Sunday 26 August 2012

Launch party for One Good Turn - Day 2

Welcome, everyone, to my blog and to the second day of my online launch party for my first romance enovella 'One Good Turn'. Here is the paperback 3D version of the cover.

What do you think of that? Great, isn't it?  That is the 3rd version now I have; normal 2D, 3D and this one.

So, today's question is this: the premise of the book is that Geraldine dies and goes to Heaven, but she has to earn her place by getting her ex love (her true love) to be a happier and caring man again. I won't tell you how she does it, you have to read it to find out, but this is what my question is based on. Imagine you are Geraldine.  You are at the Gates of Heaven but can only enter if you can romance your ex love, who has to be a true love, so he is a normal loving, caring and happier man again (as he has turned grumpy and angry at where he is).  What do you do to return him back to the love you knew?  The most romantic suggestion will win a prize, to be revealed the end of today.  So, get your thinking caps on and let me know how romantic you can be.

Will be popping in and out to see what comments you give me. See you later. Need to check my emails again.

Friday 17 August 2012

Blog Party for One Good Turn

I am hoping that my first romance enovella 'One Good Turn' will be out by the end of next week. I am waiting for the final proofs from my editor and the proper sized covers for each website, then it can be all systems go for it. A few days after that, in two weeks time, I plan to have a blog party for a few days to celebrate the start of my romance writing career (there are six more stories to come in the series of this one and I have others, inc a similar story, I have planned). I will put a notice out on FB and Twitter when it comes out, and when the party starts. I need to do a schedule of what I want to do for it, but I do know that there will be a question for everyone to answer relating to the enovella. And there will be a prize for the best answer.

I won't be having a physical launch as yet. If the short story I am currently revising for an anthology coming out in October gets accepted for it, then I will have one for that and include promotion for the romance and my YA novellas.

So, watch out for messages from me announcing the start of a blog party. I can't wait.  See you soon.

My next post will be about the stats of how many ebooks I have sold so far, before the start of my romance series comes out. I want to compare it to what effect having published a romance has on it all, as I have read that romance writers earn 170% more than their peers. We shall see.

Sunday 12 August 2012

Me and Asperger's - Sensory Overload

A couple of months ago, an illustrator friend of mine, mentioned something about her daughter who also has Autism.  She said that her daughter sometimes has trouble coping with the world and at the end of the day she shuts herself off.  This got me thinking about a few incidences I had a few years ago at work, and made me wonder if I had sensory overload - you can't cope with the world and everything that is happening and what you do.  It made me realise that Asperger's isn't always about difficulty communicating with others, but there are other problems.  Here is what happened to me.

A few years ago (about 5-6) I was at work having my lunch. As usual I was reading after I had eaten my lunch.  I had just started reading when my brain went into a fog and it felt like it couldn't take any more information in.  I felt I couldn't cope with doing anything.  It was a struggle to even walk back to my desk.  I ended up in tears and going home. It took me a couple of hours in bed, resting, to get back my energy.

This wasn't the first time it had happened to me. On other occasions it had happened at the end of the day when I was walking home from the train station.  I had got half way home, when my legs felt heavy and seemed to me that they couldn't cope with it all anymore. I started feeling faint and had to stop at the bus stop to rest before I could manage to carry on walking to get home. When I got home, I had to go to bed and rest for a couple of hours. It has always been after a few hours resting that I am able to get up and live normally again.  It has also happened first thing in the morning or during the day.

I have always thought it was a virus, but now I am not so sure.  Could this be sensory overload?  Could my brain have been telling me that it had had enough and couldn't go on and I needed to rest to carry on again?

I would like someone's opinion about this.  If you read this and think yes, it was sensory overload, let me know.

Saturday 4 August 2012

Ebook pricing

Over the last few weeks I have read blogs about pricing ebooks, and there seems to be a bit of a hoo-ha about it.  It seems that some people think that authors should price their books higher because of all the hard work they have done for it. There is also some hoo-ha whether 'free' books are now working, esp with Amazon KDP Select.  I have now decided what price I will put on my ebooks - it all depends on the length, and this is what JA Konrath does.

Short and long short stories under 10K words = .99c (Apart from my first Angel ebook which is now free - as part of the freeway experiment that DD Scott has done. And it has worked. Slowly getting to 5000 downloads)
Anthologies/novellas from 10K to 20K words = $2.99
Novels/Boxed Sets from 20K to 30K words = $3.99
Novels over 30K words = $4.99

So, with that guideline for myself, my next Angel ebook, which is turning out to be a novella and over 10K words, will be priced at $2.99.  At some point, I might reduce it for a while.

So, how do you price your ebooks?  Let me know.