Here’s a Health to the Cow and to Her Long Tail

This post’s subject header was taken from the “Gloucestershire Wassail”, which is a traditional English Christmas song. I spent part of my day earlier listening to traditional French holiday music in order to get myself worked up over my next historical fantasy novel. Nope, it doesn’t take place during the holidays, but there’ll be lots of snow in it – and for good reason. No spoilers, though.

Anyway, I just randomly latched on to that line because I couldn’t come up with one that’s more appropriate. Might as well liven things up around here by throwing you off.

The past several days, the indie publishing scene was suddenly all abuzz about social networks and marketing, and I’ll have to say that those blog posts couldn’t come at a better time. Susan Kiernan Lewis, Kristin Kathryn Rusch, and J.A. Konrath all talked about the ineffectiveness of social media when it comes to marketing one’s books. And what they say pretty much lines up with my thoughts about networking based on my own experiences, all of which convinced me to damn what “experts” say and stick to my blog and maybe Twitter for what I need.

Do I start to believe that selling your book has bollocks to do with social media?

Is it possible that the prevailing belief that having an online platform is essential to a book’s success is wrong? Are we all just the cool kids playing with the latest gadgets and wanting them to be essential and really they’re irrelevant? Is it really the author’s platform that’s important? Is that why YOU buy a book?

Isn’t it about the damn book? Read more

From a writer’s viewpoint, I’ve seen just how little effect social media have when it comes to bringing in sales. Yes, they work – to a point. And a lot of the results depend on many factors, all of which are already explored in those articles I linked to. My experience overall has been poor, regardless of where I go, and I know I’m not the only one who goes through this. Twitter is this world of infinite noise, where your tweet is only a drop in the proverbial bucket. The chances of people latching on to it and retweeting it is miniscule unless you’re being followed by hordes of faithful fans who hang on to your every word. Not so in my case. Even a link to a blog post here doesn’t get clicked on, but when I’m lucky, I might have one or two out of over 300 followers checking out what I have to say. Goodreads? Well – I left all my groups, deleted my blog, and just kept my account if only to be able to access Goodreads’ database and update it with new books.

I went through a bit of a crisis of sorts recently because of experiences I had over at Goodreads, and those articles pretty much hit me over the head with what’s so obvious. I really should be focusing more on writing and improving, not wasting time hobnobbing with everyone. Another aspect of that crisis involves the need to set firmer goals for myself where publishing’s concerned.

I wanted desperately to supplement my novels with short fiction, but I simply can’t do it, and it’s frustrating. Unless a filthy rich, distant relative ups and dies and decides to leave all his wealth to me, there’s just no way for me to free up the time to do what I really want to do, which is to focus on both long and short fiction. Then I went back and reassessed those short stories I contracted with Queerteen Press and saw that I even managed to fool myself there, though temporarily.

It might seem as though I’m über prolific, but I’m not. All eight of those short stories were already written between 2001 and around 2005. A few were published before, but I now have my rights back, and by and large, they all sat in my writing folder for years before I thought to do something with them. So, no – I didn’t start with a clean sheet of paper for each of those stories. Would I realistically be able to divide my time between new short fiction and new novels? Not with a day job, I can’t.

If I were to choose, I’d rather focus on novels, at least until I finally leave my day job behind. Pipe dream, that. The long and short of this is that I want to beef up my backlist in some way, and if I can’t manage a combination (my ideal), I think I’m better off focusing on one or the other. And since I’m a lot more comfortable writing longer stuff, I’ll stick to novels, and in order for me to achieve my writing goals for the year, social networks simply have no place in the grand scheme of things. I already took Twitter off my sidebar.

It’ll be interesting to see how things pan out with my short stories. At the moment, it’s way too early to tell, but I’ll definitely be keeping close tabs on them. Maybe what I’ll see will end up reshaping my goals, who knows?

Now Available: Out of the Depths (And Some Goodies)

Heads up! My short story, “Out of the Depths”, is now available from Queerteen Press in e-book format (note: short stories are only available in e-book format). In brief, it’s a horror / gothic retelling of the “Pygmalion” myth.

Blurb: It has been a year since Konstancji’s lover passed away, but rather than move on with his life, Konstancji hires one young man after another to sit for him as he obsessively works on a statue. What’s apparent is the fact that each sitter dies and is replaced with a new one, his grieving family compensated generously.

What no one’s aware of, though, is the purpose of the statue, which is the means through which Konstancji hopes to bring his beloved back from the dead.

If you purchase directly from the publisher, you’ll receive a 20% discount. Go here to buy it as well as to read an excerpt if you want to get an idea of the piece’s tone and style.

And some extra bits of news!

     

“The Knight”, a short story due out in March, is now listed at Queerteen Press. It’s a retelling of the “St. George and the Dragon” legend, and you can read the story’s description and an excerpt over here. And then there’s Mimi Attacks!, the next book in the Masks series (this is book number five), which is all about superheroes, supervillains, crazed fangirls, and a sixteen-year-old boy who always ends up with the short end of the stick. Book blurb and excerpt can be found here. Since this is a novel, it’ll be available in both print and e-book formats.

There you have it! And if you purchase a copy of “Out of the Depths”, I hope you enjoy it. :) It’s the only horror story in the collection of short fiction that I’ve contracted with Queerteen Press.

And My Mad Scientist Days Are Over

Well, that was quick. XD You see, I set aside this week for me to work on my “experiment” – yeah, the one I mentioned in my previous blog post. Mind you, I’ve been preparing stuff the past few days, even spending a lot of time turning things over and over in my head. Unfortunately picturing something and preparing the materials for it don’t necessarily mean an easy process or, in my case, transition.

I went all mad scientist with my writing, and look where it got me.

The long and short of all this is that I tried to write something mainstream. I was aiming for a novelette that I was going to self-publish, and you know what? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. Not only did it feel like I was disemboweling myself for material and inspiration (even with all the notes and rough story outline I have), I really hated everything I wrote down. Every word. Nothing clicked, nothing made sense, and it was pretty easy to see just how forced the story was.

I was completely, hopelessly out of my element, and it showed. I don’t want to go through with this. I can tell just from today’s horrible writing experience that this isn’t for me. So I’ll continue to specialize in genre fiction for LGBT teens, but I’m not complaining. It’s my niche, I’ve long settled down and grown deep roots in this market, I know my way around and find it pretty easy to come up with new stories, and it looks like I won’t be moving away anytime soon.

In fact, I already have a story outlined in my journal for a new historical fantasy novel that takes place in France. I’ll be working on it as soon as I’m done with Dr. Morbid’s Castle of Blood (or Masks #6).

Of course, one might insist that I should give mainstream fiction another shot, but I don’t work that way. The awfulness of today’s writing “frenzy” really gutted me on a lot of levels that it’s impossible for me to dismiss this as just a fluke. I’ve long learned to listen to intuition, and when it says, “NO!”, I know better than to second guess it. And today, it just about screamed a ginormous negative in my head, complete with about twenty exclamation points.

So, no. I’m not moving forward with my “experiment”, and while it’s a bummer that I wasted a day, I’m glad I at least gave it a shot. Another thing that I’m taking away from this is the fact that I feel a lot more confident and secure in my niche despite its smallness and relative obscurity, given what the status quo is in the LGBT YA market. From here, I need to focus on improving even more and, hopefully, help genre fiction for LGBT kids enjoy more exposure.