Status update: Ready or Not

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.

A bestseller in the making.

#14 in “Hot New Releases” – Lesbian, and #29 in Lesbian fiction overall?!

That’s where Love or Lust is on Amazon’s ranking system as I type this.

According to some, this means that I am a bestseller.  I’m still in the 12k-th slot on Amazon, overall, but … wow.

oh, and for my UK friends?

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New availability

English: A multi-volume Latin dictionary (Egid...
English: A multi-volume Latin dictionary (Egidio Forcellini: Totius Latinitatis Lexicon, 1858–87) in a table in the main reading room of the University Library of Graz. Picture taken and uploaded on 15 Dec 2005 by Dr. Marcus Gossler. Español: Diccionario de latín (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have expanded my print distribution channels, as a result Love or Lust should be showing up for all booksellers.

This does not, of course, automatically put me on a Barnes & Noble store shelf. It does, however, mean the book should eventually show up on their website, as available through their in store ordering system, and it should be available for you to request at your friendly local bookshop (for those of us still so fortunate as to have one). Enough requests come to the stores and the stores might carry me, which would be lovely.

I didn’t do this for my chequebook, though. God, no. At my list price that’s very much not the case. I did it first and foremost to be in libraries. Just as I shan’t be, automatically, on and B&N store shelf, I won’t be getting immediately shipped to any library. But those of you who like the book might suggest your library carry it.

I owe a great debt to libraries: they’re how I read as a child. I had never been in a bookstore, except a used one once, until I was a teenager. Were it not for my elementary school library and the public library I could never have discovered my love of imaginative prose. I could not have explored Saturn (or Jupiter, in the later books) with HAL, Poole, Bowman, et al; I could not have crossed the Misty Mountains to face a dragon with Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End; I could not have sought the Kammerling with Elyn and Thork; saved Ruwenda with its triplet princesses; solved mysteries with Bernie Rhodenbarr nor with Mrs Murphy & Tee Tucker … and so many more if it weren’t for libraries.

It’s rather secondary, but still important, that I may now be bought by and from a local Mom & Pop store. My conscience was a bit squirmy over the Amazon only thing. True, Ii think this now means I am able to be carried by Wal-Mart, a store that makes my conscience scream bloody murder, but I take comfort that they’re quite unlikely to approve of my book “sullying” their shelves.

I shall link back, as I discover them, to major retail sources for the story online. I shan’t scour the web for every little eStore that carries it now since some of those carried it already because they aggregate Amazon’s catalogue. I will simply keep an eye on the online big boys, like B&N, to let those who prefer know I’m there.

#18 and #52!!

Oh. My. God!

I’ve reached #52 in the lesbian fiction best sellers on Amazon and #18 in “Hot new releases” in the same category on Amazon!  (#18,852 Paid in Kindle Store)

Thank you so very much to all the readers who’ve made this happen.

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#75!

Love or Lust has hit #75 on the Lesbian Fiction top 100 on Amazon.com!

Okay, so my overall rank on Amazon is 24k and Amazon’s ranking algorythm means I could go up twenty slots five minutes from now without selling another copy, or go down twenty slots after selling one (no one can make sense out of how that works) but that’s totally not the point.

It’s exciting, full stop.

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Finally on Kobo

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Love or Lust can now be found there!

It never fails

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 stunningprint 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.

I’m so sorry!

Image representing Smashwords as depicted in C...

God, I’m sorry folks, I got distracted and completely forgot to schedule a post announcing a sale!

Luckily it is for the entire month of July, and if you shop on Smashwords already then it would have kindly told you to use code SW50 to get Love or Lust half off.

Lots and lots of books 25%, 50%, 75%, even 100% off today. A lot of authors presenting their hard work at discount for us. So today I’m posting my link to the promotion. Err … There’s a lot of erotica on Smashwords. They kindly turn on an Adult Content filter by default, but be forewarned – or, if that’s your thing, I suppose you could call it rather a plus … just remember to turn the filter off (I work in Tech Support, if you don’t think people have to be told this kind of thing – I’m terribly sorry, but I must excuse myself to laugh until I hyperventilate).

Smashwords’ Summer Sale

Announcing: Love or Lust now available!

Love or Lust coverNow available in eBook and Print: Love or Lust the first of four books in the Now & Forever series.

A light-hearted, slice-of-life, romantic-comedy for young adults, Love or Lust introduces you to Lauren Conners, a ballerina, a Good Girl, studious, and sweet, and to Salencia Constellino, an exotic, irreverent cowgirl new to the little Washington town.

When the girls meet it’s love at first sight; sparks fly, angels sing, lightning and fireworks. But they attend the best school in the area, a Catholic secondary school, Immaculate Conception. It’s not just their school that brings trouble for the young couple. The young teens have their own inner turmoils and anxieties — especially Lauren, who always wants to think the best of people, but quickly learns just how petty people can get.

It’s an uplifting story, though, meant to inspire and give hope. The girls have supportive and loving friends and families. And, largely, the obstacles of life and of being teenagers are navigated with quirky senses of humour and strange misunderstandings.

In this book Lauren and Sally are first and foremost, young high school freshmen, fourteen years old and trying to make sense of themselves and the world around them. It is my hope that it might show people that we’re all human beings no matter who it is we choose to love. That homosexual, heterosexual, bixsexual, asexual, trisexual, or what have you, are still people; still feeling beings with hopes and dreams.

Print book us$17.99/£11.50/€13.75
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eBook us$3.99. Available in numerous countries at proportionate price.
Currently in:
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Coming soon to:
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Print Pricing

Sadly, I just got done interacting with CreateSpace.

I can’t recall now if I was just working with an estimator before, or not, but now that the book is up for processing and eventual sale the final price tag is us$17.99, with standard exchange rates applied to the price tag for £ & € (sorry I don’t recall those numbers off hand and am not in a good position to look them back up right this moment).

The eBook, naturally, will be far more affordable as it will be under us$5