The Good News, the Bad News, and then Good News again!

First, the good news! Tantor Audio has bought the audiobook rights to THE SPIRIT WAR and SPIRIT'S END!!! And, they'll be hiring the original narrator, Luke Daniels, to finish the series!

 

WOOOO! This will finally complete Eli Monpress in audio book after 3 years of waiting! I don't have a release date or links yet since we just signed the papers, but when I do I will let you know ASAP.

Hooray!

So that's the good news, now for the not so good. The next book in my Heartstriker series, ONE GOOD DRAGON DESERVES ANOTHER, isn't going to be done in time to come out this year.

I know, I know, that really sucks. No one is more pissed about this than I am, but the plot as I had it planned was simply not executable, and so, rather than put out a bad book (which I will NEVER do), I'm doing a rewrite.

That said, the rewrite is going very well so far, and fingers crossed, ONE GOOD DRAGON DESERVES ANOTHER should be out early in 2015. I'm very sorry for the delay, and I hope you'll forgive me and hold on to read the next book when it comes out. I'm trying to make it extra amazing to make up for the time lost, and I really hope you'll enjoy it!

In happier news, I'm doing my yearly open NaNo thread on the NaNoWriMo Fantasy Forums! This is my fourth year doing this, and it's always a blast, so if you're participating in National Novel Writing Month, or if you just have questions about writing or the writing business in general, please stop by and ask. For the month of November, I'm all yours!

See you all soon and again, I'm super sorry about the delay. I promise it won't be too much longer!

Yours sincerely, and happy writing,
Rachel

My Halloween Costume and a reading rec!

Don't I look dapper? But seriously, how do men deal with beards?! SO HOT!

In the spirit of the joke, though, I'd like to draw all of your attention to this book I just started called FLUENCY, by Jennifer Foehner Wells.

NASA discovered the alien ship lurking in the asteroid belt in the 1960s. They kept the Target under intense surveillance for decades, letting the public believe they were exploring the solar system, while they worked feverishly to refine the technology needed to reach it. 

The ship itself remained silent, drifting. 

Dr. Jane Holloway is content documenting nearly-extinct languages and had never contemplated becoming an astronaut. But when NASA recruits her to join a team of military scientists for an expedition to the Target, it’s an adventure she can’t refuse. 

The ship isn’t vacant, as they presumed. 

A disembodied voice rumbles inside Jane’s head, "You are home." 

Jane fights the growing doubts of her colleagues as she attempts to decipher what the alien wants from her. As the derelict ship devolves into chaos and the crew gets cut off from their escape route, Jane must decide if she can trust the alien’s help to survive. 

Full Disclosure: I haven't read the whole thing yet, so it could still go off the rails, but what I have read so far has been solid, old school exploration SciFi. Most important of all in the current context, however, this is classic SF WRITTEN BY A WOMAN, and until Amazon shoved this book in my face, I'd never heard about it. And that's freaking weird since Fluency is currently #7 overall in the Kindle Store right now with a 4.2 Amazon rating from over 1100 reviews. It's got a more mixed but still decent 1000+  reviews over at Goodreads as well, which strikes me as a pretty big hit for a debut SF novel that's only been out since June.

How did I miss this book before now? Here we are, desperate to bring female voices into SF, and this lady with her hard SF debut novel about a female doctor of linguistics making first contact is quietly becoming a hit off the radar. That's incredible!

So Jennifer, if you're reading this, mega congratulations on your success and on your book. I can't wait to finish it! Most fun I've had with hard SF in a long long time. And for the rest of you, check out Fluency! Hopefully you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I was.

Nice Dragons Deserve Numbers -- Sales Report, the Thirty Day Climb, and Kindle Unlimited

ETA: It has come to my attention that some of you hate reading white text on a black background, so I've also compiled this post into a normal, black text on white PDF to make reading easier if that's your thing.

My favorite thing about the indie publishing community is its transparency. I could not have made my decision to self-publish without the sales numbers and analysis posted by the authors who came before me. As all of you who read my blog regularly know, we are big big fans of paying it forward here at Casa de Aaron/Bach, and so it was a foregone conclusion that I would do the same once my own numbers started coming in.

Below, you will find the complete sales numbers/Kindle Universe borrows for Nice Dragons Finish Last followed by a few conclusions and observations I've drawn from my self pub results so far. Please know that I am not doing this to brag. While I did admittedly have a fantastic, amazing, beyond my wildest expectations two months, I'm still nowhere near the top of the publishing heap for either the traditional or self-pub side of the fence. These numbers are provided purely for the edification and benefit of the community of independent authors who have always been so generous with their information. Seriously, y'all rock.

Before we get going, though, a word of warning. I apparently had a lot more to say about this than I realized, because this post is one of the longest I've ever made (5400 words!). That's a lot to ask someone to read on the internet, and I seriously thought about splitting it up into multiple posts for easier consumption. After reading it again, though, I've decided to leave it intact. It was written to stand as one post, and that really is how it works best, so for those of you I'm about to give eyestrain, mea culpa.

I promise it'll be worth the long read! There's some pretty cool stuff in here if I do say so myself. That said, I totally understand if giant, numbers-heavy self-publishing analysis posts aren't your thing. So if picking apart Amazon algos sounds boring to you, why not go read about dragons instead? I won't be insulted!

And now, for those brave souls who are still here and ready to talk serious numbers, let's let this cat out of the box!