I have Osiren’s Tears, and Prophecy by Barlight up on Kobo now. Give me time and I’ll have everything available there.
A prophecy taunts the proprietor of a little bar, until he can’t take it anymore. Mayhem ensues.
Prince Ashini must choose between the love of the beautiful goddess, Sekra, and duty to his own people.
Early a friend tweeted a link to this article, in which Joe Abercrombie (a traditionally published writer) said self publishing is too much work. He doesn’t want to publish, he wants to write.
Yep. He’s right. Self publishing is a LOT of work. There are covers, editors, formating, and months and months of writing with little return.
But it’s worth it!
For centuries art has been funneled through publishers of one sort or another. Book publishers, music producers, game developers, TV executives, art curators… you name it! There was a gate keeper set in front of your goal that you had to get through.
It’s like a lottery. Someone wins, and a whole hell of a lot of people lose.
And publishing, like any lottery, wasn’t dependent solely on talent or content. It was also marketability, how much money they could make off you, and sometimes your ability to stroke their ego.
Guess what? It isn’t a lottery anymore. The gate keepers are starting to notice wholes crashing through the walls, bypassing the gate they so carefully erected.
Indie game designers have produced, sold, and created major hits among gamers. Like Limbo, Journey, Minecraft, and Bastion. Games that skyrocketed past all the game publishers, earning millions.
Indie authors, like Hugh Howie, and Amanda Hocking proved you don’t need a publisher to make it big. They refused to give their rights away for someone else to make money off their talent, and they succeeded.
In film we now see some amazing special effects, animations, dramas, and story telling available right on youtube. For free. Netflix is offering some of them, like the Guild, streaming. Theaters are playing others, like Plurality, as ‘pre movie vignettes’. Others will follow suit. Indie films will get longer, and better, and eventually be available along side everything else.
Musicians, like Maclemore, are hitting the top charts without signing their life and their music over to some producer.
Even physical objects, and hand made goods. You can go to Etsy and by something directly from designers, artists, and makers. Or you can download designs from Thingaverse and print them on your 3D printer.
Publishers… the gate keepers who so carefully erected that wall so they could decided what was published, and who succeed, are starting to see that their wall looks more like swiss cheese then brick.
The status quo use to be that people produced things, and the person who sold it and distributed it, was the one who made the most profit off it.
I see a future where the person who designed, created, wrote, painted, filmed, or made an object…. they will be the one who makes the most profit off their IP. They made it. They should.
Copyright is broken. DMC is bulky, and intrusive. Publishers are more interested in the bottom line then the creators they say they serve. We’ve known this for a while, and now we have ways to combat it.
Move over publishers, I’m coming through.
If all that’s standing in my way is a little hard work, then I’m rolling up my sleeves, and I’m doing it.
Late last night I published Small Bites 2.
Like the previous title, this also contains 3 short stories. However, I wasn’t quite able to stick with the less then 1000 words goal. “Carmine” is double that.
This title also comes with a bonus at the end of the book. The other two stories, “Scarecrow” and “Price of a Book” follow the less then 1000 word flash fiction rule.
“Scarecrow” is also in “Twilight Tales”, but as it is my most popular flash fiction story I had to include it in the Small Bite series. It just happened to fit in this collection.
“Small Bites 2” is only 99 cents.
Got some really great reviews from the guys over at The Story Telling Podcast.
“She’s great at flash fiction” V.C. Coll (author of The Miscellaneous Adventures of Princess Leona)
Prophecy by Barlight is “Cute and humorous.” Garrett Robinson (author Hit Girls, Non-zombie, etc)
And Z.C. Bolger (author of Danny Calloway and the Puzzle House) just got inspired to write something when he read “Necropolis“, but he’s waiting until I finish “Forgotten Ones”.
*Happy dance!*
I experienced a rather weird thing this week.
You know when you go to the eye doctor, and they shine a bright light in your eye so they can see the back of your eye and check for issues? Ya, she did that… and I could HEAR the light.
This is the first time, that I can remember, where light triggered an audible episode. I’ve read about the phenomenon before, just never experienced it myself.
I have photophobia. That is a sensitivity to light. Even as a child I would hide out in the library, or sit in the shade with my eyes closed, because I could not see in the bright sunlight.
As a kid in sunny California with parents who constantly said “go out and play!”… Lets just say I was a well read kid.
I could buy stock in sun glasses. I break or lose them a lot, and have to get more so that I can function. Thankfully there aren’t a lot of bright sunny days in the north west.
But hearing light… that was an interesting experience. It sounded like the roar of the ocean in my ear. It would have been almost soothing if it hadn’t also been causing sharp pains and a head ache.
Maybe some day I will learn to keep my sun glasses in the car.
Or maybe I’ll just buy another book and stay in.
It’s been a while since I did an “Around the Web” post, so I thought I should catch up.
In the news this week, the biggest thing is the protests in Turkey. Huge protests, with thousands of people marching against the police. There are amazing pictures coming out of Turkey, and a lot of chatter on Reddit from people who are actually there, and what is going on.
I hope they make some headway…
Now, for the rest of the news.
Hugh Howie talks about indie authors who make a living writing.
Hugh Howie also plugged an Anne Rice video on “how to be a writer.” Hint: Go WRITE!
Neil Gaiman talks about the book that made him.
Neil Gaiman’s speach, “Make Good Art”, is now in a book form.
George R.R. Martin wrote 250k words for The World of Ice and Fire.
An Anne McCaffery tribute book will be out soon.
John Green claims Penguin to be the most effective publishing house for YA.
And non writing related…
An old video of a 7-11 at 2am from back in the 80’s. I forgot people use to smoke inside stores.
For a moment of levity, Tim Burton inspired Pokemon.
Someone did a minecraft world simulation, 1:1500 scale.
When I first started publishing I was a little worried. Worried no one would like it, worried I would make a bad name for myself, worried I’d never sale one… etc. etc.
But it’s actually going better then I thought it would. Sure, I’ve only had 22 sales, and 48 freebies… but that’s 60+ people that read my book.
What’s even better, I have only 4 and 5 star reviews. That makes me think I’m on the right track, even if it is a slow track.
On that note… I’ll be putting out Small Bites 2 next week. Now that I have some momentum I want to keep that going. I am working on several projects at once so that I will (hopefully) be able to publish something new every Friday for a while.
Books will come out as 99 cents for the first weekend, and then go up, except the Small Bites series. They will stay 99 cents as they are really short.
Then, once all the Small Bites are out, I will stick them up as one set for 2.99 (which gets you one book for free). And I will also be working to put out a big book of all my short stories eventually. No idea what I will price it at yet.
But for right now… Small Bites 2, and we’ll worry about everything else later.
The circumstance dictates that my life should be a failure.
No, wait, I’m not done.
I am 36. Divorced. I have three teenagers. I work a low paying, dead end job with no opportunities for advancement. Two years of college but no degree. Very little job experience. And I’m broken from years of abuse.
Circumstances dictate that I should be a failure. Never get anywhere, never accomplish anything, and die alone. The little old lady with a house full of cats. (Sorry, apartment, I make too little to get a house.) Too many kids, and too much baggage for any sane person to take a chance on.
Well, screw the circumstances!
Your life, and your situation do not dictate who you are, or where you are going, unless you let them. We are not the sum of the experiences we are dealt, rather we are the sum of how we deal with those circumstances.
There have been men who hiked to the top of everest despite not having feet. Women who made families, and raised children despite lack of legs. People who won contest, performed great feats of strength, painted, sculpted, created, and THRIVED despite the circumstances of their life.
What’s your excuse?
I have a lot of circumstances, but they don’t define me. I am using my time, energy, and passion to pursue the one thing that I have always loved, and always wanted to do.
I write.
I am turning my circumstances into useful things. Using the past, the baggage, and the brokenness, as springboards for stories. Using my job as time to think through plots while I sweep floors. Enjoying my family, and building a new life.
Life isn’t always easy. But the truth is… the trees that are sheltered, that never stand up to the winds… those are the weakest trees in the forest.
Don’t let circumstances get you down. Use them. Grow. Stand firm against the wind. Lean on friends and family if you need to, and prune away the rough bits. But above all else, don’t let the circumstances dictate your life.
A friend called me up the other day and told me about this amazing sale. A book warehouse was selling everything, just $10 for one bag of books. And you brought the bag, any size.
Well, I had a rolling cart. I could fit a lot of books in that thing. Maybe even a couple hundred. Didn’t matter, she said. Ten bucks.
The warehouse was actually three buildings FILLED with shelves of books. The shelves were pretty close together, too.
Enough that I sometimes had to squeeze through to fit.
Books upon books, stretching out as far as you could see. All of them mixed together in no logical order.
We were hunting for hours to find any that we might like.
Many of them were romances. A lot of mystery. It took me hours to find some sci-fi and fantasy, or paranormal. But I eventually came away with a nice stack of books. I grabbed some Nora Roberts, who seemed to be one of the most prolific authors there, and a few Dean Koontz, and then a bunch of random books with interesting covers.
And you know what I discovered while crawling through those three buildings with thousands and thousands of books laid out before me? Mind you, I could throw as many as I wanted in my cart, and price wasn’t really an option….
Book covers are boring.
Nora Roberts, Dean Koontz, John Grisham, and more… all of them.. boring covers.
You have the authors name in HUGE letters, a boring picture, and not much else. Most of them just labeled them as “fiction” so I couldn’t even get a read on what kind of fiction it was. It was frustrating… three warehouses worth of books and not much time to pic out a book, and this is what I had to choose from.
I did manage to find a lot of books with good covers… but it was hard to find them. And a lot of them were meant for younger children.
I notice that Sci-fi and Fantasy are more likely to have expressive covers. Romance is likely to have two people kissing, or something like that. Paranormal will often have an expressive cover.
This is why I work so hard on my own covers. I want someone to be able to look at a glance, and get an idea of what’s inside the book. So far I think I’ve done alright… You be the judge.
A prophecy taunts the proprietor of a little bar, until he can’t take it anymore. Mayhem ensues.
Prophecy by Barlight is out, and available for this weekend only at 99 cents.
After this weekend it will go up to $2.99.
So get it while it’s HOT!
Prophecy by Barlight is a comedic tale about a barkeep, and his desire to get rid of a prophecy. He’s willing to go to some extremes to do it, too.
Author Crissy Moss 