A Few Little Updates

I am trying to get my schedule back into shape so I can continue my exploration of the Urban Fantasy genre and get caught up on posting reviews of things I've read recently. In the meantime, here are a few quick updates:

Vixen
You may or may not have noticed that the paperback is currently unavailable. This is temporary. We've uploaded a new version of both the interior and the cover, and are now just waiting for the proof. The changes were very minor, so if you already bought the book, don't worry. There were a very few typos corrected, and we re-paginated the sample chapter of Hexen at the end, so it wouldn't look like it was an accidental repeat of chapter one. As for the cover, it just got a couple of cosmetic tweaks that were things we thought were fixed the first time around, but snuck through anyway. Without seeing the two versions side-by-side, they may not even be noticeable.

Hexen
I had really hoped to at least have the e-book version of Hexen available by now, but I have someone copyediting, and she's quite busy, and I think it will be worth the wait. I'm aiming for the end of this month for the e-verison and the end of June for the paperback, but I'll post updates as I have them. We have been through one round of edits, so with luck once I get this one back it'll be ready to go.

Book 3
I had been calling Book 3 of the Others Series Koldun, and the Su/Evgeny storyline was going to be a trilogy, after which I'd either delve more into Cara (of the short story "Cara") and her developing relationship with Magne, or I'd dip into the story of Alex's ancestor Rose-Perle and her relationship with Su's ancestor Sigrún. Or possibly, I though I might explore the mysterious Karasu, who you'll meet near the end of Hexen.

Alas, my characters and stories don't always do what I think they will. Su and Evgeny's story is going to be two more books, the second of which (the fourth in the series) will be Koldun (though it actually takes place at the same time as the first (the third in the series)). So the book I'm now writing is what happens to Su right after Hexen, and will probably incorporate a lot (or all) of what was going to be the story of Su's and Alex's ancestors. The working title is Familiar.

Hexen Cover

Apologies for my absence these past couple of weeks. Real life interfered, and all that. But here's the cover for Hexen, which should (if all goes well) hit Amazon and Smashwords early next week. Yay!

There's a lot of tea-drinking going on in this book (actually, a lot of food seems to appear in all of my books). And yes, more fox women!

In other news, I have a new series starting to form in my brain. I'm trying not to think about it too much, since I still have at least three more to write in this series (one more in Su and Evgeny's trilogy, one closely related, and one the follows the short story "Cara"). I also thought about making this new thing related to the Others, but the magical beings in it are more, well, magical, so I think it needs to be in its own world, so to speak. But that's a ways off, anyway.

Vixen for Free, and Cara

Before I completely forget, Vixen (the e-book version) is currently free on the Amazons, and will be for today (March 22, 2012) and tomorrow (March 23, 2012). After Monday, it'll start showing up in non-Amazon venues.

• Amazon.com link
• Amazon UK link
• Amazon Germany link
• Amazon France link
• Amazon Italy link
• Amazon Spain link

And I just posted a new short story called "Cara" about a new character (though she was briefly seen in Vixen and slightly less briefly in Hexen). It's 99 cents for now, though it will probably get a free promo at some point.

• Cara on Amazon.com
• Cara on Amazon UK

Experimenting With KDP Select

When we had trouble recently adding me to the White Raven Press account on Smashwords, I decided in a fit of wanting to do something to try signing Vixen up for the KDP Select program for three months. What this means is three things (or so):

1. Vixen will be available exclusively on Amazon for three months (I believe the end date is March 24, 2012).
2. Vixen will be available to Amazon Prime members to borrow for free during that time.
3. Amazon has given us five days in which we can set Vixen as free for promotional purposes.

Of those points, the first is an annoying necessity to comply with the terms of service. But since it's only three months, it's not a big deal. I hope. It won't affect the paperback, which should still be out later this month.

Point two is of no particular interest. In the unlikely event that a gazillion people borrow it, I'll get a little bit of money, but when people can borrow $9.99+ best sellers, why would they waste a borrow on less expensive books? It would be cool if someone borrowed my book, but I won't be crushed if no one does. I expect no one will.

The main reason I signed up was for the promo free days. It's possible to get your book set to free on Amazon by having it free elsewhere and then reporting it to the Amazon price-checking bots, but you can't actually make it free otherwise. And there's no way for micro-publishers using KDP to discount a book temporarily. But using the free KDP Select days lists the book as free, but shows it as discounted from the regular cover price (which, for Vixen, is $4.99).

So, for the first three days of the new year, we made Vixen free on Kindle. We gave away over 1200 copies on Amazon US (I assume this includes Amazon Canada, but I'm not sure), more than 400 on Amazon UK, and 4 on Amazon Germany (and White Raven Press has never sold anything on any of Amazon's sites other than the US and UK ones, so that was a nice surprise).

Vixen spent part of the first day and all of the second and third days in the top 20 (in other words, on the first page) of Fantasy > Contemporary. In the free books, of course. For a while, it was at #9. It might have gone higher, but I tried very hard not to check every five minutes.

So what does this mean for the book's future? Possibly nothing, but I hope it's given Vixen a little boost into better visibility. The fact that a copy sold today at cover price is a good sign (it hasn't even been up a month, and I've done no promo outside this blog and Twitter (find me @liesthrusilver). The fact that two people I don't know added Vixen to their "to-read" shelf on Goodreads is also a good sign. I think.

I'm hoping, too, that a few people leave reviews once they've read it. Assuming some of the people who downloaded actually read it.

Now I'm going to try to stop looking at numbers for a while and concentrate on finishing Hexen. My plan now is to use my last two free promo days for Vixen when Hexen is released, so it might give both books a little boost, and encourage folks to give the series a try.

It's Out! Vixen is Out!

I'll write a little about why I changed the title of the new novel (and the typefaces on the cover) later on, but for now holycrapit'sinthekindlestore!

Ahem. Yes, well.

My new novel Vixen is now available for purchase from Amazon for the Kindle. We're getting error messages on Smashwords, trying to add a "ghost" profile for me under the White Raven Press account, so it's not available there yet, but it will be soon. It should also be available direct from the WRP website sometime in January, once the site overhaul is complete (I won't link there for now, since there's not much to look at).

The paperback will also be out next month. It's being formatted now. (Well, probably not right now, since it's early Boxing Day morning as I write this, but soon.)

Newborn

Coming soon (once I finish writing it, that is) from White Raven Press:

Su just wants to sit in a dark corner for a quiet drink when she spots a newborn vampire across the bar. He's confused, and he's starting to draw attention to himself. And he's hot.

So Su decides to give him a few pointers. Then she realizes that the reason this baby vamp is wandering around without a protective escort is that she killed his parent vamp earlier that night.

Now Su feels responsible. A newborn vampire is helpless until he regains his memories and learns how to act like a vampire. Su knows enough about vamps to be able to teach him that. But Su has her own problems. She doesn't have much of a memory, either, and while she's not a vampire, she's not exactly human.

Su doesn't know what she is, and she doesn't have a kindly stranger in a bar to tell her.