She Flips, and then She Flops (With a Little Help from Amazon, Unsurprisingly)

This is me throwing in the towel and accepting the inevitable. I have to take my lumps because the goal posts keep getting moved. I'm starting off this post on a downer of a note, but you know me: I'm simply being candid. 

Okay, so firstly, my recent price change in response to Draft2Digital's new policy punishing low-selling authors never reached Amazon. That store is still posting my books at the old price even after three months of waiting (two? two and a half?). And when I received my royalty statement for June, I found that sales completely disappeared over at Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Apple, while they spiked over at Amazon. Gee, I wonder why...

On top of all that, I'm still pretty sickened by what I was forced to do, so seeing my royalties as well as where the sales all came from, I just went fuck this! and reverted all of my prices back to the old ones. 

I haven't sold a single book at the higher price, of course, and I'm not surprised. 

Self-publishing gurus will say "it's best to sell less at a higher price than more at a lower price". I get it. I do. But I know my readership, and I know my niche. Been in here for almost twenty years, for heaven's sake. I know. What small number I have are loyal, and I'm not willing to betray them because some CEO decided that we low-earners aren't good enough. 

So I'll take my lumps. I'm back to selling my long novellas at the 99 cent price point, and that's that. I'll pay the $12 "maintenance fee" on my next anniversary as a D2D writer. 

Another thing I did was update my Payhip site with the new prices as well as take the sale away. There's no reason to anymore since the point of the sale was to mitigate the effects of more expensive books. No more. I'm just glad -- for once -- that I haven't sold a thing over there, or I'll be owing folks refunds left and right. 

Now I know I started this post on a downer note, but I actually had all day to think about this, and as I'm about to log off and get ready for bed, I'm feeling pretty good about it. Sure, the loss of money with that stupid maintenance fee sucks, but I'm happy with my reversal, and this feels much more comfortable for me. 

So again, I'm so sorry for the whiplash, everyone. Be assured this will be my final post on the matter, and when The Shadow Groom is finally out, I'll be offering another BOGO sale (or something like BOGO) over at Payhip to celebrate the release.  

Next Up: Valérian

So when I said "soon", I clearly meant "in a week, yo". 😶 Yeah, life happened, alas. 

Anyway, I've just started work on Valérian, which is enjoying copious notes-spawning in my notebook. I'm really looking forward to this story as it's been getting pretty expansive in my head, and I've also got some pretty effective musical and visual inspiration for it. 

This image, which I'll be using in the gallery page for the book down the line, has been lurking in my hard drive for a good long time, and it's finally making itself "heard". I know it's most likely AI-generated, but I couldn't find anything else just as fantastical and creepy as hell that's from real-life cemeteries, so I apologize for its usage (to be honest, a lot of the images I've used for my gallery pages were AI-generated, which seems to be the thing now over at Pinterest, my go-to place for visual prompts). 

Then there's this song, which pretty much encapsulates the subject of the book:

I talked about that song as well as "Daniel" in an older post, and as with the image above, they're finally getting the story treatment. When the time comes for the gallery page to be made, it's going to be an embarrassment of riches for me regarding the images that can be used for the moodboard and other things. 

Yay, progress! 

'The Shadow Groom' Gallery Page Now Up

As I'm up to my ears in errands and chores, this'll be a short and sweet post. The gallery page for The Shadow Groom is now up, and there's quite a bit of background stuff I'm sharing with visitors there. Head on yonder for the goodies. 

And I'll be back soon. Maybe not today, no, but soon.  

'The Shadow Groom' Blurb

Getting there! I just finished the first round of revisions and edits, and I'm about to dive right back in for the next round. In the meantime, I submitted the book to Draft2Digital to format, so I can download my proof copy and use it for that purpose (and to have it listed ahead of time for pre-orders).

And along with that comes the book blurb. I was aiming for 250 words maximum, but it ended up blasting past and landing at around 260. At least it's not 300, eh?

All is well and perfect in the world because Errol Bricksworth and Edvin Loyola-Norikova are young (too young), in love (overly so), and betrothed at just nineteen (heaven help everyone). Their families aren’t very keen on the idea, and with the help of Errol’s beloved Uncle Sorrel, an arrangement is made meant to test the lads’ resolve to have their happily-ever-after.

It does require three months spent in an old, old gatehouse that’s not only home to mismatched furnishings, art, and miscellaneous contents spanning centuries, but a few very active ghosts as well. Errol and Edvin are to be the gatehouse’s caretakers while Uncle Sorrel, who owns the property, withdraws with his tiny staff to a cozy cottage tucked away in the wood. And for three months, both young men need to get their hands dirty, learn the rudiments of domestic life as a couple (learning how to cook helps), and get used to sharing space with lives long gone.

Errol and Edvin’s youth makes them brave and even reckless as they readily accept the terms, determined to prove those poxy adults wrong. Even those resident ghosts don’t bother them, though not all hauntings, apparently, are made the same. Equal parts irritating and unnerving, the ghosts gradually force the lads to think beyond their tiny world of two either through spectral echoes of long-forgotten lives or the quiet guidance of a gentleman known only as “the shadow groom” to former staff. 

The Shadow Groom is a humorous re-imagining of the German folktale “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was”.

As always, there might be some tweaking still for the blurb, but at least it's one significant step forward short of pressing "publish" on my author dashboard.  

Calendar Changes and Updated Cover Art

As I work my way through The Shadow Groom, I'm already sorting out my notes and my book queue. For a while, I had Camera Obscura slated for November 1, but looking through my journal, I'm amassing a hefty amount of (very pushy) notes for Valérian. There are a number of things still needing to sort out with Camera Obscura, and I'm not going to steamroll my way through those missing patches of plot points. Done it before, and it didn't turn out well (see: Eidolon).

To that end, I'm rearranging my publishing calendar and switching dates around. Camera Obscura will be released next year while Valérian will leap frog over A House of Profane Gods (which also has way more notes going for it than Camera Obscura, by the way, but not as many as Valérian) for the November slot. 

The book also enjoyed a bit of an upgrade in its cover art now that it's been shuffled forward to an earlier date (it may still be slightly tweaked, but the elements are staying):

It's certainly much more effective than the first cover art I shared. With all that said, here's the new calendar:

2026 calendar

2027 calendar

With any luck, my notes for Camera Obscura will grow along the way. If not, it'll be switching spots once more with A House of Profane Gods. I've already updated my Book News and Book List pages.

In other news, my new book prices are all set at different online stores EXCEPT for Amazon, which is taking its damn sweet time. If you purchase any of my Grotesqueries books there, you'll still be paying 99 cents until they finally post the new price.