The Misty Vixen Newsletter (September 2018)

So now August has come to a close and we're into September. First, let's talk about what happened in August, so then I can talk about what's going to happen, because I've had another, I guess you could say 'shift in perspective'.

WHAT HAPPENED IN AUGUST

First of all, I published three novels and a collection!

On a small side note, I am just so thrilled to finally have Demoness III out. I really hope you like this one. I feel pretty good about how it came out.

Secondly, I put up some more free short stories!

Please take note of that first one, because while all the others were already written at some point over the last few years, the Demoness short is brand new, and it adds additional content to the Demoness series!

I would also like to point out that as a little experiment, I posted that short story to SMASHWORDS. The price I set is 'Choose Your Own Price', so you can get it for free, or you can throw a few more dollars at me. I kind of did this as a way to give another option for people who want to go above and beyond and help me out financially, but honestly, if you grab it for free, I won't mind at all.

Thirdly, I added more titles to The Misty Vixen Library over on Patreon.

I managed to get ALMOST all of the links updated. With the exception of one single link, which is, for some reason, Women of the Wild: The Dryad on Kobo. The Wanderlust series took awhile to show up there as well, so it should be there before too long. But I doubt anyone is dying to get Women of the Wild on Kobo.

I think that about covers everything. Let's talk about what I intend to do in September, and some of the changes I've made at large.

THINGS I'M GOING TO DO IN SEPTEMBER

Firstly, I am going to release, for sure, two novels. ADVENTUROUS and PARANORMAL PASSIONS. And, in fact, I already have released Adventurous! You can get it right HERE for 2.99$! I'll release a more full blog post on that soon. Paranormal Passions will drop the 15th.

Secondly, I'll be releasing more short stories. I've decided to release them on Mondays and Thursdays. Now, among those short stories, I'm going to try release two more Demoness shorts that take place between Demoness III & IV. One of them features a cameo from another novel!

Thirdly, I'll be adding four more titles to The Misty Vixen Patreon Library.

  • HELLCATS 3
  • HELLCATS: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY
  • PARANORMAL PASSIONS
  • PARANORMAL PASSIONS 2

That's the stuff I'm fairly confident about, let's get into murkier waters.

I have begun working on Parasexual 2. I have it fully planned out and I'm about 1/5 of the way done right now. I'll say now that it is my intent to have Parasexual 2 published by the end of this month. If all goes well, that should definitely be within the realm of possibility. However, given how things have been going this year, I feel confident that something will go wrong this month and fuck up my schedule. If (or, let's be honest, when,) that happens, I'll almost certainly be able to publish it next month.

Now, for the big changes.

First of all, I am not going to be writing Women of the Wild II this year. I'm doing this for a few reasons, but mainly the reason is that I'm thinking it's not a great idea to have two stories in the same universe going on at the same time. The reason for that is because it's a good way to get burned out. Another reason for that is that I began trying to work on Women of the Wild II and it just didn't feel right. I don't quite know how else to describe it. A third reason I'm doing this is because I feel like my head, and my schedule, are too cluttered right now.

One of the things I didn't really realize that I enjoyed about my writing career was that I didn't really feel like I was falling behind schedule, unless I missed a few days or took a week off. But that was a small, obvious, easy behind schedule. It was pretty simple: I was working on a season of something, and I'd have another season of something else in the wings, and wouldn't think too far beyond that. I mean, I had plans, but I didn't quite obsess over them or anything. But now, I have a shitload of stuff kind of just clogging up my head. Suddenly, I've committed to re-releasing stuff and expanding stuff.

I need to prepare like 12 novels for re-release. Which, admittedly, won't take a LOT of time, but I can't just release them when they're done.
I need to expand Desire so that it reaches at least some kind of minimum standard length for a novel.
I need to write Sex & Survival 4.
I need to rewrite Alien Harem.

This stuff takes time and energy, and that, combined with stuff that just keeps cropping up in my real life, basically means that my work ethic is shit. Sorry if it sounds like I'm whining. I guess I am, but I'd rather whine the truth than try to bullshit you or even just stonewall everyone like some people do.

So, long story short, I'm going to try and focus on A) Rebuilding my work ethic and B) Finish off these projects, over the course of the rest of 2018. I don't think I can do ALL of these things, as well as a few other things I want to do, but I'm fairly confident that I can polish off a decent amount of it.

Okay, final part of this month's update. Here is the list of things I intend to try and do by the time we hit 2019. The first one is big and I've never mentioned it before.

  • EXPANDING DEMONESS. Yes, this is something that's been on my mind for a little while now. It's obvious that Demoness is my primary series right now, and probably will be for a while to come. It's also obvious that if I want to be more successful, I need to market Demoness. And it is only logical to really market the first book in the series. Unfortunately, Demoness is too short to be marketed by the most successful and biggest marketing places. I.e. Bookbub. On top of that, a lot of reviews/comments I've gotten, even good ones, lament how short the book is. At the time, I thought I was just writing another novella. I didn't realize that it would be the first book in a lengthy series. But here we are. I have an idea to expand the book an appreciable amount. Obviously, I imagine people who already purchased it are wondering about how they will get this updated version. The good news is it's fairly easy and you won't have to spend any more money. I'll explain more when I do the actual release. As for the paperback version? Well...I can't update that digitally, unfortunately. I guess the best I'll be able to do there is temporarily lower the price of the paperback. I can probably afford to shave off 2$, so if you want to pick up the expanded edition, it will at least be cheaper. Sorry I can't do better than that.
  • EXPANDING DESIRE & RE-RELEASING THAT SERIES. So, I'm in the process of expanding Desire right now. There will be somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 words of extra scenes added in. After that I'll be re-releasing Seasons 1 - 3, making Desire a four part series. I'm honestly no longer sure if I'm going to do Desire 5. I mean, I have an idea, but it's not a very compelling one. I feel like I've probably done all I want to with that series. I may feel differently in the future, but the more I think about it, the more it feels right to let it rest. I'll publishing Desire 1 - 4 over the course of November and December.
  • RE-RELEASE PARANORMAL PASSIONS. This one is simple, just a basic re-release of the Paranormal Passions series. These will be released this month and next month. No new content, nothing special.
  • SEX & SURVIVAL 4. Due to the way my schedule falls, Sex & Survival will not be re-released until early 2019, over the course of January and February. However, I will try to write Sex & Survival 4 this year so that it'll be ready to go. I'm positive that four novels will be as far as Sex & Survival goes. Mainly I want to get this one written and out of the way because it really sets the stage for my next big series in that universe: Haven. Which I'm really excited for.
  • FREE SHORTS. Right now, I have five more short stories ready to release. On top of that, as I mentioned above, I plan on writing and releasing two more shorts that take place between Demoness III & IV. I'm still figuring out if I'll be removing any of the bonus content from as-yet-re-released titles because they screw with the pacing. There might be some more free shorts from Paranormal Passions, Desire, Sex & Survival, and Lust & Adventure.
  • LUST & ADVENTURE. So, I'll be preparing Lust & Adventure for re-release in 2019. Nothing's really going to change there, but I'll need more time to figure out if I'm going to continue that series. I have an idea and there's a lot of potential there, but my main focuses in that universe are Demoness & Women of the Wild.
  • KYRA'S GAME. This is that incest-themed free story I was talking about. Production has unfortunately stalled on this, but I really do want to write and release this in 2018, and I intend to.
  • ALIEN HAREM. I honestly don't think I'll get to this in 2018. I'm probably going to wait until I wrap up Parasexual, and I'm no longer even sure when that's going to be. That series might go on for a little while. But I mentioned it earlier so I thought I'd elaborate on it a bit. I intend to have it be a four-novel series.
  • PARASEXUAL & DEMONESS. These are to be my two main focuses for the rest of 2018. I fully intend to get Demoness IV out this year, and at the very least Parasexual 2 & 3, possibly even 4, but we'll see.

And that's about it. Sorry if this isn't what you wanted to hear, it's just that it's been a rough fucking year for me and I'm kind of grappling with a few things behind the scenes in real life as well. I'll keep trying to do the best I can to get more content out quickly.

Post-Crisis Update or How Amazon Quartered My Income For No Reason

In March of 2018, I had the worst month, sales wise, of my entire career since it had become financially viable in 2015.

In April of 2018, I finally managed to get some new cover art out that I had been holding onto for awhile, and also finally managed to release my first ever feature-length novel, DEMONESS II. At the same time, I also decided to try something I'd been waffling about for awhile. I took down the old, episodic versions of my series HELLCATS and re-released it as a novel with brand new cover art.

This created a perfect storm.

I began selling. First some, then a lot. Then, as April was beginning to close out, a metric fuckton of books. I was selling like crazy. To this day, I don't know what precisely did it. I think that mostly it was luck. Right books at the right time. That and being in the Kindle Unlimited probably helped a lot.

As I pressed on into May, I was still kind of dazed, but also ecstatic. It felt like finally, FINALLY, after years of desperate struggle, writing my fucking ass off, (I average about one novel per MONTH for three solid years), I was finally receiving what I had fucking earned. And I planned on capitalizing on that.

I published WOMEN OF THE WILD, a novel I had written and edited in late 2017 but was saving for later, figuring that now was the perfect time. I busted ass and got HELLCATS 2 out the door as fast as I could and got to work on preparing Hellcats 3 and Demoness III as well.

And then it happened. In the afternoon of May 10th, at around 4PM, I went to check on my sales numbers and suddenly discovered that I couldn't log in. I also checked my e-mail and found this message waiting for me.

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

Naturally, this sent me into a fucking panic. I responded to the best my ability...and they responded by taking down every single eBook I had ever fucking published in my entire life. I got a message back from Amazon the next day stating that they had decided to reinstate my account, but when I asked them about all my missing books, it took them a whole day to respond that it was a glitch and they would need five motherfucking days to 'look into it.'

Well, while I was initially waiting for that message back, I freaked the fuck out and ended up emailing Jeff Bezos, since in an interview he gave out his personal email address and claimed that he would personally review any problems that anyone had with Amazon.

Although to this day I never received a response from Jeff, or from that Amazon associate who claimed they'd get back to me within five days, my eBooks were put back up within 24 hours. So...that was nice at least.

But now I had a problem. That 'previous communication' they mentioned was from a weird little situation that had happened back in February of 2018. I'd noticed that ALL of my KU reads for the month had vanished. At first I didn't think much of it, I thought it was a glitch, but then I received a message warning me about 'reading or borrow activity originating from accounts attempting to manipulate Kindle services.'

I didn't know what the fuck they were talking about, and while at first they admitted that my reads had been taken in error, they never gave them back. So that second message I got was my second strike, which resulted in a suspension.

I was terrified that a third false positive would result in a flat-out termination, which would basically cripple me as a writer, if not outright kill my career.

Now, I did some research and determined that what was most likely causing this was this situation:

1) Some worthless piece of fucking shit scam artist writes some 'books', throws them up in the Kindle Unlimited, then creates a fake bot account to 'read' all of their books, so that they earn money for page reads.

2) In order to hide the fact that this is a fake account, they have their bot read other author's books to completion.

3) Amazon discovers the fake account, and decides to punish EVERYONE who has had a book read by that account.

No one knows for sure if this is what's happening, this is all just guesswork, because Amazon flat out refuses to give anyone a straight answer as to why they are being arbitrarily fucked over.

(Side Note: Yes, I understand the logic behind Amazon's refusal to give out information on this subject, because then the scammers could take that information and find new workarounds. I understand that, but people's accounts should NOT be suspended/terminated without an actual human being getting involved and they should NOT be taking this 'guilty until proven innocent' approach. It. Is. Wrong.)

Obviously, I was terrified that if whatever tripped up this bot the first two times with false positives did so a third time, Amazon would summarily execute my account despite the fact that I have never done anything shady or against the TOC.

For the record, not only have I never attempted to manipulate Amazon, the Kindle Unlimited, or my readers, nor do I ever have any intention to do so, I don't even know how to. Seriously, I'm not that smart, I just write stories about people having adventures and fucking, and I'm not even great at that.

I tried to come to Amazon with my concerns, but they literally stonewalled me. I never got ONE response to a few emails I sent asking what kind of guarantee they could give me of any kind of protection against this happening again, or even just some advice or help against preventing these false positives.

The thing is, I understand the need to protect the readers, and other authors, and the KU itself. I would actually be perfectly fine with surrendering any ill-gotten reads I may have gotten. I'd have no problem with that.

But when my entire career, my ability to earn fucking money, can be ERASED by a company that apparently does not give a shit about authors for literally no other reason than one of their overzealous and clearly broken bots or AIs falsely targeted me, well...then naturally I want to disassociate myself with the thing that can make that happen.

I.e. the Kindle Unlimited.

Because that is literally the ONLY thing this is about.

Finally, I sent them an ultimatum: Either promise me protection from this broken fucking bot of theirs, or pull EVERY one of my titles out of the KU immediately.

Although they did not respond to ONE of my polite requests for some kind of help, to make some kind of sense of what was happening, they responded to that one almost fucking immediately. And took everything out of the KU.

So I spent the next few months trying to just get on with my life and figure out where to go from here. I was also living in mortal terror that it would happen again, because although my titles were no longer available through the KU, those that had been borrowed before everything was pulled out were still in the libraries of the users who had borrowed them, and would remain so until they naturally fell out of the KU themselves.

In short, when you enroll a title in the Kindle Unlimited, it is on a 90-day lifespan. At the end of that 90 days, you can either choose to keep it enrolled, or pull it out. As of right now, some of my titles still aren't out yet.

My thought was that my books might still be in the libraries of fake accounts, and get read, AND TRIP UP THE FUCKING BOT AGAIN.

So far, that hasn't happened. I think I'm in the clear now, but it's hard to be sure. I'm still getting page reads here and there.

Naturally, this has given me a shitload of depression, anxiety, rage, insomnia, all that stuff. Demoness III was supposed to be done by the end of June, maybe early July. 

I AM STILL NOT DONE WITH IT YET.

And it actually gets way worse. Not for me, but for a lot of other people.

I am not the only one this has been happening to.

Jan Stryvant was fucked over for no reason.

J. A. Cipriano's Amazon account was unceremoniously executed.

Michael-Scott Earle was ripped out of Amazon abruptly.

David Gaughran has been writing about this stuff for awhile now.

Here's a good article from Deanna's World talking more about this whole thing.

The same thing happened to A. D. McCammon.

That's who I could find off the top of my head. Apparently, there's a lot of others. And I've read a LOT of comments of pissed off customers who said they canceled their KU subscription in response to this shit.

Now, I don't know who is guilty and who is innocent, but based on the fact that I didn't do anything even slightly shady and I got nailed to the fucking wall by Amazon, I'm willing to bet that most of them who got slammed by this are innocent. (I do know that there's a lot of controversy surrounding Michael-Scott Earle regarding some either shady or unintelligent trademark attempts, and he called most indies stupid, but I still have no idea if he actually did anything wrong with regards to publishing practices.)

So what's Amazon's response to dozens, if not more, of innocent authors getting screwed by false positives and who knows how many people pulling out of the Kindle Unlimited and even a petition with over 1,500 signatures for Amazon to change it's policies towards Authors and KENP reads and another petition with almost 2,500 supporters to reinstate Michael-Scott Earle and J. A. Cipriano?

Nothing, basically. They stonewalled us.

So what's the fallout from this fucking disaster for me?

Well, in May of 2018, I made MORE THAN I DID FOR THE ENTIRETY OF LAST YEAR. Let that sink for a minute, because it still hasn't for me. In July? I made 1/4 of that. Now while that is still a decent income...it's looking like it's still dropping.

So basically, here's what happened. After 3 and 1/2 years busting my fucking ass, playing their game by their fucking rules, and writing like crazy, I finally succeed. Not through illegitimate tactics. Not through shady means. No bullshit, no trickery, no unsavory schemes.

I did it the fucking RIGHT way.

And my reward was all this shit, and to have it literally ripped away from me for no reason. 

And Amazon doesn't give a shit.

Now, does this mean I'm fucked forever? Probably not. I'm still going to work very hard, write a lot of new novels, and try to make my readers happy and make a living doing the one thing I actually am even remotely good at and brings me any kind of happiness. I might even manage to get lucky again and make some real money again doing this. But how often does lightning strike twice?

This brings me to the last part of my update/recap/rant.

I'm sure there are people asking "Well why are you putting all your eggs in one basket? Why aren't you just publishing elsewhere?"

Well, for one, I am. And for two: Because Amazon has a fucking 80% share of the eBook market. They're the only ones who are actually doing it right. Talk to most other authors who've gone wide, ask them where most of their sales come from. They'll say Amazon.

Amazon almost effectively has a monopoly on the eBook game.

There's a story I once heard that was about a gambling man who was playing a game of cards in a small town, and he was getting fucked over badly. Very badly. Everyone could see that he was getting cheated. And someone asked him, "Why are you doing this? Why are you playing this game if they're cheating you so bad?" And the man just shrugged and said, "It's the only game in town."

Why am I still relying so heavily on Amazon? Why am I playing their game?

If you're looking to make an actual career out of writing and you aren't willing to get fucked over even worse by Big Publishing, then Amazon's functionally the only game in town.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (August 2018)

It's August now and time for another newsletter! (I like writing these.)

So, let's talk about July. Some things happened, most of them good!

WHAT HAPPENED IN JULY

First, I published three novels!

Second, I posted some free short stories to my website!

Those are the obvious things, but I've been doing a few other things in the background. The biggest thing I'm doing is republishing all of my older episodic titles. I took them down in May out of desperation when Amazon was trying to kill my career (they succeeded in at least maiming it. Seriously, fuck Amazon.) Now, I wanted to just put them all back up at once, but the problem is that although I made Amazon take all of my titles out of the Kindle Unlimited, they haven't technically fully done that. Most of my titles now sit in a kind of twilight zone where although you cannot get the titles through the Kindle Unlimited any longer, titles that had already been borrowed would remain in the Kindle Unlimited user's libraries until they naturally fell out of the KU.

This wouldn't be too much of a problem, (except for my apprehension that whatever originally tripped up their bot or AI or algorithm or whatever the holy FUCK has broken and is falsely flagging accounts might trip it again if my stuff is still in the KU...) but the main problem is that any titles that were unpublished, (i.e. most of them), if I try to republish them before they have fallen out of the KU, they will then be available in the KU again!

Obviously I don't want this to happen.

So I've been holding off, watching the list of titles still in the KU gradually dwindle across May, June, and July. The good news is that almost all of them are out now! The last one will fall out in mid August.

The good news is that the first title in several different series/trilogies became available to re-publish in July, and I did so. I then went ahead and tried to make every one of them free! I almost succeeded! All that's left is Amazonian's Love #1. Amazon has been kind of finicky lately, so I don't really know when or even if they're going to get around to making good on their promise of making that free.

Okay, I'm going to ramble for a little bit about this.

I debated for a little while whether or not to go ahead and put all the episodes back up, because on the one hand, I'm going to be eventually republishing superior, cheaper versions of them. So should I even bother? But then the somewhat more business-oriented part of my brain, (the one that probably actually keeps me alive, fed, and in an actual house because bills are a thing), pointed out that it's money and exposure left on the table. I've already gone through the process of writing, editing, formatting, and creating cover art for dozens upon dozens of titles, so why not put them back up there? Because my Complete Seasons are still up as well, and people are buying them, and apparently no one seems to mind.

So what you are seeing is basically the compromise between those two schools of thought. I'm going ahead and republishing everything, although they WILL be taken down in advance of republication of them in new novel form, some of which are still months off. However, I will be dropping the price of each of the individual episodes to 99 cents, and I won't be republishing the triple-pack collections, since they've now pretty much been rendered redundant by the Complete Seasons, and because they were really just for the fans who didn't want to wait even a minute longer for extra content, or for the fans who really wanted to go the extra mile to support me.

Now that all that is out of the way...

Not all of them are republished yet. As I said before, not all of them are out of the KU yet, but also I want to wait to really make the big push and republish/update until all of the six starting episodes are made free, and until Wanderlust - The Complete Series, is published.

Now the reason for THAT is because I'm a bit of a neurotic author. I work very hard to keep the back matter of my titles updated. I don't want there to be dead links in the backs of my books. For example, I have published a new version of Royal Lust since the last time most of those episodes were updated. If, in theory, someone grabbed one or multiple of those episodes as a reader discovering me for the first time, read it, then began checking out the back matter to see what else I have to offer, then sees Royal Lust and thinks it sounds cool, then clicks on it...they'd get taken to a dead page because I have since unpublished the old version and published a brand new version!

Not good for me.

Now, I know that the chances of this happening are probably pretty slim. Out of the people who do actually buy and then read my titles, how many of them check out the back matter? How many of those people in turn follow links? Probably not a high percentage. I have no analytics on that at all, but I'd guess less than 10%. However, I do feel confident that at least SOME people do, and I want those people to be able to have an easy time if they want to buy another one of my books, even if they're reading my oldest available title. This is why I work hard to try and keep the links fresh for ALL of my available stories. And this is another thing that had me hesitate, because this takes TIME!

Updating the back matter for a couple of dozen titles? It doesn't take that long. Updating them for a couple hundred?! Yes, that is quite the project.

So anyway, if you're interested, here's a link to the first episodes in my as-yet-republished series/trilogies.

Hopefully, at some point in the near future, Amazonian's Love Part 1 will be available for free as well!

I would really like to emphasize that if you're financially prudent, then it would make the most sense to wait until I re-release these titles as novels. However, if you don't want to wait and/or would like to give me more support, then all episodes will be available soon. Checking over my list, it's looking like I should be able to have everything up that will be going up by August 10th, 11th, or 12th. (I leave some wiggle room because although there is a set date at which the last title falls out, some factors can vary in the re-publishing process, either on Amazon's end if they decide to randomly throw another wrench at me, or on my end if something happens...or if I get distracted and lazy...)

Okay, now that all THAT shit is out of the way, let's talk about a few other things. I updated the Misty Vixen Patreon Library with several new titles in July! Here's a quick list.

For those of you who might have missed out on the announcement or might be new, if you sign up for my Patreon for 10$/month, you get instant access to most of my titles. Eventually, it will be all. As I mentioned above, I'm waiting for a last few to fall out of the Kindle Unlimited. Some titles will be posted up to two weeks early, and some will be posted about a day or so early, as I try to get stuff published as soon as it's done! (I'm so bad at release dates because of this.) Also, for 5$/month, you get early access to hot alternate nude versions of all my cover art! And for 1$/month, you get early access to the first chapters of my upcoming works.

For a complete guide to my Patreon Library, please follow this link.

I think that's everything for July. So what's happening in August?

THINGS I'M GOING TO DO IN AUGUST

All right! Let's talk about my goals.

First of all, I am for sure publishing three more titles. WANDERLUST IV on August 1st, WANDERLUST - THE COMPLETE SERIES on August 3rd, and AMAZONIAN'S LOVE on August 15th. I am also very confident that this is the month I will be publishing DEMONESS III. I'm sorry it has taken SO long! The good news is that it will definitely be longer than Demoness II, making it the longest single story I have ever published, and it feels like some of the best stuff I've ever written! I'm seriously really excited about Demoness III, I really hope everyone loves it.

Now, I do doubt that I'll be publishing anything else big this month. But that's three whole novels and a collection! However, I won't be lazing about, either. (Or, I'll try not to.) Very soon I'm going to begin planning and then writing PARASEXUAL 2. I've already got a very firm idea of what I want to do, how I want it to start and end, and some of the stuff in the middle. It should get published in September. Also, as soon as Demoness III is finished, I am immediately going to begin work on WOMEN OF THE WILD II: THE SNAKE WOMAN. I've got a rough idea for that one and it will become my main focus. That's probably going to come out in October.

Those are the big things I'm working on.

I also plan on releasing several new pieces of free content.

To begin with, it won't be long before I release DEMONESS - FUN IN THE FOREST. It's a brand new short story that takes place in between Demoness II & III, about a week after the end of Demoness II. John and Yelena go on a short adventure with a sexy and very curious felis woman. As of right now, it's about 3/4 of the way written.  It'll be posted for free as a blog post on my site as soon as it's written and edited. I'm also going to be posting a number of free shorts that I've gathered over the past few years that take place either in the Sci-Fi or Fantasy universe. I'm looking at about two a week until I run out. Finally, I mentioned earlier that I'm going to take the plunge and try writing a free incest erotica story. It's going to take place in my Sci-Fi Erotica Universe, though it will have no connection to any of the established characters or storylines so far. It'll just be its own thing. That will be posted on this website as well and have its own page. I'm still in the planning stages of that, but I won't wait until it's finished to post it. I'll be putting it up chapter by chapter. I hope you like it!

Information on all this free stuff can be found right here.

Next up is the Patreon Library. I plan on bringing some new titles to it this month. Here's a quick list.

  • AMAZONIAN'S LOVE
  • ADVENTUROUS
  • HELLCATS
  • HELLCATS 2
  • DEMONESS III

Next up is just a minor detail. I'm currently putting together some brand new cover art for my main free titles: Large & Lovely, Snakeskin, Blind Date, Pink, & The Pale Redhead. So far I've got two of them done. Hopefully it won't be too long before I get them all. I'm aiming at having those done this month.

Finally, I'm going wide! Also known as posting my books every else. So if you know someone who has a Nook, or someone who only buys things on Smashwords, or has whatever Kobo has as an eReader, then they will be able to read my works! I can't promise it will look as good as it does on Amazon, because I don't really have any control over the formatting, but it will at least be readable.

This is a kind of frustrating process. Some of my titles, like Exploration and My Undead Lover, and my freebies, are already available. But I'm running into difficulties with other, longer titles. I'm sure I can get it worked out before too long. If this does interest you, make sure to check the relevant pages on this site, as I've gone through and updated just about everything to include a full list of links.

Although I only link to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, and iTunes, I am apparently available in a lot of other places. I actually released a blog post detailing all of the places that I am available. Check it out here. Soon, I plan having all of my books available everywhere.

I think that's everything. I still feel like I'm in a transitional period and things just aren't running smoothly. On the personal front, I lost one of my keys off my laptop, which made writing a lot harder. Finally got that fixed today! I also mentioned previously that I was having kind of vague health concerns. Well...I'm still having them. At least some of it can be chalked up to anxiety, and my anxiety levels are actually returning to normal recently! But I'm still concerned that something is wrong, so that...makes me anxious. Still got a wait and see policy with all this. But it shouldn't really hinder my ability to write for the most part, and keeping busy is good.

I'm hoping that within a month or two I'll have all the extraneous stuff out of the way, and I can turn back into a writing machine like I have been at various points of my career. That will be really nice.

Thank you for reading and enjoying my stories!

Availability

This is just a quick little informational post.

Some of my titles are available through Smashwords, and I plan to release pretty much everything through there eventually. What some people might not realize is that Smashwords is actually a gateway platform. When I upload to them, they, in turn upload to like a ton of other sites. And even for people who do realize this, they might not realize just how many freaking sites Smashwords uploads to.

I sure wasn't until I actually looked into it. It's a lot!

Now, I'll only be listing five sites/platforms for my titles. These include: Amazon, Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo, Smashwords, and iTunes. The reason why is because I don't want to get overloaded with links to over a dozen different platforms, and also because I think those are the ones that people use the most by far.

However, here are other places that I am and will be available! (NOTE: I don't even know what some of these are.)

  • Baker & Taylor/Follett
  • cloudLibrary
  • Diesel
  • Flipkart
  • Gardners Extended Retail
  • Inktera (formerly Page Foundry)
  • Library Direct
  • Odilo
  • Overdrive
  • Oyster
  • Scribd
  • Sony
  • Tolino

Again, I don't even know what half of these are. There's one called txtr that I just did a bit of research on and learned that it went bankrupt in 2015! Smashwords needs to update their list. Now, I have not personally checked out all of these sites/platforms. I can't even find some of them. This is just the list that Smashwords gave me. For all I know, they could be lying. (They obviously were about txtr.)

But if you are familiar with one or more of these, and use them, then you should be able to buy my books through them!

If you're concerned about what platform gets me the most amount of money per sale, actually, Smashwords does! But like no one buys through Smashwords, which I don't blame them. Next on the list is definitely Amazon. I get 70% of every digital sale, 60% of every paperback sale (after the cost of creating the paperback). But this is just for people who are a bit more conscious of that kind of thing. Wherever you get my work, I just hope you enjoy it!

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!