Hello, friends and fans!
Welcome to another “Peek At My Week”! Here’s a look at some of my latest news: June 19, 2023! Here are some things that happened this past week.
News About Writing & Publishing: This Is The Current State Of Things
Let’s take a look at the current status quo on various ongoing issues affecting my writing or publishing:
- Writing: This past week I spent more time working on “Terror In The Outblack“, the next volume of the Panic! Horror In Space series. If you’ve ever read any of the Panic books, you’ll know I break each book up into sections, where the courageous Captain Flane and his eager-beaver sidekick, Vic, get dragged into individual cases involving the strange, the weird, the paranormal, or downright creepy! I’ve already completed four sections of the new book so far, subtitled “Hunger”, “Nine Tenths Of The Law”, “Memento Mori” and “Sandor Station”, and I’m currently still working on the fifth: “Quake”. The length of the fifth section will determine whether there will be a sixth part (which I already have a few ideas for) but I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes! In the meantime, here’s the smashing new poster for the book:
- Recently Published: The three new titles in the Quantum Series: “Underground Movement“, book 7, Book 8, “Xanadu” and “The Last Hurrah” (book 9) were published via Amazon KDP on the 6th of May. Audiobooks are currently being recorded, narrated by Darla Middlebrook! I’m really looking forward to finding out what my readers think of the three new books!
- What Readers Say: I’m not sure, I know I can’t please everybody (so I’m not trying to!) – drop me a line and let me know how you think I’m doing – or, preferably, leave me a review!
- Publishing: On Sunday 18 June I closed my publishing account at Smashwords. The reasons for this decision were the deterioration of services and drastic increase in turnaround time and responsiveness on the part of SW. You may recall that at one stage I was selling through a bunch of different platforms simultaneously to reach all their different networks (via Lulu, EBooks2Go, Draft2Digital, Smashwords, and a few others), but gradually I whittled all these down until just KDP and Smashwords remained. In the case of these smaller POD platforms, their own networks just don’t really move anything anymore – sales essentially ground to a halt. They all basically rely on Amazon, you see, and you can’t submit to Amazon through all of them at the same time – you have to choose one – so it was that SW was the last of these I used.
Sadly, Amazon does dominate the market. Even if you go through other platforms, if they don’t also put your books on Amazon, you’re wasting your time. SW used to be great – they were pioneers of the field, but they didn’t distribute a title to Amazon unless you first sold 5000 units of that title on their own network… which made it almost impossible to get there. Plus, sales on that platform have dropped markedly since they got taken over by Draft2Digital last year April. I think their days are numbered. I honestly don’t know how the smaller companies are going to survive, because they really can’t compete anymore. See below my message to Smashwords last Friday: In short, they never responded, and never got around to approving my cover updates, so I unpublished all 22 titles that used to be with SW, and sent them an email to request closure of my account. I did update the website to remove all sales links pointing to SW, but if you do wind up there by mistake, my sincere apologies. My books are now exclusively available through the godfather of e-marketing, KDP-Amazon and Audible, and their associates.
Other Stuff:
Here’s a few of the other things that happened this past week:
The Plot Thickens
At the moment I’m working on “Quake”, the last story in the next
Panic! Horror In Space book (book 4:
Terror In The Outblack), as I have been this week. I’ve already completed four other stories for this book (“Hunger”, “Nine Tenths Of The Law”, “Memento Mori” and “Szandor Station”) in the past few weeks, and I’m happy with all of them.
Seems I’ve written myself into a corner – again. This is quite a complex story – more difficult than I’d imagined. I mean, how complicated can a story really be?
For the uninitiated, who might be used to reading a story and appreciating its nuances and subtleties – and perhaps wondering at how the author builds the story up using the right words and evoking certain emotions in the process, leading up to events in the book… let me tell you that, as the author, it can be pretty damn hard work – involving mental gymnastics and probably restless nights and even migraines – working to figure the story out until we’re satisfied with it!
For me this is usually easy – the story just flows and basically all I need to do is word it well and ensure there are no holes in the plot! Sometimes I will hit a snag, and sit and wonder “how the hell do I get around this?!”
and then the answer will come to me, even a day or so later.
This time however, I’ve written myself into a corner – and it necessitates making changes throughout the story, and not just little ones. Unlike painting oneself into a corner, where paint eventually dries and all you’d need to do is wait – words never dry. A broken or incomplete plot doesn’t just sort itself out overnight. It will still be there tomorrow, taunting me – until I eventually solve it.
Some writers like to carefully and exhaustively work out an entire plot from beginning to end before even writing a word of the story – I’m not one of those writers. I’m what they call a “pantser” – as opposed to a “plotter” – meaning that I fly the story by the seat of my pants (cue a mental image of me wearing an old fashioned leather flying helmet and goggles!).
That said, when starting a story, I already have the basic plot and story laid out in my head, including what sort of circumstances or villains the protagonists will encounter – fleshing it out while I write. I’ve been writing this way for over thirty years, and this is the first time a story – which I feel has a lot of promise by the way – has, ten thousand words in, just sat down cross legged and stared at me, sulking – the words “this just isn’t working out for me!” appearing in a speech bubble above its head!
Is it a story about dehumanization? About psychopathy? Or will it be more paranormal, say about a zombie infestation? There are dead colonists lying strewn all over the town on Ramus-12 already, so that’s workable… but do I want to make it about zombies?
Ghosts?
Or could it rather be about the dangers of AI?
Or…
shit… could it involve all of them?! *Screams*
This particular story appears to have something of an identity crisis! Oh well, at least that’s familiar territory for me.
I accept that this is all part of my creative process. I need to figure this out. And I will.
Pass The Magnifying Glass
What the thousands of comments on every science, astronomy, archeology and history pages’ posts look like these days… I love seeing posts on these topics, but I’ve had to unfollow them because the sheer weight of stupid posts by stupid people is overwhelming. It’s gone beyond “reaching for the popcorn” entertainment to rubbing my nose in what a lost cause the human race is.
Free thought and critical thinking doesn’t mean embracing conspiracy theories and rejecting science and facts – it means rejecting oppressive thoughts and traditions and superstitions in favor of rational thought and fact-based analysis.
Somewhere, between all the brain-farts from flat earthers and crackpots screaming about “god” as an antidote to reality and common sense, I can almost feel other people like me looking on aghast at these festivals of narcissistic self-gratification, these shameful celebrations of willful ignorance and self-deluding denial.
The longer I watch this twisted reality show of ants trying to dazzle the world with their own short-sighted self-interest, the more I feel like bringing out the magnifying glass on a sunny day.
That’s all for this week!
As always, I’ll keep you posted about any further developments. And remember:
In spite of some of my books having been on Amazon since 2005, not one of them has yet reached the magical 51 reader reviews yet! (The highest number any of them has, is ten – which is a pretty good number, but still not high enough for Amazon!) I would really appreciate your help on this! Come on, leave a review – it’s free!
I wish you all a pleasant week until next time!
Thanks a lot for all your friendship and support, I hope you know it is all deeply appreciated – and remember, keep reading!
Cheers!
All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2023.