in beta reading for me. If you’re still interested, and you think you’ll be able to read through Lament for me in the next couple of weeks, I need to hear from you ASAP.

What I need is going to be extremely simple. I do not at this point need in-depth proofreading or copyedits, although as always, any obvious errors should be brought to my attention. Mostly I need people to read through it like any other book, sanity-check it, and tell me if it hangs together cohesively. If you’ve read previous drafts of Lament and you’re up for taking another stab at it, you’re more than welcome. If you haven’t read a previous draft and you want to, that’s also awesome.

Either way, contact me if you want in. I will fling you a copy of the manuscript in the file format of your choice. My usual gmail addresses are acceptable contact methods, as are DMs on Twitter or PMs on Facebook. Hell, if you can reach me with smoke signals or carrier pigeons, go for it! Just talk to me!

And talk to me soon. I would like if at all possible to re-submit the book to Carina before I go to Canada at the beginning of March, to get it done and dealt with. Thanks all, as always, for your support!

Goodreads Data Alert

If you click on the Learn More button a new page pops up talking about Goodread’s reasons for doing this, and displaying a form where you can fill in data from other sources to make sure that the book doesn’t vanish out of their database.

AUTHORS: Go check your books on Goodreads and make sure you’re not about to lose your only entry in their database. ESPECIALLY if your only listed edition is a Kindle Edition.

GOODREADS USERS: Check your bookshelves and see if you’re about to lose any Kindle Editions out of your various shelves. You do NOT need librarian access to rescue a book–anybody can fill in the form, apparently. But you should rescue any obvious Kindle Editions in your lists. All you need is a legitimate source of data about the book, from somewhere other than Amazon.

I’ve also removed a few of the sidebar widgets. The Links/Blogroll widget has been turned into an actual Links page, since I had enough links that I thought they might as well have their own page. I’ve also created menu items for my Facebook and Twitter accounts under the “Contact” menu to give those higher visibility, and I’ve provided a link off to my annathepiper.org blog for those of you who might care to follow that. (I’m a lot more prolific on that blog than I am on this one, which remains writing-related!)

Meanwhile, I’ve updated the FAQ, Faerie Blood, and Defiance pages to reflect the status of my former Drollerie works. Since I’ve seen a few folks on Goodreads have continued to add me to their To Read lists (hi, Goodreads folks!), I just thought I’d issue a reminder: Faerie Blood and Defiance are to my knowledge no longer for sale with any ebook vendor. (If they are, and you can point me at a link, let me know! Drollerie needs to take any further instances of the book down if they’re out there.)

But if you haven’t read the book or the short story and you want to, I’ll be happy to hand-sell a copy to you. For Faerie Blood, I’m asking five dollars for an EPUB or PDF copy (and I’ll convert it to other formats on request). For “The Blood of the Land”, I’m asking 99 cents. The best way to pay me for either will be via Paypal to my gmail address, annathepiper. If you’d like to discuss alternate payment arrangements, drop me an email to the same gmail address, or visit my Contact page.

These prices will stand until my plans to self-publish Faerie Blood and Bone Walker go through, as per my previous Kickstarter post. Anyone who’d like to go ahead and buy Faerie Blood now will receive the Drollerie release copy, though I will also provide updated copies to known purchasers of the book once the self-pubbed version is ready.

Note also that I am pursuing self-pubbing “The Blood of the Land” with new cover art and layout; what you’ll get now if you want to go ahead and buy it is my manuscript copy. Again, though, if you buy the story now, I will keep track of you and provide you a free copy of the self-pubbed copy later!

As always, thanks for your support, folks. Y’all on Goodreads, hope you’ll like my book!

• New theme! Woo!
• Standalone pages now have comments disabled and hidden.
• My Contact page has been updated to include my Google+ and Tumblr info.
• The page for Defiance has had it now-defunct buy links removed since the book is no longer available for sale.
• I have added the capability to crosspost from WordPress out to Tumblr, now that I have an account there.

And, although I haven’t actually started this yet, be on the lookout for a rework of my How to Read Ebooks set of posts. Since we’ve had some changes in the ebook and ereader realm over the last several months (notably, the releases of the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, and the ability to check out library books on the Kindle), an update of that information is definitely called for. So watch this space for more data on that!

If you’re an Ilona Andrews fan, that particular writing team has a novella called Magic Gifts set in the Kate Daniels universe. It’s only available for a short period of time and you can only grab it off their website, so if you want it, scamper over here and yoink it down! And thank them for sharing it with their readers.

Meanwhile, I’m aware of two freebies currently available for the Kindle, and the first of these is The Devil of Kilmartin by Lauren Wittig, a historical romance. This one’s only available for free until tomorrow. So if you like your romance historical and you like your heroines gifted with healing magic (I’m a sucker for healers myself), you might grab this. But grab it fast.

Last but not least, Martha Wells, who is marthawells on both LJ and Dreamwidth, has The Cloud Roads available for free for the time being on the Kindle. I don’t know how much longer this’ll be the case, so you might grab this one if you like fantasy. Book 2 of the series, The Serpent Sea, is about to come out.

I want to hear from you if you fall into any of the following categories:

1. You’ve run a successful Kickstarter campaign (what incentives worked to get you supporters?)
2. You’ve supported a successful Kickstarter campaign (what incentives got you to support the campaign?)
3. You are a prior reader of Faerie Blood and you want more in the same universe (what would get you to support this campaign?)
4. You haven’t read anything in the Warder universe yet and you want to (same question as previous)

Note that the overall point of this Kickstarter would be to get Bone Walker finished and purchasable in electronic and print formats, with the side bonus of doing a second edition release of Faerie Blood. Thus the things I’d need to pay for would include:

1. Commission of cover art for both books (cost TDB, I have a query out to a potential cover artist)
2. A proper edit pass over Bone Walker (estimated cost $700), since it absolutely must be edited by someone who isn’t me; a query is out to a potential editor
3. Initial setup cost with either Third Place or the University Book Store, depending on who has better rates, to get both books printable on the Espresso Book Machine (estimated cost $150 to set up both books)
4. Cost per book and per page of printing individual copies of both books (cost TDB, as Bone Walker isn’t finished yet, but Faerie Blood would probably run me $2 per book and $.03 per page)

Look behind the fold for my thoughts on potential incentives. I want your feedback on order of incentive levels, combinations of potential incentives, and viable pledge levels for them! Also, if you can think of any really nifty incentives I don’t include here, do please let me know!

Here are my initial thoughts on a rough draft of potential incentives and pledge levels:

$5 or more:

A DRM-free copy of Bone Walker‘s electronic edition, in .mobi, .pdf, and .epub formats, and your name in the Acknowledgements section of that book.

$10 or more:

As above, plus a DRM-free copy of Faerie Blood‘s electronic second edition, in the same formats, and your name in the Acknowledgements section of that book.

$15 or more:

As above, plus a DRM-free copy of the Warder-universe short story “The Blood of the Land”, with new layout and cover art.

$25 or more:

As above, plus a signed print copy of Bone Walker.

$50 or more:

As above, plus a signed print copy of Faerie Blood‘s second edition.

Now, all of the above are incentives I am reasonably confident I can offer. Here are others I could offer if enough extra money is raised:

Since this Kickstarter is specifically for Bone Walker, Book 2 of the projected Kendis/Christopher trilogy, I will be focused on finishing that book. However, enough extra money would also raise the potential of me also doing the as of yet unnamed Book 3, which is projected to take place partly in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and to follow up on the backstory with Christopher’s mother, alluded to in Faerie Blood. This would be the biggest and most important extra potential incentive!

Also there are:

1. The first Warder universe novella, featuring my psychic chick of size who is asked to help find out who murdered the Warder of Providence, Rhode Island. This work is already in progress so would be the first one I’d offer as an extra incentive.
2. The second Warder universe novella, featuring a geeky tuba player who must help a Warder save migrating sea dragons.
3. Warder universe novella #3, featuring the young Millicent Merriweather becoming the Warder of Seattle in 1953.
4. Depending on how things work out with a potential cover artist, I could investigate the idea of prints of cover art.

And in terms of incentives for ridiculously high pledges, I would totally be willing to consider commissioned short stories, novellas, or even full novels set in the time and place of the supporter’s choice, as long as they were within the Warder universe. And I’d totally consider naming characters after supporters as well.

So talk to me, people! How should I improve upon these potential incentives?

Note also: for people who have already purchased Faerie Blood, I don’t want to make you pay for it twice, so I want your feedback on how to make these incentives worth your time as well if I’m going to be offering a second edition of the same book!

1. There are already a whole lot of urban fantasy novels out there;
2. I’m not romance-y enough for the paranormal romance end of the spectrum, read, I have no sex in this novel, and there’s barely any kissing;
3. I’m also not dark/gritty/apocalyptic enough for the urban fantasy end of the spectrum. There’s not much actual violence in this book, and my heroine isn’t a badass, she’s a fiddle-playing geek who only just finds out about her fey heritage and the magic she’s inherited from her mother–she doesn’t have much time in the story to actually do anything seriously badassed with it.

Given these things, I am extremely dubious about my ability to pitch the novel to any further big pubs or agents. For one thing, I’ve already pitched it to most of the big pubs, with the exception of DAW, and the main reason I haven’t sent it to them at this point is my aforementioned wariness of the current urban fantasy market. For another thing, I’ve also already pitched it to the agents in which I’m actively interested. Part of me is still nagging that the couple dozen agents I’ve pitched it to isn’t enough work on pitching it–but on the other hand, a lot of the agents out there seem to have gotten slammed with so many queries now that their slush piles are crazytalk and their response times have accordingly increased dramatically. There are some agents whose response time has gotten to be over a year, and that’s assuming you get back a response at all.

So given all this, I’m seriously tempted to go the self-pub route with Faerie Blood and any further related stories, and focus other energies on newer things to be pitched to the big pubs.

My question for you therefore, O Internets, is this: if I were to do a limited run of print copies of Faerie Blood, would you buy one? I’m thinking about it because there are two Espresso book machines right here in Seattle, and one of them is right down the hill from my house at Third Place Books. I have two books (by other people) that are the output of this machine, and while it had trouble with the thicker one which is over 500 pages, the shorter one, which is comparable to Faerie Blood in length, is not badly assembled at all. If I were to get new, cover-quality art for the novel, it’s conceivable that I could therefore do a small set of print copies.

So I’m putting hard thought into this. I am looking at Third Place’s posted rates for their printing services, and pondering the possibility of doing a Kickstarter to raise the money.

Talk to me, Internets. Would you be interested? Because if I get enough people going hell yeah, I will move forward with this.

ETA: It has now been suggested to me on Google+ that I should consider a Kickstarter not for Faerie Blood specifically, but rather, for finishing Book 2, Bone Walker–and offering print copies of Faerie Blood as a potential incentive! I like this idea quite a bit and am going to be thinking about it very hard. If any of you out there would like this too, I really want to know about it!

It’s a bit weird, being back to square one with this book, even if at a smaller scale than several traditionally published authors I know who’ve had a series fold out from underneath them. At the same time, though, it’s also a bit of a relief.

Faerie Blood is now in the queue at Carina Press, for all the same general reasons I was interested in them before: i.e., they’re queer-friendly, they’re digital and therefore appealing to me as a tech geek, they’re taking all genres and do a lot of ‘other genres with heavy romantic elements’ stuff in particular, they now have a solid and established track record. In this specific case, though, I’ve also noted that they’ve published at least a couple of authors who’d been previously published elsewhere–at least one author for example who was previously published through Dorchester. So I’m hoping that this’ll mean they’ll be receptive to my work.

Relatedly, I am one, count it, one single chapter away from finishing the sixth draft of Lament of the Dove. Once that happens, I will be putting out a call for beta readers. (I’m cognizant that we’re moving into the Christmas/Solstice season, though, so I will be trying to schedule around that, and targeting sending Lament off in early January.) Watch this space for further details on that, people!

mmegaera

She was kind enough to give me a coupon for a review copy from Smashwords, and I’ve just finished reading the book as of this weekend. It’s a bit of a mashup of Western, SF, and time-travel romance, and I found it a good solid read. A proper review will be coming later (I’ve rated it on Goodreads but haven’t written up a review yet), but I wanted to go ahead and mention it now. Click over to her page to read an excerpt, and if you like what you see, buy it and tell her I sent you, mmkay?