The new chapter of Moonlight is live on FP.

This is another re-written chapter, but I feel it’s much stronger than the previous version, especially Charias’ breakdown scene. Let me know what you think. Moonlight Chapter 29

Writing Updates

I’ve been working on Honeymoon almost exclusively and have 8,600 words written. It’s starting to look like this might be a 20 or 30k word story, which is a novella. As long as I can get it finished and edited in time, I don’t care how long it is. It just means you guys will get your money’s worth. ^_^

Don’t forget to vote!

Help me decide what to write about for NaNoWriMo. Vote in the polls to choose characters, setting, and plot elements. Vote Now!

What is NaNoWriMo?

In case you’ve never heard of it, National Novel Writing Month is a global challenge to anyone who has ever considered writing a novel. During the 30 days of November, participants strive to write 50,000 words — a short novel. Which is completely doable, given the right self-motivation. It’s a mere 1667 words a day. I’ve ‘won’ five or six times. It’s how book 3 of Magebound, Broken Wings, Breach, and Moonlight got worked on, and in three of those cases, finished. You can check you the official NaNoWriMo website for more information.

The Pros and Cons

By November, I’ll be finished preparing Breach for publication. I could work on other publishing projects, but I’d kind of like to do something new. I could write another 50k on Moonlight, but again, I want something new. If I decide to do it, I’ll have to put all my other WIPs on hold. That will kind of suck since I only just got back into working on them.

On the plus side, NaNo is a lot of fun. There’s a kind of camaraderie in knowing that thousands of writers are also pulling their hair out or banging their faces against the keyboard, just like you! Also, in the past, NaNo winners have gotten coupons for free proofs of their books from CreateSpace, and since I’m using CS now, that would come in handy.

Lightbulb!

Lol, I just had a crazy idea. If I do decide to do NaNo, I still don’t know what to write about, so…I’m going to let you choose! I’ll think up a bunch of options, like setting, species of characters, theme, etc. and I’ll make a page where you can vote. I’ll use the most popular choices and try to outline a story based on it. No promises that it’ll turn out, but I’ll give it my best shot. So what do you say?

Let’s Build a NaNo Novel

Still working on Dragon Bait. It’s up to 11,150 words. Ever wanted to know how to fist a dragon? 0_o (I hope not, lol)

Still working on Moonlight. It’s up to 127,211 words, but I’m a little stalled right now in the middle of a sex scene. Sex scenes are always hard for me, but I’m second-guessing myself again, wondering if it’s too soon. All things considered, I really don’t think so.

I mean, we’re halfway through the story, 120k words into it and Charias has been attracted to Izeri since the moment they met. Izeri has been attracted to Charias as well, even though he’s denied it. Now, they love each other, are brought together by a traumatic event, Izeri has no one else, he’s isolated, he wants Charias to love him so much that he won’t care when Izeri finally reveals his secret, and neither of them were celibate because they don’t like sex, they just wanted someone special to share it with…So why the hell shouldn’t they have sex? Seriously, I’m not finding a reason to keep them apart.

Breach progress:

— Finished character bios
— Finished preliminary e-book formatting of text (Paperback formatting is different and takes a lot longer)
— Decided on subject of articles: Incubism, Dracorians, A Brief History of Devaen, Breach Bestiary (Brief info on all the weird critters talked about in Breach)
— Finished outline for Honeymoon, the short story I’m including.
— Started working on Honeymoon (currently 1,500 words)

Update on Broken Wings

Broken Wings has been in print for 10 days and so far I’ve sold…1 copy. I did sell a few more e-books, which is great since I make a larger royalty on e-books than on the print ones, but it’s still a little disappointing. I do have three wonderful five-star reviews on Amazon, though. 😀

I’m planning on lowering the price of the e-book at the first of the year. It will have been out for a year by then and I think that’s long enough at ‘full price’. Hopefully, making it cheaper will inspire some more sales. Currently, it’s at $4.99. I’m thinking of lowering it to $3.99 or maybe $2.99. In comparison, Breach, which is a shorter book, will debut at $3.99 and after a year, I’ll lower it to $2.99.

I’ve also been reading up on ways to promote a blog, like this one: 13 ways to generate more shares and likes on your blog. Since I was gone all summer, my website traffic has fallen and I feel like I’ve lost some of my audience. I’d like to find them again, and to find new people who don’t yet know what they’re missing, so I’ll probably be trying a few things off that list, lol.

So I found this link posted to my Twitter feed today, Should the gender or sexuality of a novelist matter in gay fiction? It’s an interesting article that I don’t completely agree with, but I understand the author’s point of view. He says that as a gay man, he wants to read gay fiction written by other gay men, because it’s more authentic than gay fiction written by straight women pretending to be gay men.

I was like, Wait, wut? 0_o He also says that ‘all authors who are active in social media lie’. I took a little offense to that. I’ll be honest, Katica Locke is a pseudonym (but I’m sure most of you guessed that already). It’s not my real name, but I have a very good reason for that–I work at an elementary school. I think the need for a pseudonym is pretty obvious.

Other than that, I’ve been more honest with you guys that I am with most people who know me by my real name, because I don’t have to keep all of this (my writing) secret from you.

Anyway, back to the topic of gender. I understand that if you’re a gay man looking to relate to other gay men, then it does matter, but I don’t really write for gay men as an audience. I write for anyone who enjoys the kind of stories I like to tell. Some are gay men, most are straight women, some are lesbian or bisexual — frankly, I don’t care. I’m not trying to appeal to certain demographic. I write what I like, and if other people like it, too, that’s awesome, but I’m not going to pretend to be something that I’m not to try to get more readers.

I don’t write coming of age, or coming out stories, or what it’s like to be a gay man in an intolerant society. I don’t try to tackle serious issues, because I don’t feel qualified to do so. I don’t preach or condemn. I write fluff, I write drama, I write smut and fantasy. I write stories of love and acceptance, in fantasy worlds where being gay is rarely an issue.

So, anyway, that’s enough heavy thinking for a Sunday morning. I just felt a little discriminated against and wanted to whineshare. Because I’m honest like that.

And speaking of honest, I have a new Interview on Smashwords. It was a lot of fun. I’ll be adding a link to it on my Q&A page, where you can also ask me questions (hint hint) 😉

The next chapter of Moonlight is now live on FictionPress! Read it here: Chapter 28

I’m also thrilled to say that Broken Wings has two three five-star reviews on Amazon!

My next writing project is getting Breach ready for publication. Since it was previously published, the editing has been done, so at least I don’t have that to worry about, but I’d like to add the same kind of extras that I did in BW — character bios, articles, and a new short story.

What other extras/bonus features could I add to Breach?
I’d love to hear your ideas. 🙂

Holy cow! That didn’t take no 5 – 7 business days. 😀

I’m pleased to announce that Broken Wings is now available in paperback from Amazon: Broken Wings by Katica Locke

I also have a new Author Page at Amazon, which will have a listing of all my books through them, so you might want to bookmark it. 😉 Katica Locke Author Page

I also updated Facebook and added a page for Broken Wings, so do me a favor and go Like it, please. Broken Wings on Facebook

Okay, so I didn’t find any mistakes in the proof (not to say there aren’t any, I just couldn’t find them), so I approved it this morning. It’s now live and available for order through the CreateSpace website. Before I give the link, there are a few things I want to say about that.

— To buy directly from CS, you need to sign up for an account with them.

— I’ve heard that the shipping is much higher through CS than through Amazon

— I get a larger cut of the list price through CS than through Amazon

Even though I make more money if you buy through CS, I don’t want you guys to get screwed on shipping, so just wait a few days. Broken Wings will be listed on Amazon sometime next week. I’ll let you know when that happens.

However, if you absolutely, positively cannot wait, you can find my CS book page here: Broken Wings.

Broken Wings arrived in the mail today!!!!

It’s the proof copy, which I’ll spend the rest of the day looking over for glaring errors, but a cursory examination shows it to be a well-made book. The cover is thick and glossy, the pages crisp, and the binding solid. I have heard that product defects do occur sometimes in printing and assembling, but CreateSpace has a quality guarantee and will replace a defective product, so no complaints there.

There are a couple of things that I maybe should have done a little differently, but as this was a learning experience, and there isn’t anything serious (more like my own personal preferences) I’m not going to take the extra time to tweak a few little things. For example, the cover image is a little dark, but that’s the difference between seeing an image on the computer screen and seeing it printed in ink on paper. Next time, I’ll lighten the image just a little. The words on the cover, mostly the title and author name, are a bit jaggy, the lines not very smooth in some places. It’s not bad, but I’ll do better next time.

Another thing is the gutter — the inside margin where the pages are bound together. It could be a little wider. None of the text is obscured, but it’s a pretty thick book (just a hair under an inch), and I have to tilt it just a little from one side to the other to read the last few letters on each full line, but that’s probably because I don’t want to open it wide enough to crease the spine.

I forgot the half-title page in the very front (just the title, no author) and when I did my formatting, I had no idea what orphans or widows were, so there are a few of those. (Those are partial lines at the top or bottom of a page. I did get rid of one and two line pages, but I didn’t know about the orphan and widow thing.) My next book will be much better.

Here are a couple of pictures:
(That spot is a quarter, btw, for size reference)

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Milestone #1

I have 100 blog followers! (101 actually).

Milestone #2

Broken Wings on FictionPress has received 1700 reviews! It has over 645,000 hits, too.

So this has been a wonderful, exciting, fantastic day for me! Yay! And provided there isn’t anything that just has to be fixed in the paperback, I think I’ll release it tomorrow. Friday the 13th has always been a lucky day for me (I just like being contrary, lol)

Don’t forget, a new chapter of Moonlight is coming on Monday.

I received my copies of the termination contracts a few days ago, and today when I checked on Magebound at Amazon and B&N, it was no longer available (unless you want to pay $26 for a used copy  0_o If you have one, hang on to it! It’s a collector’s item now, lol).

I still have to wait 30 days before I can legally publish it again, but I’m not going to rush into it. I’m considering doing some rewriting of it before I re-release it. I’m a bit hesitant to do this because I don’t want to upset diehard fans who love it just the way it is, but I think I’ve grown as a writer and I’d like the chance to polish it up a bit and maybe add a few new scenes, or flesh out existing ones, because the book turned out short than I’d expected. (It was my first, after all.)

(Can you tell I recently discovered how much I like polls?) 😀

Also, I’ve started working on Dragon Bait again. I couldn’t believe how much interest there was in dragon porn stories. My website statistics show that ‘dragon porn’ is the second most frequent search term that brings people to my site (the most common one being my name). I figure if that’s what the people want, that’s what I should be writing. I will finish posting it here for everyone to read for free, but I’m going to break it up, serialize it, and post one chapter a month. Depending on how long it ends up, that could six or eight months. I’m also going to make it in a e-book, so if people don’t want to wait for each chapter, they can buy the whole story for $.99 or maybe $1.99, depending on how long it is. I think that’s fair.

I’m still working on Moonlight. Don’t worry, the revisions are going well and my word count is up to 120,000. I will have the next chapter ready by Monday, Sept. 16th. It’ll probably be ready before that, but I keep jumping around between the chapters and changing little things to make it all flow seamlessly and cohesively, and I like having that freedom. So, sorry, but things are going to move a bit slow for a while. I don’t want to make the same mistake again.

Finally, I updated my website, including a new page for Breach. It has a new cover, what I hope to charge for each version, and the planned release date. Let me know what you think. 🙂

It’s done! (I think.)

I finished all the formatting and typesetting and page layouts and uploaded the cover and everything. Broken Wings is just one last review away from being available for purchase from CreateSpace. I ordered my proof copy this morning, but it won’t get here until around the 16th ( because I got the cheapest shipping.) I could do the review online, but I want to see the actual product before I make it available for purchase. I know the cover won’t be the greatest because my image quality was only 256 dpi instead of the 300 it recommends, but I couldn’t figure out how to increase the dpi, so it might be a bit blurry or something. I figured it was close enough. We’ll see.

I’m not expecting to sell a whole lot of these since it is cheaper as an e-book (and free on FictionPress if you don’t mind all my typos) but I remember getting several requests for a paperback version, so here it is if anyone still wants one. Mostly, I just wanted to go through the process to see if I wanted to use CreateSpace for the rest of my books, like Breach and Magebound. I may even make a paperback collection of my short stories.

And now…a poll!