March in Review
April Fool’s! Okay, now that that’s out of the way (I don’t know about you guys, but I suck at April Fool’s), let’s take a look at how things went in March.
Total words written in March: 56339.
Word goal for March: 52000.
Stuck with my New Year’s resolution: Technically, no. There were days when I only wrote a little and then made it up the next day, or on Sunday.
Concern with New Year’s resolution at this point: Zero. As far as I’m concerned, I’m meeting my writing goals, so New Year’s can sit and whistle.
Stories published: Shamrock Delight, Further Variations, and Granted.
Stories written: Silken Jane, Shamrock Delight, Granted, a Weird West story that I might publish under a different name, an untitled one having to do with magical shirts, and another untitled one set in the Absolute Ecstasy universe.
Misc: Retitled the book “Looking Sideways At The World.” It is now “Additional Variations,” ’cause branding is fun. I’m also currently writing another Aegis Chronicles story, even though they don’t sell very well. I just like ‘em.
Also I decided to try World of Warcraft. I know, I know, I define the term “early adopter.” If you’re on the Stormrage server, say hi sometime!
Difficult Stuff (and Crocodiles)
This is going to come as a shock to you.
Sit down.
You’re reading this on a computer screen, so I’m assuming that you’re sitting. Never mind.
Here’s the shocking bit: writing is not all roses and song.
I know.
I’ve heard male writers (not me, I like being alive) refer to it as analogous to a woman giving birth: there’s lots of pain and screaming, but at the end you have something to show for your effort that you can be proud of.
There are multiple problems with the analogy, of course, not the least of which is that it makes women want to slap you upside your fool head. I don’t have enough women in my life that I can afford to alienate them like that.
I had a point. Ah, there it is, hiding under all the words. The point is, writing is difficult. There are easy parts, like there are easy parts to everything. Even crocodile dentistry has its easy, pleasurable bits (most likely the parts having nothing to do with the crocodiles). Writing has its wonderful moments, where you’re flying along and not worried about plot or word count or crocodile insurance or anything else. Even the parts where you wrestle with theme and stuff can be fun.
For me, though, the re-writing is a bitch. If you read some of my earlier stories, I’m ashamed to say, you’ll see that.
I’m not big on re-writing. Some people say “writing is re-writing,” and while I’m not going to throw overt abuse their way, I will think nasty thoughts at them. Re-writing, the editing process as a whole, is a vital part of writing. Initially, it’s easy to see your finished rough draft as a masterpiece. This is particularly easy when you haven’t been writing long, and honestly, I haven’t been writing that long, at least not professionally. I know enough to know better than to throw my first draft out there, though.
What I’ve been doing is, I’ve been teaching myself to do minimal rewrites. When I edit, I start at the beginning and go page by page, line by line, and fix the stuff that doesn’t make sense. Really, that’s all editing is: making sure that what you write is clear enough. It’s like clearing the crocodiles out of a swamp to make a lake. They do that to swamps, right? I just realized that I hadn’t thrown a crocodile in there for a while.
Right. Editing. So I go through, catch all the typos, fix things like sentence structure, execute most of my commas (the commectomy has to be half of my editing cycle), and make it look like the story was written by a person with a nodding acquaintance with English. Then I go through it again and fix things like plot points (fuck, the crocodile bit his left leg off, dammit!) and other details to make the story work better. Then I publish that sucker.
Am I perfect? Allow me to spend a moment laughing here. I have many faults as a writer, and I’m even aware of some of them. But I’m better than I was when I started publishing in August. I’ll be better this time next year, and the year after that. I’ll probably be making more money, too, but we’ll see how that goes.
I want to thank my audience, by the way. Each month that I’ve been writing has been better, sales-wise, than the month before. February was by far my best month ever, and I finally broke the $1000-in-one-month mark, domestic. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am at that, and it’s all because of you guys. Thank you, and I plan to keep writing weird erotica for the foreseeable future.
Checking my work:
Since my last post, I’ve put up two short stories and a bundle of shorts.
Shamrock Delight is my St. Patrick’s Day story. Michael wakes up in the body of an incredibly hot redhead and has to figure out what the hell happened. The last thing he remembers is going into a bar on St. Patrick’s Day, two days ago.
Granted is my newest story. John visits a company called Wishes that promises to grant his wish (for true love) as long as he helps Wishes grant two other wishes from other clients. He agrees, and soon finds himself helping with a bank robbery…as the extremely female distraction.
Finally, my newest bundle is Further Variations, which collects Absolute Ecstasy, Changing My Channel, Changes of Heart, Shamrock Delight, and A Desire For Dragonfire under one cover.
A few housekeeping things: I’ve changed the cover of More Variations just a bit, because I always sort of hated the original one. I also changed the title of the collection “Looking Sideways At The World.” It’s now Additional Variations, with a different cover, but the contents are still the same as they were.
Next story is gonna be Silken Jane, though it will appear in a fairy-tale erotica collection first. I also have a fun short about shirts that change people, and that Weird West story that took a variety of strange turns. I also have the body swap story…okay, novella to edit. Bleh. You know how I adore editing things.
Crocodiles.
Cheers!
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Welcome to March!
Ah, March. Gateway to April. My favorite things about March are that my brother and dad have birthdays, and Cadsbury Creme Eggs are on sale. I will give it this, though: it’s a hell of a lot easier to type “March” than “February.”
But we have other water-dwelling lifeforms to sear. As I did last month, I’m going to post my word count for February.
Word count goal for February: an even 50,000. Thanks to the extra day and lack of Sundays, etc, etc.
Words written in February: 55,091.
Stuck to New Year’s resolution: Fuck yeah I did. That is, I wrote at least 2000 words per day except on Sundays if I didn’t feel like it. Go ME. For those keeping score at home, I bought myself a bottle of whiskey to celebrate. Bushmill’s, don’t settle for anything less.
Stories published in February: 1 from another pen name, The Dragon and the (Virgin) Princess, and Enticing the Unicorn. That’s right, got the damn unicorn story finished! I actually quite enjoyed it. Remember, if you head to Smashwords and enter the coupon code “BB34Z” you can get your free copy of The Dragon and the (Virgin) Princess.
Stories finished in February: 2 from another pen name, Dragon, Unicorn, the sci-fi bodyswap one, and two more called Granted and Silken Jane. Granted will be the next one posted, most likely, and Silken Jane (a retelling of the folk tale Iron John, with rather more transgender transformations and sex) will probably show up in a collection of erotic fairy tales fairly soon. Either way, it’ll be out as a stand-alone story soon enough as well.
Works in Progress: A TG one that has to do with St. Patrick’s Day (I know, I’m behind. Sosumi.) After that, I’m going to take a stab at the Weird West with a project I’m calling Sisters In Arms in my head. Also gonna have another bundle of published stories out fairly soon. I think I’ll call it Further Variations. Themes rock.
Cheers!
General Update (Free book!)
The writing continues. I want to thank everyone for the nice reactions I got from the “How to Ebook” entry.
I got the January royalty report from Amazon, and I’m glad to say that my streak of “increasing my revenue every month” continues!
My latest story is out. It’s a weird one, even for me, a humorous short fantasy told from the viewpoint of a dragon who doesn’t really understand humans. Of course there’s some TG goodness; this is an Avoi story, after all, and while the two of you who read “Front Desk 2AM” and “Burning Passion” know that occasionally I write non-weird smut, I try to stick with weird when I can. I was sad to see that I’d been beaten to the Cthulhu smut by several anthologies, for instance.
Anyway! The new story is called The Dragon and the (Virgin) Princess, and can be found at Amazon, All Romance, and Smashwords as usual. It’s $0.99, since it’s a short’un, but if you go to Smashwords and enter the coupon code BB34Z you can get it for free any time between now and this time next year. I want to than my friend Alex for giving me the spark of the idea that led to the story. Thanks, my little subatomic particle!
If I go to conventions, I’m totally making business cards with that coupon code on them. I thought the story was a hoot, even if it wasn’t exactly a usual Avoi story.
Checking my work:
Started and finished a story about granting wishes called, wait for it, Granted. It should be up in the next week sometime.
I actually started editing the frikkin’ unicorn story. I know by now people are starting to think, “This had better be the fucking Citizen Kane of unicorn transgender smut,” and I think that I’m safe in saying that it will be. GOD I love writing for a niche.
My sci-fi body swap story is going, but it’s kinda bogged down in a side story about a rape trial right now. I had no idea that it was going to turn into such a long story, or that it was going to be, like, serious and shit. Ah well. We soldier on.
So far this month, my New Year resolution is going nicely. 2000+ words a day, fo sho, and I even managed 2,900 or so today because I wanted to see how Granted would end.
Upcoming projects: A St. Patrick’s Day story, another St. Patrick’s Day story under a different pen name, and a retelling of the folk tale Iron John. I swore I wouldn’t do another retelling that involved an outline after writing Cat’s Black Boots, but it turned out I was wrong. The Iron John retelling will probably go into an adult fairy tale anthology as well as showing up as a separate story under my name.
Also finishing the body-swap story, which is well over 40,000 words by this time. o.O
Cheers!
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How to Ebook
Before I get started here, I just want to say ZOMG. I’ve had a little over 1000 views of this blog. I never expected to get that many this fast. I mean, sure, eventually, when there’s that scandal about the…but I’ve said too much. Thanks for visiting, guys. It’s humbling.
I also have 146 followers of my Twitter feed, which amuses the shit out of me. I’m not a very regular tweeter. Anyway, hi Twitter folks! You guys rock!
Okay, on to the actual point of the post. A lot of authors say that the number one question they get is “Where do you get your ideas?” (Gary Larson, creator of the comic “The Far Side,” said that a close second for him was “Why do you get your ideas?”) I have not found this to be the case in my life, mostly because I write erotica and people are usually scared to ask that question. Instead, the question I hear the most often is some variation of, “How can I do that?” That, in this case, being making and selling ebooks. The stuff that I’m going to show you is going to involve a lot of reading, and I have absolutely no problem with that. If you’re willing to read, how on earth do you claim to be willing to write?
Guys, I have no new ideas here. I want to be really really clear on that. I am standing on the shoulders of giants here. The information and links that I am going to give here are written by others, and this is going to be little more than a collection of the stuff that helped me get started.
Also, I’m going to assume that you have a story. Short story, novel, whatever. Poetry. Haiku. I don’t care. I’m going to assume that you have something publishable.
First stop in my case was Amanda Hocking’s blog. Hocking is the wunderkind of the indie publishing scene, and was one of the very first to break a million dollars in royalties with independently-published ebooks. She writes paranormal romance for the most part, at least some of it aimed at teens. I know, this is probably not your genre, but bear with me here. Chick knows her stuff. She talks about how she got started here. And she talks about how she does what she does here. Guys, it’s easy to get discouraged in this line of work. It’s very good to have blogs like Hocking’s to refer back to from time to time. Those two entries were huge helps to me when I got started. The second blog entry there contains links to other blogs. Sort of like this entry does. Did I mention my lack of new ideas here?
The first blog that she mentions in there is J.A. Konrath’s. There is damn good reason for this. Konrath has been publishing for years now, and is a major voice in the indie publishing world. His blog is called “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing,” and that’s precisely what it is. It’s worth going back into the archives on this one. He does lots of interviews, and while he can get a little ranty from time to time I still find it worthwhile to read.
Konrath plucked the best of his blog from the ‘net and put it together under one cover: The Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Go now. Buy this. If you do not have a Kindle, you can download an app for free from Amazon that will allow you to read it on your computer, phone, smart glasses, or whatever. The book is $2.99, and if you’re serious about the indie ebook trade, there is no better way to spend three bucks. You will make it back many, many times over.
Dean Wesley Smith has written a little bit of everything from novels to comics to short stories to…okay, you get the idea. He’s been publishing for around 200 years now, and is still way behind on his idea file. He writes long entries that are done in wonderful detail, most of which have to do with the indie ebook market. He’s experienced it from both sides, both as an indie publisher and a “legacy” publisher, and he’s firmly on the indie side for good reason. His blog is divided up into major sections. The two that I found to be the most useful were Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing and a relatively new series called New World of Publishing. Those links drop you into the table of contents for each section. Both of them are worth reading thoroughly.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is another writer who’s been publishing for many years in many formats. She does just excellent sci-fi, and one thing that I love about her blog is that she posts a brand new free short story every Monday. Honestly, how can you beat that? Anyway, she’s also seen life from both the legacy and the indie writer’s viewpoints, and has a lot of really insightful observations on both. Her book The Freelancer’s Survival Guide is seventy (that’s seven-zero) chapters of amazing freelancer information. In the section of her blog called Business Rusch, she writes about the business side of things. She covers all sides, including agents and contracts and copyrights, oh my.
John Locke (no relation to the dude from Lost) writes and publishes the Donovan Creed thrillers, among others. He’s the first indie publisher to break a million books in sales, and he tells all about it in his blog and in his book How I Sold 1 Million Books in 5 Months. Is his technique for everyone? Of course not; we can’t even get any two professional writers to agree on a price for a 50,000 word novel. However, the book is $2.99 and very much worth reading through.
Okay. Honestly, that’s how I got started. I just read everything that I could that people said had helped them. I really hope this can help some others get in touch. And to the authors named in this article, I offer heartfelt thanks.
Checking my Work:
Still on track for my New Year’s resolution this month, so that’s good. Finished another story under my other pen name, finished a quick humor story about a dragon who mistakes a knight for a princess. Those should be up soon.
Currently writing: The sci-fi story, which is turning out to be even frikkin’ LONGER than I thought. Also a story about a guy who helps fulfill some wishes.
There is no unicorn story here. You saw nothing.
Cheers!
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What? February already?
Man it’s easy to lose track of time around here. The self-employed freelance lifestyle can lead to that pretty easily. Today I’m gonna do what I hope will become a monthly thing for me: the wrap-up. I know, it’s a revolutionary idea with a brand-new title, but bear with me. I think it’s gonna catch on.
Stories published: Seven, including Changes of Heart, Absolute Ecstasy, A Desire for Dragonfire, and four under a different pen name. Not bad, really, though I had hoped for one more Avoi story. Changes of Heart was a lot longer than I expected it to be, and honestly I’ve had Dragonfire kicking around my hard drive for a month or so now. Mea culpa.
Word count goal: 52,000. That’s (31 days – Sundays) x (2000 words a day)
Word count for January: 56409
Kept to New Year’s Resolution? Technically no. One of those days, I only did 1640 or so, and the next day I made it up with 2700ish. I felt guilty at the time, but not so much now.
This month, sales-wise, I did better than last month on Amazon and All-Romance. I didn’t do as well on Smashwords or B&N. Part of the problem there is that my alternate pen-name is actually a pair of names, and Smashwords get all freaked out when that happens. I’ll figure it out somehow.
So there we have it, the January 2012 Maxwell Avoi Monthly Wrap-up. I think that’s too long a name; I’m going to call it Bob instead.
Checking my work:
Currently working on the sci-fi story, which is looking to end up fairly long as well. You’ll be glad to know that the MC (Main Character) has become a space-slut, which I think we can all agree is the best kind. Cheers!
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Why Erotica?
Dude, why NOT?
I wrote erotica for years. Again, it was the whole “writing is the art that I’m good at” thing. I posted several stories on Fictionmania, and that was really about it. I always view the smut as a hobby. It never occurred to me to write and sell it until I found myself checking out a few stories in the TG erotica genre on Amazon. There aren’t many. There’s probably a reason for that, but I figured that I could do that. I pulled some of what I thought were my best from FM, polished them up, and created the collection Variations. I posted Variations about the same time that I posted Twice Around, and the rest is history.
Sort of.
See, for a while it was tough to say what I was doing for money. See, I currently live in rural Arkansas (as I pointed out to a friend of mine, Arkansas does not faff about when it comes to the term “rural.”). I love it here, and I won’t hear a word said against it, but the fact is that I live around a great many folks who simply would not accept a smut writer. I tell them that I write short fiction under a pen name, and that’s usually enough to fend them off. If they insist, I tell them that it’s biology-oriented, which throws the rest of them off.
I can count the number of people here who know what I write on one hand. None of them want to know this pen name. I’m okay with that.
See, I’m not ashamed of what I do. I find it amusing when someone says something along the lines of, “So when you make enough money writing…that stuff, then you can stop and write what you really want to write!” It’s usually said with a sunny smile and a relieved tone, as if they found out my plan. Well, no, they didn’t. I am writing what I like to write. This is the plan.
So why do I write under a pen name and not tell people about my stories? It’s simple: there’s a vast distance between “being ashamed of what I do” and “rubbing it in peoples’ faces.” I like living here, and I like the people here. People like me. I think that there are a lot of folks who might lose their good opinion of me if they knew what I wrote, so I don’t bother them with it. If they ask me flat-out, then I won’t lie. Thankfully, I live in a place where people don’t like to pry. I also have friends here and on the ‘net who are fully aware of what I do, and they’re fine with it. Works for me!
Checking my work:
Just released the story Changes of Heart, which is my Avoi Valentine’s Day story this year. It’s a pretty long one, weighing in at 23k words and some change, but I’m gonna leave it at $2.99 for now in celebration of the season. Alternately, I’m leaving it at $2.99 right now in a cynical effort to cash in on the season. Your choice! It’s currently available on Smashwords and All Romance, and the link up there goes to the Amazon page.
I’m about halfway through a sci-fi bodyswap story, which is always fun. This one features space travel!
blah blah, unicorn story, blah blah.
Cheers!
