Hello, friends and fans!
Welcome to my 71st monthly newsletter! Pull up a chair, let’s chat! In this month’s newsletter: updates on publishing, reviews and news. Let’s take a look at this months’ “stuff”!Some General News
Wow! What a month this has been! October was hectic and filled with upsets of every kind – and in spite of that, from the outside you might not have been able to tell!
Not only have things been crazy at work (not to mention surreal) for reasons I cannot go into here, but also in my private life as well! Kay and I have both been to the doctor in the past few weeks to undergo various tests and for our own, different reasons. Fortunately we’re both quite healthy, but there are just a few little things that need attention and sorting out with the assistance of a kind-hearted and insightful GP.
On topic however, the month of October heralded a return to more focused and attentive writing on my part, specifically on the upcoming new titles in the Quantum Series! I’m sure a lot of you are clamoring to find out how that story arc – left hanging in mid-air at the end of “High Steaks” turns out! You won’t have too much longer to wait, so please put down the pitch forks and torches! Haha. Anyway, beyond that, October has been occupied largely with my efforts to recover from the loss of my publisher (Moon Books Publishing) following the death of Brandon Mullins, and in restructuring and replacing the books on the various publishing platforms after they disappeared when MBP went down with him. There’s a lot of good news in that department in terms of my having replaced all the eBook format versions already, and I’m in process with replacing the few outstanding paperback versions as well! Mainly, this month the good news is that in consultation with the narrators, I’ve found a solution for the matter of my audiobooks – but you can read about that in the next section below!
Moving on, during October I also wrote three lengthy informative articles about some of my series – Galaxii, Quantum and Panic! Horror In Space. I did this because I thought some readers might be interested in finding out where and how these series came about, and also what inspired me and so on. The links are further down in the newsletter FYI.
News About Writing & Publishing:
This is the current state of things:
- Audiobooks on ACX: The process of transferring my audiobooks from Moon Books Publishing’s ACX account to Nigel Peever’s ACX account has been requested for by both parties and should be underway soon. This solution will need to remain in place until one day when ACX wakes up and realizes there is more to the world than just the USA, UK, Canada and Ireland, and I can eventually register my own ACX producer account! Until then, this arrangement will need to stay in place. The migration process from Brandon’s ACX account to Nigel’s could still take some time to sort out, but I will keep you appraised of any progress!
- Outstanding royalties: These are royalties earned between January 2022 and the present via MBP’s KDP and Ebooks2go accounts, which have remained unpaid due to the death of Brandon Mullins at Moon Books Publishing. At the latest report this past week, Elizabeth is still working on tracing the accounts involved as she shuts down MBP. It seems Brandon didn’t cc her in everything relating to MBP, and tracing the payment accounts that received royalties from KDP and ACX is proving quite a challenge. It seems at this stage that all payments from sales via MBP in the past year until the audiobooks migrate to Nigel’s account, will have simply disappeared into oblivion.
- Restoration & Republishing Process: As you may recall, when Moon Books Publishing folded after Brandon’s death, they took all my books down from their KDP account and I had to put them all up again. A few months ago I managed to republish all of mine again via my own KDP account, but hadn’t yet got round to restoring books I’d edited for my parents. During October I also finally republished both my mom’s poetry books, and my dad’s three completed books, as well as my wife Kay’s poetry book, on KDP:
- Op Vreemde Weë by Yvonne Lorraine Engela
- When Day Is Done by Yvonne Lorraine Engela
- African Assignment by Theo Engela
- A Way Of Life by Theo Engela
- Shakandazu Valley by Theo Engela
- Season’s Change by Wendy K. Engela
If you recall, I have mentioned a few times previously that I’d edited all of these items myself. They’re now available in eBook format; I’ll try to get round to putting up the paperback versions for these books soon. In the following week however, I finalized the paperback versions for seven books, namely: “Space Sucks“, “Space Sucks Too“, “Malice!“, “When Darkness Calls“, “Opsaal“, “Lifetime” and “Season’s Change“. There are still several more paperback versions of books I need to finalize, and I hope to do so in the coming next few weeks!
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Writing: Believe it or not, I also managed to do a little writing during the past week, although not as much as I would’ve liked! “Underground Movement” Book 7 in Quantum is now at almost 42,000 words.
- Marketing: Having noticed a gap in my promotions channels since deleting my previous Twitter account (@pinkfuzzyninja) I created a new Twitter account which reflects my name this time (@ChristinaEngela). This is much better as my old account was steeped in activism posts and a general mix of stuff that wasn’t really associated with my writing and didn’t really scream “AUTHOR” at all, and Twitter wouldn’t allow me to change my account name! You can follow me here: Twitter.I’ll also be announcing quite soon, details about a new webzine for readers and writers of sci-fi and transgressive fiction I’ll be launching!
I will, as always, keep you updated.
Publishing
Currently Available Titles:
My books are available as eBooks, Paperbacks, and Audiobooks, and you can find them everywhere. Click the links in the slideshow below to view titles available in these formats.
If you’re still wondering where to find them in the format of your choice, you should read “Where To Get My Books – Specially For My South African Readers!” (recently updated).
New Titles:
These are recent new titles published in 2022:
New Releases!
My most recent new releases for 2022 are “Christina Engela’s Strangely Compelling Scifi” (September 5, 2022) preceded by “We All Fall Down” (July 27, 2022) and “Sentinel” (May 07, 2022).
Sentinel – Book 4 in the Galaxii Series:
The starship I.S.S. Munray is a ship crewed by a lot of ill-disciplined misfits barely one step away from another court-martial – and the Captain’s the worst of the lot! When the opportunity presents itself for Vice-Admiral Beens to rid himself of the troublesome, malingering Wynne Polluk, he jumps at the chance to introduce a new broom, in the form of one Sonia La Belle.
In order to meet the deadline, she must deal with all the obstacles in her path; an old rundown ship whose engines lie disassembled, an uncooperative senior staff, and negative hopeless crewmembers who’d probably be more at home in the stockade than running a starship! The Munray and her crew resume their life of routine space patrol – which is soon interrupted when the ship is diverted to pursue a pair of dangerous fugitives who’ve escaped from a max-security facility – one that was supposed to be escape-proof! This turns out to be an exercise which will push ship and crew – and the Captain – to their limits!
Can they overcome all the obstacles they face, track down the Corsair fugitives, and do so in time to prevent the destruction of Earth?
Read more.…Ashes To Ashes…
Stuart Flane, Captain of the starship Mercury is called in unwillingly, kicking and screaming, to investigate the mystery of the ghost-ship Amundsen, which has just pitched up out of the black after being missing for 63 years. On top of that, Flane must also race to a mining colony where strange preternatural fuckery has resulted in six missing children and a series of inexplicable related events had left the subterranean city in a state of panic. What dark, aberrant secret lay behind the tangible terror of Caverna?
How would Flane’s skeptical superiors react to his next report – and above all, how would he word it? The word “carefully” always came to mind. What was he supposed to do – lie? Well, if he didn’t use apparent trigger words like “ghost”, “haunted” or “undead”, that’s pretty much what he’d have to do! Trouble was, some high-ups at Fleet HQ were starting to ask pointed questions about his reports – and sooner or later, Flane worried, someone was going to turn up demanding answers.
The astute Captain’s fears are realized when the Mercury is ordered to Starbase 43, where Commodore Link is waiting to ask a few questions about Flane’s reports. The Commodore, a dyed-in-the-wool skeptic and heavy-handed disciplinarian, makes it his business to interrogate and intimidate crewmembers referenced in Flane’s reports – at least, the ones who aren’t dead yet. Flane grumbles as Link’s investigation progressively turns his life into a bit of a miserable hell. Then, as if by coincidence, the Mercury is redirected to a nearby industrial colony to investigate disturbances at what – much to Flane’s acute embarrassment, turns out to be one of the most haunted hotels in the outblack.
Read more. Strange Is Only A Suggestion.“Sci-fi is the main thing.” I was told in the original brief by Brandon Mullins, CEO and owner of Moon Books Publishing. “Compelling would be nice. Strange is only a suggestion.”
That set the theme (and the title) in stone, and thus it was that Christina Engela’s Strangely Compelling SciFi was born! I set out to look for stories which fit these parameters – sci-fi which celebrates the weird, embraces the unusual, seeks to unscrew the inscrutable… and is also… strangely compelling! If that’s what you’re after, you’ve come to the right place!
This anthology contains eight strangely compelling sci-fi stories by a group of four talented, imaginative fellow writers: H.G. Emert, Thomas M. Malafarina and Major Roxbrough – and me!
This particular title was originally published by Moon Books Publishing, but as Brandon Mullins sadly passed away in January of this year, his widow Elizabeth returned the rights to the book to me. I have now republished it on my own, and it’s now available in its second edition format via all the usual places.
Audiobooks:
I have 15 audiobooks available on Audible and Amazon! Click the links in the slideshow below to view titles available as audiobooks.New Audiobooks:
You can view my audiobooks here.
Coming Soon!
When complete, these next three audiobooks will be released via ACX!
Feedback & Communication
Reviews:
You can see all my previous reviews here.
Interviews:
I have no new interviews to show you this time, but all my interviews are linked to from this page.What The Readers Say:
All my reader comments are linked to from this page.Mentions:
- I found some new shares of quotes and mentions of me on the internet: Here are the new ones from October:
Fanmail:
- On 30 October, I received the following message from Jackie Shika: “My question is, what inspired you to be a writer? I myself want to be an entrepreneur. What is the secret of being a successful person at what you do? I believe I can do it, but sometimes I let fear get in my way.”
“Hi Jackie,
Well I grew up in a home where my dad was a writer. He wrote a lot of short stories and three novels and his short stories had been picked up by a national radio station here in South Africa, dramatized and broadcast with different actors playing the roles of the characters on air. I grew up listening to my dad’s stories on the radio, and watched him writing as I played at his feet. This was in the 1970’s so there were no computers back then!
Even despite this small success, my dad never found a publisher for his books during his lifetime, and died with unrealized dreams at the age of 55.
These days the market is so flooded with writers and material – even good and great material, that publishers just can’t focus on everyone. That’s why so many of us go indie – and its certainly why I did! It’s hard to find a publisher, but it’s easy to publish yourself – and whether you publish your own work or have some big company do it for you, your work is still published, and you can still get paid for it. You might not get rich off it, you might not be able to retire early to write fulltime, but you can still make a comfortable sideline from it – which is where the entrepreneurial part comes in!
Writing is like a business – actually, it IS a business. You have a product (your book or books), and you need to get it out there for people to buy and read. Reviews are important, but they’re not the be-all and end-all of the business, they’re just a good marketing tool to help promote your work. Sadly, unless you have lots of money, you’re going to have to promote and market your own work – and online is the easiest, best way to do this. I still just use free advertising methods due to the terrible currency exchange rate from Rands to US Dollars.
I suppose the “secret” you’re asking about is learning from your past experiences as I have – and determination. Just not quitting. Refining my books – many of them have been up for sale since the early 2000’s, although none of them resemble what was originally put up anymore, they’ve all been through a constant, ongoing process of refinement. New covers, new formats, several edits and revisions of the content.
The best part of being an indie author is having full, complete creative control over how the end product looks.
I think the important thing you need to keep in mind is that you don’t need to fear failure – because unless you quit, you haven’t failed. Not trying is quitting too. Start with one project, finish it to the best of your ability, then put it out there for everyone else to see – and use the feedback you get to refine it until you find that “sweet spot” that makes you go “yeah, that’s the one! I’m happy with that!”
I hope this is useful to you! All the best with your ambitions!🙂”
Videos:
You’re welcome to browse through the videos on my YouTube video channel! I’m not really the performing seal type, but I do my best! There’s also a 13 minute movie on there, called “Bang, Splat!“, based on characters and settings from “The Time Saving Agency“.
Latest Articles:
Below are links to a few of my most recent posts or articles since my previous newsletter:
- A Peek At My Week! #75
- Boo! It’s Almost Halloween – Here’s A Free Gift!
- A Peek At My Week! #74
- A Peek At My Week! #73
- Christina Engela’s Monthly Newsletter: #70 October 2022
In Closing
Until next time.
Thanks again for all your support, sharing, friendship and interaction!
As always, feel free to email or message me via Facebook if you have any comments or questions!
Cheers!