Returning To Roots

 Oh look, it's another instalment in the endless saga of theme changes this blog has been through! Well don't worry, folks. I think this one is here to stay! I really enjoy it. I've neglected this blog for far too long because:

1) I figured Blogger was dying (and it kind of is, I guess, but I don't care anymore).

2) I figured nobody was reading it (which isn't totally true, but it wouldn't be a big deal if it was).

3) I am very intimidated by picking out a blog theme. It's hard. I've seen people call blogs just like mine ugly and clunky, but I don't care. This design/theme makes me nostalgic for a ton of other author blogs I used to follow.

Now I've just accepted this is what my blog looks like and this is what I want it to look like. It's nostalgic. It's retro. It's...very, like, 2009-2011 YA author vibes, and you know what? That's when I was in middle school dreaming of being an author, and the paranormal romance trend was at its peak, and I miss that. Plus I don't really like 'sleek' minimalist blogger themes. I need a good one-column text-based theme for my blog. Simple and clean.

Not, like, the Utada Hikaru song, either, although that is a bop.

My Kingdom Hearts nostalgia might be in overdrive right now because I've been playing through FF7 Remake - thanks, PS Plus! - and loving it. Cloud is such a nerdy twink and everybody is flirting with him, and Aerith is a queen! I figured she might be an overrated character, because I've only ever seen bits and pieces of her so I wasn't sure if she deserved her popularity, but she's so funny and full of personality. I worried she might just be a blank slate 'nice girl' for Cloud to mourn, but she's really cool and has more personality than he does, lol.

Anyway I just wanted to briefly pop in and announce the reasoning behind my reversion to this simple old theme and the black/purple color palette I used to use. It just feels right to me. I think it's nice. Even though it is slightly clunky, but I think that may be part of the charm.

And, since I am going to keep writing on here no matter what, I'll probably try to find a way to direct attention to this site on other social media platforms. My favorite authors all ditched blogger for like, Twitter, but Twitter makes me suicidal. And Instagram is cool but I don't feel like me or my surroundings are pretty enough to post there except on Stories. So I'm determined to make this blog come alive again.

Alexa Donne was saying in one of her newer videos about author branding and marketing and how to avoid burnout with both, that blogs might not be as popular as they used to be, but that the written word is just a more enjoyable format for some people, and I know that rings true for me. For some of us that just won't change.

Plus it's hard coming up with content ideas. I want to explore new mediums of content, but some of them are very intimidating, and you also have to figure out how to make them compatible with social media in order to actually share them and create interaction. So that's intimidating. But I like blogging. I'm good at it. Even if it isn't a hugely popular form of content anymore. I can't be the only one who still enjoys blogs, right?

Another really smart thing Alexa Donne said in that video is that mailing lists are kind of over (because everyone has one and they're all kind of the same and they're pretty much just blog posts in email format anyway) and I'm happy about it because I honestly never figured my mailing list out. Shit's a mess.

Anyway, that's all on my end. If you need me, I will be writing gay stuff, playing Final Fantasy, and eating directly from my shirt pocket which is currently full of a handful of loose jelly beans, because that's what a heathen I've become during this pandemic.

Xoxo, Gossip Girl :D Nah, just kidding...I wish, though.

How The Moonlight Burns

It's 4am and I only just finished editing the third Lilac series, which means I basically want to cry. I still have to edit the final one before I go to sleep, and even after that I want to draft a couple chapters of something else. I'm taking a quick break before I dive into it, but I am going to edit it tonight, just so I can share the cover, 'cause that's how I roll.

I also have nothing else to do with my time or energy so it makes sense to just write until I drop. I spent most of today sleeping. My aunt and her boyfriend came over for a while and I had no energy to deal with people so I just stayed in bed, though I had to get up and open a window because they were smoking and the house reeked.

So now I'm up. Writing. Being productive.

I need to put out more titles because the few I have out aren't selling well, which means I have to keep trying new things. I think it's mainly because:

A) I don't do much marketing (I honestly don't have the energy for it and interacting with people makes me really anxious so it takes a lot of build-up to force myself to do it, even with people I like)

B) The books I have out are mostly ya, and ya readers don't really take as many chances on new or unpopular writers, especially indie ones

C) I don't have /that/ many books out.

It's important to me to be prolific - I want to be consistently putting out new releases, and I haven't been doing that because life and mental illness and a million other problems, barriers, and admittedly, a few excuses.

Tonight once I finish editing Beacon I'm probably going to start on a new edition of Iceblood, which will be longer and have expanded scenes and passages. Instead of writing the original idea I had for Anarchy, which just wasn't working out, I'm going to make it a direct sequel to Iceblood, continuing with Atka's pov and story as opposed to exploring a new character.

So that's where I'm at! I'm sorry this blog is a bit of a boring 'here's what I'm working on' piece, but I haven't done much in the past few days. I did walk around the woods and take photos and selfies, since it's finally spring and the snow has melted for the most part, but other than that...not much.

But if all goes according to plan, I may be posting a cover reveal before the night is out! :)

Shelves, eBook Pricing, and Cheekbones

I rearranged my book shelves and I gotta say, they're looking better than ever. Last night I noticed I'd lost my copy of Night Myst, the first Indigo Court book, so I bought the ebook on Kobo because I wanted to reread. It cost me fucking ten dollars. FOR AN EBOOK.

I mean, it's traditionally published, but still. It's makes me mad that publishers expect readers to dole out ten dollars or more for a digital file they consume in less than two days.

I will never charge more then five dollars for an ebook, and that's God's honest damn truth. (Fun fact: Divinity is on sale for 99¢ right now!) I mean if I'm ever working with a publisher, they'll be in control of that, but still, all my self-published ebooks have been and will be under five dollars.

Look, for ten dollars I could buy three paperbacks on Amazon or at a used bookstore. For ten bucks I can get a to-go combo of the best Chinese food in the city. I can buy new headphones and a fancy candle or body lotion. I don't need to spend ten dollars on a fucking ebook I'm gonna blow through in two or three sittings. I'm telling people fun stories with romance and action and swords and explosions - I don't think it's fair to charge an arm and a leg for a story.

I mean, there are exceptions, sure. If it's a box set or a super long book. Like, as an author, if I'm writing a book and it turns out to be this 200,000 word epic, yeah, I expect to get paid fairly for that. But even then, at least to me, for how fast I write, yeah, that's still only gonna be an eight dollar book, you know?

Maybe it's me - maybe I'm cheap and skeptic because I grew up poor and even now, ten or twenty bucks that I get to spend on myself instead of essentials is a rare treat that I want to squeeze every penny out of, because it's rare, but most of that money goes to books. And I think it's kind of unfair to charge a reader that much.

But I'm off on a tangent; the point is, I'm rereading Night Myst so I can devour this whole series. The covers are beautiful and the story, from what I recall, is so much fun. Definitely worth a read.

Meanwhile I'm drafting Atrocity (gah!) and making plans for a bunch of other fun stuff I can't wait to share.

I'm also working on an anthology set in the menagerie world (Shadows of Ourselves, Maelstrom, et-cet) and it's so much fun. It's called City Magik, and I'll probably be fairly hush on it until the day it comes out, but it's great and the cover is a beauty.

In the meantime I'm listening to a lot of Tinashe and mainlining coffee. And watching Eye Candy, which I never saw and should not have been cancelled. I can't get over how good this show is.

Also, I really wish I could pull off the same angles as Victoria Justice. Damn, those cheekbones. Color me jealous.

Interviews, Coffee Math, and More!

In the past couple days I've been talking with other authors (some indie and some not) setting up interviews for the near future, and I'm really excited for some of these. I love talking to other authors about their work and processes, and it's always fun to help another writer gain some exposure.

Those should be up over the next few weeks, and I plan to do as many as I can, with as many authors across as many genres, as I can. If you're an author interested in being interviewed here on the blog, email me at ApolloBlake@mail.com with the subject line interview, and links to your social media, and I'll shoot you over the interview questions!

Aside from that, most of the past few days has been me trying to figure out how much coffee I can ingest before I die, and trying not to commit murder. I get agitated a lot.

Especially by the people I live with.

Trust me, if I could afford to live in an ice palace in the subarctic somewhere, I'd be gone today. Clark Kent has no clue how good his ass has it.

Anyway, through laborious, harsh research, I've deduced that I can have nine coffees a day without dying. Maybe more. I'm not pushing my luck.

But I love caffeine. It's not good for me, I should probably quit it, but here I am on my fifth or six coffee since I woke up. I'm gonna try and cut myself off, here though.

Or maybe not.

I have a long night of editing ahead of me, including some blog breaks. I'm going to do more posts on writing, since they've gotten a good response all around - and maybe a few on marketing - though I'm not the best at marketing. I've talked about how annoying I find the fame game in the past, and I can't see myself stopping anytime soon, but it's still (a really big) part of the job. So.

Blogosphere Bullshit (I'd Rather Be a Person Than a Profile)

I'm an artist. And I want room to work on my art.

I don't want people interrupting me. I don't want people knocking on my door every fifteen minutes. I don't want advice I didn't ask for, and I don't want to be forced to blog every day because 'it's good advertising' or be forced to try and get fucking Twitter famous because it will get more of my books out.

I hate this fame game that everyone is so sucked up in and I hate that all my friends think that lines of text on a computer mean we're communicating because we barely even know each other anymore. I don't want to have to be on social media to connect with them when we never see each other in real life. I want to fucking talk to people and I want to be left the hell alone to make my shit.

The thing is, I feel like when I think this shit or feel this stuff it comes off as, like, I'm anti-technology and I don't enjoy all of this progress we've made - I do. The internet is amazing, and I've made friends in other parts of the world using it.

But sometimes I want to talk to my friends on this side of the world. I want to be able to sit down and talk with the people I grew up with and talk to them instead of sitting there watching their phones the entire time, or going to their place to watch them sit on their computers.

I don't know. I can't say any of this without sounding pretentious and snobby, and I don't care at this point because it's so fucking frustrating. I just want to delete facebook and sign off of everything and be a person instead of a profile.

And That's All I Can Really Say...

Yesterday I worked from 6 to 10:30. Today I'm working from 2 to 10:30. I keep working long shifts that end late at night, and I have a really long commute, and I actually didn't sleep last night when I got home because my anxiety was going off of the walls, so I stayed up and now I'm going back to work without any rest, but I really don't care because I can't afford to care because I'm 600 dollars in debut and I still have Christmas gifts to buy on top of coffee and bus money. It's a hard-knock life.

The thing is, this hard-knock life is very time consuming. And when I do have free time it's usually spent doing laundry/dishes/homework. I may have underestimated just how heavy my workload was when I mentioned some previous release dates. I wanted to put out the first instalment of ADSD next month, and I've barely started drafting it. I wanted to put out SOSAS on the 15th, but I am nowhere near done editing it. And it's not that the book is bad at this stage. I could have something to publish by the 15th, and it would be a good book, but it would not be the right book.

Right now I'm focused on trying not to drop dead, trying not to flunk out, and trying to save up enough money that I can, you know, stop fucking worrying about money. I've got a small ghostwriting gig on the side that helps a bit, but it's mostly chump change, so I can not afford to quit this job right now.

I want to put out the best books I can. I rushed both the Lilac shorts and Things We Saw At Midnight, not during the drafting process, but during editing - and those books suffered for it. I've cleaned up the Lilac Jones shorts, and I'll be revising and republishing TWSAM soon, but right now I'm focused on Souls of Salt and Seawater. On not rushing it. On letting it grow and nurturing the vision of Josmea that I have in my head. This is the first introduction to a world that I plan to spend years and years of my career writing different books in, and I want it to be a good first impression.

More importantly, I know that Alice, Joram, and Rayna deserve to have their stories told in the best way possible. And I know you guys deserve a finished product that is of the same quality you'd find from a traditional publisher. That doesn't happen when I rush.

But I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I don't have more to show you guys, more words for you to read. I want to put things out, and I'm constantly torn between trying to be prolific and trying to be sane, and well-written.

I would rather be the last two.

So I'm not rushing myself anymore. I'm not rushing my works.

What does that mean? Well, it means that SOSAS won't be out on the 15th, this month. It might not be out until the 15th of next month. Or the month after that. I can say it will definitely be out in the next few months. When I say I don't know when it will come out, what I really mean is, I have a good idea of how long it will take me to finish this, but I've guessed wrong before and been mad about it so now I'm keeping my mouth shut.

As soon as it's done, arcs will go out to people on my arc list (I have not forgotten about anyone on Tumblr!) and I'll be talking about it and posting about it and advertising the release date to high heavens. But I've decided that I'm going to take a page out of Amanda Hocking's book and just not talk about my works until they're finished and I'm ready to hit publish. So as soon as my currently announced titles are released, I won't be talking about anything I'm writing until I'm ready to share it with you guys, no matter how much I really, really, really, really want to.

So, I'm sorry, if you were waiting for the Dec. 15th release. The book is still coming. But I want it to be the best quality I can make it, and quality takes time, which is something I don't have much of. And that's all I can really say, for now.

Time to go get ready for work T.T

Souls of Salty Snide Remarks

So, Souls of Salt and Seawater is coming along. Coming along as in, I'm going to be ready to send out ARCS by November, as in, I'm having fun with it, as in, the cover came out and I forgot to post about it here.

I'm a pretty forgetful bitch, if I'm being honest. I'll forget something is a dream and wake up excited to use my new laptop or go find my new husband in the backyard and then realize - wait a minute, I didn't actually go on an electronics shopping spree or marry Brandon Urie! It was all just a dream!

My dad says it's because I smoke too-much pot, my mom says it's because of my dad (his genetics are cursed with this pesky thing called alzheimer's - my gramma has it really bad) and my brother says it's because I'm plain stupid. But then, he's probably just salty because I got better eyebrows than he did.

So anyway, I forget important stuff, and then I make up for it by posting it late and trying to make it seem like it's still relevant and exciting. Which is what I'm doing now. So here's the cover:

 Isn't it beautiful? Don't you want to marry it, start a family, have a child together, and then run out on it one day by telling it you're going for cigarettes and milk and then never coming back? Me too. And the plus side is, it won't be able to hunt you down and demand child support because it's just a book cover, and your child together is purely hypothetical. All I'm hearing is a bunch of pluses, to be honest...

Anyway, aside from beginning an ill-advised affair with my book cover, you can also support the project by talking about it on Twitter, Tumblr, or the micro-blogging platform of your choice, or giving the Lilac Jones Adventures some love on Wattpad. Seriously, guys, word of mouth is so important as an indie author. I so appreciate everyone who has reviewed one of my books, or shared it with a friend, or retweeted/reblogged a post about it.

I'll have more news about SOSAS out closer to release, and when arcs are available (everyone who requests an arc of this book is getting one, no questions asked) and more. I'll also post more news about Shadows when I have it.

Thanks for being cool and not making salty, snide remarks when I take too long to post updates, guys! Love ya's!

-Oliver