More Music

I've been compiling a lot of good writing music lately. I should probably make another 8Tracks playlist but I'm lazy, so I'm gonna share some of it here instead. I listened to a lot of these while writing Divinity...

Divinity Pre-order + Vacation!

So, Divinity is available for pre-order, and I'm now going on vacation. I'm only gonna take two or three days, but it's gonna be a nice bit of rest before I hop onto Tears of Sunrise and the sequel to Divinity.

I'm going to read And I Darken and enjoy the new speaker I just bought for my computer and blatantly ignore social media and get back into sketching and go on walks and venture into the city for some rare human interaction.

In short, I'm doing all I can to avoid being burnt-out. I have to write Untold as well, but the plot for that just changed drastically and it's still in the outlining stages because of the switch.

It's so much I need to take a step back for a few days, get my head back in balance, and then hop back in.

I always like a little break after publishing a new book, anyway, for some reason. Postpartum depression or something, indie author version, but my books burn bright and fast and once they're done I miss the fun of writing them, but I'm also a little dead. It's nice to be able to breath out, sit back, and feel my shoulders relax knowing there's no deadline or release date on my shoulders and I can do what I want.

I wanted to write Untold next because I already revealed the cover, but I'm not gonna rush it - I think the idea needs some time in the incubator.

What I'll probably write next is the first sequel to Divinity. I can see it being 4 or 5 books, honestly, so I want to get another one out fast. Then it will probably be Tears of Sunrise.

After that - the world...

Angels and Everything

So last night I finished my last round of copy edits on Divinity, wrote the acknowledgements, formatted the ebook, and sent it off through Amazon's review system. The pre-order should be up within 12 hours if everything goes right. And if it doesn't, I guess I can always bury myself under a blanket nest and pretend the world ended.

I'm super excited to be putting another book out, but I also plan to fix the whole paperback situation today after I've done the cat box and dishes - aka, the lack of a paperback edition.

I haven't seen the SOSAS paperback, but I'm sure it's beautiful.

And it's my only book available as a paperback.

Why? I'm lazy. And formatting paperbacks doesn't just mean more formatting and more forms to fill out - it also means more graphic design, more proofing, hours of work for each book that could be spent...writing a new book.

I wrote the draft of Divinity, which was like 30,000 words, in 7 days, and edited it in 5. The finished book is over 53,000 words, and I'm kind of in love with it. I write books fairly fast.

But that doesn't mean they don't take time.

Especially when you consider that I have 4 novel series going right now:

-The Charmers Series
-The Evernight Falling Chronicles
-The Dreamworld Duet
-The Seraph Chronicles

And 4 standalones to write:

-Maelstrom
-Untold
-We Die Like Angels
-Desperation

As well as some projects I'm kicking around the side. I was also originally writing a book called A Darkness So Divine, but I scraped the project.

To be perfectly clear I love having a lot going on and a lot of projects to choose from, but it is also a huge workload and a lot of pressure, so I've put off working on paperback editions to focus on more drafting and editing for new projects.

But I think I need a tiny break from publishing stuff, and the best thing to do would be focus on new editions of old books instead of putting out new titles, and let myself take more time to write for a bit.

So I'm going to hold off on announcing release dates until I have two or three books ready to publish at once, and then I'm gonna drop a bunch of 'em on you like bombs.

In the meantime, paperbacks.

I hope I can order some soon - I particularly want Divinity and Shadows of Ourselves in paperback. Shadows is still my best book in my opinion, but Divinity is fun of a different kind.

And the sex is a lot more detailed. >:D

I'll post when the Divinity pre-order goes up, but if you're a blogger who wants and arc feel free to comment or message me at ApolloBlake@mail.com for a copy!

The Return to Editing Hell - Also, Cake

I'm deep in the pits of editing hell, sorting through alternate characterizations and back stories and fictional family trees, so I can't take the time to write a super long blog post today.

Once I finish this round of edits I'm starting tonight I'll be writing another self-publishing know-how type post, though. Probably.

Right now I'm focused on making Divinity the most fun adventure I can. . .

I've been eating this Dairy Queen ice cream cake while I obsessively edit and tweak the cover design. I think it's pretty fun, so far. It's got angels and monsters and hot boys and Devil Wears Prada-ish subplots. I feel like readers will be able to tell I'm only scratching the surface of things with this book, and the questions they're left with will lead them onto book two.

Because, damn, book 2. Things are going to go a little insane.

I don't think I realized when I started writing these how action-driven the series was going to be, overall, and I'm having fun coordinating fight scenes and stuff. Every time I try to write a romance I inevitably end up throwing in battle scenes, because I can't help myself.

I just have to ask myself, if my book doesn't have elaborate fight scenes then am I doing my inner six year-old, who lived on Dark Angel and Kill Bill and Pirates of the Caribbean, any justice at all?

Nope. So, more swords.

It seems like a pretty simple solution to all my problems.

One thing I really love about Divinity and the Seraph Chronicles in general is I'm letting myself play around with pov and verb-tense. I know that's not something everyone loves, but I feel like when it's done right it's actually fairly enjoyable.

Right now there is an epilogue I'm thinking of taking out, even though I like it quite a lot - I feel like it fucks with the momentum of the book.

Since I'm too lazy to search for a good, non-spoiler-y quote right now, I'll leave you with a bit of the music I've been listening to while writing this bad boy;

Things I wish I Knew Before I Started Self-Publishing

There are plenty of posts like this out there, and plenty more that teach you how to self-publish piece by piece. I don't feel the need to make too many in-depth tutorials about that, because there are people who have already said those things better than I can.

There are also certainly authors who have been both writing and self-publishing for much longer than me. I've been writing for nearly nine years now, but I've only been publishing since 2014--first, writing erotic romance under a pen name, and later, the young adult and new adult books I write and publish now as Apollo Blake. On July 29th I'm putting out my first New Adult paranormal romance with erotic aspects in it as Cosmo Knox to separate it from the more tame books. So while I do feel confident giving publishing advice and guidance, I'm also aware that there are authors out there with much more in their repertoire to share than I have.

If anything, the most advice I have to offer is about graphic design (I do have some cover design tutorials planned for the future) but there are quite a few thing I wish I'd known when I started self-publishing, and I find it fascinating to hear about other writer's processes anyway, so I figured I would share them for any beginners out there.


Writing your next book is more important than any kind of social media marketing you can do.

Social media followers aren't necessarily book-buyers. Having a large number of followers doesn't guarantee success or sales, and relying on them too much as opposed to producing more product will hurt you in the long run. It's good to get the word out there, but another book that's produced with care and good craft has more push behind it at the end of the day than a tweet that gets 15 minutes of attention.

This isn't to say social media is useless; it can lead to increased sales, but it's much more common for a new book to spur on sales than it is for one of your tweets or blog posts to be one of the few that goes viral. Sure, a new social media post might get you some more sales, but a new book is almost guaranteed to.

You can make good book covers yourself, but you have to be honest with yourself.

Buy a graphics program like Photoshop or Paint Tool Sai. (I use Sai, because I like it best, but it's not really meant for photo-manipulation.) If you can afford it, a graphics tablet. (I like Wacom.)

Now learn to use them. Learn by doing. You can be surprised how purely awesome you can get at developing new skill-sets when you have the internet at your disposal. Learning new languages and instruments and stuff like graphic design or how to build furniture gets much easier. Develop an eye for good stock and look at photo-manipulation tutorials and learn how to create new effects. Improvise using the tools in the program you like and you'll develop both a style and a useful eye for aesthetic and emotion in imagery, over time. It helps to watch a lot of video tutorials and look at which kind of covers you like, observe how other editors place things and how they adjust colors. There is a wealth of both speedpaints and tutorials on Youtube that are not only amazing, but also entertaining as hell.

Eventually you'll be producing high-quality covers and saving costs on cover design by doing it yourself while getting just as good a product, but you have to be honest with yourself; evaluate your art and question how it stands up against other authors, compare it to the covers on bestselling books. Learn about what draws the reader eye and what people like in visual imagery, learn about colors and how certain aesthetics evoke a certain emotion, look at other covers in that genre. You can't learn design if you can't see where you error and learn to improve, but it is both fun and worth it.

I have never taken a professional design course, everything I know about image editing I learned myself, and (not to brag) I think I've created some very pretty book covers:

 

You can find good stock on Canva for a dollar an image, Pixabay and sites like it have free commercial-use stock, and you can even find cool textures and stock on DeviantArt that creators put out for free commercial use. (Always be sure to read stock and resource rules! I tend to use DA for textures and little else.)

Reviews aren't always an indication of sales.

I have some books that have four- and five-star reviews that don't sell as many copies as my books with zero. Publishing is a weird industry, and while reviews (both positive and negative) definitely help, they don't always have an affect, or, when they do, a large one. My title with the best sales has zero reviews and has still become my top earner. Don't sweat it if your book doesn't get reviews straight off the bat; a quality product will still draw sales regardless.

It's better to write the book only you can write than try to fit into genre norms. 

Genres are meant to indicate certain aspects of your work to readers and buyers, not to dictate every aspect of the content itself. Allowing genre or age group to force your writing into a box where you strive to hit genre trends will hurt you and your career. More importantly, it will usually negatively impact your creativity and take the fun out of writing. Don't sacrifice aspects of your art in order to turn your book into a clone of its peers. Allow your original voice to shine through. It's easy to start thinking of your books as solely commercial ventures once you become your own publisher, but don't lose sight of your unique artistic voice, because it will always strengthen the personality of your work. 

It's good to have a backlist, even if waiting to publish is painful.

Waiting to put out a book you know is ready sucks, but you will always draw more readers putting out the books in a series closer to each other than you would putting out one book at a time. Even unrelated novels are more beneficial financially if they're put out closer together--readers want to binge, just like TV audiences do. Content consumers have big appetites all around. If you want to be prolific but don't want to waste time building up a backlist of long novels or simply don't have it, novellas are a fun way to put out titles faster without sacrificing story and quality, sort of a showcase of what you can do as an author, and a fun little reading experience on its own. Be warned, though--novella readers and novel readers tend to run in different crowds, so you can't always be confident in them following you over to longer works. There is a decent market for novellas, though, and they're both fun to write and useful for developing a stronger writing skill-set, just like short stories, but with a bit more meat on their bones.

Other authors are your friends and you should be giving back.

The indie community has your back. Really, they do. For every author that seems like a living spam-bot just throwing their books at you, there are two more who are kind, thoughtful, talented, and creating good art. Give back. Spread the word, offer a helping hand, use word of mouth to help the careers of other indies. Put your money where your mouth is, so to speak.

Making good art is better than making acceptable art.

Good enough isn't good enough. You should be striving to make each book you put out better than the last and deliver the best product you can. Always be looking for ways to improve on all aspects of production, be it voice, cover design, formatting, marketing, or more. You owe it to people buying your books to work as hard as you can to create an enjoyable, riveting experience.

Authors like Jennifer Ellision, Leigh Ann Kopans, and Nenia Campbell make really good art and put out books with production value (editing, cover-quality, prose, and formatting) that matches their traditionally-published peers.

Be honest with yourself with what you're putting out and do your best to improve it. It's not uncommon for me to release new editions of old books that I've given a firmer editing or a new cover because of how much I've learned since its initial release. That's another thing: no book left behind. You might think its too late to save a title in your catalog that didn't have the best cover or had a few odd quirks in the formatting, but it's next to nothing to give a book a new, better cover or another editing pass and tweak it to improve the overall quality, and it can rejuvenate an old title and bring in new sales. You might not think it matters, but it matters to people who will read that book in the future, so don't just strive to improve with new books--apply what you learn as you go to the old ones, too.

Don't take yourself too seriously.

The number one cause of writer's block is putting too much weight on your own shoulders. Let's be honest for a minute, okay? You're not curing the zombie virus, you're not ending world violence, you're not building a helicopter or sailing across the ocean on a floating mattress--so take a deep breath and chill. At the end of the day no matter how much work goes into your book it isn't going to turn into some magic tome whose pages glow that cures diseases with just a touch and saves the world. You're just writing a book. Have fun with it, and try to make it fun for the reader. Accept that when it's done it's done, and move on to the next project.

Seriously, write the book only you can write.

You will always write faster when you're not writing something just because you feel like it's what you should be writing. What do you like in a story? If you love problematic kidnap romance (ahem, ahem) then don't force yourself to write worldly literary fiction, just 'cause it seems proper. If you like experimental lyrical prose, quit forcing yourself to slam out chick-lit novels that annoy you. If your favorite books are trashy paperback crime novels or formulaic fantasy romances that are fun to read at the laundromat, why are you writing dark magical realism and trying to be the next Neil Gaimon? It's not that hard to figure out that if you write what you love, you will love writing. Have fun and you'll get more done, that's my motto and I'm sticking to it.

To be clear, there can be a marked difference between reading tastes and writing tastes. I love reading memoirs, but whenever I try to write one of my own I cringe. I adore historical novels, but I think if I ever try to write one I'll rip my own hair out of my head. I like to read light, fluffy, breezy romance books to wind down after stressful work days, but whenever I try to write them I end up with really gritty, dark stories about, like, substance abuse and mental illness and abuse, but with werewolves and pixies running around in the background.

So, really, there's no accounting for your tastes as a writer--but you know you best. Do what you enjoy and leave the rest to other writers. Don't fight your voice, and you'll find writing regains its joy for you.

Also, read these books:

2k to 10k by Rachel Aaron, Let's Get Digital by David Gaughran, On Writing by Stephen King, Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine.

I will freely admit that I regularly reread sections of 2k to 10k every time I start drafting a new manuscript. The editing method she puts forth in that book also changed the way I edit forever, making it much more time-efficient and effective for strengthening my stories. And fun. I used it for Shadows of Ourselves and edited that book in record time, so I am never going back.

That's what I got, really. My other advice is basically drink lots of water and some coffee, take breaks from writing to walk around and breathe for a minute, and make lots of cool writing playlists on 8tracks to inspire you. Pinterest is also a life saver.

(You can see my endless pretty boards here, if you like nice pictures and magic and apartment porn!)

*Bonus; the best writing snacks you will ever discover!

Swiss Cheese Crackers:

I honestly don't know if these exist in the US or other countries, but if you live in Canada (at least on the East Coast) then you'll probably be able to find them, and let me tell you--I WOULD GIVE UP MY FIRSTBORN RAPUNZEL-STYLE FOR A LIFETIME SUPPLY OF THESE SWEET LITTLE MIRACLES. I can't tell you how many times I've crammed a box of these down my face while pulling off an eleven thousand words writing night. They never get old. These are the ones I pull out for long-haul, I'm gonna be here for twelve to fifteen hours writing fests.

PB & J on Toast.

I'm crying right now. The only thing better than pb & j is pb & j oN TOAST. Seriously, take a break to eat this and feel that godly peanut butter energy flow back through your body. Drink some water (or more coffee, if you roll like me) and hop back on the keyboard to watch the words fly.

Plain, Salted Crackers

Yeah, I admit it, sometimes I go two days without consuming anything but water, black coffee, and plain crackers. Am I a destitute London street urchin who sometimes steals away into the kitchen of a hipster cafe at night to get some brew? Does some tragic disease make it so I can only digest saltines? Nope and no way, my friend, it's just that sometimes the best thing to take the edge off is a crunchy cracker. And, also, sometimes, you work better when you're hungry. Obviously don't starve yourself, but it's okay to let yourself feel the edge of hunger sometimes, and you might just find it sharpens your mind for a bit and helps you get in touch with the psyche of your characters. Especially if you're writing like, angsty emotional scenes.

Plus, crackers are pretty good, either way.

Microwave Rice. (Bonus points if you also fry an egg or slice up cucumbers or mushrooms.)

  

If you want the warmth and heartiness of a big meal but not a lot of cooking time, because you've been running on fumes for hours and hours now and you just remembered you're a human being who needs food to survive, and not just words, then throw a cup of rice and a cup of cold water in a microwaveable dish with a teaspoon of butter and microwave it for 6 minutes, stirring at the 3 minute mark. 9 times out of 10 this makes perfect, delicious rice that's even better with a hot fried egg on top.

Water.

I'm not one of those people who thinks water is a cure-all, but get up right now and go take a drink of cold water and tell my it didn't clear your head and refresh you. I tend to keep a cup or bottle beside me as I'm writing, both because it's my favorite drink and because it's an excuse to get up and stretch my feet for a second. Most people don't consume enough water, so this one is really important to remember.

Raw Carrots.

You guys have no idea how much I love carrots. Seriously, grab one from the fridge, peel that shit with a peeler or a knife, and run it under cold water--tell me you don't feel like you just leveled up. They're just really refreshing, they perk you right up. They have the added benefit of being really crunchy.

Coffee.

I drink my coffee black. Am I a hipster? No, I am, sadly, just A Sucker With Bad Genes. For some reason if I put sugar and milk in my coffee I get really bad heartbearn and acid reflux. Sometimes I put cinnamon in there, though. Or ice cream. But usually it's black.

I will fully admit that I sometimes drink up to nine coffees a day. I will also freely admit that I added this to the list pure to add delicious coffee pictures.

...Now go make a coffee and get writing! (Or, if you like reading and wanna support me, you could check out my books, here!)

How To Train Your Laptop. Oh, and other stuff.

I really, really need new candles, but the only kind I want are Bath and Body Works 3-wicks and I worked at the local one, so. I don't wanna go back to shop, because, awkward. Also I'm technically supposed to be saving for a new laptop.

Working at a desk is my normal method, but I hate desktop computers. Like, with a passion.

This one is secondhand, really slow, and Scrivener keeps crashing on me. It takes like 2 or 3 tries to restart it, too, which is not optimal. Another thing is, I do all my own cover design, and I have a lot of variations of large files for those, so it cramps up space, but I need them all.

I really want to get into music production, even if I'm just learning basics, and I need a new computer to do that work on. I know this one can't handle it. I think if I tried, I'd fry it.

I want another touchscreen laptop, because I fucking adored that thing, but I need to save a lot if I want one. Plus I'm also trying to find a new living situation within the next few months, so it's going to be tight...

I like to think I'm fairly tech savvy. I mean, I was basically raised by a computer and I learned to use them by breaking a long string of them, learning to fix a few of them on my own. I think I spent more time reading troubleshoot tutorials and computer forums in middle school than I did my actual assignments. I missed like 50 days of school each in the 7th and 8th grades, and most of that time, when I wasn't reading gay Harry Potter fanfiction in a blanket nest on the floor, I was fucking around with my computer and testing it's capabilities and exploring new programs. In a blanket nest on the floor.

And yet, I go through devices like a falling skydiver hitting tree branches on his sorry way down. I'm telling you, I have lost count of how many desktops, laptops, and notebooks I've gone through in the past decade. It's SCARY.

At the same time, it keeps me on my toes having to readjust to new shit all the time.

I've been getting back into traditional art lately. I got my start in art doodling anime and shit in the sides of my notebooks in grade school, because I'm a Mary Sue like that, and I was really into the DeviantArt scene in, like, 2011, and I got fairly decent for my age, but then a bunch of my tablets broke and I stopped doing digital art for like three years. I reverted to scribbling on loose leaf and stopped producing finished pieces, and now that I'm trying to get into it again...

I hate my tablet.

The new one is this little square thing with like, barely any surface space and the pen settings are absurd. There's this shitty double-click feature that makes it impossible to draw in web-based art programs, and Paint Tool Sai is really annoying.

I've been using it to do photo-manipulation and make book covers, which is not what it's for, but I've set it up for that and it's what I know how to do best with it now, so it's not like, tailored toward digital painting for me anymore. And I don't want to fuck up my current settings because I love them so I'm not changing them, but I also can't find another program I like. I despise Photoshop, I just do - it feels very rigid and I don't like the interface whatsoever, but other shit mostly sucks too. I liked Open Canvas for a while but it was only good for like, messy kind of junk art, which was cute enough but not what I was going for...

So what I'm saying is, if you have any good art programs, send them my way and I'll check them out.

Anyway, what it boils down to is that when I get a new computer I'm gonna go nuts downloading music software and synth programs and shit and make a noisy little Soundcloud-bound mess of an ep. I think it will be mostly instrumental, because I don't love my singing voice. I am not the worst singer in the world or anything, but still. I wanna make the musical version of fortune cookies, if that makes sense. Like it's small and simple but you crack it open and there's strange wonder inside. I also like circus sounds. But less Melanie Martinez (although I love her) and more Amanda Jenssen... But at the same time, more robotic? That's not the right word, just more techno trash. Glitchy, that's the word.

~glitchy~

Aside from that I just really wanna get Divinity out. It turned into this strange poetic abstract thing, and it's darker and kind of more mature than I'd intended. I set out to write a fun Kiera Cass-type book, that you could read in one sitting and be like "That was cute, that was fun," and just be light, fun escapism.

Instead I think I wrote one of those, "What the fuck did I just read?" fantasy stories. I still think it will be fast and fun to read, since it's just a bit shorter than Blood of Midnight, so far, but it's not what I expected it to be.

I think my biggest complaint with so much urban fantasy and paranormal romance these days is that we get this fascinating mythology and world, and it never goes anywhere. Like, it's 300 pages of high school and family life and two straight white teens falling in ~true love~ with a couple scenes with magic or the paranormal sprinkled throughout, and it makes me go, "Is that all?"

Even rereading Blood of Midnight, I see that in it, and I'm like, why did I hold back on this world? And so now in the sequel I get to go back and show it through a more mature, worldly version of Dru's perspective, because it's two years later. So I'm peeling back and showing more of that world and making it less contemporary, less focused on the relationships and more on the world changing around them.

I don't want contemporary with fantasy trappings - I want actual urban fantasy. Whenever I try to write like a simple, straightforward book like that, those magic scenes expand and twist and end up taking the whole of the story.

And I like that, so I've embraced it, and I try to cram as much magic and power and action and strange beauty as I can into the books.

In Shadows of Ourselves, the draft was like 73,000 words, and the finished book that's out now is like, 126,000 something, because in editing so much of what I did was bring the world forth and make it clearer and sharper. I added in new scenes and new locations and went through the ones already there to make them stand out more and add a bit more magik in there. I think when you have that big intense world full of like, hot immortal beings and ancient devices and a big cast of paranormal stuff, you should use that, you know? That's what your reader wants!

I love Leigh Bardugo and Marie Lu and Laini Taylor and Lev Grossman because of that, you know - they recognize that their readers and enticed by these magical worlds, so they let them become characters, they explore them in-depth and turn over every part of them. They don't say "Oh, well we'll have two or three mediocre scenes about the magic so that doesn't take away from the stale development of this romance!"

I love romance. It's where I got my start reading more mature, darker books. But if you hold back on actual plot and world development to force a predictable romantic plot on us, it's going to backfire. It's going to hurt the book and the romantic subplots.

I think very few writers can keep the focus on the romance and have their work not suffer for it. You have to be really good at romance to do that, and that's people like Rainbow Rowell who make masterpieces with the simplest building blocks. (Carry On might be my favorite novel in the world. That still has a lot of magic though, so it might not count. Fangirl is also fantastic.)

Like, when you're reading a Lev Grossman book, you know that's going to be like 300+ pages just crammed to bursting with magic and spell craft and history and the settings come to life. It's amazing.

So of course as I've been writing Divinity, the world has kind of grown up like a hedge form this really basic premise into this strange, creepy, kind of fantastical world, 'cause those are where my heart is, and it gets bigger and weirder the more it goes on. It starts as this kind of predictable, conventional kidnap-romance, like, "Oh no, I'm stuck in this hot billionaires lavish penthouse, but not all is as it seems!" and I try to just really quickly throw a wrench in the way it seems things are going and twist them in a different direction. I'm kind of surprised how my outline has changed since it's first draft, too. Some stuff has surprised me.

Here's a really quick teaser, complete with redacted spoiler and all:

(I think you can click to enlarge it, if it's hard to read!)

And now I'm going to get back to it, and hopefully finish this book tonight or tomorrow!

Some Things I Need To Say For Reasons

• In my post about Divinity, my m/m romance novella coming out soon, I said it would be out on the eight. I lied. It will probably not be out until closer to the end of the month, but I do intend it to be out this month. These things happen with publishing sometimes.
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• I still have no release date for Untold but it will likely be sometime next month or the one after.
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• I am still not accepting unpaid writing work, so please don't send me offers to write for 'experience' or 'the pleasure of it' because there is more pleasure in writing my own books that I know I am actually getting paid for, along with said experience.
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• The 99c promo for Shadows of Ourselves is over and you should check and see if it's still up on your Amazon storefront while you can, before the price change takes effect, if it hasn't already.
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• As always, I'm very grateful to everyone reading and giving feedback on my work! If you've bought one of my books, thanks a million!