Creeping Sales

I check my sales numbers for Kindle and Smashwords kind of regularly. I know I probably shouldn't. It can be kind of depressing to look at (I have 1 sale on SW, from about a year and a half ago). But, after I got over my last bout of "Fuck it, I quit!", I started looking at things differently.

I have relegated the short stories I've self-published to being practice. They are there for others to enjoy, and really, that's it. They are good ways of measuring my skill as a storyteller, and if I just look at them in that light, I'm ok. Right now, I make about 1-5 sales a month. The Orc stories seem to be the most popular, with Pekra and The Orc Way being at the top (though I think Blackskull's Captive is my best work). I also sell one or two copies of Entertaining the Masses each month. So, it's all good. Interestingly, my collection With a Silken Fist has yet to sell a single copy.

Going forward, I am going to focus more on developing longer works. And in between those, I'll work on shorts here and there. I will probably continue to self-publish the Gortek and Pekra stories on Amazon. But the other shorts will be submitted to pro markets.

My current long-form work is one that I blogged about a long while back. It's a sort of sequel to L. Sprague DeCamp's Conan of the Isles. As a Robert E. Howard fan, I know that I am expected to revile DeCamp and all that he touched. But, aside from his personal traits that I find deplorable (like his treatment of Howard's personal life and character), I enjoyed his pastiches, for the most part. I also liked how he filled in gaps in Howard's Conan narrative to create a single epic storyline (don't get me wrong, the Howard originals are still much better).

Conan of the Isles sees Conan abdicating the throne to his son, Conan II, or Conn, and going off on one last voyage of adventure. The story I have in mind answers the question of "What happened in Aquilonia when Conan disappeared?" For copyright reasons I am changing the names of characters, places, etc. But at its core, my story is still pastiche. I have outlined the first part of the book, and am working through chapter two right now. When it's all said and done, it'll probably weigh in somewhere between 50-60k words in length.

What am I going to do with it then? Submit it to publishers, probably. Maybe see if I can get an agent to work with me. Or, failing all of that, I might self-pub it, but that would be a last resort. At this point, I just want to focus on getting it done. I'll worry about how to publish it when I have a finished product to present.

The Orc Way

My fourth Kindle story is now live.  This one is a sequel to PEKRA, as it relates events that happened to Gortek just after his mating with her.  From the "back cover":

The Red Reavers are on a mission: To secure a dwarf for their chief, who wants to learn how to make steel weapons. But when the Orc patrol finds a perfect candidate for their needs, will their leader, the brainless oaf Kagan, muck things up with his short-sightedness?


It’s up to Gortek to handle the thinking, and keep his patrol-mates safe. But is he ready for the inevitable confrontation with Kagan?

You can find it here.  I hope you enjoy it!  As always, reviews are GREATLY appreciated.  And be sure to check out my other stories, if you haven't already.

Note:  The cover shown above is the actual final cover image.  The one that Amazon is showing is the previous version, which was rushed, and I dislike very much

On covers

I am currently preparing another story for Kindle publication.  It's another Orc story that centers o Gortek, the male lead in Pekra, and it takes place not long after that story.  Right now, though, I am stuck on a cover.

The covers for my Kindles so far have all been somewhat similar, stylistically.  Particularly, the Orc-related ones.  Basically, it's a black background, with a Photoshopped image of a head/face.  So, I am inclined to keep with that trend.  Last night I took a photo of an actor who has certain features that fit Gortek, and morphed and colored it to the point where you can't really recognize who the original actor was.

At first, I was hesitant to go this route again.  I didn't want people to get them confused, and think that all of my stories were the same.  But, I started thinking about it, and realized that it's a pretty common thing for stories and books in a series.  So, I'm going to go with it for now.

That being said, I think I will have to start over tonight.  I screwed the image up beyond easy repair last night, and I didn't really like how it looked at the end.  Sometimes, if you don't pay attention to what you are doing, Layers in Photoshop can be a pain the ass.

Promotion time!

My latest Kindle, Severance, isn't getting a lot of love.  So, as a way of maybe generatinig some interest, I am offering it for free for a short period.

Starting tomorrow, and running through Friday, the story will be a free download for your Kindle and Kindle apps.  Download it here.

Severance had a job to do. As an assassin she was required to detach herself from her target. But this one was personal, as well as professional. And there was a good chance she may not survive the job.

Would her preparations be enough to carry her to a new dawn? Was she up to the task of taking on the most famous and mystery-shrouded assassin in the world? There was only one way to find out…

It's Tuesday!

Monday is history this week already.  Nice way to start.  Had a pretty good weekend.  Gaming on Friday, The People's Brat Fest on Saturday, cookout with Friends on Sunday, and a nice, lazy Monday (except for that whole installing the A/C thing).

Yesterday also marked the publication of my third Kindle.  I had submitted this story to a couple of different places without success.  I figured since I had made it a goal to publish a Kindle a month for a year, and I hadn't managed to get anything finished this month, I would just throw it up there.  So, a couple of hours of working up the cover image and formatting the file, and presto!  Kindle #3.

This is a fun one.  It's an action/horror/sword & sorcery bit, about a young girl assassin, and her most terrible foe.  I rather enjoyed this one.  And my wife really likes it.  Special thanks to her for helping me fill in those holes in the characterization.  It's a better story for it, I think.

The story is available here.

Just as an aside, most of these stories will only be available through Amazon for the time being.  I'm testing the waters of their KDP program, which makes the story exclusive to Kindles for 60 days.  We'll see how that pans out in the future.

I did it again!

Last night I worked feverishly for a good hour or more on the cover of my latest Kindle publication.  This one is a short tale about "Orc romance."  I think it's a fun story, though I doubt I could ever find an actual market for it.  So, self-publishing seemed a natural fit.  I decided to try out Amazon's KDP program, and this one is only available via Kindle for at least the next 90 days.  I've also set it up to be free for the first five days, starting tomorrow.  Right now, it's only 99 cents, but tomorrow thru the 25th, you can download it for nothing. 

You can find it here.

Funny thing is, my wife loves the story so much that she wants to see more about the characters.  Which got me to thinking about the story I had written for Scott Oden's (sadly defunct) anthology.  That story centered around one of the main characters of my "romance" story.  So, the idea came to me that maybe I would expand the other story, and integrate a second plotline involving the main character from the romance.

Does that make sense?  Well, it will if/when I do it.  But that may be off in the future a bit.

Right now, I have two Kindles published, and both involve Orcs.  And, I got to thinking that maybe I should publish something non-Orc related, just to mix things up.  Thing is, I don't really have anything complete.  But I have a few WIPs that I could finish, and I will probably dust one of those off and have a go.

In other writing news, Pulp Empire has announced three new anthologies.  I have ideas for all of them, so I plan to work up some proposals, and hopefully get into at least one.  Regardless of whether they accept my proposal(s) or not, I will probably write the stories anyways.  If Pulp Empire doesn't want them, someone else might, or they may end up on Kindle.

And finally, school.  I have an 8-10 page paper due in less than two weeks.  I should probably start on that soon.  This weekend.  I'm hoping the new power supply for my wife's old laptop arrives today, so I can have a dedicated "mobile writing machine."  That may motivate me to write more often.

Other than that, not much new to discuss.  I'm currently re-reading Hour of the Dragon, by Robert E. Howard.  Odd trivia: I have six versions of this book; hardback, paperback (with intro by KEW), Conan the Conqueror, eBook, the Del Rey edition, and an audiobook recorded from an old book on tape of CtC.  Needless to say, it's one of my all-time favorite books.