Category: Updates

New (Year’s) Content

Hi, all!  First off, let me wish you all a peaceful New Year.

I come bearing content.  Princess Disasterface now has its first Holiday Special (aptly titled Holiday Special #1), and we now have an illustrated Cast of Characters.  One of the lines came out a bit blurred by our witch friend.  Gah.  Something to fix in the New Year.

I’ve been toying with the idea of creating an actual Princess Disasterface comic book.  But where will I find the time?  Another resolution, I think.

In other news, I am very slowly putting together a fantasy short story collection to showcase my writing style.  Sales of my first novella are NOT exciting (in fact they may still be zero).  Building something like a reader base takes time. I doubt I would buy a review-less book from a first-time indie author, either.  So the goal is to continue to put out accessible quality content and eventually attract readers. That is the plan, at least!

There’s still a paperback version in the works, too.  (You notice my blog posts read like a wish list of completed tasks?!)

I couldn’t be happier that you’re all here with me on my comic(al) adventure, though.  Thank you for making Princess Disasterface a part of your free time.  It’s been a wonderful year.

Cheers, and a Happy 2020 to you all,

CKB

Episode 2 begins!

Princess Disasterface is back!  Episode 2 begins here.

I’ve been making some font changes here on the website and in the comic to make things look a little sharper.  When I said there was a learning curve to building this website, I meant it!  I only recently figured out how to alter the font attributes so things are more readable.  Not to mention justified instead of centered.

Baby steps!

Anyway, it’s nice to be working on the comic again.  My little break didn’t get me as far ahead as I hoped, thanks to my delayed release of A Shadow in Sundown.  The truth is I probably need to set a more realistic timetable for myself.  Once, I aimed to release almost every week…and now we’ll see how it goes.  Any scene/episode that requires a new background takes a lot more time to put together, and then I end up behind.

My Episode 2 resolution will be to relax and enjoy the process a little more.  I’m really looking forward to creating younger versions of the Duchess (whose name has been revealed–Diometra!) and the Queen (Esmerelda Sparkles Medina) as I delve into their backstories.

Cheers!

-CKB

A Shadow in Sundown is here!

My first novella has finally made it onto Amazon, after many months of delays!  You can find A Shadow in Sundown (ebook only so far) here.

I also have an Amazon author page now, which I’ve added to my About section.  You can look at that little gem here.

After a lot of back and forth, I decided to enroll in KDP Select.  I had hoped to roll everything out on a variety of platforms (I still can with the paperback, when I get that darn cover done), but then I read this very persuasive article from Draft2Digital about exclusive vs. wide marketing.  (Lot of links in this post, aren’t there!)

In a nutshell, they suggested giving exclusive publishing rights a go, at least for a single term, for authors with less than 3 titles.  That’s me!  And the free promotion that comes with being an ebook exclusive to Amazon could be a real help.  At least I hope so.

Anyway, I now have 90 days to focus on my writing.  And my new four-legged friend.  And my family and the holidays and…you get the picture!

Oh, yeah, and Princess Disasterface, too.  It’s coming back shortly, I promise!

So cheers to you, dear reader, and boo to all the things that take us away from whatever is most precious to each of us!

-CKB

Self-publishing A Shadow in Sundown

My new novella is almost here!  In ebook form anyway.  A Shadow in Sundown (Book One of the Open World Quartet) will be released on Amazon first.

So what’s next?  Paperback, promotion stuff, adding the book to other retailers…it’s overwhelming at times but I’m looking forward to it, too.  I’ve been trying to get this together since the summer, was sure it would happen in November and…well, here we are.  Almost at the end of the year!

A Shadow in Sundown has an even longer history than that, though.  Looking back at old files, I think this story started 8 years ago.

What I remember is that I wrote it quickly, and that I had no idea to do with it next.  It wasn’t long enough to submit to a literary agent–not by a long shot.  I brainstormed ways to make it into a longer book, tried to expand on it, tried to add perspectives of new characters and continue the story.  Nothing quite worked.

Years later, I realized, Oh.  I write novellas.

After that, some of the writing problems I’d struggled with for ages started to make sense.  But there was one new problem: unknown authors rarely get novellas or short story collections published.  So when it was time to do something with this story that started so long ago, I had to learn how to become an indie author and self-publish.

I do wish novellas were more common today.  It’s true that some of my favorite books are uncommonly brief (like The Buddha in the Attic, or The Whale Rider), but in today’s market a standard word count range, for a first-time novelist, is generally very important.  (Journals are also an option.  You can read a little bit about literary journals in yesterday’s post, Goodbye to Glimmer Train.)  So for this, for me, self-publishing was king.

And here we are.  (And here we go!)

I’ll be sharing more about A Shadow in Sundown in the coming days.  I hope you’ll take a look.

Oh, and Princess Disasterface will be coming back soon, too!  I’d say in the next week or so.  As always, stay tuned, and thanks for reading.

Cheers!

-CKB