Looking forward to 2016
2016 Resolutions: Spend a greater percentage of my time writing: This seems to be a common theme among fiction writers this year. For me, this means putting the writing first, being more efficient with the time I spend marketing, and continuing to use the strategy I developed last year to increase my productivity. This strategy (which consists of alternating between my historical fiction and my new science fiction series so I am writing on one series during the times when I am researching, plotting, and publishing work in the other series) enabled me to actually double the number of words I wrote last year. Write more but shorter blog posts: I have neglected my blog this year. On one hand, I felt increasingly like I had nothing new to say in the rapidly evolving self-publishing/ebook environment. On the other hand, Read more…
A Gift for the Holidays: A Victorian San Francisco Novella
I am delighted that I was able to finish the next installment in the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series in time to give it away for the holidays. Violet Vanquishes a Villain (which started out as a short story and grew into a 28,000 word novella) picks up where the fourth book in the series, Deadly Proof, left off. And it is now available as a FREE electronic download for anyone who has subscribed or wishes to subscribe to my newsletter. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE In addition, for those who would rather buy it directly, it will be only 99 cents through December 20, 2015 on Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and eventually Apple. Here’s the description: In this novella, Annie and Nate Dawson, the amateur sleuths from M. Louisa Locke’s cozy Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, are visiting Nate’s family at Read more…
Paradisi Chronicles Launches Today: Nervous and Excited!
Like the character quoted in this picture, I feel like I have embarked on a rather perilous but exciting adventure with the publication today of my two works in the Paradisi Chronicles series. My coming of age adventure, Between Mountain and Sea, and the short story I co-authored with my daughter, Butler’s Brother, are both now available on Amazon–and there is no turning back! The experience of collaborating with six other independent authors to create an open-source, science fiction universe was an adventure all its own, (see the background on the Paradisi Chronicles here), but I hadn’t anticipated how nervous I would be about actually publishing my own novel in this new universe. I always wondered why other authors said they were writing new series outside their regular genre under secret pen names. But now I think I understand…because for the first time Read more…
Podcast Interview with Hank Garner
Two weeks ago, I was contacted by author Hank Garner who does interviews for his Author Stories Podcast, and the interview just went live today. Hank is a great interviewer (so check out his site), and I was particularly happy that we not only got to talk about my Victorian San Francisco Mystery Series but that I was also able to introduce his listeners to the history behind the Paradisi Chronicles–the open source science fiction universe I have been working on with six other authors for the past year. In fact, the reason Hank had heard of me was that, even though the first round of works written for the Paradisi Chronicles aren’t going to be out until September 1, our whole enterprise was now the subject of a good deal of buzz among the science fiction/fantasy world of indies. Read more…
The unexpected effect of the “perma free” strategy on my productivity
In a post entitled Time for a Pivot? I detailed a shift in my marketing strategy for 2015. In 2014, all my books were in Amazon’s KDP Select (which requires exclusivity) and I used the 99 cent Kindle Countdown KDP Select tool as my primarily form of promotion. In December 2014 I took all my books off of KDP Select in order to sell them in a variety of bookstores (Apple, Nook, Kobo, GooglePlay), and for these first six months of 2015 I have been using the perma free strategy (making Maids of Misfortune, the first book in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, permanently free) as my major promotional tool. I also committed to writing more short stories, getting audiobook editions out for the next two novels in my series, and writing a short story for a new science Read more…
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