The Misty Vixen Newsletter (December 2018)

Here we are. The last month of the year, and the beginning of the horror that is winter. Let’s get this started.

WHAT HAPPENED IN NOVEMBER

Admittedly, most of November was kind of dead, but then I got a bunch of stuff done at the end there!

I released five novels! And one of them wasn’t a re-release!

Sorry it took so long to get Parasexual 2 out. Although the edits went fairly quickly, there was some trouble with the cover art. But it’s up now! Now, let’s talk about this month.

WHAT I WANT TO HAPPEN IN DECEMBER

DEMONESS

I’ll lead with the cool news: I am officially over 1/3 finished writing Demoness IV! I’ve actually been doing pretty good at consistently writing it almost every day. I’m feeling pretty good about how it’s coming out and I do fully intend to go full steam ahead with it, making it my main focus until it is finished. If we’re very lucky, I’ll have it out in January, but I don’t want to make any promises because I have other things going on in the background and, on top of that, I’m already beginning to feel the effects of winter. Mainly I’m just fucking exhausted a lot and it’s hard to focus.

I do intend to have the expanded version of Demoness up this month. I also intend to have Fun in the Forest published through the KU as well, but I’m currently waiting on the cover art. Once these two things are complete, I will finally re-enroll all three Demoness novels back into the KU. I also intend to have The Former Princess published this month as well, but it’s looking a little iffy. We’ll see. It basically completely depends on whether or not I can get the cover art for it.

PARASEXUAL

I have officially planned Parasexual 3, though I have yet to begin writing it. I want to get through writing at least half of Demoness IV before I begin dividing my attention once again. I wanted to give out a little word of warning with regards to Parasexual 3: it’s going to be somewhat different than any of the other books in the entire series. As for why this is happening, well…I’m not sure. It just kind of came out that way. As I was planning it, it just felt necessary. So I guess what I’m saying is, don’t expect the elements of Parasexual 3 that stick out as different to become the new normal.

RE-RELEASES

Although I’m 99% positive that it will be impossible to do, I would like to get all of my re-releases out before the end of the year. It’s a lofty goal and it depends on a few things, but it’s what I’d like to do.

Now, the second thing might be disappointing to some people, but I think most people won’t care. After thinking about it for awhile now, I’ve decided that I am not going to continue the Lust & Adventure series, nor am I going to write Sex & Survival 4. I do want to apologize, and offer an explanation. I’ll try to explain it best I can.

Something happened at the beginning of 2018. I’m not sure what, but I think I kind of reached a point where I just couldn’t keep writing episodic stories. For the first two years or so, I enjoyed what I was writing well enough. I mean, it was kind of overwhelming, often even, because I had to keep producing at such a breakneck pace, but I was able to keep it up without too much difficulty. (Again, for the most part.) Even up through December 2017 I was finishing up Desire, and doing a good job at getting regular content out. But then it came time to finish up Sex & Survival.

Since about Alien Harem, when I really began to settle into the six episode seasons, it took me roughly between one month and a month and a half to get a whole season written. Typically a month. I kept that up for just about 3 solid years. That’s a lot of writing. But in December of 2017 and January of 2018, I just hit this kind of wall. I think it was because I had gotten a taste of writing longer content. First with Demoness, which has become my favorite series I’ve ever written. Then I had a lot of fun writing The Misty Vixen Starter Pack (especially Like A Sex Toy) and Women of the Wild. But I was focusing on writing Demoness II for the first portion of 2018. And I just wanted to write it so much more than I wanted to write anything episodic. It felt so much more natural, it flowed so much better, it was just an all around far more rewarding experience to write. And you can really see this reflected in the Sex & Survival release dates.

Where as with basically every other season of every other series taking about a month to write, it took me over two and a half months to write Season Three of Sex & Survival, and that was after taking a month long break. I just didn’t want to write it. It was like pulling teeth. It was really awful. As the rest of 2018 played out and I started working on novels, it’s really, really hit home just how much I’ve come to dislike writing episodic fiction, and how much I really, really want to write longer works.

Because of this, I kind of feel like everything I wrote before Demoness II (with the exception of Demoness & Women of the Wild) is kind of part of its own era. Publishing Demoness II was like beginning a new chapter in my writing career. And so honestly I just don’t want to go back. I want to go forward. I want to write new content instead of rehashing older stuff.

It was why I decided against rewriting Alien Harem and Valkyries. And it’s why I’ve decided to leave Lust & Adventure and Sex & Survival alone and not continue those series.

There’s other reasons too, but that is the biggest one. For Lust & Adventure, I ultimately felt like any of the ideas I was coming up with for continuing that series would be way more useful as material for Women of the Wild or Demoness. For Sex & Survival, well, I feel like that series really floundered. Even people who liked it probably sensed this about it. Mainly, I just didn’t know what to do with the universe. It came from, I think, the fact that there are only really two types of enemies to fight: zombies and hostile people. Weirdly, this made me feel limited. I don’t know why, but it did. And so I finally had a breakthrough and came up with an idea of how to fix this. And so it makes more sense to begin fresh with a new series in the same universe, rather than write one more novel for a trilogy that isn’t that good to begin with.

I hope you can understand my reasoning and that you aren’t too upset if you were looking forward to future titles in those series.

OTHER

The big thing I want to say is that I’ll be having a big Christmas sale. I’m going to have all of my stand alone titles, and all the first books in every series, be free for five days, starting December 23rd and ending December 27th. I’m hoping this will kind of kick me back into popularity. If I could make even like half of what I did in May, I’d be living the goddamned high life.

The editing is going a lot slower than I’d hoped. So far, I’ve only managed to edit Wanderlust I. I’m halfway through Wanderlust II right now. I actually had my editor, who’s working on My Undead Lover right now, prepare to get back to editing the Demoness series, because something occurred to me. I’m not terribly far away from finishing up Demoness IV, and when it’s done, I’ll need to have them edit it right away. Which they can’t really do if they haven’t also read Demoness II & III, and Fun in the Forest & The Former Princess. Which is going to take time. Which means they should probably get started on it sooner instead of later, which means I’ll have to put a bit of a pause on editing the other titles. So great. I’m trying to get my fantasy universe backlog knocked out of the way first, as it’s by far the biggest. Once it’s over, I’ll feel a lot better, because it’ll get a lot easier.

I guess the only other thing I have to say is that I still do intend to work on my incest story, but, like before, there’s just too much other stuff going on. It will get there someday!

As I mentioned above, winter’s upon me now. It’s cold and miserable and it gets dark way too early. I’m combating it best I can, but I’m sure that I’m going to get worse before I get better. So if I’m slow or unresponsive, that’s why.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (November 2018)

Okay, here we go.

WHAT HAPPENED IN OCTOBER

So, I managed to get at least a few things done in October.

I managed to publish four novels, a collection, and a bonus short story!

That’s the bulk of what I actually got done. Honestly, everything else I technically did or made progress on needs to be discussed in the next section, so let’s just move to that.

WHAT I WANT TO DO IN NOVEMBER

So, first of all, I should definitely have Parasexual 2 out in November. I finished writing it and have sent it over to my editor. Last I heard, she’s halfway through it or so. Once she gets done and tosses it back to me, I’ll do an edit for myself. I’m currently still waiting on the cover art for it, but I’m hoping that by the time I’m done editing, it’ll be ready. And then I’ll publish it! It’s about 12,000 words longer than Parasexual and I hope you like it.

Now, I’ve gotten the plan for Demoness IV all worked out, and I’m almost positive it’s going to be longer than Demoness III. Although I don’t think this trend of each book being longer than the last to continue beyond this next novel. It’s kind of just working out that way. And I could be wrong, Demoness IV could be roughly the same length or maybe even a little shorter, but I doubt it. I think I’d like to settle on an average length somewhere between 75,000 and 90,000 words. Which, to give you an idea of that, it would fall somewhere between 220 and 265 Kindle Pages. Demoness III was about 78,000 words and 229 Kindle Pages, which I feel pretty good about for length. On top of this, I have officially begun writing Demoness IV!

So when’s it coming out? Shit, I don’t know. I will work hard on it, but I’m just going to call it now and say it is not coming out in 2018. I’m looking at an early 2019 release date, but it might be as late as February or possibly even March. I will try hard to get it written, but writing it alongside Parasexual 3 and all the editing I’ll be doing, combined with the fact that we’re heading into winter now means that I probably won’t be writing super fast.

And yeah, I’ll begin writing Parasexual 3 this month as well. I’m going to try and have it out sometime in December.

Now, let’s discuss some of the bigger things happening.

In a previous post I mentioned that I now have a friend of mine editing my works. Since I have always wanted another pair of eyes on my work, and because she agreed to it, I have decided to just go ahead and have her edit my entire fucking library. And because I’m, in some ways, a precision freak, I’ll feel the need to read over everything that gets edited as well to see if I can catch anything else.

Now, because I’m going over (for the last fucking time) my entire library again, I have also decided to do something that I really should have done from the beginning: create a timeline. Now this primarily will refer to my fantasy universe, given that there really hasn’t been much content written for the paranormal and post-apocalyptic universes, and the timeline for the science fiction universe is pretty straightforward. I’ll be taking the opportunity to go back and look at all the clues I wrote into the works, because although I did have a rough idea of when stuff takes place, and on a very basic level you can figure out the timeline in terms of the order of titles published. Wanderlust is first, and I think My Undead Lover and Royal Lust took place sometime during or shortly after, and obviously Royal Lust takes place after My Undead Lover, then comes Lust & Adventure, then Demoness, then Women of the Wild. There are some specific references in there, like Lydia in Demoness III, so I do feel like I need to actual create a document with a definitive timeline instead of just having it as this vague notion in my head. I’ll release it on the website for those who care, and I’ll do the same for the science fiction universes.

Next on the list: I’ll be re-publishing Alien Harem & Valkyries as they were instead of doing full rewrites. I came to this decision after going back and expanding Desire and Demoness. The reason is because I realized that I don’t like going backwards. Expanding those two novellas was kind of grueling work, and it made me realize that going back and rewriting two of my series, even though they could use it, would take a LOT of my time and although at first I’d probably enjoy myself, I would quickly tire of it and eventually I’d start dreading it, which means that it would not only take longer but would sap my energy while working on other projects. So, if you were looking forward to that, I am sorry.

Okay, so because I like doing stuff like this, I’ll just make a list of my stories that still need tending to, or changes are being made, or are upcoming. So here we go.

  • DEMONESS. Okay, actually a lot to say about this. First of all, I did finish expanding Demoness I. I added in about 15,000 words. It has been edited by my editor, although I haven’t gotten to edit it yet. Unfortunately, it’s going to be a little while before I get that version uploaded and get the Demoness books enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited. Here’s why: I want to have everything perfect and ready to go before I do so. So what’s required to getting everything perfect? Well, Demoness I, II, & III needs to be edited by both myself and my editor, as well as Fun in the Forest and The Former Princess. On top of that, I am going to have cover art made for both of those shorts as well. On top of that, and this is important, I am not going to keep those stories free. Why the hell am I doing that? Well, honestly, not that many people are reading them, based on the metrics I’m getting. I honestly think way more people would read them if I published them and enrolled them in the Kindle Unlimited. Which means I need to take them down from my website. So here’s what I’ll do in the future: I’ll first put the free shorts that take place in between the novels (because I intend to do more) on my website for a little bit, give people the chance to read them, then I’ll take them down for publication. And there will be warning ahead of time, so if you follow my Twitter, you should be fine. So it’ll be a little while before anything visible happens relating to Demoness, several months at least.

  • OLDER CONTENT. So I still have some older content to re-release. Alien Harem 1 & 2, the Valkyries Trilogy, and Sex & Survival 1, 2, & 3. I’ll put up Alien Harem and the Valkyries Trilogy as soon as I get cover art for them, and I’ll put up Sex & Survival as soon as I get closer to writing Sex & Survival 4. After that, I’ll be done re-publishing stuff!

MY UNIVERSES

  • FANTASY. This one is my main focus right now. Demoness is going to continue for quite awhile, although I honestly will have to take a break at some point to focus on other stuff. I also still need to at some point continue the Women of the Wild series, but I’m still not sure when that’ll be. That goes double for Lust & Adventure, which I won’t be re-publishing until I’m ready to write Lust & Adventure IV, which I’ve got no idea when that’ll be. I do have really, really big plans for this universe, like a huge, epic, world-changing adventure featuring, in one form or another, probably every main and most side characters I’ve written about, and some not yet written about. I’ve laid down a few very, very vague hints alluding to a larger story so far, and more will be coming in the future, but it’ll be quite awhile before I get to this.

  • SCIENCE FICTION. I don’t have a whole lot of plans for this one, actually. After getting all the older stuff re-published, I currently have one more idea for a decently long running series called Wild Discovery, which is more of a survival erotica. It’s going to take place ten or maybe fifteen years after all the other stories and feature a new alien race. I do have another vague idea for a series set in this universe, but it hasn’t really taken shape yet, so if I do get around to it, it’ll be awhile. I think there’s a decent chance that Wild Discovery, which I think will run for 12 novels, but that could change, will be the end of the Sci-Fi universe for awhile.

  • PARANORMAL. So this one I’m definitely bringing to a close for the foreseeable future when I finish up Parasexual. I have a few vague ideas, but honestly, this is the universe I find it hardest to write for, or at least come up with ideas for. Since I have so many other ideas jostling for my attention, I see no reason to try and expand this universe any further if I’m having a lot of trouble.

  • POST-APOCALYPTIC. So, I actually had a breakthrough earlier this year in terms of making this universe more viable. After Sex & Survival 4 is written, I plan on writing Haven, which takes place about a year later and I feel really good about, then another series that I actually think might be really awesome, or at the very least, it will hit a certain fetish that I’ve brought up a few times now very hard. And then after that I’ll do probably one more series that kind of unites the protagonists from Sex & Survival, Haven, and the unnamed series, and be kind of a climax. Then I’ll probably set that universe aside, unless I get some extremely compelling idea.

  • WHAT ELSE? Something that I’ve been thinking about is moving away from shared universes and doing stand-alone series. Let me give you a little bit of an idea of stories I’ve got waiting in the wings. Although I never thought I’d say so because I don’t chase trends, after realizing that super hero stories and LitRPG or GameLit stories are so popular, I thought about it and realized that I actually have a few ideas. So I’ll be doing a super hero series and a GameLit series. I mentioned on Twitter that I recently got an idea for a Sci-Fi/Horror series. I really, really want to write this one and really like it, so that’s definitely on the list. Those three will definitely be my main focus after I wrap up some of my shared universes (probably not permanently but for awhile). Besides that, I have an idea for a kind of big crossover series of all my universes (sounds crazy, I know, but I’ve got a good idea.) I also have an idea for an action series that follows a group of freedom fighters trying to overthrow an alien government in the future after an alien invasion occurred and Earth became occupied. I have other, even vaguer ideas floating around that haven’t really coalesced into anything yet. So obviously I have ideas for years and years of content. When 2019 rolls around, I’ll probably do a big retrospective and look forward and go into all this a bit more.

So that’s about it. Because of all this editing and writing that’s going to be going on, I’m probably going to go a little quiet for the rest of the year and somewhat into 2019, just working my ass off on getting it all done. Honestly, I will be feeling SO much better once all this editing is out of the way, the timelines are made, the old stuff is re-published, and Sex & Survival 4 is written and out. Because once all that is done, I will return to simply looking forward again, and working on maybe two things at a time and being able to have a clearer, more focused mind and get a lot more written a lot quicker!

A Few Quick Updates

Hey, just thought I’d fill everyone in on a few things I’m doing and a few decisions I’ve come to.

So, first of all, I’ve got a friend who’s going to help me by editing my work, which I figure will be very helpful. Provided this works out and I’m not too demanding, I’m going to give them all my older works to look over, and new works from now on. Hopefully this’ll catch a lot of the little things that I miss. It’ll never be perfect, but better is good.

And because I need to look over anything that’s been edited by another person, this means that I’ll have to be looking over my entire catalog…again. I’m honestly hoping this is genuinely the last time I have to do this, and since that’s going to be happening, I’m going to take the opportunity to actually create a working timeline for my various universes.

With my paranormal and post-apocalyptic universes, I could do it right now, since there’s so little there right now. But with something like my fantasy and sci-fi universes, especially the fantasy one, I need to go back through and really examine everything. As a very rough notion, the order in which I wrote the stories is basically the timeline. I did try to put in some references to events in other books, but honestly, I should have been figuring this out more specifically. I don’t think most people really care all that much, but I know there are some dedicated fans who want to know, which is awesome, so I’ll be doing this as well.

This whole process is going to take quite awhile, and will be going on quietly in the background for several months at least.

Now, the bigger decision.

I have decided that I will NOT be re-writing Alien Harem & Valkyries. Instead, I’ll be re-releasing them as is (with new cover art/formatting though). The reason I’m doing this is because going back over Desire and Demoness and expanding them has taught me an important lesson: I DO NOT DO WELL WITH RETREADING OLD GROUND.

This expansion process has actually taken a pretty big toll on me. I’m having a really hard time with writing new material for Demoness right now. I think it’s probably coming out okay, but it’s kind of like running a marathon. It’s really frustrating. And it really just taught me that while at first I might enjoy the process of rewriting Alien Harem or Valkyries, it would quickly become a huge drain on me, and that’s actually rewriting entire NOVELS, not just writing some new material.

So, if you were looking forward to those, I am sorry, but I’ve learned that I really need to look forward to new material, because I actually have a LOT of ideas that I’m really eager to get to, and that holding them up just to rehash older material doesn’t make sense any longer.

As of right now, I’m kind of on approach to the home stretch of finishing up Parasexual 2. Probably another two weeks of writing, I think, we’ll see.

Almost done with the expansion of Demoness, just need to finish writing the final piece of new content, then finish editing the rest of the novel to make sure it all fits together. Then it needs to be edited, as well as Demoness II & III. Then they go up and get enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited!

I also got started writing the Demoness short that takes place after III but before IV. Got about a thousand words in last night. I don’t think it’ll be longer than maybe eight thousand words. Once Demoness is done, I’ll turn my full extra attention to that short. I’m so looking forward to having them both done and out. I suck at multi-tasking most of the time.

The Misty Vixen Newsletter (October 2018)

Oh wow…

So September was a fairly big month for drastic changes on my part.

Let’s get started.

WHAT HAPPENED IN SEPTEMBER

Let’s get the simple stuff out of the way first.

I published four novels and a collection!

Obviously that’s not the release schedule I originally had set. I’m beginning to suspect that release schedules aren’t really compatible with me. Something I typed during the last Newsletter was “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.” But after I wrote that, I began thinking about it, and asked myself…well, why? Why can’t I?

Why not just release something if it’s ready?

And that’s why I got the Paranormal Passions Trilogy out. They were ready. Why wait? But I’ll get more into this later.

I posted five more free short stories.

That represents the last of my ‘reserve’, as in, stories I had leftover from the Quickies collections and other collections. It’s possible there might be a few more, as I have yet to fully go over Sex & Survival, and I think one or two of the bonus shorts I wrote for it might not so comfortably fit in a novel format, but we’ll see.

Now, as for the bigger stuff.

My Patreon Library is gone. There is no 10$ tier any longer. The reason for this is because I decided to rejoin the Kindle Unlimited. Why in the fuck did I decide to do that? For a long explanation, read this. For a short version? It’s…complicated. Honestly, I feel like I’ll just butcher it if I try to shorten it. Just go check out that blog post. But that’s why it’s gone, I can’t have my titles that are enrolled in the KU available literally anywhere else. The biggest bonus of this is that a lot of people who had to stop reading me because they were only able to do so through the KU now get to read me again!

My Patreon is still there, and anyone who wants to help out is still really appreciated.

Uh…what else did I do last month? It wasn’t a great month. Besides the generalized anxiety and depression issues, I had a death in the family. Still kind of dealing with that. If I seem kind of erratic or scatterbrained, that’s probably why.

Oh, if you missed it, I did write a rare blog post about my views on the fact that I write feel good stories. Check it out.

I think that’s about it.

THINGS I’M GOING TO DO IN OCTOBER

Well, first off, I do intend to get the Desire series back out. The first one is going through the publishing process as we speak. It will be enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited. Going forward, practically everything I write should be. The release dates I have on my release schedule might not hold up because I’m waiting on the cover art, but otherwise the books are done and ready to go. I expanded Desire by about 12,000 words, so even if you read it before, maybe pick it up again. Or read it through the KU. Otherwise, nothing new for Desire 2, 3, & 4.

I’m going to try and get a free short story that takes place in between Demoness III & IV out. It’s set about a month or so after the end of Demoness III and will be just a fun little adventure story. And it will be featuring a character from another, much older fantasy story of mine!

I fully intend to update my novel Demoness this month. As I mentioned earlier, I really wanted to go back and expand it a bit for a few reasons. Mainly because when I was writing it, I didn’t know it was going to be one of my favorite stories and the beginning novel in my freaking flagship franchise. I’ve already begun the process and I have to say, going back and even just re-reading/editing over what I had so far, it’s given me a chance to clean up some inconsistencies that I wasn’t really thinking about because again, I didn’t know I’d be doing a second or third book, let alone probably my biggest series ever! There isn’t going to be a massive amount of content added. I’m shooting for about 14,000 words, bringing the total wordcount up to roughly 45,000 words. So still pretty short for a book, but a bit more respectable I think. What can you expect? Some more interaction between John and Yelena, some more sex scenes, (obviously), and mainly an extension of the plot point near the end of the book where they help Lily by taking out a necromancer’s experiment gone wrong. That’s going to be a bit more of a thing. Now, if you already have this book, you should be able to simply go in and download the updated version. If you have the Kindle Unlimited, just borrow and read! Once this update gets pushed out, I’ll be enrolling Demoness II & III in the KU as well.

Now, with regards to me being in the Kindle Unlimited, please take note that right now, the only titles currently not enrolled in the KU are my Demoness Trilogy and Women of the Wild. Everything else (with the exception of my episodic titles and their complete seasons, and my already free titles,) is in the KU. So if you missed anything, check it out!

Now let’s talk about why I’m seriously beginning to doubt the idea of a release schedule. It occurred to me not too long ago when I was working on Parasexual 2. At present, I’m halfway to my approximated word count that I expected it to come out to. However, I don’t think I’m halfway done with the story. This seems to be happening more than ever now than I’m writing actual novels. I don’t know if it’s just the fact that I’m working with longer material and I’ll eventually get a better hang of it…or if it’s just something I’m personally bad at.

I’m also thinking that Demoness IV is going to be longer than Demoness III, and Demoness III was the longest thing I’ve ever written.

So this is why I want to relax the release schedule, and I think you’ll agree with me: Whenever I hear about some kind of creative endeavor that suffered at the cost of the release date, (this happens with video games a lot, in my experience), I always get sad and wish that they would have just been allowed to take the extra few months, or even the extra year. I mean, Dragon Age II needed more time, and clearly suffered because of it. Dragon Age III, on the other hand, was given an extra year, and it fucking SHINES as a result. (DA: Inquisition was fucking amazing.)

So my point is this: I think most of you, as an audience, would rather I take the time to get it right instead of hitting an arbitrary release date. Which is why I’m basically just going to be a lot more loose with the release schedule and probably change it to a ‘What I’m Working On’ page.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to George R. R. Martin it up and stretch this shit out for months or years. Believe me, I still want to get these stories to you as much as I hope you want to read them.

So, with that being said, how are things going with Parasexual 2 and Demoness IV? Not as well as I’d like, but I also believe in being honest.

I’m probably a good 2/5 of the way done with Parasexual 2. And starting this week I intend to get back on the horse and ride hard to the finish line of this book. I am going to try and not let life get in the way as much as it has been over the past several months and just get this book written.

Demoness IV is still in the planning stages. I honestly thought I’d have begun writing it by now, but after writing the third book, I needed a break. I needed time to just step away and let all the ideas I have for IV stir up, then settle down, so I can sort through them and assemble them as best I can. I’ve got the skeleton of the book uncovered and I intend to have a fully fleshed-out plan by the end of this week.

I feel like that’s all the big stuff out of the way. Now, where I’m at with the other stuff cluttering up the background.

Kyra’s Game, my incest erotica, hasn’t seen any progress. I still really want to write this, I’m just too goddamned busy.

Lust & Adventure. The more I think about it, the more I think I’m going to just pull this down for now and put it back into storage. I’m not abandoning this series, but I do need to put it on ice for now. I don’t think too many people will be upset because I honestly don’t know if this series had a lot of fans. I'll be honest and admit that I’m not 100% sure why I feel like doing this, only that my instincts are telling me to. I think one reason is that I don’t want yet another series sitting idle on Amazon. I’ve already got Women of the Wild stalled for now.

Now that Desire is expanded and out of the way, I think that once I get Demoness expanded, and that Demoness short story written and finished, I’ll be able to begin turning my spare attention to Sex & Survival 4. Once I get that out of the way, I’ll technically be caught up! I do still need to rewrite Alien Harem and Valkyries, but those can definitely wait.

I’d really like to get to the point where I’m just hammering away at Demoness and Parasexual. Although I honestly am not sure when Demoness is going to end, I’m confident that Parasexual will not end up a mega-series like Demoness. It’ll definitely reach its end before too long. I have rough ideas for want I want to do for Parasexual 3 & 4, and I feel confident there will be at least a 5, possibly a 6. But again…we’ll really have to see. I’m not really a fan of keeping a series going for the sake of money. I have so many other ideas I really want to get to! Once Parasexual ends, I think I’ll start work on Haven. But that’s getting ahead of myself.

I think that’s everything. The only other thing to say is that now I’m living with background fear that I’m going to get slammed by Amazon again and I might not walk away the next time. Unfortunately, I have to play Russian Roulette if I want to actually succeed in life. Is it fair? Fuck no. But as everyone is apparently so goddamned thrilled to point out: Life isn’t fair.

Wish me luck. I’ll try to work harder and write faster.

Feel Good Stories

This is kind of just a rambling blog post.

I’ve been dealing with the notion that I’ve been, for the most part, writing what I guess could be called ‘feel good’ stories, or fluff, or whatever you want to call it, basically since the beginning. Its obvious to me that one of my weaknesses (I’m sure there are many more I’m not even aware of) as a writer is that a lot of my stories lack conflict.

I feel like I’m getting a little better about it with my latest works, primarily my Demoness series, but for someone who writes a LOT about romantic entanglements and harem situations, I don’t really put any relationship drama into my works.

The honest truth about why my stories, which are frequently part of a genre or archetype plot that is supposed to be full to bursting with drama, lack that quality, is that…I just don’t like it.

I’ve always been a pretty laid back person. Even in my youth, when I was a lot more emotionally unstable, I never liked conflict. For the most part, I don’t feed off of conflict and drama the way so many other people seem to.

I think the simple notion that reality TV exists and is popular speaks to the fact that there is apparently a vast demographic of people who basically get off on watching other people scream at each other, or scheme and connive behind each other’s backs, trying to figure out the best way to fuck each other over.

I’ve never seen the appeal in that. I don’t like my characters fighting, I don’t like the ‘will-they, won’t-they?’ drama that so many romance stories seem to be built on. I mean hell, most of my characters just start having sex within a few hours of meeting each other, if not sooner.

I suppose the primary reason, if I’m looking at it with a more critical writer’s eye, that I don’t do this is because it feels false. When I’m coming up with my plots, I never try to inject…well, anything, really. Everything that I put in my books, I want to feel natural, like it belongs there.

Drama feels really artificial to me. It’s like how a lot of people are uncomfortable with the more modern Avengers movies because some of them have some seriously unnecessary jokes written into them. I hate forced comedy. Not every scenes needs a fucking joke, and it really just robs a lot of scenes of any power they have when a character unnecessarily shoots off a one-liner.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind comedy in movies, and there are some comedy movies that I love. I hate forced comedy. I hate it when it felt like someone had to use a prybar to wedge a completely unnecessary joke into a scene. Thor 3 and Guardians of the Galaxy 2 were guilty of this. And yes, I do understand that Guardians is largely a sillier and more comedic, but that’s just it. Guardians 1, and most of the scenes with the Guardians in Infinity War, felt a lot more natural because the writing was better and it didn’t feel like the writers were trying to force comedy in there. They let the situation be as funny as it needed to be.

I’m sure this is being done because Disney is trying to appeal to not only as broad an audience as possible, but also to a younger demographic.

I frequently find myself just getting frustrated when drama arises because it so often seems unnecessary. Thus, my stories are largely bereft of relationship drama. Amazonian’s Love is a definite example of the opposite of this, where I actually tried to put a little bit of drama into it from the beginning, it was the mindset I had when I began planning it. I don’t know if I did a good job or not. I just hope people liked it.

But honestly, the more I think about it, the more time goes on, the less bad I feel about writing feel good stories. It’s never been any mystery to me that life fucking sucks. There’s a lot of bad shit out there, a lot of bad people. A lot of shit people, honestly. People that just hate. I think it’s why I write what I write. I’d rather write about love, and people getting along, and being happy, and dealing with problems in a more realistic way. (Emotional problems, I mean. Using magic or sci-fi tech isn’t the most realistic way to deal with your problems.)

I’d rather write about people feeling good than people suffering. I guess I feel like there’s enough suffering out there. Of course that doesn’t necessarily stop me from writing about different kinds of conflict, and stories can’t be all happy all the time, even feel good harem stories where everyone gets along and fucks. Conflict is part of the storytelling process.

So yeah, kind of a rambling rant on why there’s no relationship drama in most of my works. Hopefully it was an entertaining read. I guess I should get back to writing Parasexual 2 and Demoness IV!

I'm Returning to the Kindle Unlimited

The first question I imagine is: Why? Why in the hell am I doing this?

There’s a few reasons.

Since the beginning, I’ve had hopes and aspirations. I’d like to say that getting anyone to buy or even read my work is enough, but that would be a lie. I’m not like those people who ask “Why does it always have to be about money, can’t you just be happy with the act of creation? You should be lucky that anyone has read your work, let alone paid for it.” Well, the answer to that question is, uh, the fucking world runs on money, and you need it to literally live.

Don’t get me wrong, I do write to be read, to make people happy, but I also need to make a living.

And for a long time, I actually was largely okay with making a living. That alone put me in probably the top 5% of every indie author who took a shot at writing as a job. Again, I was, and still am, extremely grateful that there are enough people out there who like me and my work that I can make this my job.

But since the beginning, I have had that vague idea of making a lot of money from writing. Like real money, you know? I don’t think I’ll ever be a millionaire. The idea still seems ridiculous to me. But then I finally began to achieve REAL success, making life-changing money. And you know what? I was able to actually do shit with that money. I gave my mom some money to help out with bills, I helped my friends out with some of their problems, I actually put money into a savings account, I was able to leave great tips.

To be honest, I’d make a lousy ‘conventional’ rich person. I don’t want a mansion, or even a really big house. I don’t want a new car that costs 50 grand. I don’t care about drugs. I’m not much of a vacation person. Obviously I’d like to have money to buy nicer things, but I also would love to be able to legitimately help people who need it, and life has proven to me time and again that by far the most effective way to help people is with money.

The amount of money I was making in April and May meant that I could do that.

In the months since the whole catastrophe, I’ve had a lot to think about, and this was the conclusion that I came to: I will never again achieve the level of success I saw without the Kindle Unlimited. Because of this, I am functionally living without the same hope that I used to have. As I said before, I was, and to a degree still am, thrilled to be making a living doing this. But there was always that sort of ‘real success is out there somewhere over the horizon if I just keep trying long and hard enough’ feeling to my life.

That’s gone now.

So my choices became these:

  • Stay out of the KU and settle for the fact that I’ve basically peaked, and this is as good as it’s going to get for the rest of my life. Sure, I might see some more success after many more years of plugging away, but that might feels far, far more diminished now, because Amazon clearly favors those in the KU. I think they even go so far as to not just give those in the KU preferential treatment, but actually suppress those who aren’t in it.

  • Go in the Kindle Unlimited, probably begin to see genuine success again, and live under a lot more stress because I am effectively playing Russian Roulette with my career. I still don’t trust Amazon. After what happened in May, I probably never will again. What happened before could happen again, and this time I might get terminated. But I might not. Maybe they actually changed some stuff in the backend, or maybe they’re actually trying to clean up, even a little. Or maybe what I’ve heard, that accounts don’t get terminated without a real human being getting involved.

So basically, I have to choose whether or not to live with hope. Hope is important. Making progress, achieving goals, doing things, these are all integral components to the human condition and to getting any kind of real satisfaction out of life.

I’d like to take a moment to say I don’t think I deserve massive success, or any success really. I’m more pointing out that clearly I’m capable of it (…if I get lucky enough…). I try to take ‘deserve’ out of the equation for my own life. I have a pretty low opinion of myself, and spent a long time feeling like a failure. I still do. But having actual, genuine facts that prove that I can actually succeed at writing has helped somewhat.

That’s my more personal reason I’m doing it, but I have another, probably bigger reason, and that is: the fans.

I received several messages from people telling me they wouldn’t be able to afford my titles unless they got them through the Kindle Unlimited. That was pretty unhappy news. I want to be available to people, and I definitely do want people to be able to read me. And being in the KU means that a shitload more people will be able to.

Sorry if this kind of rambling.

There are the reasons: I want more people to be able to read my work and I want to live my life at least thinking that it’s still trending gradually upwards…not down, and I want to help people.

So let’s get into the more practical side of things.

Part of the Kindle Unlimited deal is that any titles enrolled in the KU must be exclusive to Amazon. Which obviously means I won’t be able to publish them on any of the other platforms, nor will I be able to utilize my Patreon as I have been. So I’ll just say it here and now: If you are a 10$ Patron, you should either lower or remove the donation, since that tier will not be useful for much longer.

Now, as for how I plan on actually handling this whole thing.

I will be slowly reintroducing myself into the Kindle Unlimited. Paranormal Passions, when it releases on the 15th, will be uploaded to the KU. I’m doing this because I’m paranoid. While I still don’t have any real idea why I was threatened, I do think that some of it probably had to do with the INSANE success I was suddenly seeing. It probably didn’t look legit, even though stuff like this does happen legitimately.

(Seriously, Amazon is punishing authors for being successful? This whole thing is still goddamned ridiculous.)

Going forward, all new releases will be placed in the KU. And I’ll occasionally slip another of my already-published ones in, probably with a prioritization on Demoness, given that’s my flagship franchise.

That’s about it. Please, wish me luck. I’m playing Russian Roulette now.

If you have any questions at all, please ask. Either in the comments or send me an email. I will respond.

And to my fans, and readers, and supporters, seriously thank you. I obviously need to make a living and pay my bills, but having people actually read and even enjoy what I write is its own reward, and a massive one. I hope through my writing that I’ve helped you in some way, even if it’s just to pass the time, because you all have helped me in ways beyond measure.

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!