Erotica Shorts

Recently I've become fairly active in a reddit community called r/smutwriters. Essentially it's a community of people like myself, people who write erotic romance fiction. It's a private group; if you're a writer and interested in joining you need to be invited.

That said, one of the things I've taken from this group is the value of short stories. I've written shorts for years, but never realized they had a home outside of anthologies. Chalk it up to my own ignorance. Thankfully my time conversing with other writers has helped me see that there is certainly an audience for shorts, and they get a second life upon bundling.

Next week I'm hopefully going to be publishing a short I've been toying with for a while, and the way it shaped up I'm hoping to do a sequel at some point as well. It's an idea I've played with for some time, and it incorporates much of the same themes as Awake My Soul, essentially bdsm, erotica, and an historic setting, although this one is more Renaissance than Medieval. I'm inclined to title it something like 'Welcome to the Black Room' and make it part of a series I'm thinking of calling 'The Masquerade Affair'. Hopefully that gives you an idea of the setting.

With this short I'll be trying out the KDP Select option, which means that this short will be free, for a time, on Amazon. As it's a short I'll be pricing it at $0.99 as well. It's about 7000 words long, and I hope you, my readers, enjoy it!

Week One of Release

Awake My Soul officially launched at about 7pm EST on Amazon and so far between Amazon and Goodreads it's carrying a 4.5 our of 5 star review. So far sales have been pretty good and I'm proud that Awake My Soul cracked the top 20,000 kindle books for sale on Thursday. I know that isn't huge, but there are over 500,000 books for sale on kindle, probably more. To be that high was a bit thrilling to see, and my goal once more reviews come in (hopefully more come in!) is that I can crack the top 10,000. Again, it doesn't seem that great, but with so many books available that's a big push! I even made my first sale on Amazon.de today and that was a surprise. It's crazy that someone on the other side of the world will be reading my book.

For those who want links (and hopefully there are some of you), here is a full breakdown of where Awake My Soul is currently available!

Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.de
Amazon.fr
Amazon.es
Amazon.it
Amazon.co.jp
Amazon.in
Amazon.ca
Amazon.com.br
Amazon.com.mx
Amazon.com.au
Smashwords.com (let's you download whatever format you like)

And because I'm very proud of them, here are my reviews!

Short and sweet!

My Amazon link is up! For those waiting to pick up Awake My Soul for your kindle, here's the link! Hope you leave a review!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GR4BX86

Monday is the official launch of Awake My Soul!

How exciting is that?! I'm giving myself the weekend to pimp the book out and give away a few copies in hopes of reviews, but launch day is this coming Monday and I hope everyone has a chance to check out Awake My Soul!

In the mean time I'm working on a few things. I'm still working away at Lay Me Bare and I'm probably about 90% done! I've also started laying the ground work on a sequel to Awake My Soul, which I've tentatively titled Betray My Heart. Besides that I'm taking some time to work on some shorter pieces I've been playing with. I hope to have the first one, a modern short erotica piece, available come December. I might test the waters of KDP Select with that.

So go buy Awake My Soul come Monday! I'd love you for it if you did.

Release time is finally here (ish)

Awake My Soul is formatted, converted, and finally, mercifully ready to go. I plan on officially clicking the PUBLISH button on Amazon on Monday, November 18th. 

I guess what I'm announcing now is a semi-soft launch through Smashwords. Awake My Soul is available through them at the moment and with the coupon BG75G you can download the book for free for any ereader. Yes, 100% for free until the end of the month. It should work for any ereader. Through Smashwords it will become available through the rest of the online retailers (IE: Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Apple, and so on) hopefully in the next few days once Smashwords accepts it into the premium catalogue.

Again, the code is BG75G and the link to the book is here. Thank you for your patience! Now go download it for free!

So close I can taste it!

Time to bite the big one. It's time I finally buckled down and bought Word. The real Word. Not the fake one I've been using for years. Seems like the Works Word Processor just isn't going to cut it when it comes to the final touches of formatting. If I'm going to continue epublishing, it's a necessary step.

What does this have to do with anything? It's me saying I'm almost done! I've done all the formatting I can on Awake My Soul (which is everything save the table of contents and chapter headings!). With Word I can add those last touches and it's done.

Of course, my anxiety is finally starting to ebb away at my stomach. I'm so close to being done that it finally feels like it's really happening. With that comes the fear that I wont sell a single book. Or that if I do, people will hate it and then I never sell another book again.

There are so many historical romance novels out there, how can I even dream mine will stand out? I need to keep reminding myself is all I can do is work hard and do my best. If people buy it and like it, amazing. If not, at least I tried.

In a quick note of other news - I finally started writing more of Lay Me Bare! Added another 1000 words so far today. Since I'm stuck on Awake My Soul until Word gets installed, I might as well get some words on paper for Lay Me Bare!

Faster Than Expected!

This morning I finished my second edit of Awake My Soul. I edited it once already, sent it to an editor, and now I've edited what they looked at. I hope going through it once or twice more will be the last I need before it's time to publish. Probably twice, just to be sure!

I've looked into KDP Select and honestly, I don't think it's for me. The more I hear about Smashwords and the accessibility, the more I like it. So of course it will also go on Amazon, but not on the 'select' feature. 

I'm hoping to reach out to a Romance Novel blog about a cover reveal soon. It would be a nice way to generate some publicity and get the ball rolling. Of course, the cover needs to get made soon too!

In the end, I'm beyond excited about how things are going. I absolutely cannot wait for people to be able to read my book!

Productivity

Today is the first day since I officially became 'unemployed' that I haven't done any work on my writing. Not because of laziness, slacking, or anything of that matter. No, simply because we're getting ready for our Halloween party! Yes, I'm aware it's a couple days late, but it was the only day that worked.

But the real news is I'm almost done what I hope is my second or third last go through of Awake My Soul before I put it up for sale. Free time today has been spent looking into Amazon's new KDP Select incentive and I'm curious if I should try it.

For those (probably most) of you who haven't heard of this addition, what the new incentive lets you do is create sale days for you book. So say your book is $4.99, for 24 hours it would be $1.99, the next 24 hours would be $2.99, and so on until it's back to its normal price. Whether this incentive will actually add to sales is still largely untested, and I hope to see feedback soon from authors who have used it.

Tomorrow I hope to get lots more editing done. Hopefully soon Awake My Soul is done and dusted and ready for sale!