Ten Years as a Publisher: What (If Anything) Have I Learned? (Part Two)

This is the second of my posts reflecting on my ten years as a publisher of my own work.

As anyone in the author/publisher business will tell you, things have changed in the last ten years. A lot. Still, just as in Casablanca, the fundamental things still apply. And the most fundamental thing in publishing is that readers will not buy a book they never come across. If you want to sell a book, you have to, somehow, put it in front of readers. A lot of readers. And better yet, in front of a lot of readers who want to read the type of story you've written. How to get your book in front of those readers may be what has changed the most.

In 2015, when I released my first book, it was possible to release a book on Amazon and Smashwords, and expect people to see, and some to buy it, without doing anything more than releasing it  Maybe even gain enough of sales to get the ball rolling. But I believe that even then, it was still much harder than to sell a book than it had been in the gold rush ebook era, a few years prior. I can't say how much traction a book would receive without further efforts, since I used a free price to drive my sales upon the release of A Summer in Amber on Smashwords, and shortly after, Amazon matched that price as well. My records are a bit spotty early on, but it appears that I sold (for free) 127 copies in the first month, and by the end of August, I had sold 823 copies, along with 583 copies of Some Day Days, my second book which I'd released in July. Even with a free price, the books had to have been widely seen to have sold that many books without any other effort on my part.

Back in those days, more ambitious authors wanted, and paid, to land spots in the various book promoting email newsletters, in order to reach more readers. A few years later Amazon came along with ads you could buy, or bid on, and those became the new go-to method of getting your books seen on the home page of books similar to yours. While I am sure that these methods still apply, these days, social media seems to be all the rage, at least with the younger writers and readers. I've heard it said may times that today's authors spend half their time not writing, but commenting, liking, and posting within the author/reader communities one can find on various social media sites. If you have a personality, you can make videos on TikTok or even have a YouTube channel. I've discovered that may "BookTubers" are indeed authors who use their channels to promote their books, some more than others. 

The idea in social media promotion is to make on-line friends with other authors, potential readers, influencers, and gain as many followers in return as you can, in order to sell your book. The theory being that it is easier to sell to friends than strangers. Plus the cool kids now do Kickstarter book releases to get their money upfront, if they have the money and expertise to fund and run them. The key, however, is still numbers. I've seen it said by a YouTube booktuber, who did a Kickstarter for his books, that you can expect only 2% to 3% of our subscribers to buy a book on your Kickstarter, and I expect similar results for converting subscribers to customers for most types social media.

While I can not say for certain if what I did ten years ago would work today, I do know that without my free price, my books would likely have not gained any traction and that I would likely have lost money promoting them. However, free books might still work today, for one simple reason; there are an order of magnitude less free books available, making any one book at least 10x if not 100x easier to come across. Plus, I feel that the readers of free books are a distinct market, eager for books to read, making them more eager to find new books. But, who knows? I can, however, say that I wouldn't have done anything different then what I died, if I was just starting today. I'm still lazy.

My strategy of releasing my books for free has worked quite well for me, and still does. I often sell over a thousand books a month. It works in part because I have built a small following who will likely buy each new book, eventually. Which is to say, when they think to look up my books to see it I've released anything new. But more significantly, because I now have an 18 or 22 book back catalog of books, every new reader will, if they like the first book of mine, will have seventeen other books of mine to pick up and read. While they may not read them all, every sale of a book to a new reader is likely multiplied by all the other books of mine that appeal to them. I am certain that those add-on sales make up a significant share of my sales. These are sales I've earned by writing millions of words and publishing 18 books (or 22, on Amazon and Kobo) rather than via promotions and advertising. Luckily, I love to write.

Back in 2015 there were plenty of snake-oil merchants out on the web trying, and too often, succeeding, in selling aspiring authors dubious keys to success, with their books, seminars, and package publishing deals. They're still out there today in force. It's a good business apparently. Much more lucrative than writing books. And with the traditional publishing business laying off so many people, those refugees also out there trying to make a living as freelance editors, cover artists and promoters. Plus, as I may have mentioned before, there seems to be a trend to try to make self-publishing into mini-trad publishing by guilting author/publishers into thinking that they have to follow all the steps traditional publishers do in getting a book published, except that the authors have to pay for it themselves. So, as I said above, the fundamental things still apply here as well. There's a sucker born every minute, usually an aspiring author, and one should never give a sucker an even break. The hucksters never do.

So to sum up what I've seen in indie-publishing over the last ten years, the fundamental things are still applying. If you choose to get into freelance fiction, either in traditional or indie-publishing with the idea of making a long term career of it, you are going to be sadly disappointed. Indeed, if you get into indie-publishing expecting to make money, you will be sadly disappointed. But, if you expect to lose money doing it, you'll be pleasantly surprised by how much you can lose, especially if you follow all the advice floating out there about how to succeed in indie-publishing. Just about the only people who succeed in indie-publishing are the hucksters, a business many authors switch to as soon as they have a little success. They know where the money is in this business.

However, if you write and then publish your work as a creative endeavor first and foremost, and enjoy the creative endeavor, you will find it very rewarding. Though you might not see any reward in your bank account.

Some final thoughts in a week or two. In the meanwhile: 

The ebook version of The Darval-Mers Dossier is now available for pre-order on Amazon for $2.99 for a June 5th 2025 release.

The free versions from Google, Smashwords, Apple, B & N, Kobo and various other ebook stores will be released on that date, or before. Stay tuned for their release date. Audiobook versions will follow shortly after the ebook. A paperback version will also be released on June 5th or before as well. Price to be determined by final page count.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 105)

 

A brief break from Emma M Lion. As you likely recall, in order to read about said Miss Lion, I had to sign up for a Kindle Unlimited trial, and going all out, I signed up for two months for $.99. So, in addition to Miss Lion's journals, I'm going to use my two months to explore other books as well. This week we have a book from an author that I have a space opera or two of his. I was curios to see what this book fantasy book of his offered.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Wizard's Butler by Nathan Lowell  DNF 29%

Lowell is a very popular indie author. This book has a rating of 4.4 stars from over 10,000 ratings. It is a well loved and popular book. However, the eagle-eyed reader will have already noted that I wasn't captivated.

This is a cozy fantasy written before cozy fantasies became a thing. This story is set in our contemporary world. The premise is that an unemployed former Army medic, Roger, is hired as a butler to look after a rich gentleman in his mansion for one year. The gentleman in question, the wizard of the title, is showing signs of dementia and his relatives hope to ship him off to some sort of care facility after a year, and turn his mansion into millions, for themselves. They say he claims to be a wizard, but they think he's more than a little round the bend, aided by the fact that he sort of acts like he is when they're around, for some reason. But he is one, with a tribe of pixies and fairies looking after him.

At first Roger doesn't believe in the pixies that the wizard claims that keep the mansion dust free and the fairies who mow the yard, but he can't come up with a better explanation, since there is no dust in the mansion, and the lawn never needs mowing. By the time I gave up on the book, he'd come around to accepting the wizard, pixies and fairies. 

However, up to that point the story was mostly a slice of life story Roger learning how to be a butler and look after the house. Other than being told about how the wizard became a wizard, not much, if anything, out of the ordinary happened. Except that once, some how the coffee tasted like vinegar coming out of the coffee maker. And whiskey disappears from a saucer left on the kitchen table. Hmm... 

Lowell spends a great deal of time and words describing mundane details. A great deal of time and very mundane words. For example, he has Roger decide that he needs to learn how to cook, so Roger comes up with a plan to learn via online videos presumably on YouTube.  (I highly urge you to check of Glen & Friends on YouTube if you enjoy cooking - but I digress.) However, the mansion doesn't have internet installed. A major problem. You and I would just call our local internet provider monopoly and order it up. But not so with Lowell. He has Roger contact a friend who apparently does this as a business, and then spends 7 pages (!) having his characters go over the house deciding just where to install the internet router and wires. This consultant even finds a place in Roger's butler's office where he can place his laptop computer when not in use, i.e. near a wall socket where can be charged when not in use. I kid you not. The downside is that he'll have to unplug it and carry it over to his desk to work on it. I guess extension cords are not invented in this world. And what had me shaking my head even more was that she'd even buy him a laptop from a "big box catalog" as part of the project, because, I guess, Roger apparently never had one before and wouldn't know what one to buy. This was published in 2020, mind you. No laptop, only a cell phone? Kids. I guess.

Now, I don't need a lot of action to keep my interest. Indeed, I really prefer slow-paced books. But in those cases I do need to be entertained by the writing, and the characters. In this case, I found neither entertaining. In cozy books there are almost always colorful characters to liven thing up. This is not the case here. Everyone is every bit as bland as the mundane narrative style Lowell writes in. Everything about this book is as exiting as watching grass grow or paint dry. So why this book is both very popular and highly rated? I must be missing something. But what? However, the same thing happened with that book about the junkyard and the missing maple syrup that I reviewed last year. I just don't get it. Clearly I'm clueless as to what makes books popular. 

But never fear, I soldier on. Seven weeks more of Kindle Unlimited. Fingers crossed I'll find some gems. Not that I really need to. Emma is a true gem.

Ten Years as a Publisher: What (If Anything) Have I Learned? (Part One)

 

The 23rd of April will mark the tenth anniversary of publishing my first book, A Summer in Amber back in 2015. It's a milestone, and one that deserves some reflection. This post is the first of several looking back on the last ten years.

The question in this post is; "What have I learned publishing my own books?" Of all the little things I've learned along the way, the one big thing is that writing fiction is not a career. It's not even a real job. It's a side-gig, at best, but more likely a pastime, a hobby, even if one calls oneself a professional author. Even if one is a traditionally published author. But for most, it is just a dream, a delusion.

I don't follow many authors blogs or videos, but the funny thing is that two of the ones I do follow also released their first books in 2015. One of those authors is Stephen Aryan, who used to have a YouTube channel devoted to dispelling the myths of traditional publishing. He sold a fantasy trilogy to Orbit, one of the major publishing houses which came out in 2015, and sold enough copies to earn him a second contract for a new trilogy for them. The second one didn't do as well, and they dropped him. He then sold a duology to the small press Angry Robots. The first book for them did well enough to get him a contract for a trilogy, however the second book of that duology didn't do well, nor have the first two books of his subsequent trilogy. The last book comes out soon, but is dead on arrival. No new contract. So now, after ten years he's without a book contract. Essentially out of the business, though he still has an agent, and is writing books in the hope of selling them to a traditional publisher. He may still get back into the business, but generally, publishers look at past performance, and his failure to become a best selling author after ten years will likely make it a tall order to overcome. He has, however, now self-published a novella with more to follow. Perhaps reading the writing on the wall. His career arch is very typical of authors in traditional publishing.

The second author whose videos I followed is Chris Fox, a self-published science fiction and fantasy author who also use to have a YouTube channel, and who also started releasing books in 2015. Being a prolific writer, he put out multiple books a year and did all the various things one has to do to sell books on Amazon. He was quite successful. He grossed $170,000 in 2016 and peaked in 2020 with over $272,000 in sales from his books and audiobooks, releasing nine books in that year; five of them in the last four months of the year, with ever diminishing returns. Sales went south from there, with 2021 sales back down to $190,000. He stopped reporting his sales after that. He had launched his dream project of a long ten volume fantasy series that year, but wrapped it up last year, in only seven volumes. He hasn't published a single book since July 2024. His many books are still up, and selling, though I have no idea how much they bring in. The point is that either he and/or his readers seem to have burned out. Ten years again.

I've heard it said that in traditional publishing nine out of ten writers are out of the business in ten years. These two authors are pure anecdotical, and yet...

And yet I think they represent the norm. Writers and their stories are the raw material of the publishing business. Writers and stories are far from a rare commodity, so it is not surprising that in traditional publishing they are paid poorly and quickly cast aside when their work does not prove to be a gold mine for the publishers. And in self-publishing, the competition is so fierce that to stay on the radar of readers they have to pump out far too many books, so that both readers and the writer burning out on. and often in less than ten years. The fact of the matter is that books, stories, and writers are subject to the whims of fashion, and almost every writer will fall out of fashion sooner or later.

So all in all, despite the glamor of a relative handful of long-time successful writers, writing is a temporary part-time gig, and more accurately, a hobby. If one is lucky it can be one like woodworking or quilt making, where one can make some money selling bird houses or quilts at craft fairs, though  writing  is likely not as lucrative. Too often writing is a hobby that costs money, oh, like golf or fishing.

So what I've learned from my ten years publishing my own work, is that I was right in accepting that my publishing venture was going to be a what is often referred to by "professional" self-publishing authors as a hobby, even though I've made money - a penny a book - where most of those professionals have lost money trying this and that, whatever was the hot secret of success of the moment, like another self-publishing author, Ron Vitale, who has lost something like $10,000 over his 13 years as a self-published author. He has now decided to consider writing a hobby and spend more of his free time doing other things.

Well, it's been ten years for me, and I'm still here, still writing and publishing books. And most importantly, still having fun doing so.

Free Again

 

A Brief Update:

I've decided to pull the plug on my experiment of charging the Amazon price on Kobo to see if I could get better exposure and some traction on Kobo's version of Kindle Unlimited lending library. No business resulted over the course of several months. So being an impatient fellow, all my books are once again free on Kobo.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 104)

 

This week we once again return to a maybe London of 1883, Lapis Lazuli house in St Crispin's, and it young owner, Emma M Lion. I at least, eagerly. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion Vol. 3  by Beth Brower    A

As the title suggests, these books are written as a series of journal entries, each book covering just two months. And as such, they cover a variety of events as they turn up. And while it may be possible that Beth Brower has in mind, a beginning, middle, and end for her story, (And according to her blog, she does) it is not evident in these books. Which is just one of their many charms. 

However charming, this is a collection of incidents and characters who come and go, so that the very seemingly random nature of these books makes it impossible for me to say much, if anything about what's going on in them. I suppose others, likely on Goodreads, have attempted to do so, and if you're really curious, you can give them a look. But for me, the great charm of these books is that they are written without (apparent) intent to be a novel. I charge anyone to find where the first act ends and transitions into the second, or the third, or identifying the climax and falling action. This is not to say that they are without structure, it is just that there are so many threads to the plots woven through these books, that they remain in something of a quantum state - everything is so undecided, yet to be determined. Like real life.

All of the other key features that I greatly favor in my reading are present in these books. They feature a pleasant and interesting main character in Emma. Her growing friendships play key roles in the story. Friendships are always something I enjoy in the books I read. And of course, style. Like all of my favorite books, these books are written in a clever, witty, and understated style that manages to keep even the must unlikely things and events somehow seem totally believable, always grounded in the coherent reality that the author builds into the story. And yet, at the same time, it is riddled with all sorts of little mysteries - in both the setting, and in many of the characters as well, that keep me reading them way too fast.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion Vol 4  By Beth Brower   A

I'm not going to bother reviewing individual books. This one continues to be wonderful. Read them.

According to Beth Brower, she does have a plan for all the books, though as I said above it is not evident. One of the reasons for it not being evident, is that her plan is to cover three to four years of Emma's life, with each installment recounting just two months of it Thus it should take 18 to 24 volumes to finish the story she is planning to write. With only 8 books released so far, I don't expect to live to see the series completed. But, you know, I really don't want these books to reach some sort of ending. I don't want all the little mysteries solved, all the characters and their pasts revealed. It's the journey, not the destination that I'm enjoying.

I will wrap up the final four volumes and see if I have anything more to say, after giving you a break, time to go out, sign on for a free month of Kindle Unlimited, and read them for yourself. You'll thank me.

Three Novels in a Year* (& One on the Way) What's With This?

I wish I knew. To tell the truth, I find it a little spooky. Part of it can be explained by the simple fact that I've been able to come up with stories to write. When I have one, I can set it down in words, at about a thousand words a day. And I write every day. Those words add up. Still, coming up with stories has been, in the past, a problem for me. Unlike some authors, I don't have a head full of story ideas, and never have. Nevertheless, you only need one idea at a time, and, at the moment, I've had one idea after the next. I can't fully explain exactly why that is. 

I do, however, have several ideas...

One is that I have returned, in a way, to my roots when it comes to telling stories. My first two stories, Some Day Days, and A Summer in Amber, which, while set in the near future, making them science fiction, were basically light novels with an element of romance. Some Day Days quite explicitly had a romance as its focus, though not, strictly speaking a romance novel. I considered myself a science fiction fan in those days, so it was natural that I would write and market those stories as science fiction. But fact is that they had little more than the future setting to make them SF, as they weren't built around some wonderful new idea to explore, typical of true SF. 

Since A Passage to Jarpara, I have been writing novels like those again. Novels about people. They're speculative fiction only in their settings, and that only because I don't care to write contemporary or historical fiction. I don't want to try to fit my stories into this world. I read and write to escape it.

I must admit, however, that I still used some science fiction elements in these last three stories, mostly to explore the history of those Earth colonized worlds. If I'm honest, that has been something of a crutch. I used them to create some sort of an interesting ending. Still, since Passage to Jarpara, I have all but eliminated "adventure" from my stories. They have gotten more and more mundane, save for those endings. 

My newest novel, The Daval-Mers Dossier is, on the surface, a mystery story. But again, that's sort of a gimmick. The mystery, a low stakes one, is the excuse to introduce a fictional character from Chateau Clare, just for fun. This story has no science fiction elements, save for its locale, the world of Chateau Clare and Glencrow Summer. And my Project 2028, is going to be 100% a light fiction novel.

In short, I am no longer writing genre fiction. Oh, I may use a science fiction or fantasy tag when listing the books, so that my readers can find them, but that's just marketing. The heart of my stories going forward will be everyday stories of ordinary people, on a world much like our own, or rather, as it was, a hundred years ago. Those are the stories I like daydreaming about, and can get me motivated to put then into words. There will no doubt be a price to be paid for this change in direction, since many of my readers are science fiction and/or fantasy fans, and my new books aren't science fiction or fantasy. Oh well. 

But that brings us to my second idea about what's going on, which is doubling down of what I've done throughout my writing.

Which is to say, writing my stories to entertain myself. This has always been true. However, I have occasionally taken into account what I think might appeal to readers when coming up with a story idea.  Beneath the Lanterns, was my attempt at writing fantasy, and my Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories were a return to the setting of The Bright Black Sea, my most popular book. The Girl on the Kerb was my attempt to branch out into espionage stories. But all my stories have to appeal to me, and those story ideas are rare.

I've now gone all in on this mindset since I started writing Passage to Jarpara, which is to say, writing the stories with no regard whatsoever for their commercial prospects. I wrote Passage to Jarpara because I liked the character and the setting, and really wanted to get Taef Lang to the job he always dreamed of. If it mean writing a glorified travelogue, well, so be it. Chateau Clare was, in part, a rude gesture to the popular modern fantasy novels, with their wars, magic, bad or morally grey characters, blood, and guts. I wanted to write the opposite, but not cozy fantasy either. I wanted something different, I think it is and that was what I set out to do.

I expected sales its reception might not be great. So when four of my seven beta readers never sent back any feedback on it, I took that as a glimpse of its future prospects. And to tell the truth, I found that encouraging. It meant I written something different, and had fun doing so. Indeed, I went directly on to write Glencrow Summer, a story even more "just a novel" than Chateau Clare, before Chateau Clare was even published. Like a Zen archer, I was content to let my arrow land wherever it was meant to.

The Daval-Mers Dossier now builds on that tradition. It's inspired by a suggestion from one of my beta readers, and it includes a dog, since another beta reader likes dogs. Why not? It has something of a mystery story format, but has the same, leisurely paced, low stakes story, with too many words style that has become my own. Only its setting makes it maybe science fiction or fantasy. Otherwise everything is very everyday normal.

And I can report that I have already written over 15,000 words of  my Project 2028 novel, which once again set in Lorria, a year after Glencrow Summer with a new set of characters, along with a cameo or two. This one also won't have a whiff of science fiction or fantasy, save for its setting.

As I said above, I think all this creativity comes from letting go and not worrying about pleasing readers, Instead, I trust that if I like it, there'll be readers who will as well. This approach frees me to just have fun writing and publishing. 

And finally, I think doing something different for every book makes writing interesting, even if it is somewhat disconcerting for regular readers. It's producing art rather than a product. 

Still, the thing is that you can't fail when publishing your own individual work, because you can't succeed. Oh, some are making money writing and publishing, a few even a lot of money, for a while. But the statistical chances of this happening are so remote that you need not concern yourself with the possibility, even if that's your goal. Writing and publishing are worthy ends in and of themselves. It doesn't matter how accomplished, or unaccomplished you are, it's your creative expressions that count. 

So, I guess I'm writing a lot because I enjoy writing. I love dreaming up people and their world. I want to see where I can take them, and them, me. I love playing and painting with words. Writing, for me, is not the work you hear people saying that it is. It's fun and that's what makes writing easy for me, and in the end, what makes me as prolific as I am.

*Published. I had written half of Passage to Jarpara before going back and finishing it, starting in Oct. 2023.

The one on the way... Late May, Early June

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 103)

 

Oh my! Here we go down another rabbit hole! Maybe it's a rabbit warden. In any event, the books I have for you today, and indeed, I have two, since they are novella length rather than novel length, where the suggestion of my daughter, after learning that I had read a Jane Austen book. She thought I would like them. She said I could read them on Kindle Unlimited. I didn't have Kindle Unlimited. But she assured me that I could get a couple of months for free if I looked around... and then read them for free. Well, the best deal on Amazon itself was one one month free, or two months for $.99. Good enough. And well, since you can't take it with you, or send it on ahead, I opted for the two month deal.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Vol. 1  by Beth Brower  A

You might not think, judging from the cover, that this would not be a popular book, but trust me, it is. At the time I am writing this, it's Amazon's number 3673 on the best seller, which translates to selling something  like 66 copies a day. The thing about books is there's so many of them, so many types of books, with so many different types of readers, that you just can't imagine how wide a spectrum there is in reading. I bring that up as this book is an example of such an unexpected book and success.

Now, on to the book. 

As the title says, this is a fictional journal of Emma M Lion, an account of two months in the spring of 1883. It is set in London (ish?) England,  "ish" because this seems to be something of an alternative London fantasy. Not only do the street names do not match our London's St Crispin where this story is set.(This is common in historical fiction.) But there is a ghost, as well as the strange fact that the residents' personal items seem to turn up in other people's houses for no explicable reason. Oh, and the signs are either upside down or backwards. Otherwise it seems set in a fictional, but almost historical London of the period.

The journal begins when the twenty year old Emma arrives in London's, St Crispin's neighborhood, after having spent the last three years looking after an ancient and unpleasant cousin Matilda. She is the heir to Lapis Lazuli house in London's St Crispin neighborhood, once she turns 21. However her cousin (by marriage) Archibald Flat has been living there for many years; a favor granted by Miss Lion's father. Mr Flat is an unpleasant man with a deep grudge against Emma, and sets her up in the garrot of her own house. And so Emma sets out on her new life as a semi-independent woman - as independent as any woman could be in 1883, which is to say, hardly at all. Unless one is willing to break the rules. And pay the consequences.

The book is written as a series of journal entries describing the house, its neighborhood, her friends, as well as offering glimpses of her past. At the end, we are introduced to a mysterious new tenant of Lapis Lazuli minor, who is to take up residence in a portion of the house split off to rent out  And as we leave this entry we have Emma's engaged by her aunt as the "counterpart" to her daughter, Emma's lovely and nice, cousin Arabella Spencer, during her first "season" as she is introduction to London society to land a wealthy husband. Emma is expected to look dowdy enough to enhance the beauty of Arabella. 

The charm of this book is, for me, the writing, clever, witty, and as engaging as Emma who "writes" it. It is merely an introduction to the tale, which I believe currently numbers 8 volumes. I've been told that the pace picks up in volume 3, but I'm in no hurry. And well, you can read these slim volumes in a day.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Vol. 2  by Beth Brower  A

Each of these volumes recount two months in the life of Emma M Lion. My daughter described these books as about this young woman who lives in London in the 1880's and goes about and does things. And so far, that about all that I can tell you. In these first volumes the reader is introduced to a lot of interesting characters who you know will play their parts in the series going forward, but just how... That is the question. Or rather questions. Lots of them.

As I may have hinted in the introduction to the volume 1, this is a wonderfully strange book, delightfully written. I don't know if there are more books like this, but I have to doubt it. Sometimes, reading these books, and some of the others I've read over the last several years, I find myself amazed at the pure and original creativity that books like this represent. Imagination is such a wonderful gift. And when it is paired with a gift of wit and a way with words, well, reading it makes you glad you're alive to be able to enjoy them.

I've read these first two books in two days. They are short, but it looks like the books get longer as the series goes on. If you have Kindle Unlimited, give them a try for yourself. You see my grade. Very highly recommended.

Cover Art for The Darval-Mers Dossier

 

Above is the original cover art that I painted for my up-coming mystery novel, The Darval-Mers Dossier. As a painting, it is not very good. However, it was painted as a "commercial" work, i.e. for the cover of my book. As such it had to have certain characteristics, like the main action on the left half of the painting, and representing an actual scene to be found in the book. So, despite it being a very so-so painting, it looked to be good enough to use, with modifications "in post" as they say in the movie business, so I moved ahead to use it.

For the proposed cover I had two scenes from the story in mind. The one above, and a landscape scene; a twisting road lining a steep bluff with some motorcars and the sea far below and in the distance - inspired by some scenes from the movie "To Catch a Thief", i.e. the Italian Riviera or some similar place. However, I couldn't quite get the angles of this landscape scene right in my head, not being able to build a complete picture in my mind, and so I started with the train station scene from the story, since I've painted a fair number of similar train station paintings before. Like the one below.

Oh, how I wish they used steam engines in Lorria, but alas, no steam, no smoke. I had to work with what I had written. However, as I said, I knew that I could adjust what I had in post, and hopefully make it work. The first thing I did was add the "cartoon" effects that give each paintbrush stroke a little shadow. It serves to sharpen up the painting. Below is the painting with that effect added.

The effect was subtle, but I didn't want to make it too overpowering. I just wanted to sharpen the edges a bit. The next step was to fit it into the cover. I didn't need the whole painting, so I could resize it or move it about to fit what I needed. I also knew that I would have a title box on the cover and to a lesser degree, a blurb box on the back cover to consider. I made the image bigger than what I needed for the cover to give me the freedom to frame the painting to fit the cover. Below is the current result. I can still move it about or resize it, but all in all, I'm happy with the way it turned out. So this should be pretty close, if not exactly the cover of the paperback version of The Darval-Mers Dossier.

The release date is not set yet, but I expect to have all the work in hand for an early June 2025 release. Stay tuned for more details!

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 102) EXTRA! EXTRA!

 

Today we have a lighthearted homage to James Bond, Matt Helm, Napoleon Solo, and all those classic cold war spies in a briskly paced thriller.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

John Nuclear at the Perihelion Palace by Berthold Gambrel  B

The title character, John Nuclear, is a semi-retired special agent who is called back into service by his old boss for a mission to recover a certain mysterious item, the tianming. Exactly what the tianming is, (besides a MacGuffin) he isn't told. All he's asked to do is get it any way he can. And to do that, he must go to the Perihelion Hotel where the criminal who has gotten hold of the the tianming is auctioning it off to the highest bidder. Of course Mr Nuclear isn't the only agent that has been assigned to acquire the tianming. The others include; Tau Centi, a rather mysterious agent of which not much is known about, Ivan Volgakov, a subtle, charismatic agent, Professor Ulysses H Pinecone (pronounced peen - ah - conay) an inventor with a interesting bodyguard, and La Rouge Elite, the Queen of Hearts, one of the most dangerous and successful agent still active in the world. Over the course of the story Mr Nuclear get to meet and deal with all of  them, one way or another.

Since this is a novella length story, it's intricate plot unfolds at a breakneck pace, always with lots of twists, turns, and gunfights along the way. Only at the very end do we learn the purpose of the tianming device.

As I mentioned in the lede, Mr Gambrel has written a fast paced thriller laced with humor and cheerful shout-outs to all the staples of the Bonds and Solos of books and movies from the 60's and 70's - from beautiful spies, to unexpected villains, gunfights high stakes, and narrow escapes. A treat for fans of the genre

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 101)

 

We're back to Georgette Heyer this week, with a sequel of sorts. This book is set some twenty-five years after the events of These Old Shades.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Devil's Cub by Georgette Heyer  B-

As I said in the lede, this book is something of a sequel to These Old Shades. In it we have the son of the romantic principles of that book, who is very much a rake with a violent temper, and who is much given to fighting duels in which he is known to have killed a man. In this story, he comes close to doing so again, and this time he is more or less forced to flee England,  incase his victim dies, since that would be considered murder. While fleeing England, he decides to take along a young woman, who in turn, hopes to force him to marrying her or risk a great scandal. However, her older sister is given his message by mistake, and she decides to take her sister's place and when this is discovered, (she wears a mask to pull this off), she plans to make it seem like a great joke. Unfortunately, when the rake, the Devil's Cub of the title, discovers this, he doesn't take it a a joke, but, in rage, takes the older sister to France with him instead.

In most of Heyer's books, she has the women fall in love with either "bad boys" or the unflappable domineering man, so you can easily guess the ultimate ending of this tale. But, as in this story, you always have intrigues, misunderstandings, and misadventures along the way to that inevitable ending. In this case, however, I really disliked the male lead, the rake, and could not credit his transformation to something other than a violent, short tempered rake. I pity the poor heroine who will have to put up with his violent temper, a temper that I seriously doubt would be tamed even by love. So, all in all, fine for what it is, a historic romance, but far from her best. 

My Secrets of Success, Such As It Is

I'm happy to say that, unlike many artists and writers, I've never suffered for my art. I believe in talent. My talents. Both writing and painting have, from an early age come naturally to me. They're gifts. Gifts that I've enjoyed all my life. As gifts, I take no credit for them beyond using them and having fun doing so. Writing and painting are not hard for me, they're not work.

The fact that I've never entertained lofty goals helps me enjoy my talents, such as they are. I don't anguished over my limitations in my art and writing. I'm content with what I can do, get better, if possible, and not regret what I can't do. Many people have far more talent than I. I give them the joy of it.

Time is another key component to my successes. Several aspects of time.

The first is that I started writing my published novels around the time I turned 60 years old. By that time, I'd read several thousand novels, and knew what I liked and what I didn't like. I just set out to write the stories I liked in the style I liked. Unlike younger writers, I knew what I wanted to write and how I wanted to write them, and didn't need all the books, articles, blogs, and seminars that younger writers feel, or at least told, they need to shape their writing. 

Another aspect of time is free time. The time and energy to write. While I did write several novels and some shorter pieces when I was working, it was only after I wasn't working that, over the course of the last 15 years, I've written all my published work. I've had the time and mental bandwidth to focus on writing, and have used it.

And then there is daily time. I write nearly every day. It is the first thing I do each morning, seven days a week. I don't leap out of bed eager to write. I crawl out and often have to force myself to sit down and start writing. But then, before I know it, an hour or more has just flown by and it's time for toast with marmalade and a mug of tea. Sometimes, when the story is going well or I'm nearing the end, I'll spend another hour or two in the evening writing as well. This consistency, for me, has been the key for getting books written.

Another factor is that, except for a few years of selling my paintings, I've not tried to turn art into money. With a few notable exceptions, notable because they are the few exceptions, art, in any medium, pays shit. I've long known that. If you really want to make money doing art, you need to find a real job with a paycheck every week or two in the field. And even so, it won't likely pay well. Free lance writing is a side gig, a hobby, a passion, or a dream. Not a job.

All of this is not to say that I haven't struggled. Mostly it has been dreaming up stories I want to write or scenes I want and can paint. This can be frustrating, but once I do have a story in my head, I find it easy to set it down in words. Perhaps too easily and with too many words. Oh well. I just like messing around, either in paint or words.

Treating writing as a work of art is another key to my success. I treat it as a form of personal expression. I write the stories I want, the way I want them. Thus, I have no need for critique partners, alpha and beta readers to read and critique my work while in progress. No second guesses. Only when I'm done writing three or more drafts, do I show my story to my beta readers, mostly for their help in proofreading, though I do make many of the minor changes they might suggest. But otherwise, I just trust myself and my talent.

This idea of writing for the fun of it, extends even further. Not only do I write for the fun of it, I refuse to do what isn't fun for me. I have no, or few and fleeting, unpleasant tasks in my writing and publishing. Things like, in LibreOffice, getting the first page of the story in the paperback version to start on page 1, while having no page numbers for the front matter pages. Little things like that, which are more challenges than anything else. I've had to innovate, try different covers, explore new venues and formats to achieve my sales, but truthfully, I find that interesting, a game to play, and rather enjoy doing things like that, so it's hardly work. 

A lifetime of having to watch my pennies means that I don't like spending money. And I don't spend money, nor time and effort, trying to sell my books. I'm not a social person, so X, TikTok, and the like, are well out of my comfort zone so I don't use them either. I don't spend countless hours posting, liking, commenting, trying to build a following and making friends with influencers in order to sell my books. I waste my time in other, more agreeable ways. 

I owe a great deal of my happiness with my writing and publishing to the fact that I decided that since the money I would likely make by putting a price on my books would not make an appreciable difference in my life, I'd forgo it. Instead, right from the get-go, I'd decided to measure my success in readers rather than dollars. Since starting selling books ten years ago now, I have always sold hundreds of books each month, every month, by selling them for free, without putting any effort into it beyond writing and releasing them. And as a result, I've now sold more than 1000,000 books. Oh, and made a penny a book, clear profit as well, thanks to Amazon's policy, not mine.

And well there is the fact that I just like just sharing my "hobby" with readers. It feels right. I never have to agonize over if I am giving my readers value for their money. Some readers will like them, others won't, but with my preferred price of free, I don't lose any sleep over those who don't.

Plus, I feel that if I had gone the usual route, you know, by actually charging money for my books to reflect all the time and "work" I put into producing them, chances are that I'd only have sold a couple hundred copies. Maybe. Given that, who knows how many of the books I would've actually written? Would I have grown discouraged and given up writing years ago? I don't know. I can only imagine how discouraging it must feel to write books and sell only a relatively few copies. Still, the value of art is in the art, not in its sales. Sales don't matter. Still, it is nice...

So, all in all, the secrets of my success can be summed up as keeping it simple, trusting myself, and keeping it personal. I write and publish for me and have fun doing it. Plus, I honestly enjoy being able to share my fun, and my worlds, with you, dear readers. That's all I need. That's success, in my book.