A Tale Of Epic Novels And The Pratfalls They Provide

Ah, I have returned to my blog, full of the proper shame necessary to inform everyone that I am a writer of epic-sized novels (your friendly local neighborhood doorstopper, really,) and this means you can't trust me when I say "lol this huge freakin' book will totally be coming out this month!!!!"

YEAAAAH not really.

To be fair, all previous estimates for a release date for "ZUTTO" were up in the air because they relied on two critical things: editing and other projects going on. As much as I wish I  could say I make my bread and butter from writing novels under this name, the honest truth is that I don't. So sometimes projects under this name have to take a backseat and we just gotta roll with it!

But let's remember, my name is Hildred and I am a writer of epic novels. Even if they're romance. Okay, seriously, especially if they're romance.

All this is leading up to a pretty big announcement! First, you really CAN BELIEVE ME when I tell you that ZUTTO will be coming out by, at the latest, May 29th, 2015. Possibly earlier! How do I know I can finally tell you this with great confidence? Why, it's done! It's edited! All that's left is to put on the finishing touches and make it into a beautiful book! IT'S SO CLOSE.

I laugh at myself, really, because things have been so crazy this year. One thing that's made it crazy is a brand new project I'm working on under this name. I basically took all of March off and, yes, a good chunk of April to write a 220,000 word doorstopper. Standalone. Romance. Yes, yes, lesbians in Japan. BUT it's NOT a Ren'Ai Rensai novel! It's a brand new cast of characters albeit a familiar setting (especially if you've read Jiai Jouwa.) I have no idea at this point when it will be released, I'm shooting for sometime this summer, but ahaha, let's make no promises, right?

The novel is called Love, Yumi and you can follow some excerpts I'll be posting at my tumblr. Hope to see you there!

Celebrating One Year With The Dream Job: A Reflection (And Such)

Today marks the one year publishing anniversary of "DAISUKI." my first ever published work. One year ago today I was nothing but a fledgling publisher, who had no idea what to expect or what would happen a few months from then. I was confident in my writing abilities, but nervous about how they would be received - after all, it isn't every day that someone goes out determined to write a series about polyamorous lesbians.

The support I had from friends and family was what was able to get me off the ground. I will always be grateful for the support many of you showed me then, and since then. Thanks to your efforts, my stories were able to get in front of many strangers. Some off them were not my target audience, but many of them were. Many of them took a chance on me. Some of you reading this right now are some of those strangers who decided to take a chance on my unconventional romances. Many of you have contacted me over this past year and have expressed many wonderful sentiments that have helped me keep going in this little venture of mine.

Since I was a little kid I've always known that I wanted to be a writer. Back in those days, my only chance was scoring a lucrative deal with a trade publisher - since we pretty much all know that actually making a living writing for a trade publisher is a lot harder than the public thinks. But as I was growing up, I met a lot of roadblocks. Namely, people in authority telling me that I needed to "think realistically." This of course meant going to college to get a super expensive degree in something that had nothing to do with writing. And as it turned out, had nothing to do with my life in general other than putting me into crazy debt. But this post isn't about university mistakes and coulda woulda shoulda. It's about what actually happened that was pretty amazing.

The five REN'AI RENSAI novels I published this past year.

Most of you (who have asked over the months) know that I don't give out hard numbers. Many authors do, but I'm not comfortable with that. What I will say about my sales and earnings this past year is this: I am very happy. I am paying my bills that threatened to bankrupt me just a year ago. I am not quite where I want to be yet, but I am okay with that. The tradeoff, especially in this economy, is that I get to do my dream job every day of my life - which doesn't feel like a job, because I would be doing this anyway! - and still get by, with a little room to spare. I'm still learning a lot about running my own business, especially on the tax side, but it will all fall into place with more experience... eventually.

Over a year ago I took a chance on a fantasy.  Now it's a reality.

It was quite the coincidence that I would technically start a new series just a day before Daisuki's one year anniversary. But really, it's a pretty poetic coincidence, especially since the titles are a bit similar in the Roman alphabet. One year ago I would have never guessed this would be the state of my career. It both amazes me and makes me extremely proud of the work I have put out.

This is far from the end. It's barely the beginning. This is only the first year in what I hope will be many, many years of me writing and publishing. This time next year I hope to be in the serious publishing stages of my first fantasy novel (which yes, will include many sexy lesbians... just now with more galactic-ness~) and can't wait to share it with you.

Thank you again for helping to make this past year possible!

Weekly Writing Check-In: IT'S LIKE RAAAAIIIIN~ ON YOUR WEDDING DAY~

(No, I am not getting married, before the OMFG U STR8 NOW? comments start flooding in~) This week is a rather silly, ironic week. Mainly that this is the week I will officially attempt to reenter the work force in order to pay my monthly loan bills for this degree I just had to have, (That's gotten me super far in life. Mm-hmm. Lost generations, and all that.) I have to do this because, while I'm not making chump change at self-publishing, it's still not enough, and I'm almost all out of savings. I could make thousands of dollars overnight but wouldn't be able to pay bills next month because of the way Amazon delays payments. BUT today I DID wake up to find more sales in the past three days than I ever made in one month last year. Amazon has been nice to me today. Not only did it finally set ROUMAN to perma-free, but it also finally linked up the DAISUKI paperback and kindle versions. Yay! Still, this is Amazon. I don't expect it to last long.

This will also be the week I launch a new (lesbian erotica) pen name, focusing on short and to the point works as opposed to my plot and character driven heavy erotic romances I write under my real name. More on that later as I get closer to the release date of the first work. I still have some tax stuff to talk over with my trust tax lady.

Tomorrow, or possibly Tuesday, I will be unveiling the SUPER SECRET PROJECT I've been working on since December. Ren'Ai Rensai fans should get a huge kick out of it. But that's all I'll say about that for now!

Now excuse me, I have a resume to go brush up.

Weekly Writing Check-In: Prioritizing

I find myself in the really strange place of having SO MUCH to do I'm not sure what order to do it in. Usually, I am great at prioritizing things I have to do so my brain doesn't explode from anxiety, but I think my issue today is that they're all things that have to be done around the same time, and some things I have to wait for approval on, and and and...

Basically, this is what I'm looking at:

• Submit SEIKOU to all retailers at certain times so they'll show up on around the same day. Maybe.
• Continue writing the first draft of Book 4
• Start a short story for my new pen name
• Finish the next RR short
• Work on SUPER SECRET PROJECT
• Futz around with cover mocks for multiple series
• More futzing with paperbacks (Hatsukoi should be out this week!)
• Mail stuff
• Other crap no1curr about.

I've actually managed to get through most of this today, but I'm always in that state of "should I be working on something else first instead? And there's the part where I'm not sure I'm in the mood to write...just watch Japanese dramas...and play Sims...my life.

How y'all doing? Busy this week? NOT busy this week? Maybe it's time to start hiring personal assistants. 

Weekly Writing Check-In: Big Life Changes Are (Perhaps) Afoot

This past week has been an emotional whirlwind for me. On a lark I started applying to day jobs again, not expecting to get anything. Well, unless things start to go seriously south in more ways than one, it looks like I may be moving up to Portland (a seven hour drive from here in lil' ol Curry County, OR) for a full time job. If that comes to pass, it will mean a lot of changes with my publishing business. Mostly, time. Right now I work about 12 hour days on my publishing business. This is how I am able to put out so much so quickly, because I am CONSTANTLY working. I will go from 12 hour days to 2 hour days. Releases will become sparser.

But on the flip side.

I will no longer have to worry about making money with my releases. I can just write what I want and get it out there. Assuming I have the time and energy to do it.

There are a lot of other feelings involved as well. Nothing I really want to get into here because lol no but tl;dr, I just wanna write all day.

That said, I've got another REN'AI RENSAI SHORT coming out tomorrow, and book 3 is in a couple of weeks! Back to work!

Weekly Writing Check-In: One Month Check-In for "DAISUKI."

Hard to believe that one month ago today I released "DAISUKI." unto the world. Since then I've experienced a month of ups and down, growing pains and learning curves. I wish I could tell you that I became a big money-maker overnight, but, ALAS, I have not. But I have no  complaints so far. I am selling more, it seems, than most newbies with only one book out, and I am optimistic that once I get more books out there starting next month everything will work out!

I also wish I could share sales figures with you, but I don't think I'm allowed to from various TOS. But I CAN break down my sales percentages based on sales venues! Currently I have DAISUKI available on Amazon, B&N, Kobo (only took three weeks UGH), All Romance, and Smashwords (inc. expanded distribution to Sony and iTunes.) As of right now at this moment, here's how it's breaking down:

Amazon - 80%
Barnes & Noble - 10%
Smashwords - 10%
All Romance + Kobo - Try again, loser.

My percentages seem to mirror most of my research:  Amazon is a majority of the pie, and B&N comes up second with all the others vying for third. I'm rather disappointed in ARe since most other erotic romance authors told me they did very well there, but I have a feeling my niche (lesbianism. Yeah, it's a niche.) is the main factor here. On a site inundated with MAN PECKS MAN PECKS MAN PECKS you get the idea....

I suppose I should share what's coming up this we - OMG Nanowrimo. Ha. I've decided to go ahead and do the CROSS// universe grab bag. Finishing up book 3 of RR and then writing two shorts for it should push me over 50k. And if not, there's always book 4 to start. BUSY BUSY~

Also, be sure to be here for BOOK 2 TITLE/COVER/BLURB REVEAL ON THURSDAY! It's gonna be hot!

OUT NOW! "DAISUKI.", Book 1 of "REN'AI RENSAI"

I'm super duper excited to finally announce the official release of my debut novella, "DAISUKI.", now available at Amazon and Smashwords! (Still dancing with B&N and Kobo. Sigh. So if you need an epub, Smashwords is the place to go at the moment. It and Amazon links are below.)

It hasn't quite hit me yet that I've just published my first novel, and now my writing career is a real thing. It's been one of my top lifelong dreams since I first learned to read. Of course, my ULTIMATE dream is to make a decent living off writing, but that's where beginnings come from.

Thanks to everyone who supported me along my journey and still stops by once in a while. The ride's not over yet!

Amazon US / Amazon UK / Smashwords

(I mean, the blog tour starts next week! Woo!)

(ALSO! This is post #299! You know what that means! PARTY POST FOR 300 TOMORROW! BE HERE FOR GIFS AND LOLZ)

Weekly Writing Check-In: In Which I Look Super Productive

Woooo, what a week. I worked pretty much nonstop on writing crap, that I barely had time to get any exercise...or eat...or shower...or you know, do life stuff. That's how I am, though. Once I'm in the zone lol what is basic care of my body~

So, let's see what I did this week!

1. Finished second to last round of edits for "DAISUKI." Which lead me to-
2. Format it for Kindle! Took a couple days to get the hang of, but I'm not happy to report I know how to format for ereaders in Scrivener! So far I've only made a mobi and ported it to my Fire, and am now doing my last edits via reading on the Kindle. Do you know how intense it is to see your book all formatted prettily for an e-reader? It's awesome! And the cover is FANTASTIC on my tablet. ;) But now I've got the extra aggravations of my last edit, because the Kindle shows me just how repetitive some words / phrases may be.
3. Wrote three more scenes for the next book in the REN'AI RENSAI series. I'm now two away from finishing the first draft!
4. NOW FOR THE SUPER EXCITING STUFF! Friday I registered BARACHOU PRESS as my Doing Business As and received my first EIN from the IRS. So, essentially, I've started my own business. No press, book, to sell well and make me money to stay afloat. No pressure at all.

I like how those only break down to four points. But it was a lot! I feel quite accomplished today over what I accomplished last week, and look forward to this next week as well!

My goals for this week are to finish writing my new WIP and to finish the last edits of DAISUKI. I should have both easily done by Friday, assuming I'm not coming down with something. Only 15 days until release date!

Oh! And don't forget, yesterday I launched my very first (although co-run) blogfest, the Love, Differently Blog Hop coming up this November. Be sure to check it out and maybe sign up!

Weekly Writing Check-In: Feeling The Grind

This is my brain on "grind. (Photo by Cgoodwin)

...and no, not the sexy kind, either. (Darnit, foiled again!)

This past week and this upcoming week are just packed with so much stuff, that I'm starting to feel the lag. This last week I stayed up super late each night and am now running on empty, so today I mostly took off to go "duuuuh" and recharge before jumping back in tomorrow. Mostly, I need more sleep. Tonight I hope to get at least 8 hours! Woo!

As most of you know, I'm continuing to write the first draft of the second book in the Ren'Ai Rensai series, and I was starting to go fkdsjfklajkl because it's already full novel length and the end wasn't showing up. So today I sat down and wrote out an outline for the remainder of the draft. I am ten scenes from finishing! Now that I can see what the end is going to be, I feel a lot better about it. Normally I don't really outline like this, but I decided I needed to in order to keep myself grounded and stop panicking. (Let's put it this way. I'm hoping to get the second one out by Christmas...preferably in November. With finishing the draft, editing, editing again, getting it beta read, editing it again, sending it off to the final editor, editing it AGAIN...that's a lot to chew.) I'm going to shoot to finish the draft by this time next weekend, which means no fooling around during the day! GET TO IT, HILDRED.

On another front, DAISUKI continues its edits and marketing for its release later this month. Have got the first week of the blog tour more or less planned out. Tomorrow I tackle the site layout! (Uh, on that note, if you're here and you see the layout in a state of yuck, it's because I'm fiddling with it. Sorry!)

So yes. Today? Rest. Tomorrow? The fun begins. So long as I get enough sleep tonight, should be fine!

Weekly Writing Check-In: Slogging Through

Another week, another check-in. Not as much stuff happened this week as it did last week, but things are on track nonetheless. I'm still waiting on final edits for "DAISUKI." so I'm busying myself with writing the MS for the next book in the series, which is both my Camp August novel AND coming out a "full length" novel. I'm currently at 62k, and while the end is in sight, I'm expecting this novel to push 75k. Who knows how long it will be after edits, but I'm sure it'll be the longest in the Ren'Ai Rensai series. (That's okay, chronologically it's the first book anyway! It's allowed to be longer.)

So, yes, Camp! I'm not as far ahead as I usually am in Nano events, but I should finish either tomorrow or Tuesday. Currently I'm just shy of 47k. Making progress, but I want this story to be done already! Sheesh! (Also, cover image has been picked out for this one. I'm currently pushing for a late November/early December release for this one. See, this is what happens when you're "unemployed" and just work on books all day. You're able to crank books out this fast. It's kind of...exhilarating? Frightening? Gah.)

I don't really recommend this fast of a pace to anyone. As it is, life revolves around me getting up at noon-1pm, putting around for an hour, checking all my usual websites, exercising (let's not talk about how I've put on 25 pounds since moving back to America. Woo!), reading, dinner, and THEN my writing life begins from about 7pm to 4am. This includes blogging, writing, editing, and anything else related. Yes, I consider blogging a part of my writing job. Why shouldn't I? =P

I suppose I should stop rambling for now. What have you all been up to this week?

Hubpages Wednesday: Or, Whatever Happened to That Thing

You may or may not have noticed a severe lack of Hub updating from my end of the Internet. I have a pretty dang good reason for this:  I got Google sandboxed early last month.

What the heckity heck is the "Google Sandbox"? Succinctly, it's when Google's algorithm decides it's not going to send your website traffic anymore. There's a number of reasons this may happen, but the short of it is that it happened to me, and I stopped making money. Any money.

July actually started very, very excitingly. By the end of the first week I had made almost six dollars! I know, right? Up until that point my traffic had been steadily increasing, and I put out a huge effort to write as many quality hubs as I could to keep the hits coming. Somewhere at the end of June my hits TRIPLED and I started raking in some money. By the end of the first week of July I was pretty sure I would hit my very first payout the end of that month.

Then I logged on one day to see that my hits had tanked to ten.

And they never got better.

I went from making sometimes up to two dollars a day to barely making four cents a day. All I could figure, as it never improved no matter what I did, was that I had been sandboxed, and it was time to move on. So I did. I stopped hubbing mid-July and focused on my noveling.

Today I logged into HP to see what was going on hits wise. It had been over a month since I last checked it, too disgusted to even bother. Shockingly, I made a whole daughter this month. Woohoo. But what actually WAS nice? My hits were back up in the hundreds! That is, they were about June's average, right before my trafficked tripled.

So what does this mean? I think when I have some downtime I'll go through and start updating some of the older hubs and start advertising them again. Apparently, Google is liking me enough to give me hits again, so why not? But I'm not gonna wear myself out writing new articles if I don't feel like it. I have a couple unpublished ones languishing that I might as well get out. If things improve again? I'll let you know.

I'm over at Meradeth's today!

Time for me to write a guest post! This time I'm over at Meradeth Houston's blog, talking about living and writing abroad in Japan. Check it out an tell us about your experiences writing abroad! (Or your dream to!)

Weekly Writing Check-In: And We're Off

Well not really. I'm not going anywhere. Nobody's coming here. It's not even a really good figurative title. The only thing going "off" is my alarm clock every day at noon. But! As of yesterday evening I finished the pre-beta edits for my upcoming novella and have sent it off to beta. Wow. I must have no life. In less than a month I wrote a 45k novella, rewrote it, edited it, rewrote it again, and then finally edited it one last time and then sent it off to beta. This is my life. Every day.

Needless to say, my evenings are so consumed with writing/editing that I had NO IDEA what to do with myself later on. I just sat here, after doing my cleaning and blogging, going, "Now what?!" I had idle hands. You'd think I'd take a break, right? Give my brain the night off? Nah. I WENT STRAIGHT INTO THE FIRST DRAFT OF THE NEXT ONE~ Wrote two pages before finally going to sleep. Writing 3k every day is so infused in me now that I don't know how to function otherwise. I mean I got nothing else to do with my time...

So while I wait to hear back from betas on this novella, I've started the next. I plan on releasing both by the end of the year (more details to come, but basically, a couple months apart) so might as well get as much done now as I can before my brain becomes consumed with more editing, Camp, formatting, and marketing! Oh goodness. The life I've signed up for.

That was my week! Huh, for once I actually had something to talk about. As for the cleaning? Taking a break from it tonight. I have a million CDs to put away and I just don't want to. Ha!

A Life In Which Writing Is ALWAYS A Priority!

On Saturday I wrote a post about what my life would be like if writing wasn't a priority, ie if I knew I would never be published. In that post I talked about how I treat writing as my career and thus depend on it for my future and even financial security. When money and happiness are on the line, you bet writing is a priority!

Thus, it's also important for me to think and consider what my long term goals are on this career-end of the business. What do I want from this writing that I spend over 10 hours a day (yup) doing? Well, obviously, money. I need money to move out of my natal home (pressure's mounting, guys) and to live the lifestyle I want. In order to accomplish that, you're supposed to outline your goals, right? Okay.

What I do want my writing to bring me? What is the end-game, to say, of my writing career?

It's pretty simple, but will be a long road full of long hours (I'm excited!), some shorter term than others. But I'm the type of person who always needs something in my control to look forward to, so these big goals that probably won't happen for another 10 years are good for me.

Let's see what my writing's gonna get me. (Yes, it will, this is non-negotiable. Hear that writing? I own you.)

1. Making enough to cover my monthly loan bills so my savings are not depleting. This will be about $300 a month.
2. Making a living wage. This will vary, of course. It could mean just making more than the 300 so I save up some money, to being able to afford to move out of here to the valley and start a proper ~adult life~, where I can eat what I want, live in a nice apartment (or home?), get around (no dreams for a car, so to afford public transport) and pretty much being able to go out and do what I want while still continuing to save.
3. Making enough to travel at least once a year. Trust me - traveling is expensive. My ultimate dream in this regard is being able to stay for a month in Japan once a year because I can.

WHELP it's 11pm, I have 1000 words to write before midnight, a chapter to completely edit, and another 1k to write before sleep. And I want to get some Sims 3 in there. I GOTTA GO.

What are your long term writing goals? Are they financially related?

A Life in Which Writing Is Never a Priority

A day or so ago The Golden Eagle made a post in which she asked, "Would you write if you knew you'd never be published?" Of course I thought about it and subsequently replied, but my reply made me think a lot about the role of writing in my life...especially now.

My reply was basically "Yes, but not as much." More complicated than that, as I will get into further here soon. As most of you know now, I'm recently unemployed (by choice) and living with my parents again (by choice...well, er, kinda. I have money but no income so I don't feel like wasting my savings, you know? Especially when I still have loans.) I live in a dinky little town in super rural Oregon where jobs are non-existent, and I don't drive let alone have a car. This means I've got a lot of free time. And since my dream has always been to be a successful published author...well guess what I'm working towards full steam now? Yup. Publishing.

So, if I knew by some whim that I would never be published, would I still write? Look, I am not Idealist Hildred. I'm more certainly not Optimistic Hildred. I am Realist Hildred, to the core of  my little blackened no1curr soul. No. No I would not. I would be out there hitting the pavement harder than ever, pushing myself into random people's houses in the valley looking for a 9-5 to make ends meet and find some sort of direction for my financial future. Because writing is my job. It's my career. Without publishing I don't have much chance at a good career.

My dream is to not only be successful financially, but successful because people like my work as well. Because they look forward to the next book I want to publish. Without being published I have no future dreams, or at least nothing as strong and important to me. I would still write, of course, because it's the best, but it would be a back-burner hobby. At best I would write a page a week, instead a few a day. And be pretty miserable at my 9-5, more than likely.

Thank God I'm going to be published, eh?

What about you, in case you don't follow The Eagle?