What Makes It All Worthwhile

Sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel, as far as writing is concerned. I guess all authors suffer from this kind of discouragement at times. I struggle so hard to write and in one year, produce half a dozen books at most, while the annual output from some of my peers is in the double digits. I spend time, energy and money on promotion, only to see my royalties stagnate or even drop. For some reason my books are rarely reviewed (though when they are, the comments are generally positive). I honestly think I write pretty well, but in fourteen years of publishing, I've never, ever had anything approaching a best seller. I don't bother checking my Amazon ranks. It would just be too depressing!

Yesterday, though, I had an experience that made me realize it's all worthwhile. All the sweat and tears, all the frustration, the waiting for titles to appear, the scrambling to get the word out - it means something. Something important.

You see, I got an email from a long time reader and fan. She recently had a computer crash, and she lost a lot of books of mine - some that she'd bought, a few that she'd received as prizes over the time she has been following my blogs and entering my contests. She told me she intended to spend the money to replace the titles her computer tech hadn't been able to recover, because she really wanted to have them on her bookshelf.

Of course that made me feel warm all over. Then, however, she shared something that literally brought tears to my eyes. Although I've "known" her for quite a long time, I didn't know much about her life. It turns out that that she has a severe disability that keeps her bedridden much of the time. Reading is her therapy, her way to escape from the unpleasant realities of her daily life. She told me that my books take her to another world, one in which she can imagine anything happening.

This - well, this is a big deal. I'm not just a writer of trash, of smut that gets hidden behind adults-only filters. I'm a creator of worlds, and I have at least one reader for whom they're very real. When I start feeling down, I can remind myself that sales don't really matter - not nearly as much as bringing happiness to the few loyal readers who really do love my stories.

And furthermore, despite what some puritanical pundits might say about my subject matter, I can reassure myself that writing and publishing my sexy tales is downright virtuous - that in a small way, it makes our world a better place.

Different Stages in our Journey

A few days ago I received an email from a relatively new author whom I'd hosted here at Beyond Romance, asking for marketing advice. My first reaction was a snort of derision. You're asking me how to build a brand and increase your sales? I haven't got a clue!

In fact, I'm been fretting lately about the way my royalties seem to be trending down rather than up. I realize that there are many variables contributing to this phenomenon, including the fact that I haven't published a new romance title since last fall, and the sad truth that every single day, hundreds if not thousands of new authors join the ranks of the competition. No wonder it's so difficult to get noticed. Anyway, since I've made a resolution that I'm going to at least double my sales this year, I've been trying to figure out a marketing strategy that will help me attain that goal.

Anyone have any ideas? ;^)

To get back to the subject at hand, I did not, of course, simply dismiss my colleague's inquiry and tell her that she should seek help elsewhere. I gave her what assistance I could, with the caveat that everything I was saying was based on my own experience alone. As I worked on the email, I realized that I did have some useful information to impart, simply because I am at a different stage in my author's journey than she is.

I have a back list of almost fifty books at this point. I've been running this blog for more than three years and have accumulated more than 110,000 page views. I don't know if I have really achieved general name recognition, but when I google my pen name, I'm always astonished at where it shows up. (And because it's so unique, 99 out of 100 references I find do in fact refer to me.)

So, I'm not where I want to be, sales-wise. Or, for that matter, from the perspective of productivity. Well, that's something to focus on, but still, I'm a long way from square one.

And furthermore, I'm still writing. It's so easy to get discouraged in this business, especially given the ridiculous odds of even getting noticed. I haven't given up, though occasionally I'm tempted. I'm not going to surrender to guilt or self-pity either. I spend the time I can afford. I write what appeals to me. I've been fortunate to have a very high acceptance ratio. Honestly, there are tens of thousands of authors who would give anything to be at my stage in this journey.

Now it's time to move along the next segment of my writer's road.

My Book, My Nemesis…

By Chacelyn Pierce (Guest Blogger)

First, let me say thank you to Ms. Lisabet Sarai for hosting me today. I'm not much of a guest blogger because, well, I feel like I really don't have much to say that would be interesting. But I wanted to share the history of The Last Pyr of Eden and how far it came. Not to mention how it nearly took me out and crushed my spirit.

Originally finished in 2010, it sat collecting dust on my hard drive for almost two years until I subbed it this past summer. It was called Ethereal Heat back then and it was my nemesis. This manuscript had literally put me through Writer Hell. It tested my strength, my resolve, and nearly broke me. This story wrenched tears from me and not in the joyful sense.

My idea for this story was sound; my series plot was played out to the end. I started writing it and I spent most of 2009 "perfecting" this story that I deemed my best work at the time. Then, my computer crashed and I lost everything, I was devastated. I was 30k into this great story, and then I was down to nothing. I was depressed for weeks to the point that I didn't write anything or jot down ideas. I just moped about the apartment feeling sick, looking like a zombie when all I wanted to do was write the next scene. It was as if the computer virus killed me and my characters too.

But there was a ray of sunlight.

I took my computer to get fixed and nearly kissed the tech guy who told me they were able to pull my work from the hard drive. I waited for three days to get my recovery disks. I was so excited that I'd be back at it; I'd be crafting this fantasy story again. I went out, rented a computer and squealed like a captured pig when my book files sat nice and pretty in this protected folder. I opened it up, lost only 5k, but I couldn’t be happier. My mom bought me a USB, I was saving every five minutes. I was pushing 45k, things were back on track.

So they seemed…

One morning, I plugged in my USB and it was empty. It was okay though because I'd saved on the computer too, right? Nope. I'd been only saving on the USB, which was now blank. My mom called the store which she bought the USB from, and lo and behold my USB had likely come from a batch that was proving faulty. Panicked, I freaked and descended to the self-sorrow again. I was back to the 25k saved on the recovery disk. I lost another 20k on this story. Gone. I was even more distraught. I stopped writing, I was proving useless at it anyway. A few past projects were rejected via agent and I was stuck in this Write and Obliterated limbo with my current WIP.

My husband noticed I hadn't written anything in about a month and I told him that I wasn't getting anywhere. So why even bother. Wrong words to say to him obviously because he chewed me up and down about not quitting and he basically pushed me back into the chair and told me to finish it. My mother provided me with encouragement as well but I didn't want any of it. The only way to get them to go away was to write. I grumbled the first two days. I hated all my characters because I knew where they were supposed to be in the story and they weren't there anymore. I finally got back up to 40k and felt a little better. I kept chipping away at it and finally I had an 85k piece of crap. (I can say that because it was my novel and it was true.) I felt good, though. I polished it up (horribly) and started subbing it.

My query letter got a few nibbles from agents that requested partials. You don't know how happy this made me. I can still see me and my mother rushing out to Kinko's at ten pm to make copies. Those agents liked the plot of the story but ultimately said no. I was disappointed but not crushed. I was so used to hearing no that it hardly phased me.

I knew I had more learning to do; it had everything to do with my technical writing and grammatical issues. I put Ethereal Heat aside and worked on other things, novellas, short stories, and I started subbing to e-publishers. After a few months I met the right friend that helped me see the mistakes that I was missing. She doesn't realize how special she is to me. Finally, after learning a little more, I started getting some contracts, learned more things by my past editors and other author friends that I was lucky to obtain along the way.

In 2012, I opened the file I hadn't opened since receiving my last rejection in 2011. I looked it over with a better eye for detail and got to work fixing it up 2012-style. I chopped it down, took 30k out (funny, isn't it), gave it a new name, and subbed it to the e-pub world. Total-E-Bound picked The Last Pyr of Eden up so fast I was left feeling like I read the acceptance letter wrong. It couldn't be a yes. Yeses didn't come that fast and nothing had gone right with this book, nothing. How did it finally get to the point of acceptance? I was still asking myself that question through the edits. How did my nemesis book and I make it to this point. My answer came when I had to type out the dedication; it was my mom and my husband. Without them, my newest release wouldn't be out for all to see

Blurb

Outside the protected gates of Eden, ancient enemies lurk in waiting to drain elementals of all their power.

For eons, the four elementals have bled their nourishing blood to sustain life for superior spirit elementals known as Daemons. No race has suffered in despair as critically as the fire elementals—the Pyr. Their numbers dwindled down so miserably, that Raynor is the last known warrior of the race, living on a faint hope that there is more of his kind between both worlds. He ventures out constantly searching for elementals to save from enslavement. In reality, he searches for a female to bond with. After a yearlong trip away from Eden—an elemental settlement hidden deep in the woods—he is immediately confronted by the enchanting Sylph, Samira. She ignites desires and emotions in him that he considered long dead and nearly destroyed like his people. Indulging in his erotic cravings with Samira can be a daring game to play, because elementals have never intermingled in all recorded history

Bio

A rocker by heart, Chacelyn Pierce is constantly ear plugged with heavy tunes blaring to stir up the phantom personalities that swarm her mind. It’s no surprise that she enjoys writing and reading to satiate her appetite for the male antagonist in a story. Married to a blatant redhead and mothering a diva, there is never a dull moment in the house. As a native Texan, she doesn’t personally own a horse but follows the unwritten southern rule of knowing how to ride one. When she’s not testing the emotional capacity of her characters, she works part time as a dog groomer.

Find Chacelyn at:
http://www.chacelynpierce.com