End of August Project Update

The last couple of days have been very much "A Hard Day's Night" work-wise, so I'll just quickly summarize where I am with my multitude of writing projects:

1. Cozy Mystery #2--I'm not sure yet if I want to call it Restaurants and Revenge or Food Safety Can Be Fatal. (I think the second one is more fun, but since I work in food safety, I'm not sure how that would look professionally.) My plan is to write about 500 words a day and aim for about 15,000 words/month. I'm around 13,000 at the moment, so I should make my goal. I just need to figure out a few more details about the murder.

2. Untitled Fantasy Short Story--I have a complete first draft around 4,300 words. I rewrote the opening scene, which naturally will affect the other scenes even though they feel more complete to me. Hopefully by September I can start submitting it to markets.

3. Dryads and Dragons--My original plan for August was to write about 200 words on this project per day. I made my goal for several days, but between squeezing in other projects and trying to figure out how I get from the middle to the end, I haven't worked on it for a while. 

4. Cozy Mystery #1--It's been about a month since I finished it, so it's time for the first read-through. How many inconsistencies will I find? Did I portray my heroine's Filipino heritage accurately? What will the beta readers think? Tune in sometime next month (hopefully) for the answers! In the meantime, enjoy the Beatles:

https://youtu.be/Yxq40ZYIibw

ReCONvene 2020

 

 I originally hadn't planned to attend any more virtual conventions this year, but when one of my blogging buddies, Terri Bruce, posted about ReCONvene 2020 (the virtual version of Boskone), I was intrigued by a couple of the panels. (Terri published a short story collection called Souls last month. The cover is pictures, and You can check it out on Amazon at the link.) Since it was only ten bucks to attend the convention, I decided to register. Below is a list of the panels I watched. 

Glimpsing Climate Recovery

The Distant Future in Science Fiction

The AI Amongst Us

Modernizing Fairy Tales and Myths

Exploring the Literary Sandbox of Speculative Fiction

Worldblending in Speculative Fiction

Unfortunately, the con chose not to record the panels, and I didn't take notes. (One good thing about virtual panels is that it's easier to do things like clean, cook, and crochet while you're listening.) I was particularly interested in the Modernizing Fairy Tales and Myths panel, but it didn't go into the details of adapting old tales to new settings as much as I hoped it would. It occurred to me after the panel was over that I could have asked for writing tips in the Q&A, but by then it was too late. 

The panelists (at least, the ones I'd heard of) were mostly traditionally published authors, and all of the panels were well moderated. A couple of the panelists missed panels for technical or other reasons, but on the whole the panels were well run. Obviously a virtual convention lacks many of the charms of an in-person convention, but since this I've never been able to go to Boskone, a virtual convention is better than no convention at all.

Businesses in Cozy Mystery

 Although I've been reading cozy mystery for a few years, this year is the first time I've tried writing in the genre. I finished the first draft of the first book of a series at the end of July. Now I'm working on the sequel. It's a lot of fun, and I seem to be making better progress on it than I have been with the urban fantasy trilogy I started a couple of years ago. (My goal is to write at least 500 words/day on the cozy mystery and 200 words/day on the urban fantasy. I started tracking at the beginning of August, and I've met my goal more often than not.)

One thing I've noticed about cozy mysteries is that when they involve business owners, they omit certain types certain types of business activities from the story. For example, I'm currently reading a series about a witch who runs a bakery in a small town. I already read the first three books and just started the fourth. There's lots of talk about baking, cleaning the store, making deliveries, and selling to customers, but no mention of preparing payroll for the employees or pest control. (I originally had more items in this list, but to my surprise, the third book included disasters like running out of supplies or surprise health inspection.) Maybe authors don't feel comfortable including those tasks or think they don't contribute to the story or cozy atmosphere. 

As a reader, I'd like to see some of these activities too, as they would make the story feel more realistic. As an author, I hope other readers are open to learning about them. For example, in my current WIP, my main character is going to attend a multi-day class about food safety in restaurants. I've also had to attend food safety training for my job, but there's never been a murder involved. Hopefully homicide is more entertaining than hairnets. Later on in the series, my main character will go to a nearby berry farm for ingredients and end up having to solve another murder. Just another day on the job, I guess.

Are there tropes in the cozy mystery genre (or any other genre) that you think ought to be subverted? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

August IWSG: Pieces and Forms

We made it to August, everyone! Welcome to another Insecure Writers Support Group post. You can learn more about them on their website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed.

Our hosts this month are Susan Baury Rouchard, Nancy Gideon, Jennifer Lane, Jennifer Hawes (no link available), Chemist Ken, and Chrys Fey.

Our question for this month starts with an unattributed quote: "Although I have written a short story collection, the form found me and not the other way around. Don't write short stories, novels, or poems. Just write your truth and your stories will mold into the shapes they need to be." Have you ever written a piece that became a form, or even a genre, you hadn't planned on writing in? Or do you choose a form/genre in advance?

Although I am still more of a pantser than a plotter, I generally do know length of story and genre when I start writing. However, I've written stories that were meant to be standalones but became part of a series. Lyon's Legacy is probably the best example of a story that sparked more stories.

I'm afraid I don't have much to say on this topic, and I should be working on my multiple writing projects. So if you'd like to comment on this post or link to your blog on the same topic, please do so.

Budgeting Writing Time

Remember that cozy mystery I mentioned last week? The rough draft is done. It's a very short novel, right around 50,000 words, but that gives me space to add more scenes later. The other short story I mentioned is coming along too. Currently it's around 2,600 words. I expect it to be between 3,000 and 4,000 words when it's complete. I'm already plotting out more stories in my cozy mystery series; in addition to a sequel, I also want to write a prequel short story about one of the characters for a newsletter giveaway. All of this isn't taking into account my other series or all the revisions, editing, and formatting I have to do before I can publish these works.

It seems like I'm giving myself more and more projects to manage in less time. In order to make it all work, I'm going to have to figure out how to budget my time better. Either I could block it out by project or by process (e.g., block out hours or days just for writing or editing.)

Do you prefer to work by project or process? Which one works better for you? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

General Update 7/22/20

1. Remember how I was talking a couple weeks ago about the difficulties of uploading my stories to the Apple Store? I figured out how to convert them to the right format. Although I don't have Apple devices, I do have an Apple ID. I was able to use that to log onto iCloud and access the Pages app. That allowed me to convert my files to EPUBs the Apple Store could accept. I was able to upload my books to the Apple Store.

2. Another part of getting my publishing ducks in a row was updating my universal book links. I took care of that last Friday, which was a vacation day for me. Some of it was automatic, but I had to copy/paste links too. At least I don't have to update the links in my books just yet.

3. My cozy mystery novel is close to 48,000 words. I hope to finish the first draft by the end of the month, though I expect it to be less than 60,000 words. Some sites say cozy mysteries should be around this range, while others say between 70,000-80,000.)

4. I also started an unrelated short story. I don't want to go into detail, but it's a new twist on an old fairy tale. Hopefully I haven't jinxed this project for myself by discussing it.

5. Hopefully once the cozy mystery and the short story are done, I can return to the last book of my urban fantasy trilogy. I left my hero under perilous circumstances.

6. Other projects I've been working on include sewing masks, baking, and making ice cream. Maybe I can host an afternoon tea when there's a vaccine.

7. While we haven't gone out much this summer, we were able to return to the Field Museum on Sunday. It was strange seeing the main hall (pictured above) so empty on a Sunday afternoon.

So, what's new with you? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Sale at Barnes and Noble

I mentioned last week that one advantage of going direct to ebook stores is the ability to do special promotions. In fact, a promotion that I set up at Barnes and Noble just went live. If you buy one book in my Season Avatars series, you can get the second one half off. Since the first book is free, you can get the five-book series for about fifteen bucks. Here are the direct links:

Seasons' Beginnings
Scattered Seasons
Chaos Season
Fifth Season 
Summon the Seasons 

This sale goes through the end of September, so pick up some seasonal reading today.

On Going Direct

Although I've tried using Kindle Unlimited a couple of times for my books, I prefer to go wide with them to serve as many readers as possible. In the past, I've used distributors such as Smashwords and Draft2Digital (I highly recommend the latter over the former). Distributors make it easy to reach multiple sites with one process. However, publishing directly to sites such as Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and Apple also has advantages. You can have greater control over pricing, gain access to special site-only promotions, and receive higher royalties. So last month, I stopped using Draft2Digitial for the distributors listed above and started going direct.

So far, it's been a tedious process republishing my work at different vendors. Kobo and Barnes and Noble were the easiest, since they accepted the files I'd used elsewhere. Google and Apple are more complicated. I have to submit my manuscripts to Google as PDFs and to Apple as epubs. While Word does a straightforward job of creating PDFs from Word documents, I have to use a conversion program like Calibre to create EPUB files. This worked for some of my books, but others got rejected for embedded font errors, and I haven't figured out why. So Apple currently has only one book out of my five-book fantasy series and Lyon's Legacy but not the sequel, Twinned Universes. I'll have to do some more research to figure out what the problem is.


Once I get everything republished properly, then I have to convince Amazon to set the first books of my series back to permafree. Then I can promote them to encourage readers to get the rest of the series.

If you plan to publish your books on multiple sites, I recommend gathering all the information and files you need before you start. It's not just manuscripts and covers; it's blurbs, ISBNs, and other information such as original publication dates. I wound up collecting some of this information in a single document I can use as reference later.

If you're an indie author, do you publish just on Amazon or other sites too? What's your favorite store for ebooks? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

IWSG: Industry Changes

We're halfway through this crazy year, and I'm sure things are nowhere near settled yet. At least we have the Insecure Writer's Support Group to share our concerns. If you're not already familiar with the IWSG, you can learn more about them on their website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed.

Our hosts this month are Jenni Enzor, Beth Camp, Liesbet, Tyrean Martinson, and Sandra Cox.

Our question this month is There have been many industry changes in the last decade, so what are some changes you would like to see happen in the next decade?

As a hybrid author, I'm not closely involved with the publishing industry. I have a few short stories in anthologies, but I self-publish my novels and related stories to keep control of my rights. Publishing contacts demand authors sign away all their rights for a fraction of their worth. I'd like to see contracts become more fair. I'd also like to see more opportunities for indie authors to prepare paper copies of their work (I found CreateSpace was much easier to work with than some of the other sites) and to get those works into libraries and bookstores. I hope to see more acceptance of indie authors at the conventions I attend.

What would you like to change about the publishing industry? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Mid-Year Reading Update

Since next Wednesday is July 1st, I'm assuming we'll have another Insecure Writer's Support Group post. I figure I'd do my semiannual reading review a little early. My Goodreads Reading Challenge is to read 150 books this year. Unfortunately, the lockdown didn't give me more time to read; if anything, I feel like I've been busier than ever. I've still managed to read fifty-nine books, but I'm currently twelve books behind schedule. Hopefully I'll be able to use a few more vacation days this summer and spend some time catching up.

Here's how my reading breaks down by genre:

Fantasy: 21

Mystery: 18

Non-Fiction: 11

Science Fiction: 5

Other Fiction: 4

By Format:

Ebook: 44

Paper: 15

Since many of the mysteries I read have a paranormal or fantasy element, I normally count them as fantasy. I was tempted to put those books in both categories, but that would have been confusing.

Here are a few of my favorite books from the past six months:

Oona Out of Order

Half Soul

The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse

What's your favorite book you've read this year? Feel free to share the title in the comments.

All We All Problematic?

I've been thinking a lot about John Scalzi's recent post about generations and discrimination. One of the points of his post is that each generation has to come to terms with their biases, and their targets may differ with each generation. Just as we deplore the sexism and racism of earlier generations, in time, other generations may find their own reasons to think we're unenlightened about subjects they value. Is it ever going to be possible to free ourselves from all biases?

Unfortunately, probably not, unless human nature changes dramatically. Here are a few factors discussed in Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. The more bonded we are to our in-group, the more we distrust outsiders. Humans require some leadership, but too much hierarchy or too much inequality leads to instability. According to Scientific American, wealth tends to become concentrated in the hands of a few over time. The more wealth you have, the easier it is to rig the scales in your favor--and perhaps even convince others that this situation is natural. We're also prone to implicit bias, though there are ways to overcome it.So if we all have biases, does this mean we're always going to have to deal with systemic discrimination?

I think this is really going to depend on how much empathy and open-mindedness we have. Open-mindedness is part of an individual's personality, but empathy can be developed, especially by reading fiction. We need to view ourselves as belonging to different groups and work to establish connections between them. We also have to learn about the ways we distort critical thinking to support our biases instead of viewing them objectively. This work may never be finished, but each of us is obliged to contribute. We become problematic when we fail to show empathy to others or change our minds when we're shown new evidence.

What do you think is the best way to tackle discrimination? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

What the World Needs Now Is Hopepunk!

The year isn't halfway over, but I'm sure most of us are ready to see it go. Between the COVID-19 pandemic, massive job loss, police brutality, and rioters disrupting peaceful protests, it's obvious that our economic and political systems are failing a lot of people, especially marginalized ones. When the situation improves, we need to make systemic changes. Speculative fiction authors are leading the way in imaging what a better future would look like, particularly in genres such as solarpunk and hopepunk.

Hopepunk is a very new subgenre that was named in 2017. Like rebellions in the Star Wars universe, it is built on hope and surviving past the end times. The genre emphasizes community, kindness, and resistance. You can find examples of hopepunk stories at the link above and here. Much of Star Trek is hopepunk, as is parts of The Lord of the Rings. These stories obviously pre-date the naming of hopepunk as a separate subgenre, so the ideas have been around for a long time. However, I do think the psychological need for stories like this is greater than ever.

I have written a solarpunk story, "A Shawl for Janice," which is part of the Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters anthology. The main characters in my still-in-progress urban fantasy trilogy are kinder than many others in their community, which allows them to gather allies.

Are there elements of hopepunk in your stories? Do you have any favorite examples of hopepunk? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

June IWSG: No Secrets, Just Plans

It's hard to believe it's June, isn't it? I hope you have some perfect days this month. But first, it's time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group post. Learn more about the IWSG on their website, Facebook, and Twitter. Our hosts this month are Pat Garcia, J.Q. Rose, and Natalie Aguirre. We've been posed the following question: Writers have secrets! What are one or two of yours, something readers would never know from your work?

Well, when it comes to revealing secrets, especially online, there's only one thing for me to say, and that's...

So, let me tell you how my writing is going instead.

My main focus at the moment is a cozy mystery with paranormal elements. It's called Murder at Magic Lake, and I currently have about 22,000 words drafted. (Yes, this is a quarantine novel.) I aim to write about 500 new words each day, or at least enough to get me to the next 500 or 1,000 mark. If I have enough time afterwards, I also try to work on Dryads and Dragons, the third book in my urban fantasy trilogy. After losing most of my first draft back in February, I'm over 24,000 words with that. A short story I submitted to an anthology back in February was rejected, though the editor was very encouraging and urged me to submit to next year's anthology. I should look it over again and send it to another market. However, I've drawn up a new marketing plan based on advice from indie author Susan Kaye Quinn, and that's going to take priority. I'll be publishing my work directly to Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Apple, but first I may update some blurbs and keywords for my novels. It might also be time to update the covers for Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes, since they're from 2011 and 2012. There's a lot to do, so I need to break it down into manageable tasks.We may not be able to travel anywhere this summer, but I'll still have plenty of uses for my vacation time!

Are you revealing a secret for IWSG, or did you choose another topic? Feel free to share in the comments. In the meantime, it's back to writing for me.

 

An Online WisCon

The con must go on. This weekend, instead of heading up to Madison, Wisconsin, I sat in front of my computer to watch panels and presentations on YouTube and chat with others via Discord.

The virtual format allowed me to attend events that I don't normally have a chance to watch, such as the Thursday night reading by the guest of honor and the speeches on Sunday night. On the other hand, there were only a few hours of programming instead of the normal all-day affair, and the choices were much more limited. I wound up watching more readings and academic presentations than I normally do at WisCon. For the first time, I even watched the "Not Another *#?! Race Panel," which is a staple at WisCon. This is a panel where people of color discuss anything other than race. Normally I would pick a more focused panel dealing with something I wanted to learn about, but I enjoyed this panel more than I expected. I learned about an awesome Filipino bakery in Chicago, and the discussions about bad Star Wars parents and how the Harry Potter characters would handle quarantine were funny. Would I attend the panel next time I'm at WisCon? It would depend on what else is scheduled at the same time.

I have to admit an online Dealers Room and Art Show don't have the same draw, and even though there were a lot of subject-specific channels on the Discord, I didn't feel like I had anything to add to the conversations. I missed attending Farmers Market Saturday morning, listening to readings at Michelangelo's Coffee House, and shopping at the Soap Opera. When you've been going to a particular event for so long you expect to run into a past self in the elevator, any change feels strange. Hopefully next year the con will go on in person. But if for some reason I can't attend, being able to watch at least part of WisCon online would keep the connection alive.

Indies Together and WisCon Schedule

Best-selling indie author Susan Kaye Quinn has started a Facebook group to help other indie authors. It's called Indies Together. It's a private group, but she's encouraging other people to join. Susan is sharing her marketing knowledge with indies and offers a couple of different "recipes" depending if you're exclusive to Amazon or have your work available in multiple markets. I've read through her advice, and it makes sense, though it does take multiple books in series, time, and some seed money to make it work. If you're looking for a group with supportive members, I recommend it.

It's hard to believe WisCon will be this weekend. Today is the last day to register here. Standard price is only $10, but there are other tiers available. I won't be able to participate much on Friday since I have to work, but I should be able to do more Saturday through Monday. I'll report back next week how it went.

Amazon's Upload: Is the Near Future Futuristic Enough?

Although I don't spend a lot of time watching TV, occasionally I'm able to squeeze in some time around dinner when I'm crocheting or cutting fabric for masks. I was intrigued by the ads for Amazon's new show Upload, about Nathan, a young man who's killed in an accident and uploaded to a digital afterlife represented by a fancy hotel. Helping him adjust is his customer service representative "angel" named Nora. The show is set in 2033, which is only thirteen years away. Technology has advanced to the point where people print food, use self-driving cars, and, as the premise implies, have the ability to upload a human's consciousness to digital format.

I'm in the middle of Episode Three, so it'll take me a while to finish this series. However, I have noticed a few things that don't seem realistic to me. For example, in the first episode, we see a woman with a black-and-white avatar, which was based on an old photo. This was probably put in to be funny and appeal to the audience. In practice, we can already add color to photos, so why wouldn't that be done for her? For that matter, why not allow people to customize their avatars or even choose non-human forms? There's also a pretty big plot hole in the first episode where a dangerous section of the afterlife has less security than a chapel in that same setting. The dangerous area is key to the climax of the first episode; however, I think it could have been set up to make the character work harder to gain access, which would have proven he was truly desperate instead of hangry and annoyed about a bad hairstyle. Perhaps I'm more critical of these things because I'm a storyteller and used to nitpicking my own work.

One of the biggest dangers of writing about the near future is that it can be so hard to predict. You can reference current popular culture, but will the songs and movies you use be a flash in the pan or still be popular a decade or two later? Your audience may appreciate the throwback, but would a movie from 2004 be meaningful for a character who could have been born that year? What new disruptions will occur in the next thirteen years that we couldn't have foreseen?

Anyway, as I keep watching, perhaps some of these "glitches" will make more sense. (I'm trying to avoid spoilers, so please don't add any in the comments.) It will be interesting to look back at this show in thirteen years and see how well it compares to reality.

IWSG: Writing Rituals

Welcome to the month of May, otherwise known as Level 5 of Jumanji if you've been following the memes on social media. It's not only the first Wednesday of May, but it's also the 30th anniversary of the day my husband asked me out, and I gave him a "Maybe." I guess by now I can give him a more definite answer. I guess I should also remind readers that this is the designated day for the Insecure Writer's Support Group post, in which writers can share their insecurities without fear and encourage other writers. Learn more about the IWSG on their website, Facebook page, or Twitter feed. Our hosts this month are Feather Stone, Beverly Stowe McClure, Mary Aalgaard, Kim Lajevardi, and Chemist Ken.

Here's our question for the month: Do you have any rituals that you use when you need help getting into the ZONE? Care to share?


No, I don't have any special writing rituals. As a working mother, I have to take my writing time wherever and whenever I can get it. These days, since I'm working from home, I can no longer write on my lunch hour at work (I'm too busy making lunch for my son and myself, doing the dishes afterwards, and catching up on laundry.) What I can share is that it often takes me a while to get into the zone, especially if I'm not sure what to include in the scene I'm working on. I can be very distracted by games and social media under these conditions. To help me get started, I may end a writing session by adding a few ideas about what I want to add next and try to think about my story when I'm doing housework or walking around the neighborhood. The more I write, the easier it is to get the ideas that keep my fingers typing.

Now that I've warmed up by writing this blog post, it's time to turn to my work in progress. If you have any ideas for getting into and staying in the writing zone, please feel free to share them in the comments.

I Didn't Start the Fire (Song Parody)

Yesterday was my 50th birthday. To mark the occasion, I decided to rewrite the lyrics to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" to cover events of the last fifty years. There are five verses, so each one is dedicated to a different decade. (I used Wikipedia to look up key events, people, and things from each decade.) Although I like to rewrite lyrics to songs, this was one of my more challenging projects. Billy Joel manages to make his lyrics work by incorporating internal rhymes into every line. Not all of my lines rhyme that well. The syllable counts for each line don't sound consistent to me, though I could be mishearing them. Perhaps I'll come back to this at some point to tweak a few lines. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this musical trip down Memory Lane.

Earth Day, Watergate, Richard Nixon ain’t so great,

Oil crisis, Gerald Ford, Hawking finds black holes,

Voyager, Pinochet, Bell-Bottoms and World Trade,

Elvis Presley, Happy Days, Alda and Travolta

Saigon falls, Jonestown, Biko, and stagflation

Star Wars, Space Invaders, Dark Side of the Moon

Disco, edit genes, Test tube babies hit the scene

Margaret Thatcher, Mao Zedong, hostages, and Brady Bunch!

(Chorus) We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it

Lennon shot, Regan lives, Cold War and Gorbachev

Marcos had to go, Pinochet and Truedeau

Rubik’s cube, Madonna, Mario and Pacman

New pope in Rome, ET’s gotta phone home,

Dallas was a dream, Valley Girls reigned supreme,

Michael Jackson, Challenger, Halley’s Comet, Chernobyl,

Apple, MTV, Sarajevo, Tom Hanks

INXS, greed is good, Germans tore a wall down

Chorus

World Wide Web, NAFTA, Bill Clinton, Mandela,

Hubble, GPS, Windows is a big success,

Rodney King, Eurostar, Kuwait and the Gulf War

Dolly Sheep, Warsaw Pack, Rabin and Arafat

Climate change, slacker, Hale-Bopp, Pathfinder

Amazon, Hong Kong, Spice Girls sang their songs

Toy Story, Pokemon, Gen X has flannel on

OJ got away, end it all with Y2K!

Chorus

9-11 don’t forget, Facebook on the Internet

Climate change, anthrax, we all wear cargo pants

Harry Potter, civil wars, Pluto now is a dwarf

Bush, Obama, Merkel too, Come on back, Doctor Who

Housing bubble had to burst, earthquakes did their worst

Sequence genomes mice to men, Avatar and Eminem!

Chorus

2010, Arab Spring, African uprising

Castro, smartphones, hybrid cars and flying drones

Human rights, Endgame, California needs some rain

Chicago Cubs break a curse, White House goes from great to worse

Women march in pussy hats, teenagers on SnapChat

3D printing, iPads, Brexit, The Walking Dead

Fire sweeps a continent, fake news from the government

COVID-19 at my door, I’ll be here for fifty more!

(This last line is meant to be an expression of an indomitable spirit, not hubris.)

Chorus

Indie Publishing: The Reckoning

When I started indie publishing back in 2011, I promised myself I would keep at it until my next landmark birthday and then re-evaluate if I wanted to continue. That day arrives next week.

Like many people at the start of a new venture, I thought self-publishing success would be assured, and it wouldn't take me long to find fame and fortune. That didn't happen. I'm not a fast or prolific writer, and the stories I want to tell don't have the tropes many readers seem to want. I seldom sell books unless I pay for ads on the free/bargain book sites, and even the ads end up costing more than I earn. I earn more from selling short stories to anthologies than I do from my indie-published novels. Perhaps I should focus on short stories--if I still feel that writing is worth the effort.

Despite all the struggled, I'm determined to keep writing and self-publishing my novels. I improve my craft with every project, and it's possible future novels will hit the sweet spot between what I want to write and what readers want to read. I don't necessarily need to be a bestseller; if I can find a few thousand people who are in my tribe and get what I write, I'll do well enough. There are still so many stories I want to tell with my current and future characters. I can't let them--or myself--down by giving up. I already fulfilled one dream by finishing the Season Avatars series. There are still more dreams out there. Thanks to indie publishing, I can control what happens to my dreams.

Here's to another fifty years of reading and writing books. May the Muse be with me!

Virtual Conventions

If you're missing your favorite convention, there are online ones to compensate. Here are a few that I know of:

Quarencon2020: This is a new convention that's supposed to run from April 24th-April 28th. There's not a lot of information on the website yet, but there will be panels, workshops, contents, and vendors (I've applied to be one of the vendors.) I think it will be free.

WisCon: This one has gone virtual as well. As usual, it will be held Memorial Day weekend. It sounds like there will be a small fee to attend, but registration hasn't opened yet. I haven't attended for a couple of years, so I'm looking forward to participating. While I'll miss seeing my Madison friends and going around my beloved city, it might be easier to focus on the online con if there are fewer real-life things competing with it.

WorldCon (CoNZealand) will occur online between July 29th through August 2nd. The supporting price is about $46. I'm not sure if I'll register for this one yet, but guests include Mercedes Lackey. I was a big fan of her work when I first started reading fantasy, so it might be interesting to attend her panels. Obviously it won't be as thrilling as meeting her in person, but it's much cheaper and easier than flying to New Zealand, even under normal conditions.

Are you aware of other online conventions? If so, feel free to share them in the comments.