My first video!

I decided to try a video presentation. Comments are appreciated. Yes, I will try to get a better microphone.




In other news, two new reviews:
The Road to Pemberley is reviewed at Austenprose

The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy is reviewed at The Phantom Photographer

I need a vacation

I am writing this on vacation.

I'm in Florida, actually, to help my grandmother pack up her apartment because she spents most of hurricane season with my parents in the north. But it's kind of a vacation, because I can go to the pool and I'm not in New York and I'm not going to two out of my three jobs. But I don't feel very relaxed because I'm not on vacation, or I don't feel like it.

The Road to Pemberley is supposed to come out this week, but so far it hasn't. The first reviews are coming out, which are always stressful, and I'm trying to get the batch of stories together that I'm going to release as a free eBook to boost the sales of The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy, because the publisher needs more time to look at sales and decide if they want to buy book 4. The requirements of social networking have almost nothing to do with writing at this point, and they are constant. For those of you who say, "Well just unplug your computer," my answer is, "Uh, on book launch week that's very irresponsible. The publisher expects me to do a lot of publicity legwork." I do unplug my computer and turn off my phone for 25 hours every week for Shabbos, which is more disconnected than most non-Amish people get, but being a writer is a constant thing.

Then there's the actual business of writing. You know, novels, not blog posts. Or revising. Or looking for people's opinions to help me revise. Or doing research. Or making sure my initial research was correct. Or looking for research books and pricing them out. Today Grandma and I found a new dollar bookstore (there's a lot of these in Florida, where people die and their kids have to donate the books somewhere as fast as possible - it's also a great place to buy furniture for the same reason). I picked up two books for two different projects which may or may not materialize in the future, but couldn't find anything Austen history-related, just mostly a lot of ancient Roman and Greek stuff, and one book on modern Chinese culture. If I was still doing research for Aristotle Vampire (which was a book that didn't sell to publishers), I would have just bought all the books on ancient Greece, but I wasn't, so I only picked up one.

I think about writing - or what I'm going to write, or what I'm going to think about as a story but not actually write - basically all the time. If my mind is not actively involved in doing something that requires my complete attention, that's what I'm thinking about. It's very hard for me to disconnect and take a mental vacation - I really have to go somewhere that's involving unto itself, like Israel (which I'm probably going to in November) or India or somewhere exotic and engaging. If you give me time alone I will basically just think about writing and increasingly, worry about my career. I like to think that if I got one book deal, a really good deal that used to be standard 10 years ago for published writers ($30K), I would stop worrying about constantly selling books to publishers, but to be honest I probably wouldn't. It's too much of a pattern now.

There's a new website coming, and hopefully my new roommate will be hired to help me with streamlining the publicity stuff so I don't have to spend so much time on keeping it all straight, and I have the eBook. So there's a lot of stuff coming down the line. It's good, but it makes it hard to relax.

Website update

Two pieces of news:

(1) I am working on a new version of the main site which is easier for me to alter as I see fit. It will be in the same location so there'll be no need to update your links.

(2) The Road to Pemberley should be in stores this week. Yay!

We'll see if Google+ makes my social networking life simpler ... or more complicated. That is all.

Quick updates

I am recovering from a medical emergency and don't have much to say otherwise. Sorry this post is late.

Book Rat's Giveaway - get both The Road to Pemberley and The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy! Contest closes June 30th.

New Review at A Curious Statistical Anomaly Blog

Signal Received?

I don't know who's actually reading this blog, but whatever, it's more for keeping people up to date if they need somewhere to go to do that.

Right now I'm in a holding period (hence Fallout: New Vegas, which I'm still playing but can now successfully stop doing for five minutes) with my writing. Book 5 is at Ulysses Press, and they have another two weeks to decide if they want to buy it, and also if they want to buy the other five books in a bundle, which is always on the table. It's cheaper for them (there's always a risk that the advance money will be higher if you buy book by book) and a load off my mind, but it's also a huge commitment by them as publishers, so we'll see.

I was really OK with the wait for the first two weeks, and now I'm getting closer to going crazy. Normally I am pretty adjusted to waits, because publishing is all about that. Waiting to hear back from agents. Waiting to hear back from publishers. Wanting for the contract. Waiting for the book to come out. Waiting for the royalty statement. Waiting for the check to clear accounting and get to me. But every once in a while, it gets to me.

Publishing is crazy. If I don't sell a book, I only get paid twice a year, when the publisher reports royalties and provides a check if I've earned royalties (which I always do, thanks guys!). If I sell a book, there's an advance check, which is split up sometimes over the signing of contract and the publication, so you get a $1500 check once and then another like 10 months later. Or they split it up three ways: contract signing, delivery of manuscript to the publisher, publication. That hasn't happened to me yet because my advances haven't been big enough for the publishers to use that to hold on to the money for longer; publishers love holding on to money for as long as possible. It's part of their business model. Eventually I will get my money - emphasis on eventually.

I was once at WorldCon, a sci-fi convention with a lot of writers, and someone told me an old adage about writers: "Amateurs talk about craft. Professionals talk about money." Which I've found to be pretty true. I don't have much to say about the craft of writing. I sit down, I write, usually starting around midnight. Either I need to do it because I have a story in me or I don't, and then I go do something else like paint while watching movies until 5 am. I don't think that much about it. It's a physical need, something I have to do because I have a story in my head, or I don't have a story and I don't need to do it. It's like thinking about breathing - people don't think too much about breathing. I don't think too much about writing. This paragraph might seriously be the longest amount of time I've ever spent talking about it on a pure craft level.

Reminder: If you would like a review copy of The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy, email me. The same goes for the upcoming anthology The Road to Pemberley, which I put together with Ulysses, but the book will not be available until the first week of July.

Out of Office

Just a reminder that the sunshine sale on The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (Kindle Edition) ends on the 15th of June, so go pick up your copy today! And I would say other stuff but literally every moment that I am not actively playing Fallout: New Vegas is living agony. So, back to that.

Late Post

It's not technically Sunday, but hey, I was writing a story for you guys and was busy.

New this week:

(1) The big news is that The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (Kindle Edition) is on sale for $1.99 on Amazon. Go enjoy this sunshine sale until June 15th! If you do not have a Kindle, you can download a reader to read it on your computer or iPad or print it out.

(2) I started a fan page on Facebook, which does not seem to be as good as my group page or as useful, but nonetheless exists. Nobody knows where things are going to fall out with the whole social networking thing and I want people to be able to find me, so they're both staying up.

(3) My agent Katie submitted Book 5 to Ulysses Press on Monday, and they have a month to respond. So we'll see.

(4) The offer for a review copy of book 4 for United States and Canada readers is still open, as long as you write a review for your website and post it on Amazon as well. This offer is somewhat open to foreign readers - it's definitely open if you'll take a .pdf file. If you're from a foreign country and you've read the previous 3 books and reviewed one or two of them, and you're willing to do the same for the fourth, we can talk. Contact me.

(5) The three very short stories for the collection are finished, and have gone to my editor. When she's finished, they will be posted on my website as a .pdf and on all the available eReaders as free package. It's only about 46 pages long, but it is free material.

(6) Speaking of collections, the fan fiction anthology The Road to Pemberley, which I edited, is coming out July 1st. I wrote the introduction and a very short story in the collection. If you would like a review copy, again, contact me. Offer good in US and Canada, in .pdf format overseas.

(7) This week is Shavuot, the Jewish holiday where we celebrate receiving the Torah. Good Yom Tov!