Grim Cherry Tree

I put the last period in my new Dwarves in Space novella on Friday, so I took the chance to return to what usually sucks up all my free spring time: painting.

With all the cherry trees in bloom around here I had this idea of greys and pinks in my head. So I wanted to see what I could come up with as well as working on adding texture to the tree.

It turned out better than I'd feared. Also, blossoms are incredibly boring to add. Dab dab dab, new color, dab dab dab some more. Can't feel my back. Dab dab dab. Re-add branches. Dab dab dab.

I've also got my one post about Love Triangles up on Thought Catalog and should have another coming on May 9th. Now to break ground on the next and then really amp up the launch date. The book stuff will never end!

Self Publishing (So You've Ruined Your Life)

Hello.

I am here today to welcome you to the exciting and fast paced world of self publishing. The electrodes implanted inside your skull are there to assist in any questions you might have. Please, sit back, relax and enjoy...enjoy...please enjoy...I am to welcome.

Is this thing on? Good. Come with me if you want to...well, you probably weren't going to die before per se, but people were gonna lance open your wallet and steal whatever tumbles out.

So, you want to get into the self publishing business? You just finished your first manuscript and you still affectionately refer to it as your baby. Congrats. The writing is the hardest part.

Have you begun editing yet? Asked a few people to beta read your mess for you? No? You might want to think about all that before beginning the long road of self publishing. The editing is the hardest part.

Oh, one more thing. Before you even put your fingers down to keyboard and inked that first word across a blank page you should have already set up a twitter/facebook/blog/BrainFuse (still in the test phase). Welcome to the world of you have to build your audience before you even have something to sell them. Now, perhaps it's not best to think of your dear online friends as an audience, but ya know. Welcome to the real world.

Finished editing? Wow, that was fast. Now, lets talk formats. Perhaps you're one of those old school people who despise technology and still has pony express hand deliver your mail for you (or you attached a cardboard silhouette of a horse to your bike and peddle it around yourself. Who am I to judge?). You prefer the feel a book in your hands. There are plenty of services that offer that experience. CreateSpace through amazon, Lulu through I guess lulu. Ingram. But don't fool yourself, none of these companies are here to make you money. They exist to get money from you. Make your choices based upon what's important to you and always with an eye towards the cost, not just for you but your readers.

A 200 page paperback from an unknown author that costs more than $15? What are the chances anyone would take that risk? What are the chances you would? It's a numbers game, and this is business, not personal.

I'll be straight with you, in this crazy interconnected world of the beeping and the bopping and Johnny Depp inside our computers (I dated this post beautifully) if you want to make sales, you need to have an eBook. My ebook sales are easily 80-85% of my total. But in order to sell an ebook you have to have an ebook file, so let us move to formatting.

Formatting is the hardest...actually formatting isn't that difficult. I use Scrivener to write. I adore it even if we fight over a few things like its need to decide what is and isn't a chapter. It will make a .mobi (amazon ebook) or .epub (everyone else) file at will. Assuming you do not have scrivener, there are a few sites out there willing to do the work for you. Never ever pay for it. It is a waste of your money. Because, assuming you have Word (because we're all stuck with word) all you really need to do is build up an index.

Find every chapter, alter the text to "Heading 1" and word will build an index for you. Upload it to Amazon, B&N, or smashwords, or wherever you want your ebook to go and it will handle most of the rest. It may not look the prettiest, but you'll have an ebook and not be down $100.

Let's slap some paint on that book of yours.

The old adage is to never judge a book by its cover, which would be apropos in the naked mole rat kingdom. Here in the land of split second impressions and retinas all people do is judge books by their covers. I cannot count the number of times I've seen responses to negative reviews be "Pity, it's such a pretty cover." "I got it anyway because the cover's so gorgeous." Everyone judges books by their covers, if they didn't we'd have a single black title on a white background and that only worked for the Beatles.

I make my own. I know, but I'm cheap. You can find tons of graphic artists begging for scraps of food but anticipate dropping a couple hundred dollars. Also, check out their book cover style, especially any in your genre. It is especially doubly important that your book look like what's inside the text. To have, say, this picture:

associated with a YA fantasy with no romance and a big old pile of fart jokes would be an incredibly stupid idea. Such a terrible idea. I can't believe anyone thought to do it, in fact. People feel cheated and will hate your book no matter how much they normally would if they expected one thing on the cover and got another. And don't expect them to have read your synopsis. Never expect the reader to read.

Why don't you want a cheap looking, nothing but stock photos cover? Perhaps it's time we talk about the self publishing stigma.

When people are flipping through the multitudes of legion crowding through the aisles of the Amazon store, their eyes aren't going to stop at what looks a free image with a bit of text lackadaisically tossed on top. They're more likely to think contained within is a pile of incoherent summaries of the possibly racist and sexist story from the author and then suddenly the back half is a manifesto about how "Hitler had some good ideas."

Unfair? Perhaps, but there is good reason for the stigma.

So what you have to do it combat it? Fancy cover, actually read back through your manuscript a few times, edit your summary, edit the book, edit your hair. Be professional at all times. This is really important for the next step.

Okay, so we have the book. It looks presentable to the world and fits your theme. Now it's time for the next stage, the never ending stage: marketing. Forget everything I said before, marketing is the worst part. It is also the part you will never ever stop. It's the carousel ride of publishing, you may switch mounts but you're always going around and around and around.

I hope you built up that audience of like minded friends because now you're really gonna need them. A few months before a date you picked from thin air or the launch, ask if anyone wants an ARC. That stands for advanced reader copy and is the form of a book publishers would send out to a multitude of people to help prime the pump before launch day. Being a self publisher, you have to do this yourself.

And send out a shit ton. The fact is, for every "sure, I'll read and review your book" you get, perhaps 10-20% will actually do it. You can rage about how it isn't fair, they're taking your baby, blah blah blah, but that's the game. You are asking for work in trade, just knock that person off the list you ask next time and move on with life. Whining, especially in public, will never ever help.

You may think, well, I'll just wait for the reviews to roll in from my new readers. Asking is cheating. Yeah, you keep dreaming that dream. Unless one of those professionally amateur reviewers picks up your book the only ones you'll get are from people who hated your book. It takes a lot to drive people to take the time to put down their thoughts, either exquisite love or hatred are the biggest pawns in the game (I think being related to the author is the little horsey). Middling reviews are so rare because no one does them on their own.

Is it...should we now? Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself on the timeline, but I think we need to discuss bad reviews.

Sit down, please. I know, you believe your life's work is so mind shatteringly brilliant that no one in the history of mankind can ever find it anything but perfect. But someone will. Perhaps he actually is a turnip that gained sentience from a freak accident with a plutonium rod and some fundip and it cannot actually read, it only despised your bias against talking turnips it invented inside its stolen brain. You can't say a damn thing.

Say it aloud, to yourself, perhaps as you explode splicers or dice up darkspawn. Working through the disappointment is human, but if you drop for even one second that you not only saw the negative review but also disagree with it online, you will have the "Authors Behaving Badly" posse on your ass so fast you won't be able to sit down for a month. The internet loves a good shit storm, and someone daring to show a bit of emotion stirs up the WASPs like no other.

I actually have some thoughts on authors responding to reviews at all, but I shall save that for another day, for they are nuanced and come with a side of fries.

Back to marketing. Along with asking people for book reviews, it's also a good idea to try for guest posts or author interviews. It's more work on your plate, but you are asking for free advertising. It only seems fair. The nice thing about guest posts is that it allows you to show off your chops and get people interested in your writing style before reeling them in with your book.

Before you start really gunning for the marketing stuff, you'll have wanted to submit your book to amazon and goodreads. This gives people an easy way to add their reviews and/or link back to your book. Never heard of goodreads? It's interesting (that's midwestern for "be careful in there"). But it's quickly becoming the place that a lot of self pubbers work their magic on, so it's something to watch.

I know, I know, self pubbers don't get a pre-order option so your book will technically be up for sale before your launch date. If that really bothers you... I don't know what to say. Them's the breaks. I can't think of a reason to keep the book hidden away once you're ready to go. Attention span is teeny tiny, and another option can easily distract people away from your book. Links, include links everywhere you can. Plastered across facebook, your blog, twitter. But for god's sake, do not spam people. Here's the difference. Making it public on your space is cool. Forcing it upon others on their timeline or on their wall, not cool.

Marketing, marketing? What else haven't I talked about in the classic bag? Oh, giveaways. If you're going to do a giveaway you need to make certain that to say enter for a free copy they should like your facebook page or retweet your contest. Something so all those who entered because "Hey look, free!" are snagged into your web and might come back later to buy the book. Or, perhaps they'll pick up a later one. Scratching backs is the name of the game in this race. If you want to have a giveaway on goodreads that's a whole nother ball of wax. I'm going to try it for the first time this year and see how it goes. I'm putting my money on "interesting" again.

Repeat to yourself, if anyone is asking for my money to help market my book they're full of shit. PR releases are added to a bank of other PR releases that no one in their right mind would greedily read. The long and short of it is that money you spent on marketing to pay someone else to do it is maybe maybe what you'll make back in sales if you're incredibly lucky. Breaking even is at best what some hope for. The name of the game is exploitation and first time self publishers are a great market.

It's why PublishAmerica (the Who's Who scam of the POD game) still rakes in suckers despite the mounds of warnings across the internet. Rejection is hard, rejection hurts, but it's a scar you have to let weep every once in awhile if you want to even try at a creative field.

Well, I guess that's it. If you've done all that I've lined out (and probably more shit I don't do because I'm an introverted hermit, like contacting media), time to sit back and wait for launch day when you can celebrate for a moment before you climb back on that marketing ride or, god save you, plan out your next novel.

To sum up, editing good, book cover very important, have an audience, ask for reviews. Don't pay anyone for marketing unless you know exactly where an ad is going. And that's the name of the game.

Now I'll return you to your regularly scheduled brain washing.

Tulips

I got my own Easter surprise yesterday. Last fall I decided to finally throw my hat into the flower planting ring and plopped some bulbs into the ground, figuring they didn't stand a chance.

Low and behold, late March, some leaves wiggled out of the ground. After watching the closed buds for a few weeks stubbornly refuse to open on a bright Easter morn they finally did just that.

 Feed me, Seymour! Feed me!

They look like satin in the sun.

And a few of the other flowers from the previous owners popping up so they don't get jealous of all the tulip attention.

Spring's here and she's brought a pomegranate gun.

We Are Entering the Love Triangle

So, you’ve got a great YA dystopian idea. Perhaps all of humanity has been wiped out by a nefarious disease carried by hamsters so the hope of the species rests upon the backs of sixteen to nineteen year olds who are immune to the rodentia dementia. You have sketches of the insane clothing all the half hamster overlord slave drivers wear. You have your plucky heroine who is sarcastic and knows her way around a weapon. (But only with the girlier weapons, like a bow or magic or a sharpened eyelash curler. Swords are for boys.)

Now all you have to do is pick a love interest, but the brooding bad boy weregerbil and the sensitive but not abusive clone of her best friend growing up are both good options. Why not do both?

You have just entered the dreaded Love Triangle and your sanity may never be seen again.

What’s the big deal about love triangles? Out of all the shapes triangles are one of the easiest to draw and give us terrible hypotenuse hippopotamus jokes. Let us break down the love triangle.

At the top you have your Mary Sue, I mean plucky heroine who is in no way a reflection of the author. On the left is the brooding bad boy who is either an emotionally abusive asshole that should be giving girls red flags instead of the vapors or a bland kid who owns a leather jacket. And the final dot in this triangle is the nice guy, the best friend, the one who’s there to take shit because this story needs to be stretched to a trilogy and we can’t all jam in cannibalistic teddy bears. More than likely this last one is also an emotionally abusive asshole who has a closet full of fedoras and blames over 50% of the population for his failure at relationships, but he’s supposed to be the safe choice.

Read the rest here

First Review and Giveaway

It has begun.

The other half of the "begging everyone and their little dog too to give a review" is "getting said reviews and then mining them for blurbs to get other people to review it." I think it finally ends with a giant explosion and we're all star babies or something.

Ah, but the point. We were all here for the point. To tie in with my first book review, the website is also offering my first giveaway. If you want a free ebook copy, head on over and throw in your name.

Read the Review and Enter for a Free Copy

I suppose this means it's finally time to put up the amazon link and info up on my side. If you want to buy it, head on over here.

Now to wait for that "I hated it and you should be beaten with a sack full of fish" review.

Carrot Cake M&Ms

Good morning class, today I would like to discuss the most disgusting candy to grace the aisle in a long while. I speak of the carrot cake M&M.

You may have not seen it on your stores. Like most things evil it has an exclusive deal with WalMart to try and contain the demon, but once evil is formed in the world it always finds a way to escape.

M&M has gone a wee bit over the deep end lately, copying hershey's kisses in the early naughts. (Are we still calling 2000's the naughts or did the cool kids come up with something less 20's speakeasyish. That's jake!) There are raspberry M&Ms, birthday cake M&Ms, the soul of angel's M&Ms. Apparently, their R&D guys barricaded themselves inside the lab and refuse to come out until they've released at least three abominable flavors a year the marketing department have to convince the rest of us to eat.

Why do I hate the carrot cake M&M? Well, let's start here:

White chocolate is not chocolate, it is satan's cum rolled in the butt crack of the sugar miser. To call it chocolate is to invite constant and deserved hatred from true chocolate lovers, or humans with taste buds. Anyone who defends white chocolate is clearly an ancient horror here to recruit people into their cult of worshiping lucifer and eating not-chocolate. Monsters.

But, I can move past my deep mistrust of white chocolate to give a more accurate reflection of the taste profile. I hate you white chocolate, Hitler ate white chocolate, melt in the cleansing holy fire white chocolate. See, totally impartial.

Before we can begin you need to get three of the carrot cake M&Ms. You'll see why.

Carrot Cake M&M 1: A bit of the classic carrot cake spice burst across the tongue but is quickly overtaken by the white chocolate. There are hints of what they plastered across the bag but it is lost in the cloying arms of the chocolate.

Carrot Cake M&M 2: The carrot cake spice is long gone now, all that remains is the evil white chocolate and a single crumb of cinnamon screaming for help before it too drowns in the sweet embrace. Things are getting bad now. The sugar coats the tongue like a too tight sweater, refusing to give up its grasp on the tastebuds.

Carrot Cake M&M 3: Oh god, the things I do for you people. Okay, okay, here we go. Like being waterboarded by pure glucose, the white chocolate has extended off the tongue, down the throat, across the cheeks, and probably into the brain. I cannot taste anything but the white chocolate, the miniscule carrot cake long ago destroyed by the menacing fist of the white chocolate. But the worst part is, the white chocolate does not wash away. It will squat on your tongue like a fat toad beneath a tree root for minutes up to an hour. Every swallow tastes of white chocolate, every breath reminds you of the wrongs you have committed; carrot cake M&Ms are a penance for the life you've lived. Look upon the cartoon bunny and weep!

If you love carrot cake and can stand white chocolate then you might enjoy these M&Ms, but you can only eat them one at a time, taking breaks every hour to let the aftertaste subside lest your tongue is overloaded with sweet and cannot find the spice at all.

If you mostly eat carrot cake for the cream cheese frosting and, like a proper person, despise white chocolate, get a tub of cream cheese and eat that. It'll be a log reduction less sweet than these M&Ms.

And that is the terror of the carrot cake M&M.

Class dismissed for spring break.

Book Trailer Premiere!

I'm happy to announce the internet premiere of the book trailer for The King's Blood from Erin Kelly.



I love what she came up with from the few images I've made. The music puts me in mind of something from Hogfather, rabbits are always scary, and it's never wise to walk under witch signs.

I also received my book proof and have approved it so soon it'll be heading out across the country to bookstores.

If you just can't wait for the May 13th launch date, it is up at Amazon so I can point some reviewers there.

I should warn you, it's a really long book.

Otherwise I'm trucking along on my Dwarves in Space 2 1/2 manuscript and plotting a few guest posts. Marketing is an endless mobius strip which you only jump off when you move to a new book and begin again.

Book stuff

Hello, it's been a wee bit maddening around here the past week or so.

To begin, I had the brilliantly stupid plan to get back into the novel writing business this month. I wasn't going to create a full novel, but I had a shorter novella in mind and since Camp Nano was starting up in April I figured, why not.

 Normally this time of year I'd be editing and after I blew my brain scraping The King's Blood into a published state, I've been itching to put finger to laptop.

I've been doing some updating to my website, which I am half assing at this point because of stuff. But if you had any pressing King's Blood questions and didn't want to ask me this might help.

The King's Blood.

Also, in keeping the marketing machine going, I've created a facebook author page. I'll be posting stuff there linking around to my writing and giveaways and swag as I make that stuff.

If you want to like me on facebook here's the page.

S. E. Zbasnik on the facebook

I'm also working on a guest blog post about love triangles and will be doing a podcast in the end of April, so you can all see me being terrifying!

As if all that isn't enough I had some fresh ulcers dropped onto my gastrointestinal tract last night. Originally, one of the things Lulu promised us along with book covers (we all know how well that went) was a book trailer and website. I suspected the website wouldn't be anything all that useful to me so I made my own but I'd been a wee bit counting on the book trailer for that Pubslush thing we're being highly encouraged to do.

You can probably guess where this is going. Since that is no longer an option, I'm working with Erin Kelly to make something. She's amazing and the person I made that Cthulhu Caketopper for. I just didn't anticipate planning and scripting a book trailer this month.

If I don't make it out of this month alive, with my dying breath I curse Zoidberg!

April Fool's Polish

I'm not one to play the April Fool's tricks on this Internet Christmas. In fact, I prefer to make the what if games every other day of the year and leave today for the amateurs. So, rather than try and trick you all I shall instead dredge up the nail polishes I created for nerds a few years back and offer them up for anyone else who may be lacking in a certain scruples.

If someone were to say, present one of these as real and available, I cannot be held accountable.

Doctor Who Nail Polish Theme:

Lord of the Rings

Star Trek:

Two Hellboys because sometimes you just need a giant red demon with a rock fist:

In the not to distant future, somewhere in polish and space:

Futurama - that's dolomite baby!

And I swear this last one was at my husband's urging:

Now I just have to kidnap a nail polish R&D scientist and make them real.

Or be able to create matter with my mind. Whichever is easiest on the universe.