First Project of the New Year: Becoming Stardust

I’ve got my first project underway. It’s related to my YA sci-fi that I had written in 2016/17. I’ve taken the first 7,000 words from it and turned it into a prequel short story. It’s called Becoming Stardust, and the novel is being re-titled Stardust as opposed to theThe Cadetship. It was always felt a little out of place with the rest of the novel because of a time jump. Anyway, I’m editing it now and holy moly, it’s all a sea of red. I must have leveled up somewhat since I last touched this piece. I know that Stardust is going to be needing the same level of input which is why it won’t be published for a long time. Becoming Stardust is going to be free and I’m hoping for it to generate interest for Stardust.

I making a hard date of having it done and dusted on April 30th. So that is 107 days or 3 months and 17 days πŸ™‚

New work in progress

Good Witch, Bad Witch, and the UndeadDon’t I always have something I’m working on but never finishing? But this time I’ve committed myself to this new story. I’ve even bought a book cover image to go with it. That’s a first.

Good Witch, Bad Witch, and the Undead is set a few hundred years ago and revolves around four sisters. Temperance, Prudence, Constance and Mercy.Β Its genres are magical realism and folklore and historical fantasy. It’s not really a historical novel because I’m not focusing on events of the past, I’m just trying to channel a feeling for the novel. It’s also a more character-driven story that revolves around the four sisters.

The story set up is more episodic. With the chapters being 5000+ words long, almost like short stories. Currently, I’ve completed the second chapter. I do not know how long the book will be or when I finish it. However, I am planning on this to be my next publication.

I’m mostly pantsing my way through this novel, writing a chapter at a time and then planning the next one with a few key events in mind.Β If it’s novel-length, then I might make it a physical copy through Amazon.Β Β 

Save One is available

Misty-summer-mountain-hills-landscape.-613864370_3000x1926 (edited-Pixlr)Save One is out πŸ™‚ It is 32,230 words long and it sits in the Young Adult and Dystopian genres. It can also be a little bit of a Coming of Age story as well.

It follows one individual Sauska Morin as she is accepted into the cryptanalyst school to become a code breaker. Her country has been at war with the South for the last few decades and she is needed to help break the codes. There she makes a close friend who is not having as good a time as her. During this time her younger brother is sent to army boot camp with the intention of becoming an infantryman. This does not bode well with Sauska because her two older brothers have died while in the army and as she experiences her life she begins to see that maybe her country isn’t as great as she thinks it is.

Screenshot_2I began Save One around July of ’17. While it took two years to complete, I was not actively working on it all the time. In fact, I would do a few drafts in close succession and then nothing for months on end. The reason this story took a while to come out was because of; burnout, other stories taking my time and, the fact that it was not my most prized story at the time. I was constantly suffering ‘Shiney New Idea Syndrome’ during this time and it took a bit of a backburner until I finally decided to finish it.

Beautiful-African-Woman-174795229_2560x3835_preview4largeAnother reason why it took so long was that I was a bit hesitant in putting out the story was because I made the main character black and I am white. I made her a different race simply because I’ve always written white characters and it was a bit boring. And the idea of having more diverse characters was starting to become a thing that needs to happen. I’m worried that it’ll come off wrong, but I’m not writing a contemporary story from the black experience. That’s why my first book cover was the black and white one. I changed it to the one above because I didn’t want to seem like I was using race to my advantage. Also, I like colour more than black and white and there is a forest scene near the end of the book.

 

New book cover :)

I’ve been thinking of changing the book cover of The Things We Do for a long time. But it was a case where I didn’t have decent enough skills/knew what I was doing. When I first created the original image (the second one), I kinda knew that it wasn’t the best, but it was the best I could do at the time. Now I can do better and I did. The first image is what I’ve come up with.

Feet or Fins is now on Amazon

feetorfinskindle

I bit the bullet and uploaded my novel on Amazon. In the past I’ve kinda had issues with Amazon because of its business tactics, but I’m not selling enough through Smashwords. So here I am.

And I’ve already got a sale πŸ™‚

I found the process of uploading surprisingly easy actually. No repeated rejections from meat grinder here. In terms of formating, I just used my smashwords version with the license section cut out and it was accepted the first go.

So now that I’ve got my book out on multiple sites I believe that I’ll be getting more sales πŸ™‚ At the moment Feet or Fins is not available as a physical book, which is something I’m going to do in the future πŸ™‚

 

Is $2.99 too much?

Feet or Fins has been online for months now and it hasn’t sold that many copies 😦 True that I’m not marketing it as much as I can, but looking at my Smashwords stats page I can see that it is being viewed quite a few times. But not that many buyers.

So I was wondering if the price had anything to do with it?

smash

Is US$2.99 too much for a 51,000 word stand alone book?

I’ve been looking around online and what you can get for $2.99 is all over the place. From a few thousand words to well over a hundred thousand. There isn’t a set guideline for this.

Maybe I should lower my price. But what should it be? $2.00? $1.50? $0.99?

Has anyone else been in a similar situation or have something to say?