The Misty Vixen Newsletter (July 2018)

Hello, everyone!

In case you couldn't tell or didn't know, I finally have a new logo/avatar/whatever you want to call it. She is hot and now represents me in the digital world. If you're a patron, you can find a totally nude version of her right here. (She has really big boobs.) But if you don't want to or don't have the money to spare, you'll be able to see her naked on this site starting July 20th.

Here is the Naked Ladies page!

So, things that happened in June.

Well, first off I published Royal Lust. If you missed it, you can get it here as eBook for 2.99$, and here as a paperback for 9.99$.

I also published Wanderlust, which is the first book in a four part series. You can get it here as an eBook for 2.99$, and here as a paperback for 9.99$.

I added a brand new page to my website that is specifically designed to answer the questions that I get asked the most often: Is there going to be a sequel? So, if you've ever been curious as to whether or not I intend to do a follow-up or continuation of your favorite story or series, check this page out. I'd like to say that while I am more certain about some things than others, I don't think anything is truly set in stone, so things might change.

The biggest thing I did was finally launch The Misty Vixen Library! Here is a blog post giving full details on it. But basically it's my own version of the Kindle Unlimited. If you sign up for my Patreon for 10$/month, you get access to (eventually) my whole library of works! Basically, you can choose to either just read the plain text right there on Patreon, or you can download a PDF or a Kindle version. I will be creating a new page on this site giving more details and direct links to the works there. I plan on adding to it every month for the rest of the year at the very least, and to try to get copies of my newest novels up there earlier than they actually publish elsewhere, so you get early access!

Finally, I had intended to release Parasexual before July, but it just didn't work out that way. I realized as June was drawing to a close that if I tried to get it out on time, I'd just end up rushing the ending. But the good news is that it's almost done! I just have to wrap up the last chapter and it'll be out. I'll let everyone know as soon as it's done, and I am shooting for a release of next week.

In a mini-update I released midway through June, I mentioned that I was having some vague health concerns. I don't really have any definitive answers, but I am feeling better and it's probably nothing, but I'll release an update if things get worse or if I have any tangible evidence of something wrong.

Now, let's talk about July.

I have a lot to do.

First of all, Wanderlust II & III are coming out this month, on the 2nd and 15th respectively. I had fully intended to release Wanderlust II by now, but I, uh...basically, I had a party yesterday and was up until 7AM, so I've been recovering today. I live a somewhat reclusive lifestyle, so I don't get to have parties often, so I tried to enjoy myself. Wanderlust II should be up by tomorrow.

As mentioned above, Parasexual will be up sometime next week.

My primary focus this month will be Demoness III. I can't promise to get it done by the end of July, but I will say that it is my goal. I will be working hard on getting it written and out.

On the Misty Vixen Library front, Wanderlust III & IV will be coming out, as well as The Complete Collection. The Misty Vixen Starter Pack is also coming out this month. It was supposed to come out last month, sorry about that. Finally, Demoness I & II will be coming to the Library as well. That's the line-up for July. Also, if I do actually get Demoness III written and out, then it'll go up too.

Now, let's talk about free stories! Several free short stories that I've written across the length of my career are going to become available through my website. Basically, I'll be posting them as blog posts here and there. Technically speaking, none of these are newly written. I'll post a little bit of history before each story to give you some context, since all of them are tied to pre-existing stories. They're basically extra scenes and bonus content related to Hellcats, Wanderlust, My Undead Lover, Exploration, and Royal Lust.

Another idea for free content I've been having is sort of in-between stories. I'm going to do an experiment and write a bonus, and totally free, short story that takes place in between Demoness II & III, since there's about a month gap between those two novels. It'll be a fun little adventure featuring a brand new character and, of course, John and Yelena. And sex. If it goes over well, I'll probably make a habit of this and write more in-between free shorts for other stories.

One big thing I need to get to is going wide. In other words, publishing my content on all other available platforms since I'm no longer enrolled in the fucking Kindle Unlimited. As such, I'll probably have to redesign my website again to provide links to everything. Oh boy, what fun that's going to be. So I'll be making announcements here and there about that when I find the time (and the willpower) to actually get that off the ground.

Another minor thing I'll be doing is updating all of my paperbacks so that the logo on the back cover is replaced by my new, custom designed logo, in case you care about that. (Most people seem not to care about my paperback options.)

I also want to say on the fan fiction front, uh...basically that's put away again. Sorry for getting your hopes up. I'm simply too busy now.

As a small aside, I recently had a poll on my Twitter. The question was: is incest hot? It didn't get too many votes, and there was one more vote for no than there was for yes. Which means that at least some people find it hot. I have to admit that incest, and none of the pseudo-incest bullshit, but real incest, is something I've kind of been interested in writing about. I'm currently tossing around an idea. If I do write it, since there's no way I'm going to publish it to Amazon, since they technically do not allow it, I'm going to just post it to my website as a free bonus story. So...if you're into incest, let me know! I'm pretty interested to see how this little experiment plays out.

And now the final thing. Basically this is just a general reaffirmation of my plans for the near future. I like to keep people updated, and it also helps me to kind of keep it all straight in my own head. (Planning is not actually one of my strong suits.)

As it stands, I have three tiers of writing. I believe I've mentioned this before. This is what they look like, and what I'm planning on doing.

Tier One: The big stuff. For the future, this tier will be taken up by Demoness and Women of the Wild. I'll be switching back and forth between those two probably until I get burned out on one of them and slot in something else. That will probably be Wild Discovery or Haven.

Tier Two: This tier is going to be populated by simpler projects. For now, that means Parasexual. That series is going to be probably around four novels. Other titles in this tier will include the Alien Harem rewrite and anything related to the re-releases. I need to expand the original Desire novella, I need to write a fourth Sex & Survival novel. I might write Desire 5, still figuring that one out. Also the occasional stand-alone novel.

Tier Three: This is for the simplest stuff. The incest story I mentioned. The Demoness short. Other free short stories. Stuff like that.

Tier One is me working on new material, while Tier Two is kind of like me trying to catch up and take stuff off the back burner. I don't think I'll have less than three Tiers for a long time, but eventually I'd like to uncomplicate things at least a little bit.

I think that's everything. If I missed anything or you have any questions, please let me know! Either in the comments below or you can just email me at mistyvixen@outlook.com.

Thanks!

The Misty Vixen Library Is Here!

Yes, it is finally here.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this, The Misty Vixen Library is basically my answer to the KDP Select. At its core, it's a subscription service.

If you sign up for my Patreon for the 10$/month option, you will gain access to my library of works. Not everything, though, not yet. But it is my goal to eventually have everything available through this.

(With a few exceptions. I won't be posting free shorts there because, well, they're freely available already. Also, Valkyries, since I plan to do a full rewrite.)

Now, to clarify what I mean by making these titles available through my Patreon. You have three options.

  • You can straight up read it right there on Patreon, as I've posted every story in its entirety.

  • You can download the story as a PDF.

  • You can download the story as a Kindle file. All you have to do to read it on your Kindle is to hook your Kindle up to your computer via USB, then drag and drop the file into the folder marked 'Documents' on your Kindle. And that's it!

So, what is currently available?

I have eight titles available right now, and one of them is currently exclusive, not yet published anywhere else! The titles are:

  • Exploration

  • My Undead Lover

  • Alien Harem Season 01

  • Alien Harem Season 02

  • Demoness

  • Royal Lust

  • Wanderlust

  • Wanderlust II *(Exclusive to Patreon right now)

Now, for the rest of 2018 at the very least I will be updating my Library with a minimum of two new novels per month, which will be available on Patreon before anywhere else.

Some might be asking the obvious question: Why aren't my other titles that are currently available part of this library? Well, basically this is out of an abundance of caution on my part. Although I have gotten Amazon to pull all of my titles out of the Kindle Unlimited, technically, a lot of them are still enrolled, even if they are not available in the store through the KU. I have to wait for them to naturally fall out of the KU. Or, at least, I think I do. Honestly, Amazon has fucked me over so bad that I don't want to risk anything further. However, everything should be completely out of the KU by mid to late August.

I'm not really sure how this is going to play out. This is an experiment. I'm doing this because Amazon fucked me over when they forced me out of the KU by falsely accusing me of attempting to manipulate the Kindle Unlimited, temporarily suspended me, and ripped every single title I've ever written out of the store for about two days, (something they claim is an accident, an 'accident' that cost me literally thousands of dollars), and, judging by my sales ever since being forced to pull out of the KU, it's obvious that it has done long-lasting, if not permanent, damage to my selling ability and visibility.

After years of struggling to make ends meet, and finally, FINALLY seeing actual, real fucking success, to have it ripped away from me for literally no reason and have the people who do it not fucking care at all, well...

That feels fucking awful.

I'm at least glad that I'm still doing pretty well, but fuck Amazon. Seriously.

So yeah, Amazon forced me to reconsider my options.

On top of that, pulling out of the KU has made several of my fans unhappy. I know it made me unhappy. I didn't want to do it. But Amazon could not promise that whatever broken algorithm or bot is detecting illicit activity might not flag me again, and then they would probably terminate my account, permanently tearing away my ability to publish for the Kindle, without even considering whether or not they were fucking over a completely innocent person.

(Yes, I'm still very bitter about that.)

But, anyway. Several of my fans have reached out to me, telling me that they could only read my stories because they were enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited, and can't afford to buy each individually. Which sucks. If I could, I'd enroll just about everything in the KU. That is another reason I'm doing this: to try and give those people another option. I know it's not perfect, but right now it's my most realistic response to the situation.

(If you are curious about learning more about the 'Amazing fucking me over' situation, please refer to this, this, & this blog post.)

Either way, I hope you enjoy the Misty Vixen Library if you are interested.

My Patreon has other rewards as well. For 1$/month, you can get early access to the first chapter of my newest titles. For 5$/month, you can also get access to naked alternate versions of the cover art!

Either way, thank you for helping me out. I really appreciate it.

Mini Update

Hey everyone.

This is more of an excuse to rant about things. It won't take too long.

Basically I'm just angry because ever since the whole thing happened with Amazon back in mid May, it feels like I've never entirely lost a background anxiety, because things kept happening. On the heels of dealing with that, (which caused old anxiety problems to flare and remanifest, naturally), I've had a few oddly vague yet potentially terrifying health problems.

To be clear, I am not in any immediate danger and I'm basically okay (as far as I know). Honestly, if I knew what was causing the problems, and it wasn't a big deal, I'd be fine. I'm not traditionally a hypochondriac, but I am paranoid and a bit of a worrier. So yeah, I've been having vague yet persistent troubles. I am going to go to the doctor soon after figuring that these vague problems have been going on for a week now and is probably worth actually checking out.

So because of all this anxiety and worry, I've been depressed and distracted and frustrated.

This has, obviously, eaten into my ability to write consistently.

The result of this is that I've fallen behind a lot on Demoness III. As of now, I've written four of ten chapters. On the flip side, I'm actually almost done writing Parasexual. I'm on the last chapter.

The main reason this is happening is because Parasexual is simpler than Demoness III, (a more traditional erotica that focuses more on sex than story, though there is a story), I tend to start the day out by writing for it first. Now, because of the stress, it tends to take longer and longer to A) wake up and get started, and B) get through writing for Parasexual. Then I feel drained and frustrated by the time I get to Demoness III. To make matters worse, Demoness III definitely feels more complex and complicated, which makes me worry over getting it right more...which makes me hesitate more often than I would if I wasn't feeling so emotionally taxed.

Honestly, all of this just feels like me fucking whining and making excuses, but I guess I'd rather whine and make excuses than say nothing or even lie. I'd rather tell the truth.

So, with that out of the way, let's do some mini-updates.

Wanderlust is coming out tomorrow!

I'm still on track to release the Patreon Library this month.

I'm writing a few more advice articles.

As stated before, I'm almost done with Parasexual. Currently writing the last chapter, and as soon as that's done, I'll get to editing and then publish it! I'm going to work at getting back on course with regularly writing Demoness III, and once Parasexual is wrapped up, I'm going to take some time to focus exclusively on Demoness III. Once I make some real progress on it and settle back into writing regularly for it, I'll begin writing Parasexual 2 alongside it. I'm also in the early planning phases of Women of the Wild II.

And that's it. There's the little update and my excuse to get my frustrations about stupid things that have been happening lately.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (June 2018)

Hello, readers!

I've been told time and again that I need to get a mailing list and I tried, but I had no idea that I was going to be required, BY LAW, to post my address in every single newsletter.

So I was like...fuck that? I don't need everyone to know my fucking address.

Apparently I can get a PO Box, but that's something that's kind of on my to-do list.

So for now, instead, I'm going to be releasing this newsletter at the beginning of each month. I'll try to keep them short and sweet, although this one will be a little lengthy, given that it's the first one.

In case you're new, Amazon fucked me over last month after I was falsely accused by one of their bots for attempting to manipulate page reads in the Kindle Unlimited. Best guess is that an illegal bot read one or more of my books in an attempt to hide itself and look more legit. But to Amazon, they don't care! They threatened to terminate my account, temporarily suspended me, and ripped every last one of my books out of the store for about two goddamned days.

Right in the middle of the best sales of my entire life, costing me literally hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. More now, given that not only did I lose momentum, but I was also forced to pull out of the Kindle Unlimited, given that they cannot give me any kind of promise that this will not happen again, and the KU was 1/3 of my income.

For a more detailed explanation of the situation, please read this, this, & this blog post. But in short: Fuck you, Amazon.

Naturally, I'm still bitter and pissed. And it's clear that I am not the only author this has happened to. And Amazon doesn't give a fuck. Because fuck the little guys right?

Anyway.

THAT is why I am no longer in the Kindle Unlimited. This has upset several people, for which I apologize. If I had the option to, I would enroll just about everything in the KU. I was thrilled to use it.

As a result of this, I am going to attempt to create my own subscription based service. I am doing this through my PATREON. Below is a list of rewards that I offer.

  • For 1$/month you will get access to the first chapter of any stories I am currently working on.

  • For 5$/month you will also get access to nude versions of my cover art.

  • For 10$/month you will also get access to (eventually) all of my stories in the form of reading it right there on Patreon, or downloading it as a Kindle friendly file, or a PDF.

I am still in the process of piecing together that library. I will be launching it this month. Below is a list of titles that will launch with it.

  • Demoness

  • Royal Lust

  • Wanderlust I & II

  • Alien Harem Season 1 & 2 (NOTE: These are the original versions of Alien Harem, which I have taken down from everywhere, as I plan on doing a full rewrite, but I thought some people might like them.)

  • Exploration

  • My Undead Lover

I will be uploading two new novel-length titles per month for the rest of the year at least. The idea is that I'll be working hard to upload something substantial and new every month from now on. The Misty Vixen Starter Pack will go up in late June, and basically as my other titles (Hellcats Trilogy, Women of the Wild, Demoness II), fall out of the KU, I'll upload them too. I will be uploading novels a little bit ahead of time, so you'll have early access.

Today I re-released my fantasy erotica/romance novel Royal Lust!

Originally, it was a trilogy of novellas titled Royal Love. If you want to know what's different between those two versions, the answer is: basically nothing. In fact, I actually had to remove a bonus short story originally released with the Complete Trilogy pack, as it screwed with the pacing a bit. Not to fear however, as that short, along with several others, will be released for free to my website!

Here's the synopsis: Ellie Lennox is the eldest daughter of the lord of the township Lennox, making her the princess and next in line. Being six foot six and heavily into adventuring, she finds it difficult to find a man to marry, let alone someone to sleep with her. All she’s really interested in are adventures and getting laid, but after a dry spell of sex, she concocts a plan to satisfy her desperate craving.

Warren is a young healer, employed by the local lord to deal with the castle’s magical needs. Although he lusts after Princess Ellie and longs for her best friend Lena, who has been cursed to be undead, he knows that neither will ever be interested in him in that way. Or so he thought. Everything changes when Ellie whisks Lena away to the secluded family cabin and orders Warren to join them. She’s about to change everything as she prepares for a night of hot sex between all three of them...

If you'd like to buy a copy, you can grab it for your Kindle HERE for 2.99, and you can grab it as a paperback right HERE for 9.99$.

Also, just in case you missed it, here's a quick list of other titles I've recently released.

All of these are available in eBook and paperback format, and will eventually be coming to other platforms, like Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and more.

Now, as for the near future.

Wanderlust, a re-release of roughly the first season of that series in novel format, will be coming out June 15th, with Wanderlust II coming out July 1st, Wanderlust III coming July 15th, Wanderlust IV coming August 1st, and Wanderlust - The Complete Collection coming August 3rd. I'll be writing some new content for Wanderlust IV.

I am currently over halfway done with writing Parasexual, which is the first novel in a new series that takes place in my Paranormal Erotica Universe. It'll be 3.99$, as it isn't as long as Demoness II or my other, lengthier releases are going to be. It's a harem novel and a lot more lighthearted, with a lot of emphasis on sex and fun with hot paranormal ladies. Unless something goes really wrong, I will have this out sometime in June. I plan on continuing to work on the Parasexual series until it is complete.

I am about a quarter of the way done with Demoness III. I wish I was farther along, and I honestly would be if all this bullshit with Amazon hadn't completely derailed my life. Parasexual would be done by now and I'd be on my way to writing Parasexual 2. But that's not what happened. On top of that, Demoness III is longer and a little more complex than what I'm used to writing. I'm aiming for it to be about as long as Demoness II, but it might end up being a little longer. We'll see. Either way it will be priced at 4.99$.

When I finish up Demoness III, I'm going to immediately get to work on Women of the Wild II, since people really seem to like the first one.

Now, some of you may be wondering about re-releases. I've since had some time to think about how I want to treat my re-releases, so below is a simple, comprehensive list of where I stand with regards to all my series I wrote before Demoness.

  • Wanderlust. This is getting re-released basically as-is, with a little bit of new content, in four novels.

  • Alien Harem. After some consideration, I have decided to do a full rewrite. This will probably be a trilogy.

  • Adventurous & Amazonian's Love. These are getting re-released as stand-alone novels with basically no changes.

  • Paranormal Passions. This is getting re-released as a trilogy of novels with basically no changes.

  • Valkyries. This is getting completely rewritten from the ground up, and I intend to treat it as seriously as my newer Demoness titles, i.e., they will be longer, more complex titles. Not sure how long this series will go on for.

  • Lust & Adventure. I'll be re-releasing this as a trilogy of novels with basically no changes, however, I am considering continuing this series, since it left off on a pretty open note. It depends on two things: if I get some good ideas and if people want it.

  • Desire. This is being re-released as four novels, with some new material written for the original prequel novella to fill it out some more, and I might continue this. That's a distant might. I have one more idea for another book, and there's always the possibility that I could get more. Plus, Desire's a big place, and there's a lot that can happen. We'll see.

  • Sex & Survival. This is getting re-released as a trilogy with basically no changes, however, I am going to write one more novel that kind of serves to open the door for a very massive change in my Post-Apocalyptic Universe, one that shakes things up a lot and, I think, will make things way more interesting for future releases. Like Haven.

And that's it. Hopefully this makes you happy!

I've just got one more thing to touch on. I originally took all of my episodic titles out of the store to protect myself from Amazon threatening me with more false accusations. I figured that now I've been pulled out of the KU, I could put them back up. Unfortunately, the ones that have not naturally fallen out of the KU yet (most of them), I discovered, will reappear in the KU if I try to re-publish them. Which obviously is not what I want.

So my thought is this: once an entire series falls out of the Kindle Unlimited (this should happen my mid August at the latest for all the series) I will post all of the episodes back up, and reduce the price of each down to .99¢. I'll also be making the first episodes of each series free. Now, to be clear, whenever their time comes to start re-publishing, I will be taking their old versions down completely. So, since Wanderlust is starting up soon, I'll be taking down all three seasons in about a week.

And that's the first newsletter. Again, I'll be releasing these at the start of each month. And they'll be shorter than this one, with releases of the previous month, progress reports, my thoughts, and upcoming releases.

Thanks for reading!

Making Cover Art

So I figured I'd try to help people out and offer some advice on some aspects of writing as a career, since I've technically been doing it for a few years now. (With, uh, varying amounts of success.)

Let's start with cover art, because as much as people FUCKING LOVE to say, "Don't judge a book by its cover!", they do. Pretty much everyone does.

However, I do want to emphasize that the real foundation of your career as a writer is the writing itself. You need a solid core, a firm foundation of quality writing with which to build on. Otherwise you probably won't get anywhere.

(Not trying to come off as sound liking some elitist bitch. I don't think I'm great at writing or anything, I just try my best and hope people like it, and practice pretty much every day.)

So, cover art.

First thing's first, you need to determine whether or not you have an eye for visual art. This is...admittedly hard to determine. I'd recommend just trying to make some covers and see where you land. Either you're abysmal and come to realize it's going to take a LOT more practice and research, or you might not be half-bad at it, or you're a natural.

From there, you should determine whether or not you want to put in the work. I can understand why you might not want to. It's the exact reason why, as soon as I got some money, I began working with someone to help me. Cause I suck at making cover art.

If you are looking to go it alone, here's some resources.

PIXABAY. This place is nice. It's basically just a massive collection of royalty free images you can use. I'd recommend getting an account, just so that you can download the biggest versions of pictures. It's no-bullshit, no hassle as far as I can tell. I haven't had any kind of trouble and I've had an account for awhile now. Go looking through this for images that you might want to use for your cover art. There's a ton of stuff on here, but most of it isn't amazing. There are some hidden gems though. Basically, try typing in a lot of different phrases if you're looking for something specific, because different words can bring up totally different results.

SHUTTERSTOCK. It's kinda like the pro version of Pixabay, in that it costs money. The images aren't super expensive. Individually, anyway. The pain in the ass is that you can't just buy one image. You have to buy, like, credits or something, in packs, and then use those credits to buy pictures. It isn't really a scam or anything, as far as I can tell. Once you jump through the extra hoops, you can buy the images without a problem. It's just a psychological trick they use to try and get you to spend more money. The bigger the amount of money you spend, the cheaper the individual pics are. They REALLY want you to sign up for a monthly subscription. If you want to buy just like a few pictures, it's fucking expensive. If you're invested in making covers for yourself, and you produce a lot of content, this is probably worth investing it.

GIMP. Sounds kinky, right? It's actually not. Basically, this is a free, open-source photo editing program. It is...complex. Or maybe I'm just an idiot, but it took me awhile to get the hang of it, and even now I realize that I'm only utilizing maybe 15% of its total abilities. It has a LOT of things you can do to make pictures, but it will take a bit to figure out. If you're looking for a given effect, google it. There's probably a reasonable tutorial on how to do it. If you're serious about making cover art, this is worth investing time into.

There's a lot of other stuff out there, but this will get you started. Also, IMPORTANT NOTE! If you are writing erotica and are going to use someone's picture, like a model you got from one of those sites, don't use their face! Not unless you got it from a site that's specifically okay with using models for that purpose. I doubt there exist vast AIs or bots trawling the internet, looking for erotica that uses some people's faces on the cover art, but it's just not worth the hassle if it ever does come up. Some people get really touchy with this and it's basically their legal right, I believe, to say that you can't use their face on your sexual content. I mean, as far as I know. I'm just a cautious person out of nature, so I don't bother.

Now, some general advice on making cover art.

  • No Crowding. Try not to put too much stuff on your cover, specifically text. Really, the most we need is the title and the author's name, and perhaps a byline (basically one of those little taglines you see on the covers), or maybe (MAYBE) a piece of a glowing review, if you somehow managed to get someone with a big name to publicly review your book.

  • Eye-Catching. Try to make your cover have some kind of central image or maybe a good color scheme to make it eye-catching. Something that snags your attention the second it enters your field of vision. Obviously different things attract different people, and this is more of an art than a science. Honestly though, like a lot of cleavage works well, I've heard.

  • Centered Text. It is your friend and it looks pro. Center your name, center the title. Unless you've got a stylistic reason to do otherwise, which plenty of people do. But it's gotta look good otherwise.

  • Series/Brand Recognition. If you're going to do a series of stories, they all have to resemble each other, to let the reader know that it's part of a series. Or, if you're going really big, it's part of a brand. Your brand. This can be super hard. For a long time I used pink silhouettes and I...have no idea if that worked or not. But I do know that not a lot of other people were using silhouettes, so hopefully it gave me a bit of good branding. Maybe go with a very specific font, (oh yeah, check out 1001fonts for some cool fonts, but make sure they're free to use and not licensed, or you'll get in trouble, but if you find one you really like, you can place it right into GIMP.) Or maybe create a little logo that you put on every cover.

  • Thumbnail. Whatever you make, it has to look good as a thumbnail. You know how the covers are small when you're browsing in the Amazon store? Basically that. It should still look good and be recognizable and legible at that size.

Now, what about if you don't want to make your own cover art?

Well, luckily there's some places you can go to get relatively cheap cover art made if you're strapped for cash.

First thing you'll need is a paypal account. Pretty much everyone operates on them and they aren't too much of a hassle.

I used fiverr for awhile. I recommend signing up and then go hunting for top-rated people making cover art. You'll be able to at least get decent cover art for cheap, either 5$ or 10$ usually. I used this person for a long time. She charges 10$ a pop now but if you aren't getting a crapload of works like I used to (I needed about 9 per month), then you should be fine. She's fast and reliable and pretty good at what she does.

Now, I found the two people that I currently now work with through the website artistsnclients. This is basically a site that hooks you up with people who draw, if that's what you're looking for.

You might also want to check out deviantart. I admittedly don't really know about about it, but some cursory research led me to believe that some artists might be open for commission. Find something that you like and maybe PM the artist and ask if they'd be willing to let you use it, or maybe to commission them to create something like it.

ADVICE: If you are going to go to someone to create a drawing or something in-depth, I'd recommend being up front about the fact that you are going to use this as cover art. Tell them this right from the outset, because I think it's fair to let them know whether this is something for your personal collection or something that's going to be part of a commercial endeavor.

There's certain a hell of a lot more to making cover art and even having cover art created for you, but I think this about covers the basics.

Hopefully this helps someone.

Changes & Plans

So, a lot's been happening.

Right now, I'm still gathering my thoughts. I feel like I'm picking the pieces back up, and walking on thin ice, waiting for something else to go horrifically wrong. But I'm going to continue forward with the tentative hope that the worst of it is over.

I want to recap a little, to make sure everyone is up to speed. I'll give a rough sequence of events.

After a massive boost in success thanks to luck and me releasing new, longer content with new cover art, and seeing more success in a few weeks than I have in my entire career, Amazon fucked me over and threatened to terminate my account when they falsely accused me of attempting to manipulate the Kindle Unlimited via page reads. I defended myself to the best of my ability, letting them know that not only did I not do that, I would never do that, nor do I even know how. In the process of this, every eBook I've ever written was removed from the store. I did manage to get them all back after a few fucking DAYS.

An in-depth post about this whole sorry thing can be read here.

Realizing that I can no longer trust Amazon, and that all of this seems to be tied to page reads in the Kindle Unlimited, I began trying to pull out of the KU. In an attempt to protect myself, I took down every individual episodic title that was in the KU, instead of waiting for them to fall out naturally, as I can't just pull out. Luckily, after I asked to be pulled out, Amazon agreed and took all of my titles out of the KU. You can read about that in detail here and here.

Now, I have decided to keep almost all of my episodic stories, and individual collections, (not including the Complete Seasons and Trilogies), unpublished, on the grounds that I will be re-publishing these stories in a cheaper and better format over the next year or so, and I would rather people have access to the better versions than the inferior versions. However, if people really, really want them, I've left up the Complete Seasons & Trilogies.

I would also like to point out that as I get close to re-releasing these titles, I will take down the old versions ahead of time. This is why Royal Lust (formerly Royal Love) is no longer available, as it is coming out June 1st.

Some of you may have noticed that Valkyries and Alien Harem have disappeared from the Kindle Store. There is a reason for this. Basically, as I think about my re-releases, some things occur to me, and here's something important that I realized.

I'm not very satisfied with most of my content. The reason for this is because...well, honestly, I guess a few different reasons. My own failings as a writer to be sure, but also because I just wasn't sure what I was doing for most of it. And, to compound the situation, writing in episodic shorts honestly does fuck with my ability to tell a good story. Or at least a story to my own satisfaction.

And this has shown up a few times in the form of, for example, Valkyries. I wrote that as almost kind of like a good version of Hellcats. Or my upcoming Parasexual. It's basically a better version of Paranormal Passions.

Because I have gotten better at writing, (I mean, I hope), and because I can write novels now, I'm really feeling the urge to redo a few of my older works, as I had much higher hopes for them, and knew they could be more than what they ended up being.

Alien Harem and Valkyries are the two I intend to do full on rewrites of. I think Alien Harem could at least be a solid trilogy, maybe even a bit more, but I think Valkyries could be a full on series. And I have more I want to say with Valkyries and I think it could be a really awesome series.

Now, in terms of what I'm doing right now.

I'm working on Demoness III. Definitely not as far in as I'd like to be, and as everything finishes settling, (I also have some unrelated real-life stuff going on right now, nothing bad, just distracting), I'm looking forward to settling in and making good progress on this just about every single day until it's done! And from the layout I've created, and how comfortable I'm getting writing novels, I think this one might actually be longer than Demoness II!

Basically the same story for Parasexual. Once everything settles, I'll make daily progress on it, too. This one will likely be about as long as Hellcats, so it shouldn't take as long to write.

The other thing I'm working on in the background right now is preparing my re-releases for, well, re-release. There typically isn't a great deal of work that goes into this, but there's enough that it warrants some preparation.

This is as far as I'm going to go on my in-progress projects. Well, writing-wise, at least. I don't want to spread myself too thin. Two projects at once is enough.

Now, as for what I plan on doing after that?

I've given it some thought, and I've decided that I will not be working on Haven after Parasexual. Instead, I will continue on with Parasexual until it is finished. This stems from not wanting to have too many series in progress at once. Three is enough. (And that's excluding the re-releases.)

That being said, I've received an unexpectedly large and positive response to Women of the Wild, and as such, once Demoness III is complete, I will begin production of Women of the Wild II. After that, I have a solid idea of what I want to do for Demoness IV, and will write that, followed by Women of the Wild III.

Once Demoness IV wraps up, I'll need to assess the situation. The thing is, I have ideas, to be sure, for several more Demoness books. But I have other ideas that I really want to get to, and I also don't want to work on a series too much, or I'll burn myself, and probably the readers, out. So there's a good chance that I'll put Demoness on the back burner.

While I will continue to work on Women of the Wild, as I have pretty solid ideas of what I want to do for Parts III, IV, & V, I'll have to decide what series to start up next. There's a very good chance that I'll finally begin my Sci-Fi Action Erotica series Wild Discovery.

Once Parasexual is wrapped up, I'll probably begin working on my rewrite of Alien Harem.

For the foreseeable future, this is how it will go. I'll have three series actively in production, with two of them being larger and more 'serious', with one of them being shorter and more focused on erotica and sex. And by shorter I mean 40,000 - 50,000 words, (Hellcats was 50,000 words for reference).

That's the gist of it.

I do, however, have one more big thing I want to talk about. My Patreon.

I've recently given it a revamp and a few things are different. One is a massive difference.

So, first of all, if you donate 1$/month, you will get access to the first chapters of my works in progress. 5$/month gets you access to the nude alternate versions of my covers and the first chapters.

I've added a new tier. For 10$/month, you will get access to all my books. This will come in the form of two downloadables: a kindle-ready file and a PDF, or you could just read it right there on Patreon. I'm planning on launching this in June and will do a full blog post explaining it. I also want to say that not everything will be available right away, mainly because of the Kindle Unlimited. Although I am technically pulled out of the KU, any of my books that have been borrowed by people will stay in their libraries until they naturally expire. So because Amazon has made me SUPER paranoid, I'm going to refrain from posting Hellcats, Demoness, or Women of the Wild related content until they naturally expire. Sorry, but I really just want to avoid any potential bullshit from Amazon.

Here's what I intend to have ready to go on launch: Royal Lust, Wanderlust, My Undead Lover, & Exploration. I will upload titles before their official release dates. Eventually, the Hellcats Trilogy, Women of the Wild, Demoness I & II, and The Misty Vixen Starter Pack will be available. I'm not going to put up my free titles (Snakeskin, Pink, Blind Date, The Pale Redhead, Large & Lovely), because they're freely available in all formats already.

I honestly have no idea if anyone will be interested in this, but I figure it couldn't hurt to experiment and give it a shot.

With how the past week or so has gone, I really feel like I need a backup plan or two in terms of being able to pay my bills and buy food.

So yeah, that's everything! Hope this was useful. Thanks for reading!

I've Successfully Pulled Out of the Kindle Unlimited - What's Next?

Right now, it's about 8AM. This whole thing has really fucked up my sleep schedule and given me some bad anxiety-related insomnia.

So. I was trying to sleep, couldn't, and checked my e-mail again for the hundredth time. My heart jerked pretty hard when I saw a new e-mail from Amazon. This is what I got.

Hello,

I’ve cancelled your KDP Select enrollment on your behalf.

Customers who have already borrowed your book can still read it until it's finished, returned, or their Kindle Unlimited subscription expires. As a result, you may see new Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) read appear in your reports until then.

See the KDP Select Enrollment Help page for more information:
https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A3M9JQJV7RDER9

Thanks for using Amazon KDP.

Amazon.com

So...yay?

I still feel like I'm under threat, because all the KU page reads I've gotten so far could still trigger their bot or algorithm or AI or whatever the fuck it is that's seeking 'illegitimate borrow activity' with a fucking vengeance.

So I still feel like I'm living with a fucking shotgun aimed at my forehead.

I've checked, and all my remaining titles that were in the KU are now not. I'm honestly hoping that this will be enough to get me out of harm's way.

But, what comes next? Because obviously this has all been a pretty huge upset for my plans.

Well, my brain's still spinning, but I've got a few things I know for sure, and a few thoughts.

#1) I am for sure going to forge ahead with publishing my re-releases, although I've had a few thoughts on that. Namely, I think I'm going to hold some of them back, because upon further reflection, I've realized that I might actually want to just do a full rewrite of them. Not many of them, just a few. We'll see about that. These will continue to be released at 2.99$ in eBook, and 9.99$ in paperback.

#2) I am for sure going to press on with Demoness III and Parasexual. I will try to get these written and released by June, but given all that has happened and how little I've got written over the past week, I'm not sure I can promise this. But I will be working very hard on these two titles, they will be my primary focus.

#3) Now that I am not longer beholden to Amazon's exclusivity, I am planning on releasing my titles through Smashwords as well, which will then distribute them to a good number of other platforms, chief among them the Nook, and Kobo. Unfortunately, since I have less control over the formatting there, I can't promise they'll look as good as they do on Amazon, and am really just hoping that the cover and writing make purchases through other platforms worth it.

#4) I've gotten messages from a few people lamenting my pulling out of the Kindle Unlimited, as they are fans of my work, but cannot afford to buy all or even most of my books, which I completely understand. This has led me to start thinking about producing my own subscription based service. Essentially, what I'm thinking right now is that I'll create a new tier for my Patreon. For 10$/month, you'll get access to all of my books. I don't know how many people would be interested in that, but it would at least be a good experiment, I think.

Those are my main thoughts right now.

At this point, I just want to keep my head down, steer clear of any further false accusations, and just, you know, write. And be able to make people happy and make a living off of that.

That'd be great.

Pulling Out of the Kindle Unlimited

Hey everyone, another update here with regards to my library of work.

In you aren't caught up yet, please read this blog post to learn how I've been fucked over for no real reason by Amazon. (I'm still pissed.)

So, last night I sat down and set aside about an hour and a half to go through ALL of my roughly 200 titles that are currently enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited and pull them out. In addition to this, I am going to be going through and unpublishing all of my individual episodes, and all of the mini-collections. Basically, all that will be left will be my stand-alone novellas, the Misty Vixen Starter Pack, the freebies, my newer novels, and the Complete Seasons and Trilogies.

Why am I doing this? Well, that blog post will explain it, but I'll go into some detail here.

Basically, because I was threatened and punished by Amazon for the actions of someone else that I have literally no control over, I need to protect myself. All of this had to do with the page reads through the Kindle Unlimited. Literally all of it. So obviously, the solution is: Pull out of the KU.

No Kindle Unlimited. No threat.

Unfortunately, with how the KU works, you can't just pull out. The best you can do is go in to each of your titles and uncheck the box that tells Amazon to auto-renew when your current subscription to the KU runs out.

How the KU works from the author's side of things is that you agree to enroll for a 90 day block. There's basically no way out once it's begun. You do get a brief window of time to exit out of it, a few days, but once you're locked in, you are really locked in. So you just have to wait it out.

In order to further mitigate the threat to me, I've decided to go ahead and just take down those episodes, so that they simply aren't available for purchase.

I'd like to say that, if you wait long enough, all of these series are going to be re-released as novels with better cover art and formatting, and for cheaper, so ultimately, this shouldn't affect you too much as the reader.

Well...except for the fact that you will no longer be able to read my titles through the KU. Honestly, I didn't want to do this. I loved being in the KU. It made things simple, and it gave a lot of people easy access to my work. And clearly it was working. A garnered a SHITLOAD of attention through April and the first half of May.

So, sorry everyone. I'm still trying to reach out to Amazon and see if I can maybe get a straight answer of: How can I possibly protect myself from this situation?

I'll let you know what they have to say. If anything at all.

Mid Crisis Update (I am PISSED.)

Let me start off by saying that: I. AM. FURIOUS.

Second, this is going to be a LONG post.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, EVERY SINGLE EBOOK I HAVE EVER WRITTEN IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE IN THE KINDLE STORE.

How in the fuck did I arrive here?

Well, lets get back to where it all started.

As March of this year rolled around, I noticed something strange. All of my page reads for February had disappeared. At first, I honestly didn't think much of it. I figured it was some kind of error. Weird errors have been known to crop up, and I was busy.

Then I suddenly got a message.

Hello,

We are reaching out to you because we detected reading or borrow activity for your books originating from illegitimate accounts attempting to manipulate the Kindle programs. These accounts might be related to a third-party marketing service. You will receive royalties associated with legitimate or paid sales; however, we will not pay for reading activity related to illegitimate accounts. 

We fully support the efforts of our publishers to promote their books.  However, please be aware you are also responsible for ensuring that the strategies used to promote your books comply with our Terms and Conditions. We encourage you to thoroughly review any marketing services employed for promotional purposes.

We take activities that jeopardize the experience of our readers and other authors seriously.   Please know any additional violation of our Terms and Conditions – including violation caused by any marketing services you, or others on your behalf, may have used – could result in account level actions, up to and including termination of your KDP account. 

Please email us at content-review@amazon.com if you have any questions.

Regards,
Amazon KDP

So I was like: WTF? I promptly got back to them, ensuring them that not only would I not attempt anything illegal or illegitimate in regards to my page reads, I don't even know how. And as for marketing: well, I had actually finally done some marketing...back in October...and in March.

So the marketing I did back in October of 2017 was for Desire, was very low-key, and resulted in basically no sales/page reads. So I figured, "Oh well." And didn't come back. Obviously there was no way that this could be affecting my page reads in FEBRUARY. (Side Note: My page reads for February weren't even that good. No sudden spike. No massive uptick. Honestly, they were below average.) And the marketing set for March was slightly more upscale, but...it was set for March. Obviously, it could have no bearing on what happened in February. (Spoiler: It didn't do well either.)

Naturally, I was confused. And naturally, I began asking: "So, given the fact that this is not at all my fault, when am I going to get my page reads back?"

At first, I got a boilerplate response.

Hello,

Thank you for your email regarding the status of your account.

Illegitimate reading or borrow activity is intended to manipulate Kindle services or products. This activity sometimes results from marketing services you might have used to promote your book. We encourage you to review any marketing services used. Please know that you are responsible for ensuring the strategies used to promote your books comply with our Terms and Conditions to avoid termination of your KDP account.

You may email us at content-review@amazon.com with any questions.

Regards,

Amazon.com

So, I sent another response, again emphasizing my need for further information on this, primarily, uh, when do I get my page reads back now that you know it's not my fault? I've been hearing stories about Amazon's stonewalling tactics of just repeatedly sending the literal same copy/paste boilerplate response, so I was about prepared to give up. The amount of cash from the page reads wasn't really that much at all, and honestly, writing erotica on Amazon is kind of like living with a gun pointed at your head. You don't really want the attention of the person whose finger is on the trigger.

But I did ask again. And I got an actual, interesting response.

Hello,

Thanks for writing back to us.

I see that you've written to us about 2 issues. I'll do my best to provide a thorough answer to each of your inquiries in this message.

1. Unfortunately, this issue is one that will require input from another team, so I can't answer it directly. I've forwarded your concerns to the team that handles this issue, and they will consider your input.

Someone from the appropriate team will reply within two business days.

*********

2. Royalties earned from pages read are available the following month, when the KDP Select Global Fund is announced. That’s why you don’t see any royalties from pages read in your sales dashboard.

Hence, you will be able to see the February report by 15th March 2018.

The KDP Select Global Fund is announced monthly in our community forum on kdp.amazon.com

Thanks for using Amazon KDP.

That first issue was me asking about which specific titles had been affected by the 'illegitimate reading or borrowing activity', which was really just more for my curiosity. But the second issue was: "When do I get my page reads back?" Obviously, he had misunderstood the question, so in response, I sent him a picture of my account, specifically the fact that ALL the days in February had dropped to zero for page reads. This is where it got interesting.

Hello,

I'm sorry for any disappointment this issue has caused.

I completely understand your concern here regarding zero page reads for the entire month of February.

We'll need a little time to look into the issue. I've reached out to our Report team to investigate this issue why no pages read updated is there any technical glitch from our side.

We'll contact you with more information within 3 to 5 business days.

Thanks for your patience.

So it was acknowledged as a glitch! Amazon acknowledged that my page reads were taken IN ERROR. Now, I'll definitely admit that this was probably written by someone who didn't know for sure. But it was something. While I was dealing with this, I recieved another message from a totally different person.

Hello,

We encourage you to thoroughly review any marketing services employed for promotional purposes.

We take activities that jeopardize the experience of our readers and other authors seriously.  Please know any additional violation of our Terms and Conditions – including violation caused by any marketing services you, or others on your behalf, may have used – could result in account level actions, up to and including termination of your KDP account.


Best regards,
Amazon.com

So I was confused again. I responded to it, asking what specifically this was in regards to, because I was already in contact with Amazon over an error. Unfortunately, they never responded. And to save us all some trouble, every week or so, I'd contact the initial guy asking, "So...how's it going with my page reads?" He responded two times, saying that they needed more time and apologizing...and then he never responded again after my latest attempt. So that was frustrating. But by then, I had other concerns, like the fact that March was my worst money for sales. Ever.

I was furiously trying to wrap up Sex & Survival Season 3 and Demoness II. And I did. I launched Demoness II and decided to give my idea of re-releasing Hellcats as some novels a shot.

Well, I exploded in mid April and things were fantastic. To be clear, I was making more in one day than I did for ALL of April...consistently. I have never even come CLOSE to that level of success.

Then, all of a sudden, without warning, I got this message on May 10th.

Hello,

We are reaching out to you as a follow-up on our previous communication regarding reading or borrow activity originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services. We detected continued illegitimate activity after our communication and, as a result, we have suspended your account to protect our publishers and readers experience.

We need you to take the necessary actions to stop the activity. We encourage you to review any marketing services you may have used, since you are responsible for ensuring that the strategies used to promote your books comply with our Terms and Conditions. Once you have done so, please send a response to content-review@amazon.com which includes a statement that you reviewed all marketing services you may have used, and confirms the discontinued use of any that might be responsible for this activity.

Once we receive this affirmation, we will reactivate your account. Please be aware, any additional illegitimate activity may result in termination. If we don’t receive this affirmation, we will terminate your account after 14 days.

Regards,

Amazon KDP

And I promptly shit my pants. I was suspended, which basically meant that I couldn't access my account. Now, to be clear, I had done NO more marketing of any kind after that one in March. I didn't really think I needed to, at least not for awhile. I promptly responded, being as thorough and transparent as possible in my response.

I spent the rest of the day freaking out, having anxiety problems, and eventually managed to sleep. Well, I woke up the next hoping for an update. Oh, I got an update all right.

Every single one of my eBooks was gone. That was when I really started to panic, because that seemed like the next step to termination. Although, oddly enough, all my paperbacks were still there. And people were messaging me, letting me know that my books were missing. Well, not much longer after this, Amazon responds, saying that they have decided to reinstate my account. I regain access and see that, oddly, all of my titles still show as Live in the store. And yet the lead to dead pages. So I thought maybe it was something that was going to self-correct. I gave it a few hours.

It didn't self correct.

I e-mailed Amazon about the problem, and then, deciding to be proactive, tried to republish a few of my titles by uploading new versions. (I needed to do this anyway, to update a few of the links in the back of my newer titles and correct a few errors I had noticed.)

That didn't work.

As of yesterday, (May 13th), I received a response from Amazon, saying that they were going to look into the error of my missing books, and they'd get back to me within 5 business days. So, if I'm very lucky, then by Friday my problem will be fixed.

But...

Let's recap, shall we?

After three and a half years of busting my ass, never once breaking the rules, struggling to make a living, and earning Amazon money for sales through my books, and writing over ONE MILLION WORDS, I finally began earning a REAL living for once in my ENTIRE LIFE. I finally began to enjoy ACTUAL SUCCESS. And I had done it without breaking any of the rules, without taking any shortcuts. I had done it RIGHT.

And Amazon arbitrarily just fucking DECIDED that I was guilty and fucked me over for basically no reason. What in the FUCK is this guilty until proven innocent shit? How can I POSSIBLY prove that I'm innocent to them? How can I prevent this from happening again!? How can I POSSIBLY know who is reading my books!? How can I stop bots from auto-reading my titles!? I have literally ZERO control over that!

And to make matters even worse, a "glitch" suddenly takes ALL of my titles down DURING THE BEST EARNING DAYS OF MY ENTIRE LIFE. This has cost me LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. And how long is this going to take to recover from this? I am EVER going to see this level of success again?

And it gets worse.

Because of this, I am basically being forced to pull all of my titles out of the Kindle Unlimited. Unless Amazon can somehow promise me that this will not happen again, I literally cannot risk losing my ENTIRE account. And I don't want to do it. I don't want to pull my books out of the Kindle Unlimited. The readers were clearly enjoying it, and some people were specifically thanking me for making it available through the KU. But now I have to deprive them of that because Amazon fucked me over for literally no reason.

I'm sorry if I seem overly petty or vindictive, but this is straight up disrespectful of Amazon to treat me, AND OTHERS, like this. I am not the only one this has happened to. I know that. And some people have had their account terminated and lost EVERYTHING.

How in the FUCK is this fair at all?

So...yeah. I'm really pissed. I'm normally a really chill person, and the thing is, I actually can understand Amazon's position. Some shady motherfuckers are using bots to fuck Amazon over, and fuck people out of page reads, and game the system. And that's wrong. And Amazon should do something about it. But this is NOT the answer. I actually wouldn't even mind them subtracting any illegitimate page reads from my account. I would gladly give those up, because I agree, it's not fair for me to benefit, even indirectly, from someone else scamming the system.

But this is absolutely NOT the way to handle this. Threatening and, in some cases, ruining the lives of innocents authors is seriously fucked up. Because for a lot of people, writing is our LIVES. Not only is it what pays the bills, but it's what we live for, what we get out of bed in the morning for. I don't write for a hobby, I don't just write as a job. I write because I love it, I write because I care about it, I write because making a living from writing has turned what was a pretty miserable life into a happy one.

And Amazon is threatening to take that away.

One final thought for right now, as I await Amazon's response. I have to say that this has utterly shattered my trust in Amazon. Before, whenever I had a problem, the responses were often prompt and professional, and they solved the problem. But this is fucking ridiculous. In an interview in 2015, Jeff Bezos himself put out a bold statement: "But if you know of any stories like those reported, I want you to escalate to HR. You can also email me directly at jeff@amazon.com." Basically, he was saying, "If you have a problem, email me personally. I'll handle it." I've heard people say that you do get a response if you do this.

So you know what? I'm going to do just that. I'm going to e-mail Jeff or at least his staff and let him know that his company has failed several people with this blind, guilty until proven innocent, or really just guilty, mentality.

Wish me luck.

And as a little P.S....

For some reason, the eBook version of The Misty Vixen Starter Pack still has a page, although the title is 'currently unavailable'. I got a new review for it from Aris Echevarria stating: "can't give a review because as i in the process of downloading this book it suddenly came up as "this is currently unable to download " so i tried other books by this same author and they were all gone. Censorship?" Thanks, I appreciate that. And I appreciate all the people who reached out to me to try and let me know what was happening, and who've tried to help me.

UPDATE #1
UPDATE #2

How I Became Successful

BEFORE WE BEGIN

Well, shit.

I've been experiencing sudden success for less than a month and I already have people asking me how I did it. And because I try to be helpful where I can, I feel compelled to put together at least some kind of coherent post explaining it.

This is going to be LONG. I'll break it up into parts.

Before I get into any of it, I want to just get the primary answer out of the way first. You aren't going to like it, and most people hate it. A lot of people do what they can do deny it, downplay it, or somehow diminish it. (I'm not a fan of it myself.)

But the biggest, most primary thing that led to my being successful was...

Luck.

Yeah, no one wants to hear that. No one wants to hear that the universe doesn't care about you and that it's all pretty much the luck of the draw. Back in the day, (before my time as a writer), luck was which editor you happened to get the day that your manuscript showed up at whatever gigantic publishing house you sent out to. Luck was whether or not he was having a good day or a bad day, whether or not he looked at your name and it gave him a good feeling or a bad feeling because someone from his life that he loved or hated shared that name. Luck was whether or not he gave a shit about your genre. And then even if he liked your book, loved it even!...well, luck was there again if he could convince marketing to take it. Was your genre in that year? Was your book just a little too hard to categorize? Too hard to market? Too long? Too short?

You can see where I'm going with this. There are so many damned things that had to fall just the right way to get signed. And that was just to get signed. That's not even considering the whole process of actually getting published, then getting your book out to bookshelves. You had to be lucky enough to get a good cover. You had to be lucky enough to get good placement in the right book stores, then get in front of the right people, and you had to get enough purchases to convince your publisher to allow you to write another book.

I avoided all this, mercifully.

And don't get me started on the people who say, "Just write a good book. If it's good, it'll sell." Tell that to all the people who wrote amazing books that never got popular until after they died, or in some cases straight up kill themselves because they never got published. Or all the people who write great works and never get noticed. Or how about all the people writing garbage that get massive success?

Obviously luck plays a part.

And that doesn't upset me or anything! (Clearly.)

But luck isn't all bad. Sometimes it turns in your favor. And if you're smart, you'll be ready to jump on it, and start building on it. Luck can provide a foundation, but you need to build the empire.

So now we need to put this in a bit of perspective. How did I get started?

MY HISTORY

In late 2014, I decided, "You know what? I want to read stories about regular dudes fucking alien women." I couldn't really find any, so I figured, why not write about that? I had a few ideas. And then I started writing Hellcats. I was not at all confident in my writing abilities, and a little bit of research told me that people were selling pretty short erotica, and that it was normal to do so. So I drew up some basic plans that became the first season of Hellcats. And not much happened at first, partially because I was busy, but also because I kept hesitating on the actual writing. I figured it was a waste of time.

Even then, though, I did try to be professional from the start. I knew that if I actually committed to this, I'd be writing a lot of stories, and I knew that I needed cover art that would be able to be easily reproduceable and wouldn't cost money to make, and would also be recognizable. (Not easy.) It also needed to be something that clearly conveyed the genre, but also wouldn't put me at risk of coming under fire by Amazon. I got lucky in a few ways. Namely: I hit upon the idea to use silhouettes, and that I had a friend who knew a bit about cover design, and was willing to make covers for me in his spare time, since they were so simple to make.

By December of 2014, I had released a grand total of 4 shorts and one Collection. (From the beginning, I figured collections were a good idea.)

And then, in January,  my sales started to pick up. I'm guessing this is from the post-Christmas rush, where suddenly everyone has new Kindles and Amazon giftcards and buy stuff in a mad dash. I didn't think too much of it, though, until March. That's when numbers really started to pick up. And that's when I got to writing in earnest. I tried to keep a schedule, and once I had finished up the first season of Hellcats, got to work on writing an idea for a Sci-Fi/Erotica novella I had, which came out to be Exploration, and then I dove into Wanderlust, since I knew that I was going to get tired of writing the same thing, and I like writing fantasy as much as I do Sci-Fi. (Maybe more.)

My success exploded and kept on exploding until July 2015 hit, and then my income was sliced in half.

Basically, I had enrolled a lot of my stuff in the Kindle Owner's Lending Library, the origin of the Kindle Unlimited. Under that program, I earned approximately 1.35$ every time someone borrowed one of my stories and read 10% of it. That's where a lot of the money was coming from. Then, when July hit, Amazon changed the program to what it is now: you get paid half a penny for every page read. And...that sucked. I mean, it is more fair to authors, but suddenly titles I was making 1.35$ on, I was now lucky to make .25¢. And it fucked with my sales, too.

But I was still doing pretty good. It was enough for me to quit my day job, and eventually I did. Still haven't gone back! (Though again, primarily because of luck.)

The second half of 2015 and the first half of 2016 were kind of me frantically trying to do stuff. I wrapped up Hellcats & Wanderlust, pushed out My Undead Lover, the Royal Trilogy, and then blasted through both seasons of Alien Harem. By the time April 2016 rolled around, I decided it was high time to get more serious. So I conceived of three new series that I was going to launch. Lust & Adventure, Valkyries, and Paranormal Passions. And two of them, Lust & Adventure and Valkyries, would each feature lengthier episodes and be priced at 2.99$ instead of the 1.99$ I'd been doing so far. I still wanted to take it to the next level.

At first, it worked. Lust & Adventure was pretty successful.

And then June 2016 happened. I still don't actually know why, but all of a sudden, my sales started dropping off. My income was almost cut in half a second time. I'm convinced that it was at least partially due to the fact that I took it upon myself to release two collections of short stories, called Quickies (which were originally created in a failed attempt to produce Patreon-exclusive content). Each of these took close to a week and a half to complete, and naturally slowed down my writing schedule. And then, on top of that, the next thing slated was another trilogy of novellas called Amazonian's Love. Well, once I got all through that and into July, and saw that my sales weren't really picking back up, I went into overdrive and started busting ass on getting Valkyries and Paranormal Passions out alongside Lust & Adventure.

Well, with the exception of another trilogy of novellas called Adventurous, and a novella called Desire, this was literally all I did until June of 2017. It seemed to help. My sales stabilized and I recovered a bit. On my better months, (few and far between), I managed to match what I was making after the initial income chop. Not great, but decent. When June rolled around, I was ready for a change.

I'd conceived of this book called Demoness that was originally just going to be another novella, and not even a particularly long one. But as I got to work writing Demoness, ideas began coming to me, a lot of them. After deliberating a bit, I finally decided to just take the extra time and write Demoness out fully, instead of cutting scenes to get it out by the release date I'd set for myself. I'm glad I did. It ended up being the longest thing I'd ever written, (although it was still not technically long enough to be called a novel).

So was this the point where it all started to turn around? Where I began my eventual climb to success?

No, not even close.

Demoness was well received, and it sold better than most, but then it pretty much just fell off, and I got right back to work, launching two new series, Desire and Sex & Survival.

It was about this time that I told myself I was going to change.

For a very long time, at around the one year mark, I knew that I wanted to write longer fiction. I wanted to write erotica novels, not shorts, or even episodic shorts. But there was a problem: novels take time. Even written at a brisk pace, they take time. If I stopped producing content at a breakneck pace, (I was producing an episode about once every four days, and had been for years, with a few exceptions), I'd lose money. I might even have another massive income drop. I couldn't risk that. So I decided that I was going to buckle down and focus, and write novels alongside the episodic shorts.

That might have worked, except something new happened. I learned that Amazon had suddenly released the ability to make paperbacks. And so I decided to take on this massive endeavor of creating paperbacks, (manuscripts AND covers!), all on my own. I had about 24 novels worth of content by then. So...yeah. On top of that, because when I commit to something I really fucking try to commit, I decided to re-edit ALL of my written work so far.

I did it. I did all of it.

And it drove me a little crazy. Somehow I managed to do this while continuing to produce regular content for Desire and Sex & Survival. I worked through most of the rest of 2017 getting this done. It gave me anxiety problems, insomnia, and I put on some weight. I seriously was falling apart. But I fucking did it.

Not that it really matters a whole lot now since not a whole lot of people actually purchased the paperbacks. But at least I figured out how to do it. It's a good skill to have, since I intend to continue creating paperback versions of my work.

I also discovered that Amazon had finally, FINALLY given us the ability to request perma-free titles. So I wrote four brand new short stories, one in each of my universes, and put them out in November. It...didn't help as much as I'd like.

Now, another thing I had been working on since early 2017: The Misty Vixen Starter Pack. Here was a collection of four original novellas, each one set in one of my primary universes, all in one convenient pack. It was to act as a gateway for new readers. I spent almost a year writing it. And I finally got it out late December 2017. That's where things get a little uncertain. I'll try to hash it out best I can.

I still had the idea to get back to writing longer novels alongside my episodic shorts. I planned on getting back to this after finishing up my paperback project, and had even managed to get one of those novels written over the course of the second half of 2017. That was Women of the Wild. My goal was to build up a store of novels, so that when I did start releasing them, I could do so in a timely manner, and give myself enough of a buffer to continue producing new content. If I had a two-three month buffer of new novels saved up, then it would solve the problem of not producing enough content to stay afloat.

Well, there was a problem with that. My episodic stories just weren't selling.  Even the new stuff. This was a pretty huge morale killer. When I finished The Misty Vixen Starter Pack, I knew I needed a break or I was going to lose my shit. I took my Christmas vacation, and I began to feel a bit better when January of this year rolled around and I saw that the Starter Pack was doing really well. But I was still tired. Like, it took me awhile to realize the massive psychological and emotional toll the second half of 2017 had taken on me. That may sound stupid, and I'll certainly admit that my job is a lot easier than most others, but it still kicked my ass. I began work on Demoness II in January, and I felt pretty good about it. But I still had to finish up the third season of Sex & Survival. Something that was becoming increasingly difficult.

The more I wrote long-form fiction, the less I wanted to write short-form. It became a real pain. You can see this in the release dates of the final season of Sex & Survival. Because winter is traditionally pretty harsh on me psychologically, I was still recovering through February and even March. My numbers, however, were looking good. January and February were both good months, the best I'd had for quite awhile, and I had hope. I was coming out of my depression when March hit.

Holy fuck.

March 2018 is the worst month I've had since I began to see success. My sales were abysmal. I panicked. I wrapped up Sex & Survival and Demoness II as fast as I could, and got them out as April rolled around, and I planned on diving back into episodic writing with two new series, (Parasexual & Haven, which I'd been promising for several months by then), something I didn't really look forward to. I also decided to finally go ahead with an idea I'd had for quite awhile. It was my theory, (which has since, to my satisfaction, been proven), that I was shooting myself in the foot by writing short stories. I needed to make the jump to long-form fiction. I wanted to re-release my older titles as novels, so I found another artist (I'd already been working with one to produce covers for Demoness & Women of the Wild), and commissioned them to draw the central figure for the cover of Hellcats. I wanted to see how it would do. So I took down the original Hellcats series and then published it.

At first, my sales started to pick up, but it was about what I was expecting, since I'd been talking about Demoness II for quite awhile. And then, around Mid April, my sales pretty much exploded. And they haven't stopped yet.

So that was when I reconfigured my plan again. And it's now my current plan. Re-releasing my older content is a good idea, because clearly there is a market for it and a lot of people who haven't read it, and find it much more appealing in novel form. So, suddenly, I have a way to provide regular content, and it will give me enough time to write novels and release them at a decent pace.

Provided I actually buckle down and stick to my schedule. Which seems like a nice lead in to advice! Or basically just my theories about why I think I might have gotten successful.

TENTATIVE ADVICE

First and foremost, I'd like to be clear: I'm no expert. I may have been doing this for a few years now, and I've suddenly starting seeing success, and I have done some research and had to learn a few things, but I am not anywhere close to an expert on writing or publishing or marketing or social media. There are by and large far more people out there smarter than me, and definitely not all of them are more successful than I am.

So, let's start by getting out the specific list of what I think factored into the fact that my books are now selling pretty big. For now. I have no idea how long this is going to last.

#1: Luck & the Almighty Amazon Algorithm. As I said above, luck played, I believe, the biggest part. Right place, right time. But a huge factor of that luck is the Amazon Algorithm. What is it? There's a lot to be said about it and honestly, I don't really fucking know how it works. On the surface, it's basically just a complex piece of software (is that the right terminology?) that runs the Amazon store and determines which books get presented to which people, and get onto 'Also Bought' lists and probably a dozen other things that I am not aware of. For once, the Almighty Algorithm began to work in my favor! I'm guessing that basically, for some reason, the algorithm put a few my most recent titles in front of a lot of people that would be willing to take a shot and buy it and read it. This is my guess.

#2: Novel-length material. I have been writing episodic short stories, with the occasionally stand-alone novella and novella trilogy, for three years now. I also have been collecting these episodic shorts into collections. By far my biggest source of income has been those collections that are The Complete Season or The Complete Trilogy, that collects, you guessed it, entire seasons or trilogies, with some bonus content not available anywhere else. I've wanted to write longer stuff almost from the beginning, just because it's less restrictive and I enjoy it a lot more, but I've had a theory that if I could find the time to do so, I'd enjoy more success. I think I was right. After close to three weeks of unprecedented success, I can safely say that like 90% of all my sales are coming from the novels I've recently published: Demoness I & II, Hellcats 1 & 2, and Women of the Wild: The Dryad. I have seen more purchases for my older stuff, primarily my Complete Seasons and Complete Trilogies, but these pale in comparison to the amount I've seen for my novels.

#3: The Cover Art. Since the beginning, I used basic pink silhouettes against some kind of simple background. It worked, I think, but clearly wasn't massive popular. I've since found a few good artists to create the drawings for my cover art. I've noticed that hand-drawn, somewhat more cartoonish or anime-esque drawings are getting more popular.

#4: A History & Presence. I'm guessing that the fact that I've been doing this for three years so far has helped, probably by embedding me in the Amazon database, and perhaps in a group of readers. I think having a history can make taking advantage of a situation like this easier, and you won't have to scramble quite as much.

There are probably other factors, but I think these are the biggest. But I also think that, overwhelmingly, #1 is the most important. If you don't want to hear how much of a factor luck can play, well, I sure as hell don't like saying it. But let's get onto the actual advice portion of this, and probably why anyone is reading this. I'll make this as concise as I can, since I'm a fan of blunt, point-blank, easy-to-use-and-understand advice.

Honestly, I'm probably going to try and do individual blog posts expanding on each of these.

  • Write Your Ass Off. Seriously, if want to be a successful writer, the first thing you need to understand and commit to is writing. Like, a lot. This needs to be the foundation on which you build your career. You probably need to write every day, to some degree. Writing needs to become second nature. By this point, if I don't write at least something during the course of a day, even days I have set aside to relax, I feel bad. Set a word goal for yourself, I'd say at least 1,000 words per day, do that for a few weeks, or maybe a few months, then up it to 1,500 words per day. Do more if you're feeling particularly inspired, but also hit that minimum even if you're feeling like shit. Taking a day off isn't the end of the world, but don't make a habit of it. I'd say keep building that number up in a similar style until you hit a point that's too much, then ease back a bit. That's probably a good medium. But also re-test this habitually. Basically, the more you write, the more you're building up your endurance for writing. I'm currently doing 5,500 words per day, 5 days out of the week, split between two projects, as a minimum. If there's time leftover in the day, I'll keep working on a third project.

  • Set Goals. I'd say it's a really damned good idea to have an idea of what you want to aim for, both in the short term and the long term. First and foremost, you need to determine what it is you're wanting. Is this a hobby? That's cool. Do you want to build a career out of this? Well, that's going to be quite a bit harder, and it's going to take time. 

  • Temper Your Expectations & Be Very Patient. This is going to take a lot of time, probably. In a way, I got very lucky in the beginning. I started seeing real success within a few months. I exploded, then most of it got ripped away from me and I had to rebuild. Twice. I am not normal. This is going to take time, and you need to be thinking about both the short term and the long term. What are you going to be doing a year from now? Two years? Five? That being said, you also need to be able to be flexible. If something just isn't working, you should probably switch it up. And who knows, maybe it'll work next year, or eight years from now.

  • Finish What You Start. I probably do this to a fault, because I hate leaving things undone, but you need to finish what you start. If you're doing a series and it's not doing as well, I can definitely understand trimming it. I have certainly done this. What I'd more say is you should probably write your books in such a way that you don't have big cliffhangers. If you need to bring the series to an end, or even just take a break, then being able to stop after the current book is always a good idea. That way you won't piss off quite so many fans quite as bad as you would have otherwise.

  • Be Transparent. If you're having problems, tell your fans. If there's some kind of emergency, be it personal, medical, mental, family, whatever, you don't have to spill your guts and let everyone know your business, but you at least need to let fans know that content is going to stop flowing for a few days or weeks or maybe even a few months. Apologize, thank them for understanding, and try to keep at least some form of updates coming out, even if they have to be vague. If you treat them with respect and honesty, fans are typically very understanding.

  • Diversify. I have four different universes that are fairly different from one another, although they each have common themes.  If you're smart, I'd have at least two different series going on at the same time. Though probably no more than three. Cycle through releases. This keeps more fans happy and it gives you a chance to get a break from what you're working on so you don't get burned out by writing just one thing over and over again. And you should probably also diversify not just in genres, like Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Contemporary, etc., but also between Erotica and Romance, have different series that emphasize either the sex or the love story. And also the kinks. Maybe have one series focus a lot on BDSM, another on size play, another on multiple partners, or whatever it is that you're into.

  • Good Cover Art. A lot of people aren't good with visual art. I'm one of them. I learned enough to at least assemble pre-made assets into something at least somewhat presentable. A few things to consider if you're looking to make your own.

    • Don't have too much crap going on. Cluttered covers are visually unappealing, and turn readers off. Keep it simple.

    • Yes, everyone DOES judge a book by its cover. Covers draw people in, content makes them stay. Drawing people in is seriously most of the battle.

    • Study the market and figure out what looks good.

    • Whatever it is, it needs to look good as a thumbnail.

    • If you're looking to do it yourself, I'd say use GIMP. It's free, it's fairly functional, it has a shitload of options. You're going to need patience for it, cause it might make you tear your hair out. Don't know how to do something? Just google it. There is almost certainly a tutorial. Look at it this way: If I can figure it out, you can. I'm not exactly the sharpest crayon in the shed.

    • Pixabay is the way to go if you don't have any money, since basically everything there is free to use in every real capacity. If you've got some money to invest, you'll want ShutterStock. If you're looking for some quick & dirty cover art for cheap, then you want Fiverr.

  • Figure Out What You Give A Shit About. This is important. Basically, you want a balance somewhere between writing what makes you horny, and writing what makes other people horny. This balance is necessary. If you're more business minded, write to market. This doesn't really mean chasing trends, that's not a great idea unless maybe you write REALLY fast. Writing to market is more figuring out what consistently sells in the genre you write in, what people like, and maybe what people hate.

  • Adapt. If something isn't working and you've given it some time, maybe it's time to try something new. Patience is definitely important, but being able to determine when what you're doing just isn't working is crucial. Try new things. Experiment. And that's not just in your writing, but also in your cover art, your product descriptions, your marketing, your social media.

  • Grammar. Edit your book at least once. If at all possible, get someone you trust who knows this shit to give it a once-over. If you can afford it, pay a professional, because you are uniquely unqualified to edit your own work, mainly just because you wrote it, your brain is more than likely going to automatically compensate over mistakes. Like, you actually won't see them. I've missed some pretty obvious shit, because I knew what I intend to write, so my brain just blew past it without noticing I'd written an extra word, or the wrong word. Misspellings very rarely get past me, but only because I've got spell-checker on.

  • Take A Break. I've probably got mild ADD. It's hard for me to stick to something for more than half an hour. Sometimes it's hard for me to stick to something for five minutes. That's why I break it up. Write 500 words, then go play a video game for 15-20 minutes, or read a book, or watch something. Come back, do it again. Sitting down firmly in front of your desk or wherever and telling yourself that you WILL NOT STOP until you've written 2,000 words sounds really cool and dramatic, but it's a pretty good way to fail and probably not write much at all, because there's a good chance you'll come grinding to a halt and think to yourself, How the fuck can I write 2,000 whole words in one sitting? This is way too fucking hard. I guess I just suck as a writer. If you do it the other way, you'll probably be surprised by how well those 2,000 words came out and how fast.

  • Plan. You know what I rely on as little as possible? Inspiration. It's a fickle fucking bitch that can go to hell. If I had written only when inspired, I'd probably have less than a quarter of all my work written by now. Before you get started, sit down and make a plan. The more detailed the better. That way you can take advantage of the burst of inspiration you typically get at the start of a project and get all the cool ideas out onto paper (or the screen) in proper order. Then, when the drudgery sets in, (and it will), you can keep going because you don't need to rely on inspiration. It'll suck, but you at least can force yourself onward.

  • Read. Stephen King once said, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write." He was right. Make time for reading. Read at least some every day if you can manage it. Reading keeps you sharp and gives you an idea of how the pros do it.

  • Marketing. I'll be honest, I don't know shit about marketing. I can say that the few marketing things I have tried failed utterly. At some point, I'm going to try a BookBub, because everyone says that it's very worth it, although it's really expensive. You should probably figure out marketing.

  • Get A Website. And probably a Twitter and Facebook. Do it from the beginning. But don't go overboard. Don't forget that what counts is your writing.

  • Don't Trust Success. If you get successful, don't trust that it's going to last. Save as much as you can. Be prudent. Cause yeah, you might have just made 5,000$ this month. What about next month? What about next year? Do you really think you're going to be making 5,000$ a month for a whole year? What about a decade from now? The more you save now, the more debts you can pay off, (is there fucking anyone debt-free in modern day America?), the better you'll be able to ride out the low months. Or maybe even the low years. If you have a job you like, maybe don't quit it.

  • Be Prepared To Act. I started selling like fucking crazy in mid-April, and still am as of early May. As such, I jumped on it and am preparing to release between 3-5 titles per month for the next year. Now, to be completely fair, I have a very strong backlist of re-releases, as I plan on re-releasing all of my older content as novels with updated cover art and formatting. But I'm also going to be working on at least two different novels at all times, trying to hit a minimum word count for both novels every day. If the people show up at your digital door hungry for content, you really need to be prepared to feed them, or they might not stick around.

  • Don't Compare Yourself To Others. Seriously, just...don't. This is fucking toxic. I know. I've been down that road more than once. Comparing yourself to other authors who are more successful than you are is fucking awful. It leads to despair, misery, depression, bitterness, jealousy, hatred. A lot of the time it leads to you hating yourself and wondering why you're such a fucking failure. It can be really hard when you're down on yourself, but you really have to remember that no, this isn't fair. None of it is. Like, seriously, luck is so important. Although there is a bit of correlation between hard work in to success out, there isn't nearly as much correlation as we'd like. You can bust your fucking ass for a few years and still not see success. You can publish your first story and blow up.

  • Don't Feed the Trolls. Don't respond to negative reviews. Like...just don't. I've been lucky in that I haven't gotten many negative reviews, but I've gotten a couple that kind of pissed me off because clearly the person didn't understand the point I was very obviously trying to make. But whatever. I didn't respond, in any capacity. Not only is it a waste of time, it's really just a bad idea. So just don't bother. Plus, I mean, from my perspective, having some bad reviews lends your titles some more legitimacy. Look at a book that has almost nothing but 5 star ratings. That's really suspicious isn't it? Makes you wonder about how legit those reviews are. But that's not quite the case if there's a healthy dose of 1 and 2 star reviews thrown in there. Plus, hey, maybe those lower score reviews actually made a good point and you can learn from that. But if it's some moron blasting your stuff with poorly-written text, you really have better things to do. Like...

  • Keep Writing. Like I said before, you really need to keep writing. I can't emphasize this enough. People want more books from you. Really well-crafted tweets, really awesome re-tweets or shares on Facebook, clever blog posts, cool pictures, this is all stuff that people might like, but never forget that the books come first, always.

There's probably stuff I'm missing to be sure, but this is what came to mind. I hope it helped. Like I said, I'll probably do blog posts to expand on some of these ideas, and others as they come to me.

So if you're reading this and you're just starting out, or you've been at it for awhile, or your sales are in a slump and you feel stuck, hopefully this helped. And I wish you a lot of luck!

Oh yeah, one more thing, check out kboards. There's a LOT of good advice there.

-Misty