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Goal! 9 comments
What does literary success look like to you?
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What Tastes Like Literary Success?
The easy answer for me is seeing that my books are being read. Yeah, all indie authors are jazzed to see our books finally in publication. And, yeah, it feels good to sell a book and make some royalty. A little coin in the pocket isn’t a bad thing, especially since there’s a cost to publishing and it’s nice when your books break even or, gasp, make a profit. I’m a capitalist and, while writing as a hobby is something I’d do anyway, making some money off it is gratifying.
But, unexpectedly, was what happened when I published my most recent book in November 2018. The sales weren’t especially overwhelming, but I’m used to that and it was before I had discovered Amazon ads. The book that comes out later this year will be a full test of the efficacy of that program. No, in November I clicked on Kindle’s KENP Reads beta report and saw this amazing report that showed me which books were being read and I could do the math and see how many books that translated into. I could see that someone (I imagine the same readers) were starting with Book 1 (Life As We Knew It), going to Book 2 (Objects in View), going to Book 3 (A Threatening Fragility) and then finishing with Book 4 (Day’s End) and they were doing it, often day after day … binge-reading my series. While I’d love it if they left a review when they were finished, this is sufficient applause for me.
In fact, it was far better than getting paid when someone buys the book, which could sit on someone’s TRB for years. Instead, I get real-time data showing the books are being read. (KENP has now come out with a royalty estimator so you can see approximately how much money you’re making from those reads). That scratches the literary success itch for me in a way I didn’t even know I wanted.
Would I like to be a best-selling author? Of course I would. Any author who says they don’t want that is either lying or in denial. We wouldn’t publish our books if we didn’t want them to be read. Most of us are, unfortunately, going to languish in the shadows for our entire careers. We have to define success in something other than the dollars our books bring in the door. For me, it’s people reading my books. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do a happy dance if I broke into best-seller territory, so isn’t it lovely that KENP is now being used to calculate best-seller rankings. And, last month was the first time my KENP royalties outranked my sell royalties, so … yeah … starting to look kind of shiny around here.
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Life As We Knew It by Lela Markham
Book 1 of Transformation Project, a day-after-tomorrow apocalyptic.
#1day only Thursday January 31.
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From “An Investment Returns” by Lela Markham.
Featured in FairyTale Riot, the fourth volume of The Clarion Call.
Now available
https://amzn.to/2OQImAa
What If Wasn’t 10 comments
We are writers. This is our time to shine. What are some of your favorite lines from your books?
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You can tell which lines of my books that I am the most proud of because they tend to become the titles of books.
Objects in View comes from a line in the third book of Transformation Project in which nonagenarian Jacob Delaney (the wisdom in the series) tells his offspring that they should “focus on the objects in view.” They could waste a lot of time and energy worrying about distant events they couldn’t control or deal with what was going on right in front of them.
From The Willow Branch (Book 1 of Daermad Cycle)
“Fate took Maryn ap Trevellyn, crown prince of all Celdrya, by surprise. Naught warned him that he’d been marked.”
“It must be nearing middle of the night, for a moon hung like a golden banqueting plate just above the southern trees and the cool air scented more of dew than spring flowers.”
“Death took him by surprise as he looked down at the two feet of dressed wood protruding from his chest. He couldn’t feel his legs, but he knew that he was staked to the tree like a squirrel.
“I’m done for! I thought death would be more painful.
“Pedyr bellowed for aid and the camp came alive as Maryn died, staring up at the moon with his life leaking away into the dirt by his feet and wondering why the shaft that killed him was the only one to fly.”
“Inside the door to the great hall, Deryk paused to shake water from his cloak, decided it was a lost cause and hung the sodden mess on one of the many waiting pegs among the myriad damp cloaks, quite a few of them plaid, but a notable number also striped. The merchants thought there‘d be war and war was usually good for them, so they loitered about the dun to be the first to know, the first to get in at the trough. Merchants cared little that war meant death. They cared only for profits.”
“The noble-born often show little care for those who fill their bellies and cellars,”
From Mirklin Wood (Book 2 of Daermad Cycle)
It did remind him somewhat of the statues he’d seen of dragons, but that was a bard’s fancy and those did not fly to your rescue that often.
Erik didn’t like how the jals stroked their beards and held their piss while he talked. He couldn’t invade the southern continent without their viks and their silence made him feel like he’d stepped on an ant hill. When his speech ran to a close, he waited for comment, questions, or arguments. He had prepared for those. Samling was all about debate. Silence shivered his bones.
Gravity dictates the fate of a dragon dancer. Miss a handhold and gravity wins.
From Life As We Knew It
Smoke and mirrors meant making the right hand so flashy that the mark never noticed what the left hand was really doing. Grant couldn’t stop the main event, but he could make this little side drama so entertaining that nobody saw through it until it was too late.
Shane swallowed audibly. Jacob sat down on the opposite end of the wide wooden stair and waited. Shane excelled at silence. He always had. Jacob didn’t try to outwait him.
“You’re not okay, are you?”
“Was your first clue that I’m actually here?”
From Objects in View
“What’s going on out there?” she asked. Right. Honesty. I promised honesty. He restrained his trained inclination to dump the screen. “Weird.” “That’s not communicative,” she said with a giggle. He smirked. The rest of the shelter was quiet. They were the only two awake. “Bear with me. Learning a new skill here.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Dylan said the same thing. Maybe you can make sense of what is confounding us.” “Oh, sure, honey. I know so much about terrorism.” She sipped her coffee. “Or is this espionage?” To Grant, this was just workaday life. Terrorism and espionage ran together in his mind.
A small throb of pain pulsed when he prodded it. That’s an injection site. I never blacked out before. Maybe I didn’t this time either. A dream before waking – a desperate whispered conversation between Marnie and Rob, a memory of sitting on the church steps and peeing in the bushes with …. Dad roofied me?
He had never slept this rough in his life. He felt like crap. He worried he’d been sleeping in it all night.
My favorite line from all of my books is still unpublished, but is the title of my new adult drama “What If … Wasn’t.” Peter is a second-chance citizen (a recently-released felon) who has a horrible history to overcome and whenever he is tempted to indulge in a fantasy where his actions did not cause significant damage to the lives of others as well as himself, he smacks himself with that phrase – “What if wasn’t, which means I have to live with what was and is.”
It’s my favorite line because it is also one of my life philosophies. You can moan and groan about how crappy your life has been and how you should have done this and could have done that if only you would have known this, but why? It won’t change the past. What if … wasn’t, so why not live with what was and what is?
Weary of Politics? Leave a comment
For a committed democrat, it sure does suck when you lose an election.
You know what I mean?
Nearly half the country refuses to listen to the other half. We think we know what the other side means, but we never venture outside our own bubbles to actually find out.
Libertarian Connor infiltrates both bubbles in a Midwestern town on Election Wednesday 2016 and brings readers along for a wry non-partisan tour of the “Bubble Battles.” He even offers a solution … not that any bubble dwellers will listen.
This novelette is a work of fiction based upon real-life events. Any resemblance to yourself or people you know is purely coincidental.
“In today’s crazy world of intense politics, Lela Markham brings a little bit of satirical humor to the table in Hullabaloo on Main Street. No party is safe from Markham’s humor in this quippy fun novel. It’s fun to step outside of ourselves and take a laugh at this book’s jabs. Great for anyone a little weary of today’s dire political tone looking for a bit of humor.” Joshua Grant
“I wrote it to make people laugh, to see that politics is not the end of the world, to help ease some of the tensions between the left and the right by showing that there is a third perspective. It’s been two years and we’re still having the same shouting match, now with physical violence. We surely need to take a pause and laugh a little at our own folly, because there’s always a winner and loser in politics and it’s interesting when the “winner” of the midterms still feels it is necessary to assault the wife of a journalist because they don’t like what he reports.” Lela Markham
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Day’s End (Book 4 of Transformation Project) is on Pre-Order for $2 off until November 20 launch.
The rest of the series is $1 off until launch.
Darkness Falls.
They fought the USDA, but winning the battle didn’t assure their survival. The fundamental transformation of America is still underway and the next blow may be worse than the first. When the power grid goes down and stays down, people begin fleeing the cities in search of food and heat, forcing Emmaus, Kansas to re-evaluate what is important to them and what they owe strangers on the road going by the town.
While some distant community members undertake perilous journeys home through a human landscape that is rapidly becoming unrecognizable, others face life-altering decisions right where they are.
Darkness is falling and a new day will dawn, seared in blood and fire.
Available for #Preorder #discount 1 comment
Book 4 of Transformation Project, Day’s End, is available for pre-order, to be launched in mid-November. If you buy it on Pre-order before November 10, you’ll get it $2 off. And watch for free days of Life As We Knew It and sales of Objects in View and A Threatening Fragility during this pre-launch month.
aurorawatcherak 