Frustrations – Page 8 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

New upload and thoughts on ebooks

Yesterday, I reformatted Genesis Earth and uploaded the new version to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. Basically, I took everything I’ve learned about ebook formatting in the last few months and brought it up to date.

Here’s the complete list of changes:

Revised author’s note to include Facebook and Goodreads links, mention of newsletter, etc.
Added teasers for BSH and Desert Stars.
Credited my editor on copyright page.
Put table of contents on one screen.
Added nav points using KindleGen.

If you’ve got the old version, the book itself is pretty much the same; basically, I just uploaded a cleaner version, with links to my other works. Genesis Earth continues to sell better than Bringing Stella Home and Sholpan, so I figured it would be good to update it.

As for how sales of my ebooks have been going, to be honest they’ve dropped off quite a bit. At Amazon, my free short stories have more or less equalized at 20-80 downloads per week, and they’re starting to get some traction on the new Amazon FR store, but the paid stuff has slowed down quite a lot.

What this tells me is that I haven’t yet built up enough of a reader base to be self sustaining. It’s not enough just to upload your work to Amazon and the other ebook retailers (though that’s certainly important); you’ve got to find ways to reach new readers and get your name out there.

I’m not too worried; I figure the most important thing right now is to build my list. After all, if you want to get discovered, the most important thing is to have something that people can discover.

Beyond that, though, I’m going to try a variety of strategies, including submitting work to more traditional markets (especially short stories). The biggest breakthrough would probably come from Writers of the Future, so I plan to put a lot more effort into that contest.

I’ll also focus a lot on the email newsletter, since that’s the best direct connection I have with my readers. For those of you who have already signed up, expect to see a lot more free and exclusive content. And for those of you who haven’t–what are you waiting for?? Check out the sidebar and sign up!

In the meantime, I’m going to keep writing novels and indie publishing them. It’s definitely worth it, even if sales are initially slow. Like Howard Tayler says, the first step to making grizzly bear soup is killing the grizzly bear–everything after that is just making soup.

Q3 Report, 2011

Before I move on to other, more interesting subjects, I want to take a little bit of time to review how my writing went in the past three months. For those of you who may be new, this is something I like to do at the start of each new quarter. Keeps me honest, I guess.

Anyhow, here goes:

This is a graph of my word count totals for the past quarter. The red line shows how many words I wrote each day, while the blue line shows a running seven day total. I include substantive revisions in the totals, but if all I’m doing is proofreading or running through copy edits, I don’t count it.

For the first half of July, I was finishing up the third draft of Desert Stars while working 40 hours per week. I wasn’t writing as much as I’d have liked, but still managed to keep some good momentum.

The HUGE peak at the end of the month represents my first draft of Sholpan, which I finished in only a week. I spent the next week in a weird writerly limbo, not sure what else to work on, then picked it up again and made some substantial changes before sending it to my editor in in mid-August. Then Worldcon happened, and I didn’t get any writing done while I was out at that. Should have, but oh well.

After Worldcon, I had maybe three or four different projects I wanted to do, but since I wanted to do the final draft of Desert Stars in October, I wasn’t sure which project to pick up. After several false starts, I ended up writing the first part of Star Wanderers, which is that hump you see at the beginning of September. The second hump is the second draft; my writing took a dip in between because I didn’t know what else to do with only a couple weeks before October.

Overall, though, my personal word counts were a lot lower than I’d like. Part of that was due to the effort I put into publishing Sholpan (it takes a lot of time and energy to publish something, which can eat into your writing if you aren’t careful); part of it was because the project I was most excited about was Desert Stars, and I had to wait until October to hear back from my first readers; but another major part was that I was trying to balance a 40 hour job on top of everything.

This is the dilemma: I want to build up my writing career to the point where I can support myself on it, but to do that I have to work a day job to make ends meet, which makes it very difficult to work on the writing career. When I was in school, I used to think a 9-5 job would make things easy, since I wouldn’t have any homework or papers to bring home. Now, though, I think school was easier, because I was only in the classroom 15 to 20 hours per week, and could allocate the rest of my time as I saw fit. Working full time is a lot harder, because half of your waking time doesn’t belong to you.

What I’d really like to find is a part time job, maybe 30 hours per week, where I earn just enough to get by but don’t feel drained when the workday is over. A lot of TEFL jobs are only about 20 hours or so per week, so I’m thinking very seriously about doing that. Then again, all the attendant difficulties of adjusting to a new culture might be even more draining than grunt labor.

I guess there’s only one way to find out…

In any case, now that October is here, I’m back to work on Desert Stars, hopefully the final draft before publication. I know I said I’d finish Star Wanderers, but since I’m going to come back to it anyway after I get the feedback from my first readers, I figure it will be better to finish Desert Stars and move on. Also, I can revise a lot faster than I can write new material, so it makes a lot more sense to get the revisions out of the way instead of pushing a rough draft harder than it wants to come.

And after that? Who knows! I’ve so many half-finished novels and projects I want to start, all I can really say is I’d better throw this up on the blog and get back to writing. So on that note

What does it mean to be “published”?

One interesting thing about making the shift from traditional to indie publishing is that it changes your perspective on what it means to be “published,” and not in ways that you might expect.

Before I made the shift, I felt as if I were at the base of a giant mountain, where climbing to the top meant getting published and that was all I could see. Sure, I knew there was more to it than getting that first book deal, but I figured I’d learn all about that at some point later–and besides, there’d be people along the way to help me.

Once I started indie publishing, though, my paradigm changed completely. Instead of focusing all my efforts on trying to land that lucky break, I started thinking in ways that were much more concrete and practical, like “how can I build my readership?” “how high (or low) should I price my books?” “how can I improve my ebook formatting?” etc.

All of a sudden, it was as if I were on top of that first mountain, with a whole range of even taller mountains to climb. And while that’s a very daunting place to be, it’s also quite encouraging, because I can see what lies in front of me and figure out what path I want to take.

One of the side effects of all this is that “getting published” is no longer a big deal to me. Whenever I see aspiring writers obsess over getting an agent or a book deal, as if that’s the single greatest thing that could ever happen to them and all their hopes and dreams hang on the balance, I have to stop and scratch my head.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s still a big deal to get picked up by a major publisher, and kudos to everyone who is. It’s just that that is not and shouldn’t be the end of your publishing journey; it’s only the beginning.

For this reason, I really don’t like the words “published” or “author” anymore. People throw those terms around as if it makes you part of a select elite, one of those godlike beings who lives up in the clouds and periodically descends from On High to grant blessings to all the poor unpublished wastrel folk on the surface. That’s complete and utter BS, and I never ever ever want to buy into it, not for an instant.

The problem is, so many people still do. They still think that there’s some kind of a divide between them and Big Name Authors, like peasants in the face of royalty. They labor endlessly over their manuscripts, terrified that one misplaced comma will forever their chances of fulfilling their hopes and dreams. And whenever anyone tries to tell them that there’s a better way, that it doesn’t have to be like this, they cling to the old paradigm like battered women who refuse to get help–or worse, like religious zealots who dream of being martyrs for their cause.

It used to be that self-published writers were the ones who constantly obsessed about being “published,” but now, I think it’s the exact opposite. Sure, there are crazies in both camps, but it seems that the balance of aspiring professionals–the ones who actually treat writing like a business–are turning to independent self-publishing.

The point is, I don’t like to think of myself as an “author,” or as an “indie published” whatever; I like to think of myself as an “indie writer”–or better still, just a “writer.” All the other terms are just too misleading and destructive.

9.11.11

I realize that by the time you read this it will probably be September 12th, and most of you will be breathing a collective sigh of relief that the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is over and done with. I apologize for bringing up the subject again; I’ve been putting off writing this post because I feel exactly the same way. And yet it doesn’t feel right to say nothing, so I figure I’ll just get this off my chest and return to my normal blogging routine tomorrow.

To be honest, there’s very little I can say about 9/11 itself that I haven’t said already. Last year’s post pretty much summed up everything I could say about my experience that day, and I won’t try to do a better job here.

There’s a reason I chose to spill everything last year as opposed to now, however, and that’s because last year was the final year in a decade that I think it’s safe to say all of us would rather forget. It started with the 9/11 terror attacks and ended with a global financial meltdown and massive recession, with two ultimately fruitless wars and millions of shattered lives in between.

I almost want to call it the “Decade of Lost Dreams,” which is sad because many of those years were the prime of my life. It’s true, though; the world has gotten a lot darker and grittier, at least for us Americans, and there are very few places we can look to for hope. President Monson wrote an excellent op-ed in the Washington Post on that subject, coming at it from a more spiritual perspective.

I wish I could be more positive, but I don’t expect things to get better anytime soon. These are dark times, and even if the specter of terrorism isn’t as bad as it used to be (thanks to the brave men and women in counter-terrorism and the military, to whom I give my utmost respect), the economy is a hundred times worse. With the crisis in Europe, I wouldn’t be surprised if we fall into a second recession; it may be that the 00’s were merely the “Decade of Disillusionment,” whereas the 10’s will truly be the “Decade of Lost Dreams.”

I actually want to do a series of posts on this later, because even though things are grim, I still think there’s a lot of options open to us–possibly more than at any other time in history. But that’s a subject for another time.

Basically, I just wanted to say that I feel like after 9/11, the country took a nosedive off a cliff, and that’s something I would rather put behind me than commemorate. Fortunately, we don’t need to let that define us–I know I certainly don’t. And as for those who have been working hard to make this world a better place since then, I tip my hat to you. We need a lot more people like that right now.

Am I a jerk?

Today, a longtime writing friend told me that she wants nothing to do with me, which made me very sad. I hope she will reconsider, and if she does, I’d gladly welcome her back as my friend. However, because it’s come to my attention that some of my other friends feel that I come across as a jerk whenever I talk about indie publishing, I feel that I should take the time to clarify a few things.

First, I wish all of my writing friends success, whether they choose to epublish or whether they choose to go the traditional route. This is not a zero sub game and I have never believed that it is. Whether or not my own career tanks, if my friends find success in their endeavors, I will gladly tip my hat to them.

Second, I wish no harm on anyone who is involved in any way in the publishing or bookselling industries. I have less sympathy for multinational corporations and media conglomerates, but I recognize that they employ large numbers of people, and I don’t wish any harm on them either.

Third, I do not believe that writers who choose to forgo indie publishing are somehow inferior to or less intelligent than writers who do. I do believe that everyone should at least try it out to see if it’s right for them, but I recognize that indie publishing is not right for everyone, and that writers should carefully evaluate their skill levels, personal proclivities, and career goals before making that step.

This is my goal: to make a living telling the stories that I love. Those stories fall firmly in the realm of science fiction: grand, sprawling space operas, thrilling sf adventures, poignant and moving tales of alien worlds and cultures, etc.

In my research of the publishing industry, I’ve discovered that it’s become extremely difficult over the past couple of decades to build a career writing science fiction. For whatever reason, publishers aren’t as interested in pushing this genre or serving its readers as they have been in the past. Contract terms have gotten worse, and it’s become increasingly difficult to break in, much less make a living.

That’s why the changes in publishing and the ebook revolution have made me so excited. Writers have more options now than ever before, and I believe that I can better achieve my goal through indie publishing than through more traditional paths.

Now, a little bit you should know about myself: I believe in complete and total honesty. If I see a problem or something that seems to be wrong, I tend to be very upfront and direct about it (and appreciate it when others are the same with me).

This philosophy has its advantages, but one of its disadvantages is that I tend to be a little tactless. If I come across as arrogant, I want you to know that I’m sorry. That’s certainly not my intent, and I’ll try to do a better job of making that clear.

At the same time, I’d like to point out that what you perceive as arrogance may just be my own excitement. All writers are emotionally involved in their work, and because we’re approaching these issues from fundamentally different worldviews, it’s very easy for mutual misunderstandings to arise.

In the future, I’ll try to be more tactful, but I can’t control how others perceive me. I have no doubt that those who are emotionally invested in resisting change will continue to find fault with those who embraces it. Ultimately, I can only be answerable to myself, those who depend on me for support, and my readers.

So on that note, I’d like to finish by saying that after reviewing your comments and giving the issue some thought, I’ve decided to go ahead with Edenfall as my next major project. More on that later, but for now, I’d just like to thank you all for your feedback and support. I’m excited to get started!

Writer’s angst & post-convention ennui

In spite of the title of this post, I’ll try not to get too emo. Not sure how well I’ll succeed, but at least I’ll try.

Worldcon was great, but it put me into something of a writing slump and I’m not sure where to go next. I was planning on writing the as-yet untitled New Rigel novel, but I want to get Desert Stars published before Christmas, and that would involve doing another major draft before sending it off for edits.

The trouble is, it typically takes me at least two months to do a rough draft. I can probably finish Desert Stars in about a month, but I’d still want to start that project somewhere around the end of September. Since I don’t expect for my first readers to get back to me until then, that leaves me with a single month to fill.

To further complicate matters, the place I’ve been temping at for the last two months wants to hire me full time. In some ways, that’s awesome; work is work, after all, and even though I won’t exactly be saving the world, it’s not a bad job either. On the other hand, 40 hours of warehouse labor per week is going to make it very difficult to do everything I want with my writing career.

Now, don’t get me wrong–I’m not complaining. This seems to be the dilemma that every aspiring writer faces at one point or another, and most of my friends have understandably chosen the stable paycheck over the ever-elusive lucky break. But with where I’m at–young and single, without any debt or obligations to pay off–and my long term career goals, I worry that I’ll end up settling if I take that path. Besides, I’ve gotten used to “starving” over the last year and a half, and it’s actually not that bad.

What would REALLY be awesome is if they would hire me part time, and I think I might be able to negotiate that. In the meantime, I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to write in September. Here are my options:

Untitled (New Rigel)

This is the project I was most excited about before Worldcon, but now…well, I’m still excited, but post-convention ennui is not a pretty thing. Basically, it’s a full-length novel set within the Gaia Nova universe, and an indirect sequel to Bringing Stella Home.

I’ve already written the prologue and I like where it’s going, but I’d have to really bust my butt to get it done before October. Then again, I usually drop the first draft somewhere in the middle, so allowing for that, it might still be good to go ahead. However, it’s generally a bad idea to plan on screwing things up.

Edenfall

This is the sequel to Genesis Earth, and the second book in a planned trilogy. Since it’s YA, I could probably pull it off in a month–YA is generally shorter than adult fiction, and Genesis Earth took me about a month to pound out once I knew what I was doing. I’ve already got the story outlined and ready to go, so no problems there.

The big reason to do this project is that the first book is starting to have some success, and that’s naturally going to drive reader interest in the sequel. I’ve already gotten some scattered emails and comments about it, asking when it’s going to come out. Also, since there’s less pressure on me right now, bumping it up the queue might be a good idea. There’s a reason some people are afraid of success.

Desert Stars Companion Novella

Now here’s an interesting idea: I could spend the next month working on a companion novel to Desert Stars, much like I spent the last month working on Sholpan. The advantages to this plan are obvious: not only would I have another full-length novel ready before Christmas, but a $.99 novella to go with it–that is, if all goes well.

This is a project I haven’t given much thought to, but it wouldn’t be too hard to come up with something. It would also get me excited for the revision of Desert Stars in October. The main disadvantage is that I don’t know how well this “companion novella” concept will work out in the market–if Sholpan tanks, I might have to scrap it altogether. But as Dean told me at Worldcon, you can’t let thoughts of the commerciality of a project get in the way of the creative process.

That’s what’s on my plate right now. Preferably, I want to choose something I can finish within a month, while juggling work and the publication process for Sholpan. Oh, and I also want to throw in a blog tour for Bringing Stella Home–more on that later.

So, to open it up to my super-awesome hardcore fans (all three or four of you), what do you think? Of these projects, what do you most want to see?

Going camping and novella update

Just a quick update on things:

I’m going camping this weekend up Huntington Reservoir with some friends, so I won’t be around for a couple of days. It should be fun; last trip was a good chance to step back and recharge, and I definitely could use that right now.

At the same time, I’m working on Sholpan, and it’s turning out to be a lot harder than I’d initially thought. I’m writing it as a companion novella to Bringing Stella Home, where the story covers Stella’s point of view through about the first half of the novel, with a few extras for the people who read the novel first, and enough loose ends to entice people who read the novella first to pick up the full-length novel.

It’s turning out to be a difficult balancing act, however. The first draft was basically just all of Stella’s scenes up to the last three/four chapters of the novel, and that ended up being too much. For those who read the novel first, it didn’t have anything new, and for those who hadn’t read it, it revealed far too much.

So for the next draft, I decided to trim it right up to the point where Stella’s story has its first major twist. Even though that includes a minor spoiler for the novel, it gives the novella a great story arc with a good reversal.

But that leaves the question: what does the story need in order to be satisfying to those who read the novel first?

I’m not a huge fan of flashbacks, but after wrestling over the last few days with the beginning, I think it’s better to start in media res, which makes flashbacks unavoidable. I’ll try not to botch them. Also, I think I’ll give some more background information about her and Lars, as well as develop her relationship with Narju. But the last thing I want to do is pad the novella with useless filler.

I dunno; what do you think? If you read and enjoyed a novel, what sort of shorter work based on that story would you want to see? And if you started with the novella first, how much would be too much, and how much would be too little?

Oh, and in case you’re interested, I took your feedback and redesigned the cover:

Thanks! I’ll see you when I get back in a couple of days.

Desert Stars 3.0 is finished!

That’s right; after almost exactly two months of writing, the third draft of Desert Stars is now complete!

This is the first draft where I feel that things are truly coming together the way they should be, where the story is transforming into something that not only works, but is actually fairly awesome. I’m probably not the best judge, though, so I’ll have to send it out to another round of first readers to get their reactions to it, but I don’t think this will need more than one more draft before it’s ready to go to a copy editor.

Anyhow, here are the stats:

ms pages: 505
words: 108,468
file size: 246 KB
chapters: 22, prologue & epilogue
start date: 16 May 2011
end date: 18 Jul 2011

And the Wordle:

The most influential song in the writing of this draft comes from an mp3 cd of Arabic music that a friend in Jordan gave me while I was studying over there in 2008. The title is فرحة عمرانة بالدار, which apparently translates to “The Joy of _____ in Casablanca.” I know absolutely nothing else about it, other than it sounds very Arab. Since Desert Stars is essentially about a far-future Arab society, it resonated quite well.

The hardest part of writing this draft was probably at the very end, when my daily routine fell to pieces and I completely lost my stride. This seems to happen a lot whenever I’m trying to finish something, which reflects in my daily word count charts.

But the ending itself was not particularly hard to write; in fact, it was quite fun. A bunch of previous changes came together in a way that just clicked, including some spontaneous ones that I hadn’t planned for at all. As a result, I’m really excited about this draft and hope to get it out as an ebook before Christmas.

One question, for those of you who have read the previous draft: do you think I could justify splitting the story into two separate novels and selling them each at a lower cost? I hate books that end on a cliffhanger, but one of my first readers thought that this might work, and it would certainly give me more stuff to epublish.

Also, if you haven’t read a previous draft and would like to be a first reader, please let me know. I only send my rough work out to people I know in real life, however, so if our only interaction has been online, please don’t ask. I’ll probably start the fourth draft sometime in September, so you’ll have until the end of the summer (and possibly a little more) to finish it.

Next project? Publishing Bringing Stella Home and putting together the spin-off novella Sholpan. Shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks. After that, I think I’ll start the indirect sequel that I mentioned before. In the meantime, on with business as usual.

…WHUT

So this morning when I was getting ready for church, I realized that I couldn’t find my Kindle. Anywhere. Remembering that I’d left it at a Quark event in my apartment’s lobby, I started frantically calling people and knocking doors. Unfortunately, no one had seen it.

A few hours later, after combing every place I could have possibly left it at least four or five times, I have to admit it’s completely lost. I have a very good idea when and where I lost it, so the only remaining possibility is that someone picked it up. The aggravating thing is waiting to see whether they return it, or whether they decide to run off with it. ARRRRGH!

The amazing thing is how attached I’ve become to that device in the last month since I first got it. I’m not a particularly voracious reader, but right up until I lost it I was carrying that thing around everywhere. It’s so amazingly convenient–instead of lugging books around, I can read almost anything I want on a device that fits in my back pocket. And the interconnectivity is really cool, too, although if I end up having to replace it, I’ll probably go with the more expensive 3g version, since hunting for wireless is a major pain.

But yeah…it’s lost, and I can’t currently afford to replace it. I’m saving up for Worldcon 2011, so finances are tight; I’ll probably have to work this temp job through most of August just to be able to go.

However, all is not lost. Yesterday, Genesis Earth got a stunning review on a book blogger / fellow indie writer’s blog. My favorite part:

This is space opera of the highest caliber. There are grand, sweeping ideas, the discovery of a new world, first contact with an alien species, an examination of the nature of humanity, the nature of the human mind. Yet it’s always a personal story. No matter how epic the backdrop, you are always reading about engaging, fully-realized characters.

It certainly qualifies as an adventure story, and keeps you wondering what will happen next. Yet it’s also much more. Genesis Earth will broaden your mind even as it delights your inner ten-year-old. It has a kick-ass premise, executed with enviable skill, full of thought-provoking ideas couched in a thoroughly-entertaining story that’s just plain fun to read.

I kid you not, I stood up and did a little dance when I read that. Someday, I’ll probably have a wife who will secretly videotape a moment like that and embarrass me by posting it to youtube or something…hehe. Anyhow, the whole review is awesome, so check it out!

In other news, I finally got around to publishing Genesis Earth on the Nook: you can find it here. And I don’t know whether I mentioned this or not, but I’ve also published it to smashwords, so if you live outside the US/UK and want to avoid the nasty $2+ surcharge that Amazon tags onto its international sales, you can find it there.

As far as the epublishing goals I set at the beginning of the week, I’ve accomplished all of them except the blog tour index and the 3+ guest posts…better get on top of that. This week, here is what I want to accomplish:

Publish the short stories to smashwords for $0 and get Amazon to price match (since giving them out for free will *hopefully* drive readers to my novels).
Figure out how how the Kindle book forums work.
Query artists/illustrators for Bringing Stella Home cover art.
Send out Genesis Earth to another 5 review sites.
Write another 3 guest posts for the Genesis Earth blog tour.
Put up the index for the blog tour.

Oh, and one more thing…FIND MY &$%! KINDLE!!!

<< sigh >>

Disappointment and a shift in direction

So the latest round of judging for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award came out today…and Genesis Earth didn’t make the cut.

Oh well, at least I made it to the quarter finals. Most of the reviews were encouraging, though the one from Publisher’s Weekly made me wonder if the reviewer had something against science fiction in general (or was perhaps underpaid and overworked, as seems to be common in traditional publishing these days).

I did notice that none of the previous years’ winners (or finalists, so far as I could tell) were science fiction–which is not to put down their quality, or the quality of the semifinalists. It does make me wonder, however, whether part of the reason Genesis Earth didn’t move on was because of the tastes of the audience.

I’m not discouraged though. My novel has garnered a lot of positive feedback, not only from alpha readers, but from agents and editors as well. I know it’s got potential; just hasn’t come into its own yet.

The thing is, Genesis Earth is a YA science fiction romance novel, and the YA market is much harder to break into without an agent than adult sf&f. I could probably find an agent if I queried around long enough, but after reading Dean Wesley Smith’s series Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing, I’m convinced not to go that route.

At the same time, ebooks are revolutionizing the publishing world much faster than anyone had predicted. We may pass the 50% mark in the next few months, if indeed we haven’t already. Combine that with increasingly unfavorable contracts with traditional publishers and some disturbing accounting discrepancies at the major houses, and self-publishing is looking better and better every day.

So I’ve decided to put up Genesis Earth as my first indie published novel. Expect to see it sometime this summer, probably in June or July.

If you’re an editor and would like to hire out your services, send me an email at joseph [dot] vasicek [at] gmail [dot] com. I’ll send out a few test pages and ask about your rates (preferably per word). I don’t have a whole lot of money, but I’m willing to pay for professional quality work.

If you have any ideas for cover art or a cover artist, let me know as well. I’ll be spending a lot of time trawling Deviant Art and old Leading Edge issues, as well as analyzing traditional book covers to get a feel for that end of the business. I’m a firm believer in the tradition of high quality science fiction and fantasy art, and want my own work to be a part of that, even if it costs a little extra.

I felt uneasy with going indie a few months ago, but right now it seems, if nothing else, like a very smart calculated risk. The worst that can happen is that it takes a long time to find its audience, leaving me out a few hundred bucks in freelance costs until it does. The potential benefits, on the other hand, are tremendous.

In the meantime, I’ll keep blogging about the process to share what I’m learning. And if you want to support me, feel free to pick up one of my short stories on the Kindle and review it / blog about it / share it with a friend. The links are on the sidebar. In the next couple of weeks, I’m going to put them up on Smashwords and B&N, so if you prefer those formats, they’ll be available soon too, I promise.

In unrelated news, my cousin Angela just got a publishing deal for her poetry chapbook! Awesome! I’m glad to see that someone else in the family is having some publishing success–good luck!

(Image courtesy postsecret)