Tag: Literature

Indie Book Buffet

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Well, today is the first of August.  So the first issue of the Indie Book Buffet is out.  Also their contest is open for all.

Just downloaded the eZine myself, so we’ll see what it’s like.  As one might notice from the cover, I’m in it this month.  Also I’ve contributed to the contest for this month.

In other news the ABCs thing will resume later today.  Sorry for the lapse, but I was rather ill.  Hard to concentrate when you feel like you’ve some terrible plague.

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Goodreads giveaway ended, Indie Book Buffet to begin

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The 4 autographed paperbacks of Love or Lust have been claimed through the Goodreads giveaway contest.

Congratulations to the winners.

Those of you still looking to win yourselves a free copy of the book should check out the first issue of the Indie Book Buffet eZine coming Thursday.

Also — you can keep reading the blog and perhaps subscribe to it.  You never know when I’ll post a code or link for a free copy somewhere.

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The Indie Book Buffet — First Edition

Published on by Jaye2 Comments

The Indie Book Buffet's First Edition Giveaway!A free monthly online magazine (also available in print for a small fee) starting on August 1st 2013 that will feature a Genre-By-Genre selection of extracts from up and coming independent authors. It’s a great way to read free samples of new indie books!

And to kick it off the folks behind the zine are hosting a huge giveaway (in case the giant image to the right here was too subtle).

A lot of awesome books will be showcased — you can, in fact, see Love or Lust‘s cover there next to the I — from a lot of indie authors.

No I’ve no direct part, other than contributing some copies to the giveaway.  I just think this is a pretty great idea and want to help spread the word.  Really some quite remarkable writers have elected to eschew the traditional model for publishing and this is one more way to help people find them.

I certainly plan to give it a look.  The info is on Facebook.

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Now & Forever ABCs (E & F)

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I’m not actually sure I’ve got an E or F.

I’m going to have to dig through my notes.  I mean, I know there’re Es and Fs in the story … or within the setting, but I’m not sure they’re anyone on screen or anyone who’s been more than a recurring face in my mind that the girls pass in the school hallway.

If I haven’t found anyone by the time I go to bed tonight I’ll try to get started on the Js.  There’s several of them, and I want to post entries of many (most?) of them.  And for those wondering, no, I actually do not have an obsession with the letter J, it just happens that the pool of names I’ve encountered in my life has a very high J-quotient, so when it’s what I’m more likely to hit.  Hell, I’ve got 2 Jacobs in Love or Lust and I’m fair certain I’d never dream of naming my child Jacob!

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Maybe the NaNoWriMo bits aren’t so bad

Published on by Jaye3 Comments

Well, I’m pretty sure, now, that I’m editing bits I wrote during November’s National Novel Writing Month event.

They’re not half as bad as I remembered them being.  Things are going amazingly smoothly.

I know the Camp NaNoWriMo portion near the end is going to make me cry.  I wasn’t happy with that while I was writing it.  Hopefully a solution will present itself before I get there.

Regardless — I’m done with them.  No more writing challenges for me except the ones I set for myself … which generally amount to things like “have some word count before going to bed”.

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Romance is not porn.

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A perfectly wonderful post.
Just as nudity isn’t sex, romance isn’t either — a romance needn’t have any erotic element at all. Even if it does, it doesn’t have to reach pornographic levels. There’s a reason Erotica is a separate genre, after all.

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Love, Lust, and Laptops

I feel like this should go without saying, right?

And yet, not a day goes by when I don’t read some tweet, some article, some inane facebook post by someone who has never even read a romance novel, decrying “mommy porn” or “mummy porn” or “porn for women.”

And then, just yesterday, I caught this little forehead smacker on the NPR book blog (hat tip to @sesmithwrites on twitter):

“The American Library Association and Barnes & Noble were among the groups named by conservative group Morality in Media in its “Dirty Dozen List” of “the top 12 facilitators of porn.””

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/04/02/175987431/book-news-american-library-association-barnes-noble-called-facilitators-of-porn

Okay, full stops between every word required this time.

Romance. Is. Not. Porn.

This comparison does a disservice to romance writers and readers, and it does a disservice to the hardworking men and women in the pornography industry and their fans as well.

So why do we…

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How does Amazon work, I wonder

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I really must say, the ranking system on Amazon fascinates me in a morbid fashion.

It is, really, the personification of many of the reasons I actually deplore the degree to which digital technology has permeated our society. Only through the advent of complex computers could such Lovecraftian mathematical models and algorithms be achieved on an hourly basis.

Something that has profoundly improved my position on the top 100 lists, or the overall sales rank lists: not selling any copies for nearly 12 hours. This, in one case, increased my rank in one category by something like 12 places.

An example of something that hurt my sales rank severely: selling about 4 copies. This, in one case, lowered me by more than 20 places.

Some things observed by other authors: raising and lowering your price has profound impact directly related to the price change (raise price, improve rank); existence of a film version – an author helping to puzzle out this ranking model had books with and books without movie treatments and confirmed that despite equal or worse sales, the ranks for the movied tales ranked higher; reviews (quantity) – it would seem that no reviews is better than some, but if you have any several is best … number of stars irrelevant, 40 1-stars is better as far as can be determined than 8 5-star.

Something with strange weight within the algorithm: 1-star reviews. They seem to hurt more than a 5-star helps. The fact that rating is used at all in the ranking is unique to Amazon, which troubles many consumers and creators alike since Amazon does not discourage people from reviewing things that they have never used/owned/etc nor take issue with people saying so in the reviews; and there’s no way to flag for removal a review for a radiant heater that reads (regardless of how many stars) “I really don’t like duck sauce” – while I pray that such a review for such an unrelated circumstance is merely the construct of my own strange mind, I do know that people will review things unrelated to the product or its quality.

I’ve actually had to resist the urge to consult astrological charts to determine if ranking trends correspond to any stellar alignments; I’m fairly certain, though, that Mercury’s position relative to Mars has some profound bearing upon the Hot New Releases Top 20 for Mysteries.

Ah me, but the eternal question: if it weren’t for computers and the internet wold my work be published? Frankly, I’m not a fan of computers and the internet as a rule. They’re useful tools in moderation, truly. I’m fond of some of their applications, like email. While I agree with Louis L’Amour regarding people relying on word processors to do too much of their writing for them, leading to sloppiness, I still would be loathe to be transferring my manuscripts to typewriter instead of Pages. Still, I would happily renew my acquaintance with my postman and invest in a big, solid Underwood if I could escape the perversions wrought upon society by the virulent proliferation of computer technologies …I miss simple electronics, such as 1980s and earlier televisions & radios {wistful sigh}.

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Well … that’s depressing

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Well, the one star on Goodreads was updated to include a review. They posted it on Amazon too.

I must say, it’s odd to see someone posting a one star review of something they say they didn’t finish. It’s typically considered bad form – unless the review was: This book wasn’t even spell checked, it’s unreadable. Technical merit, or more to the point a lack thereof, being a quite valid exception.

Still, it’s far less that which bothers me. It’s that it criticises the story for being what I say in the blurb. There’s something troubling about this. I know I can’t expect to please everyone, but I never expected it to come in the form of a complaint that the book couldn’t be finished and the elaboration on why was that it was a love at first sight story about high school freshmen … as stated in the description.  There’s also criticism of Lauren being both gay and Christian which I cannot comment on politely so shan’t try.

I think I could have been amused, but some people have said the review was helpful, and this was one of the worst sales days since it launched.

And that’s what awaited me when I woke up this morning … on my birthday. (Really, today was my really for real birthday – I thought of putting the book on special sale or something, but thought of it too late, sorry).

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Status update: Ready or Not

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Well, Love or Lust is holding strong as an Amazon bestseller and hot new release (for category, but hey — it is a bestseller list — says so on the label).  Which is lovely.  Even climbing charts globally.  A ping on the German radar and some love from Down Under hath come my way as well — thank you.

In the meantime I’ve got back to work on Ready or Not and am nearly half through it.  So far it’s not quite the disaster I was thinking, but I also don’t think I’ve hit the bits I wrote during NaNoWriMo or Camp NaNoWriMo.

I’ve a horrible, sinking feeling when I consider what I can recall of them.  They’re actually great parts — by themselves.  I’m just terrified that, when I get there, they won’t fit and can’t be made to fit.  If that’s the case, then that’s about one third of the book down the drain and a lot of work to get to before I can have the next book out.

If I’m wrong — things are going well enough between my own read through and my editor’s pile of work to do that she ought to be sitting down to attack it with her mighty Red Pen of Death which I swear is filled with human blood — possibly magically siphoned from the author upon whose work she applies it — instead of ink.  We’ll have some lovely conversations regarding my dyslexia, my inability to grasp various minutia of English grammar and orthography and then I’ll give it one more read for ‘now how in Hell did this get by both of us!?’ moments.

Should the universe be benevolent and kind (please do stop laughing, please) I might have book 2 out by Christmas.  Realistically speaking, I’ll say don’t expect anything before Easter 2014 and I might even wind up so close to 29 June 2013 that I may hold off to release on the 1yr anniversary of the first book.

All told I’m impressed with this first half, really.  There’re some very touching moments, and a good tear jerker in there.  I’ve managed to have some really good humour bits.

For fun I’ll post the only part, aside from a poem from late in the book which has already been released here, I’ll give you a sample of the only other part I’m willing to present to the wider public:

Disclaimer

The story which follows contains people:  Tall people, short people, fat and skinny.  It will contain intelligence, stupidity, ignorance and knowledge.  It will contain people ambulating, masticating, respirating, and articulating.  It will contain people who are homosexuals.  It will contain heterosexual people.  It will contain males, females, and God help us all, humans.

It should be known that the author is not promoting anything.  This story is for enjoyment, entertainment and, if the author might be permitted a moment of vanity, inspiration.

Reading it will not make you gay, straight, masculine, feminine, feline, canine, richer or poorer (well, maybe a little poorer as I hope you bought a copy, but I hope not significantly poorer).  It will not make you smarter or stupider, more or less violent.  It will not send you to Heaven or Hell (I think).  It will give you super powers if read while being exposed to cosmic rays*.

If you like it, fantastic.  If you hate it, I’m sorry.  Just know that you’ve been warned.

Yours with love,

Jaye Em Edgecliff

*Please use cosmic radiation responsibly and only according to the direction of a scientific genius or similar.  Author cannot be held responsible for injury or disfigurement caused by exposure to strange solar emanations.

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It never fails

Published on by JayeLeave a comment

No matter how hard we try there’s always something in our final, published to the public, books that is just plain wrong.

Today I noticed three.

The first came from the beautiful (truly, these are just stunning) print copies of Love or Lust that arrived today:  in the print version there’s a blank page between chapters 20 and 21.  It’s not there in the .docx file.  It’s a quirk of converting to PDF – something I had to do to get the very pretty fonts for the title page, headers, and chapter names.

The second was a sudden realisation:  I was using a draft copy of the copyright notice where I hadn’t made a final decision about the art yet!  I hadn’t listed the very talented photographer who’d taken that picture as I ought’ve.  This has been remedied.  Very sorry Oteo.

Finally, despite, I swear, copying and pasting the name from their website since I can’t bloody spell it to save my life, I still had Juilliard misspelt in all three places I refer to it ~head hung in shame~.  I have now added the first i to the word.

Let it never be said that publishing, in any regard, isn’t an adventure.

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