For today and tomorrow only, The Earl of Brass is free and The Winter Garden is 99 cents. Why? Because I feel like it and because The Earl and the Artificer will be out fairly soon, so I thought I’d celebrate.
http://smarturl.it/TheEarlofBrassIMD1
http://smarturl.it/TheWinterGardenIMD2
A better/real blog update will come later this week. I’ve been slogging through school, my GA job stuff, and writing, so my mind has been elsewhere. More updates to come soon!
I did a thing. It was a semi dumb thing and I’m not sure why I did it.
As you may or may not know, my third book, The Earl and the Artificer, is also my MFA thesis project, so I have an advisor who is supposed to look at it and give me feedback along with a class who does the same. Thus far, my thesis advisor has been very lenient with me. Some demand at least a chapter a week or put their students on a strict schedule, but he’s pretty much let me do what I want since he knows I’ll get it done.
Well, I knew he would need to see something before the end of the semester, something substantial, in order to give me a grade. Originally, I told him I would hand in the finished piece (unedited) by mid-October. At the time, it sounded like a good idea. I’d have all the time in the world. I’m only taking two classes, so how much work could I have? A lot, that’s how much.
This is when I did something dumb. Part of my job in the English department is to create a newsletter, so I spend a bit of time emailing professors, harassing them until they tell me what they’ve published this semester or what events they’re holding. While emailing my advisor to ask him about his writing, I wrote, “I’ll be leaving an edited draft of the first act, which is about 80 pages in your mailbox next week.” I sent the email off without thinking much of it until about an hour later. NEXT WEEK?! Was I temporarily insane? At that point, I had only edited three out of the eleven chapters in act one. In less than five days, I would need to edit eight chapters to get them to where I was willing to show my advisor without cringing.
I immediately texted my best friend telling her of the stupid thing I had done. “But you work well under pressure!” she replied. I do, but why did I do this to myself? Why give myself added stress for no reason? If I had told him I would hand it in two weeks from then, he wouldn’t have cared and I wouldn’t have been freaking out. Then again, my best friend is coming from England in two weeks, and I would be worrying about my stupid project instead of getting ready for her arrival.
It’s strange, but it’s as if my subconscious gave me a boot in the ass. I’ve had ample time to edit my story, but I’ve been procrastinating and doing everything but writing and editing recently. Would I have had anything to hand in by the end of the month if I hadn’t accidentally cracked the whip on myself? Probably not.
Over the course of three days, I powered through chapters one to eleven, going over what I edited already and combing through the ones I hadn’t touched yet. Last night at midnight I finally finished. While I was too tired to add any new content to the story, I officially finished my edits of act one and will hand them into my advisor on Monday.
I’m somewhat proud of myself for actually getting this all done before the weekend and that on Monday I’ll be able to present my advisor with the first third of my work. After dilly-dallying for so long, it seems strange that I’ll actually be handing in part of my thesis. Luckily my mistake created this progress. Sometimes all you need is to give yourself a kick in the ass to get going.
Hey, everyone! I have been holding off for quite a while now with posting a teaser from The Earl and the Artificer, aka book 3. I wanted to get closer to completion before putting anything online because I feared I would post half the book in my excitement. The book is still being written and edited, but I couldn’t wait any longer and had to give you a little glimpse.
In book 3, Eilian and Hadley journey to Brasshurst Hall, the ancestral home of the Earls of Dorset. Below you will find there is an uninvited guest at Brasshurst.
She put a finger to her lips and backed away from the window, her eyes locked on the head swaying above the chair’s back. As Eilian crossed the room and grasped the rough fireplace poker, he frowned at the hearth. The ash had been swept from the firebox and the mantle cleaned of debris and cobwebs recently enough that dust hadn’t settled over them again. Inching toward the double doors at the far end of the library, Eilian listened to the chug of an engine on the other side. Hadley followed close behind, fishing through her clutch. When had she started carrying that instead of her carpet bag? Her face brightened as she pulled out a snub-nosed gun the length of her palm.
“You brought your derringer?”
“It’s been useful thus far.” She checked the chambers before snapping it shut. “You didn’t think I would let you go in there alone, did you?”
Holding Hadley’s gaze, he counted off with his fingers. He drew in a deep breath and threw open the door to the orangery. A puff of hot breath hit them as they stepped into the artificial jungle. Massive palms and bushy camphor trees blocked the sun, casting the greenhouse in a balmy haze. The stench of fetid water was overwhelmed by the scent of plants. Everywhere was the smell of earth and the things that belonged to it, concentrated and bottled under the glass dome.
Eilian pushed back a Jurassic fern and followed the cobbled path toward the pool. Sweat collected under the leather brace around his upper arm, but he ignored the urge to wipe it and swept his eyes through the brush. With firecracker flowers and orchids of every shade and strange conformation crowding the path, he expected to hear the caw or flutter of a parrot, but the air was quiet, rolling and bubbling with the river and fog. As they rounded the corner, the man in the armchair came into sight. The hammer of Hadley’s derringer clicked in Eilian’s ear. He tightened his grip on the poker and watched the man turn. His sharp eyes never left his assailants as he stood and stepped around the chair. His dark suit was impeccably pressed and the fabric even from a distance was fine, better than Eilian’s. Something in his aquiline features was strangely familiar.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” Eilian called, feeling Hadley tense beside him.
“Is that any way to greet your cousin, Lord Dorset?”
“Cousin?”
“Put down the gun, Lady Dorset, before you hurt yourself.”
Hadley’s jaw clenched as she kept the muzzle pointed at the grey-haired man at the edge of the pool. Catching her eye, Eilian nodded, and she exhaled, dropping her arm but keeping the gun at her side. Eilian lowered the poker as the man approached with measured steps.
The man’s lined, silver eyes fell on Hadley’s simple coiffure before lingering on her breasts and waist a moment too long. The new dress, while of good quality, was already dirty and the corset too loose, and though her features were pleasing, she was far from beautiful. The garter gun hung looped in her stained fingers. Where Lord Dorset had found such a creature, he could hazard a guess, but why would he marry it?
“I’m surprised your father never spoke of me.”
“We didn’t speak very often.”
“Apparently. Lord Dorset, the real Lord Dorset—Harland Sorrell—and I were cousins. We were raised in this house.”
When the man’s cutting gaze reached Eilian’s mechanical hand, the younger man tucked it out of sight. “How did you get in here? Did the maids let you in?”
His eyes narrowed as he straightened and cocked his head with a scoff. “I have a key, and even if I didn’t, I know this house better than my own body.”
“You still haven’t told us who you are,” Hadley said, resisting the urge to train the gun on him. There was something in his manner, the way all of his movement seemed to be in his eyes, that set her on edge. She had seen men like that in London— men who kept you busy with their eyes when you should have been watching their hands.
“Randall Nash, and you are Hadley Fenice, the illustrious toy heiress who has risen to countess.”
Hadley winced. The embellished wedding announcement had not been her idea. Her future mother-in-law had taken it upon herself to soften the blow of an inter-class marriage with money. Heiress had a better ring than craftswoman, even if it was false. At least the announcement brought in as many orders as their Christmas advertisement.
“Are you insinuating something, Mr. Nash?” Eilian asked, but before the man could reply, the butler’s harried voice rang through the walls. His voice grew fainter as he retreated through the gallery. “In the greenhouse, Pat!”
A crash resounded behind them, and when Eilian and Hadley turned back, Randall Nash was gone. Using the end of the poker, Eilian pushed back the plants around the edge of the pool but could find no trace of him. He stared down at the empty armchair. From the humidity of the orangery, the fabric had rippled and dampened, raising the varnish on the arms and legs. Beside it sat an open bottle of champagne, a chipped glass, and a book.
I hope you all enjoyed this little sneak peek of The Earl and the Artificer. There isn’t any pre-order info yet, but stay tuned! Also, if you join my newsletter, in a few weeks you will be getting another exclusive sneak peek of chapter one.
So I decided last week that I would conduct an experiment. The part of me that is a biology major is screaming, “Insufficient data!”, but I would still like to share my meager yet telling findings with you.
People buy more ebooks during the week than they do on the weekend.
On the 19th, I had made The Earl of Brass free for that Saturday only. I did a bit of hustling online, posting about my sale, making my little graphic for it, and tweeting it with tags to various retweet groups. I only sold 122 copies that Saturday. While that’s nothing to scoff at since now 122 more people know of my book, it isn’t that much. I climbed up the sales rankings, tapping out somewhere around #2,000 in the free Kindle store and #3 in free Steampunk. Not bad at all. I saw similar results when my friends/fellow authors posted about how they did with a Saturday sale and no outside promotion.
Then, I started to think about when I buy ebooks. Did I do it often on the weekend? Not really. When I checked my email on a Saturday or Sunday, I would scroll through my Bookbub or Ereader News Today email, only stopping if something really caught my eye. Most people are busy during the weekend. They’re running errands, driving their kids to activities, catching up on some Netflix. They aren’t scrolling through Amazon’s freebies to find the perfect book.
Well, what day would be better? Friday? Definitely not. People are out and about more on Friday than they are on Saturday. Monday? Nope. That’s the day where you’re all wound-up about work, school, the kids, getting to work/school on time, getting everything together. That left the middle of the week, Tuesday to Thursday. Checking my own ordering habits on Amazon confirmed that I did most of my ebook buying in the middle of the week (you know you have a problem when you can use yourself as a place to gather data). Mid-week you have gotten over the rush of Monday and now you’re thinking about how to escape boredom or even planning what you’ll do later in the week.
I decided to set my next freebie for a Tuesday. This time, there wouldn’t be any roof-top screaming about my book being free. I wanted it to all be organic downloads from people who weren’t influenced by my posts. Amazingly, it worked way better than Saturday, seven times better actually. As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, the best overall ranking I saw last night before I crawled into bed was #227 in overall free, #1 in steampunk, #2 in historical-fantasy. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw those rankings. I was sick as a dog yesterday, so seeing those lovely tiny numbers really made my day. This morning, I went and checked my KDP dashboard to see how many downloads I actually had. 902. 902?! I have never ever had that much downloaded on one day.
I’m sure some of you are screaming, “But they were free!” Yes, they were free because free pulls people in for the rest of your series. People are much more willing to take a chance on a nobody like me if the first book is free. Why pay $3.99 if you don’t know whether my book will suck or not? Free means they’ll download it and if they like it, they may move on to book two. Yes, there are people who just hoard free books. I’ve downloaded quite a few free books I haven’t gotten back to, but the thing is, the book is on their device. At any time, they could read it and discover that you’re one of their favorite authors. A loss leader can only help to boost future sales and hopefully generate a few reviews as well.
Right now, I’m working on my plan of attack for when The Earl and the Artificer is finished. Leading up to it, I’m going to be doing a few more freebie days to generate interest in the series. With Kindle Select, I get 5 freebie days to allocate as I wish, so I’m sprinkling them around. I’m not 100% sure when book 3 will be out yet, but when it gets closer to the release date, I hope to take out an ad in Bookbub or ENT about The Earl of Brass being free. Hopefully, that’ll drive sales toward books 2 and three. This plan won’t be implemented for a while, but it never hurts to plan ahead. I will update you as I go on experimenting with sales and marketing.
Yes, I totally just made a very ghetto altered version of my promo picture.
Anyway, The Earl of Brass is FREE today only on Amazon. You can find it here.
There’s adventure, mystery, drama, a hint of romance, and of course a hint of science.
This post would have been written earlier, but I woke up with the worst headache I have had in a while. The kind of migraine that makes your face hot, your eyes sore, and your neck stiff. Oh well.
Anyway, this post isn’t about migraines, it’s about The Earl and the Artificer and writing. I’m hitting that “I’m nearly done, so now I’m getting really self-conscious about my story because I don’t know if it’s good or not.” Part of the problem I think comes from the fact that I really liked The Winter Garden, and this book is nothing like it. There isn’t that darkness or intimacy that I enjoyed writing in that book, and because I know that will be in book four, I feel myself being pulled toward that book while forcing myself to finish this one.
The odd thing is, I like this book. I like the softer tone, the different focus on intimacy, the role Hadley plays in this book, and the new character, Nadir Talbot. I keep reminding myself that I feel this way every time I hit the 2/3 mark of my manuscript. Typically, I’m a fairly confident person, so feeling down about my work is a bit soul-sucking. This book has done this to me more than either of the others, and I have to think I’m doing something right. I’m trying some new things, expanding the cast of characters and delving into history. Probably when I begin editing it, I will feel better about it, especially after I tighten things up and smooth over some early draft hiccups.
Thus far, I am at 68,000 words (not including what I’ll write tonight). Something else that’s bothering me is that I wrote so much in August that September feels meager. I know, grad school started, so I need to consider that I have new sources of stress and that I’m adjusting to the new schedule and balancing act. I’m set to hit my minimum monthly goal of 10,000 words in a few days, and I should finish in October. That scares me. I’m nearly done. Oh my god, I will be DONE soon. I’ll finish it and it will be out in the world before I know it.
Writing makes you vulnerable, and at the moment, that terrifies me. After two times, you would think I would be over it, but you’re laying yourself out for judgment each time you publish, letting the reader get an intimate glimpse of your inner world. Sometimes it’s just harder than others.
To all the writers I know who scoffed, hesitated, or snickered when I said I was self-publishing,
Thank you for devaluing my hard work. In one instant, you went from supportive friend I was probably itching to talk to about my work to “that jerk” who once again reminded me of the ignorance of some writers. You are the ones who make me hesitant to admit that I am a self-published author when I am damn proud of my work and what I have accomplished in a little over a year.
Thus far in my fairly short career as an author, I have received tons of support from friends, fellow writers, and even people I met through Facebook and Twitter. I’ve even gotten messages saying how people loved my work or my characters, which made my day, but what always sticks out are the friends whose reactions surprise you by how subtly patronizing or rude they are.
They stare for a moment as the words “self-published” leave your lips, and with a small chuckle and glance to the side, they mutter, “That’s great.” Then either go off topic completely or ask you why you are not saving yourself for a traditional publishing contract like you’re supposed to do.
Well, I don’t want to. I want my freedom. I want to control all aspects of my work. I don’t want my characters homogenized or my work shelved after it doesn’t move twenty-thousand copies in a month. I don’t want my work’s worth to be solely valued for how much someone else can make off it. Yes, I could have possibly ended up with movie deals or a display in Barnes and Noble, but more than likely, that wouldn’t have happened even if I did go the traditional route.
I say all this, having repeated it numerous times before, and then you say the worst thing you could ever say to a self-published author. “But anyone can slap a book on Amazon.”
Thank you for devaluing all of the work I put in to making that book successful. Yes, anyone can slap a book on Amazon, but that doesn’t mean it will sell, and by saying that, I have to wonder if you have any idea the amount of work that went into slapping that book on Amazon.
First there were the hours I spent writing that book, editing it, having beta readers and an editor take a look at it. The amount of hands it passed through alone should be enough to impart some legitimacy to my endeavor. Then, I worked with an artist to create my covers, and I formatted both versions of the book myself (ebook and paperback). What takes an entire publishing team at least a year to do, I do in a few months. You have no idea how much I do, and I don’t think you care to know.
While you’re waiting for that agent or publishing house to respond to your query, I’m working on building my business. More than likely, I have never said anything negative about your thousands of query letters or that I think your time would be better spent self-publishing, gaining a following and presence, and working on your next book even if I’ve thought it. You may not know it, but a lot of authors self-publish and traditionally publish and they get those contracts because they have proof their books sell. I may have even sent you links to open submissions or contests to help you while you chose give me a patronizing pat on the head.
I have proof that my way is working. I have sales and fans and people who like my work. While you could say anyone can find someone who will like their work no matter how bad, just know someone could say the same about you.
Signed,
Your friend who chose the other path
The Earl of Brass is on sale for 99 cents for a limited time on Kindle!
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I’m now at the 60% mark in my third book, The Earl and the Artificer. I’ve already had my mid-book panic/meltdown and have overcome it through outlining and trying to maintain a level head since. Trying is the key word here since that involved dowsing myself in coffee, walking in circles until nearly wearing out the floor, and probably a bit of incoherent babbling.
Between freak-outs, I have decided that after this book is finished, the “direction” of the Ingenious Mechanical Devices series will change slightly. I don’t know if the books will alternate between Eilian-and-Hadley and Immanuel-Emmeline-Adam anymore because I have a lot more stories in my head for Adam-Immanuel-Emmeline. Book four is definitely going to be for the trio, and book five more than likely will too.
The reason for this is that I really want to move toward the dark, paranormal side of the steampunk/historical-fantasy world. I’m drawn toward ghosts, mythical creatures, and paranormal entities lurking in the London fog.
Does this mean there won’t be more adventures for Eilian and Hadley after The Earl and the Artificer?
No, I am definitely leaving the possibility open for future stories with them. I love them dearly, but their relatives are calling to me more than they are. For now, they will be on hiatus after book three.
For the past few days, I toyed with whether or not to start a whole new series devoted to Adam-Immanuel-Emmeline. Honestly, it doesn’t make sense to. Readers would end up coming to the world in the new series not knowing who the characters are or what the world they live in is like. I don’t really feel like doing that with a new series even if the characters are pre-existing. It makes more sense to go on with the series and simply shift the focus. Who knows if Eilian and Hadley will be the focus for book five or six.
Either way, I feel this is the right decision for me, and I just wanted to make my readers aware of the change.
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I’m having one of those moments in my writing where I feel like I have discovered the secret to writing consistently. Well, for myself. Since everyone is different, what works well for me probably won’t work well for 80% of writers out there. At least, that’s how I always feel when I read writing advice. I’m still on the look out for good ways to plot/outline a novel ahead of time, but here it is what I have found that works for me in terms of actually getting the writing done.
Word count goals. Daily ones. Monthly ones. Several monthly ones.
I know that it sounds odd, but at least for me, I found that when I set lofty monthly goals that I missed, my confidence came crashing down to earth (*cough* NaNoWriMo *cough*). After being somewhat stumped with my current project, I joined Camp NaNoWriMo to boost my word count. I hoped to write 15,000 words in 31 days to double my word count. The Camp NaNoWriMo website had a little bar graph that grew as you entered in your daily word count. Watching the bar grow and exceed the projected word count was a pay-off. Each day I strove to exceed that projected word count more and more. By the end of the month, I had written 20,000 words instead of 15,000 words.
This was what worked. It held me accountable to a projected word count while giving me the pay-off of a visual graph that showed me exceeding my goal. Currently, I’m using one of these word count charts. They’re great because they have the same graph visual at the top along with a yearly goal, monthly goal, and projected daily goals. The sheet also tells you if you are on target to finish on time. It’s everything the numbers girl in me needs to stay on track: instant feedback, a visual pay-off, and something that is changeable.
The second part of my numbers game is that I have been setting multiple goals per month. Here is a note I made for myself on my iPhone to track my writing goals for the next few months until I finish The Earl and the Artificer:
(In case you’re wondering, July’s goals are all the same because I completed it, and the word count determines what other months will look like). As you can see, there are three goals for August: a minimum, a stretch, and a far goal. The reason I set a minimum goal is because I know things come up. For September, my minimum goal is so small because the semester starts up again, and I’m not sure what I will face and how much my writing will be affected by stress, fatigue, and assignments. My only rule for my goals is that the minimum goal cannot get smaller. I will not reduce it. It’s low for a reason, but I will hit it no matter what. I ended up creating a stretch goal and a far goal because I didn’t want to say that I had a maximum goal. If I write 40,000 words instead of 20,000, that’s a far goal but never a maximum. There is only greater than, not a less than for my writing goals. If asked, my real goal is probably the stretch goal. I would really like to hit at least that one every month without fail, but I wanted to have a fail-safe in the minimum goal. Plus it feels good to hit the milestones. That minor pay-off helps to boost you to the major pay-off.
Right now, I’m projected to hitting my minimum goal for August on the 19th. That means, I’ll have about twelve days to add 5,000 more words, which is more than doable. Then, I have the far goal, which I’m pretty sure I will meet as well.
One thing I have also noticed while charting my progress is that my daily word count has also gone up. For both July and August, I have had the same monthly goal, 15,000 words, which means a daily word count goal of 484 words. In July my daily word count average was 645 words per day, and in August, it has jumped to 782 words per day. Right now I don’t know whether to attribute that to wanting to succeed and pushing myself or if it has gotten easier to write book three now that I’m over the hump. The second halves of books tend to write themselves or at least go easier than the first half.
For the tl;dr version: set realistic goals each month, then set one that will make you push yourself, and if you want to really challenge yourself, set another milestone. Chart your daily progress and see if you improve.
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Kara Jorgensen 