Books and writing, oh my!

Sometimes, even I forget that I’ve self published a few books. A little honest background will help explain that.

My first book, A Scent of Roses, was a fabulously fun book to write. I wrote it with a solid Hammer film, B-movie vibe in my head. I tried to keep it coherent, but I gave my imagination complete free rein on the project. “Go where you want,” I told it, “and I’ll just follow along and make sure the pieces almost fit together.” And me and I muse did just that. When I finished, I was staring at this novel, just sitting on my hard drive, and got to thinking – even if it only made a few bucks self-published, that was more than it was making collecting digital dust on my computer.

For a book with no real editing and no publicity, it did (to me) surprising well. Well enough that when I finished Chrysalis, the first chapter in a series I’d been messing with for a while, I went all in. I got an editor, spent money on banner ads, the whole nine yards. And it sank. Or stank. Either way, it didn’t do nearly as well as that first effort. Even on KDP, where you earn money for people just turning some pages (at least when it was first put on there), I never made enough to get something on the dollar menu.

And then, a few weeks ago, I decided (quietly) to pull it off of KDP, set the price on both books to 0.99, and push it out with Draft2Digital to all ebook venues that would take it.

Meanwhile, back at the castle…

When I finished Chrysalis, I actually started – and finished – the first draft of the sequel. But then Chrysalis bombed so badly, and then life, that funny beast, rose up and made itself very intrusive. Writing, even revision work, wasn’t on the list. The few times I tried, either to write new or revise The Mermaid’s Tears, I got interrupted just enough to lose what steam I had.

At about the same time I moved my books to D2D, I also started feeling like now might be a good time to finally put some work into Tears, a book that needed a lot of polish and attention, but in a lot of ways was already written, at least to some degree. Any lingering doubts I had were dismissed when I checked my sales report on D2D. Granted, I’m selling my books at $0.99, but I also haven’t done much to point people their way. AND YET- I’ve made some sales. Kid’s menu meal once a month sales so far, but it’s enough to fill my sails with a bit of wind.

I am happy to say that I am finally working on both revisions to Mermaid’s Tears, as well as another full length novel. And it feels good. For the first time in a long time, I am actually feeling like I can call myself a writer again. Maybe not successful, maybe not popular, but a writer.

Now if I could figure out how to blog more often.