Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

I once read a post describing how long one should spend each day on writing vs editing, something to the tune of 2 hours on writing new words, 1 hour on editing (I could be mis-remembering, it was a while ago and I can’t find the post). there have been many times I have attempted to follow that, usually without much luck.

I would LOVE to be able to focus 100% for 2 whole hours on writing new, fresh words. But even in the little bit of time I have been working on this blog I have been interrupted about 5 times. Right in the middle of writing ‘interrupted’ in fact ^.^  And I know many of you have issues with that also.

Ever notice that? You sit down to write and suddenly EVERYONE needs you, kids, hubby, phone calls, dog, boss, coworkers….  So what do you do? How do you get word count especially when you are in a non-writing friendly environment?

I do a mish mash of things to get my writing done, sometimes with huge success sometimes with little success.

~ Setting word goals in sprints. I usually have a daily word count goal of 500 words. I want to get 500 words on my main WIP every day. But sometimes getting it can’t be done in one sit down session but rather spread out over the course of the day. Since I am a SAHM* with small children I often don’t have the luxury to sit and do nothing. I have a LARGE household and lots of things to do to keep it looking presentable, the family fed, clothed and clean. So I’ll sit down and set the goal of 100 words. Which usually doesn’t take me much more than 15 min. (There are ALWAYS exceptions to this rule though, especially with kids) 5 sessions of sitting down to write 100 words, spaced out through the day and BAM I have my 500 word count goal.

~Sometimes just finding the time to sit down to write feels like an impossible goal in itself. On those occasions I’ll sometimes use the Flylady** method of baby steps and using a timer. I’ll set the timer for about 15 min and write for 15 min, then reset the timer and go do housework. I’m often surprised at how productive I can be in that short period of time.

~ Word Wars.  What, you might ask, is a word war? Well you and a couple writer buddies set a timer and write for a predetermined amount of time. Anywhere from 5 min to 1 hour (I usually go for about 30 min.). In chat, someone usually yells out START! and we all get to writing, often after posting our starting counts. When the time is up someone (usually the person who yells START) will yell TIME and we tally up our wordcount to see how many words we wrote. Though it is called a word war, there are no winners or losers, we aren’t competing with anyone else, just ourselves. To push ourselves. I have seen on twitter that folks word war there also. I think there are a couple other writer chats beside the one I go to*** that might do word wars. I don’t have any personal experience with those, though, so I’m not sure if they do and how they manage it.

Sometimes, though I hate admitting this, the words just don’t get written.

Everyone has different ways to get writing, and what works for one person doesn’t always work for others. One thing, though, that stands true no matter what works for you. If you don’t write it, you can’t edit it. If you don’t write it in the first place you will never get published, in ANY venue.

I would suggest making a goal, word count, time frame, scene/chapter, whatever works for you, but find a goal to work towards for daily words. Even if you don’t meet that goal, as long as you work towards it you have succeeded.

and now I have to go change a diaper and do the mommy thing. Take care all.

* SAHM = Stay At Home Mom
** Flylady, is a lady who has helped many, many people with organizing and cleaning. though not all her methods work for me, I find much of her stuff very informational.
***http://fmwriters.com  which is a free site with tons of information.

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

Apparently someone didn’t like what Kris Rusch posted yesterday about missing royalties. Her websites. yes plural, are down. One, it could be random. Two…ehhh. More than two? I’d say this is an attack and given the nature of her posts, it makes me think that maybe someone wants her to stop posting. Which I don’t think is going to happen.

Here is her mirrored link  http://kriswrites.livejournal.com/ however according to PG, his antivirus software told him there was malware in the coding, so instead I’ll do what he and several other did, copy and paste her post here, in essential hosting the information which I feel is very important.

Kris –  Hope it all gets sorted out soon.

Kris posted this on the FB and so I thought i’d pass it along:

Site update: Still down. Have a major security firm trying to solve the problems. If they work out, I’ll recommend them to folks. 

It looks like the trolls who usually attack me are *not* behind this one. (I have been dealing with such trolls for months now.) This probably is a Russian malware as folks said in posts below, attracted to the heavy Thursday traffic. The malware is now moving to all of my other pen name websites, eating through them like crazy.

So if you’ve clicked on *any* of my websites (pen names, etc) since Thursday am, make sure you run your anti-virus software to make sure your system hasn’t been infected. And don’t go near my sites until I send out an all-clear. Dean’s sites are fine. No worries there. Thanks!

Beginning of post:

Welcome to one of my other websites. This one is for my mystery persona Paladin, from my Spade/Paladin short stories. She has a website in the stories, and I thought it would be cool to have the website online. It’s currently the least active of my sites, so I figured it was perfect for what I needed today.

Someone hacked my website. Ye Olde Website Guru and I are repairing the damage but it will take some time. The hacker timed the hack to coincide with the posting of my Business Rusch column. Since the hack happened 12 hours after I originally posted the column, I’m assuming that the hacker doesn’t like what I wrote, and is trying to shut me down. Aaaaah. Poor hacker. Can’t argue on logic, merits, or with words, so must use brute force to make his/her/its point. Poor thing.

Since someone didn’t want you to see this post, I figure I’d better get it up ASAP. Obviously there’s something here someone objects to–which makes it a bit more valuable than usual.

Here’s the post, which I am reloading from my word file, so that I don’t embed any malicious code here. I’m even leaving off the atrocious artwork (which we’re redesigning) just to make sure nothing got corrupted from there.

The post directs you to a few links from my website. Obviously, those are inactive at the moment. Sorry about that. I hope you get something out of this post.

I’m also shutting off comments here, just to prevent another short-term hack. Also, I don’t want to transfer them over. If you have comments, send them via e-mail and when the site comes back up, I’ll post them. Mark them “comment” in the header of the e-mail. Thanks!

The Business Rusch: Royalty Statement Update 2012

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the fact that my e-book royalties from a couple of my traditional publishers looked wrong. Significantly wrong. After I posted that blog, dozens of writers contacted me with similar information. More disturbingly, some of these writers had evidence that their paper book royalties were also significantly wrong.

Writers contacted their writers’ organizations. Agents got the news. Everyone in the industry, it seemed, read those blogs, and many of the writers/agents/organizations vowed to do something. And some of them did.

I hoped to do an update within a few weeks after the initial post. I thought my update would come no later than summer of 2011.

I had no idea the update would take a year, and what I can tell you is—

Bupkis. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.

That doesn’t mean that nothing happened. I personally spoke to the heads of two different writers’ organizations who promised to look into this. I spoke to half a dozen attorneys active in the publishing field who were, as I mentioned in those posts, unsurprised. I spoke to a lot of agents, via e-mail and in person, and I spoke to even more writers.

The writers have kept me informed. It seems, from the information I’m still getting, that nothing has changed. The publishers that last year used a formula to calculate e-book royalties (rather than report actual sales) still use the formula to calculate e-book royalties this year.

I just got one such royalty statement in April from one of those companies and my e-book sales from them for six months were a laughable ten per novel. My worst selling e-books, with awful covers, have sold more than that. Significantly more.

To this day, writers continue to notify their writers’ organizations, and if those organizations are doing anything, no one has bothered to tell me. Not that they have to. I’m only a member of one writers’ organizations, and I know for fact that one is doing nothing.

But the heads of the organizations I spoke to haven’t kept me apprised. I see nothing in the industry news about writers’ organizations approaching/auditing/dealing with the problems with royalty statements. Sometimes these things take place behind the scenes, and I understand that. So, if your organization is taking action, please do let me know so that I can update the folks here.

The attorneys I spoke to are handling cases, but most of those cases are individual cases. An attorney represents a single writer with a complaint about royalties. Several of those cases got settled out of court. Others are still pending or are “in review.” I keep hearing noises about class actions, but so far, I haven’t seen any of them, nor has anyone notified me.

The agents disappointed me the most. Dean personally called an agent friend of ours whose agency handles two of the biggest stars in the writing firmament. That agent (having previously read my blog) promised the agency was aware of the problem and was “handling it.”

Two weeks later, I got an e-mail from a writer with that agency asking me if I knew about the new e-book addendum to all of her contracts that the agency had sent out. The agency had sent the addendum with a “sign immediately” letter. I hadn’t heard any of this. I asked to see the letter and the addendum.

This writer was disturbed that the addendum was generic. It had arrived on her desk—get this—without her name or the name of the book typed in. She was supposed to fill out the contract number, the book’s title, her name, and all that pertinent information.

I had her send me her original contracts, which she did. The addendum destroyed her excellent e-book rights in that contract, substituting better terms for the publisher. Said publisher handled both of that agency’s bright writing stars.

So I contacted other friends with that agency. They had all received the addendum. Most had just signed the addendum without comparing it to the original contract, trusting their agent who was (after all) supposed to protect them.

Wrong-o. The agency, it turned out, had made a deal with the publisher. The publisher would correct the royalties for the big names if agency sent out the addendum to every contract it had negotiated with that contract. The publisher and the agency both knew that not all writers would sign the addendum, but the publisher (and probably the agency) also knew that a good percentage of the writers would sign without reading it.

In other words, the publisher took the money it was originally paying to small fish and paid it to the big fish—with the small fish’s permission.

Yes, I’m furious about this, but not at the publisher. I’m mad at the authors who signed, but mostly, I’m mad at the agency that made this deal. This agency had a chance to make a good decision for all of its clients. Instead, it opted to make a good deal for only its big names.

Do I know for a fact that this is what happened? Yeah, I do. Can I prove it? No. Which is why I won’t tell you the name of the agency, nor the name of the bestsellers involved. (Who, I’m sure, have no idea what was done in their names.)

On a business level what the agency did makes sense. The agency pocketed millions in future commissions without costing itself a dime on the other side, since most of the writers who signed the addendum probably hadn’t earned out their advances, and probably never would.

On an ethical level it pisses me off. You’ll note that my language about agents has gotten harsher over the past year, and this single incident had something to do with it. Other incidents later added fuel to the fire, but they’re not relevant here. I’ll deal with them in a future post.

Yes, there are good agents in the world. Some work for unethical agencies. Some work for themselves. I still work with an agent who is also a lawyer, and is probably more ethical than I am.

But there are yahoos in the agenting business who make the slimy used car salesmen from 1970s films look like action heroes. But, as I said, that’s a future post.

I have a lot of information from writers, most of which is in private correspondence, none of which I can share, that leads me to believe that this particular agency isn’t the only one that used my blog on royalty statements to benefit their bestsellers and hurt their midlist writers. But again, I can’t prove it.

So I’m sad to report that nothing has changed from last year on the royalty statement front.

Except…

The reason I was so excited about the Department of Justice lawsuit against the five publishers wasn’t because of the anti-trust issues (which do exist on a variety of levels in publishing, in my opinion), but because the DOJ accountants will dig, and dig, and dig into the records of these traditional publishers, particularly one company named in the suit that’s got truly egregious business practices.

Those practices will change, if only because the DOJ’s forensic accountants will request information that the current accounting systems in most publishing houses do not track. The accounting system in all five of these houses will get overhauled, and brought into the 21st century, and that will benefit writers. It will be an accidental benefit, but it will occur.

The audits alone will unearth a lot of problems. I know that some writers were skeptical that the auditors would look for problems in the royalty statements, but all that shows is a lack of understanding of how forensic accounting works. In the weeks since the DOJ suit, I’ve contacted several accountants, including two forensic accountants, and they all agree that every pebble, every grain of sand, will be inspected because the best way to hide funds in an accounting audit is to move them to a part of the accounting system not being audited.

So when an organization like the DOJ audits, they get a blanket warrant to look at all of the accounting, not just the files in question. Yes, that’s a massive task. Yes, it will take years. But the change is gonna come.

From the outside.

Those of you in Europe might be seeing some of that change as well, since similar lawsuits are going on in Europe.

I do know that several writers from European countries, New Zealand, and Australia have written to me about similar problems in their royalty statements. The unifying factor in those statements is the companies involved. Again, you’d recognize the names because they’ve been in the news lately…dealing with lawsuits.

Ironically for me, those two blog posts benefitted me greatly. I had been struggling to get my rights back from one publisher (who is the biggest problem publisher), and the week I posted the blog, I got contacted by my former editor there, who told me that my rights would come back to me ASAP. Because, the former editor told me (as a friend), things had changed since Thursday (the day I post my blog), and I would get everything I needed.

In other words, let’s get the troublemaker out of the house now. Fine with me.

Later, I discovered some problems with a former agency. I pointed out the problems in a letter, and those problems got solved immediately. I have several friends who’ve been dealing with similar things from that agency, and they can’t even get a return e-mail. I know that the quick response I got is because of this blog.

I also know that many writers used the blog posts from last year to negotiate more accountability from their publishers for future royalties. That’s a real plus. Whether or not it happens is another matter because I noted something else in this round of royalty statements.

Actually, that’s not fair. My agent caught it first. I need to give credit where credit is due, and since so many folks believe I bash agents, let me say again that my current agent is quite good, quite sharp, and quite ethical.

My agent noticed that the royalty statements from one of my publishers were basket accounted on the statement itself. Which is odd, considering there is no clause in any of the contracts I have with that company that allows for basket accounting.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with basket accounting, this is what it means:

A writer signs a contract with Publisher A for three books. The contract is a three-book contract. One contract, three books. Got that?

Okay, a contract with a basket-accounting clause allows the publisher to put all three books in the same accounting “basket” as if the books are one entity. So let’s say that book one does poorly, book two does better, and book three blows out of the water.

If book three earns royalties, those royalties go toward paying off the advances on books one and two.

Like this:

Advance for book one: $10,000

Advance for book two: $10,000

Advance for book three: $10,000

Book one only earned back $5,000 toward its advance. Book two only earned $6,000 toward its advance.

Book three earned $12,000—paying off its advance, with a $2,000 profit.

In a standard contract without basket accounting, the writer would have received the $2,000 as a royalty payment.

But with basket accounting, the writer receives nothing. That accounting looks like this:

Advance on contract 1: $30,000

Earnings on contract 1: $23,000

Amount still owed before the advance earns out: $7,000

Instead of getting $2,000, the writer looks at the contract and realizes she still has $7,000 before earning out.

Without basket accounting, she would have to earn $5,000 to earn out Book 1, and $4,000 to earn out Book 2, but Book 3 would be paying her cold hard cash.

Got the difference?

Now, let’s go back to my royalty statement. It covered three books. All three books had three different one-book contracts, signed years apart. You can’t have basket accounting without a basket (or more than one book), but I checked to see if sneaky lawyers had inserted a clause that I missed which allowed the publisher to basket account any books with that publisher that the publisher chose.

Nope.

I got a royalty statement with all of my advances basket accounted because…well, because. The royalty statement doesn’t follow the contract(s) at all.

Accounting error? No. These books had be added separately. Accounting program error (meaning once my name was added, did the program automatically basket account)? Maybe.

But I’ve suspected for nearly three years now that this company (not one of the big traditional publishers, but a smaller [still large] company) has been having serious financial problems. The company has played all kinds of games with my checks, with payments, with fulfilling promises that cost money.

This is just another one of those problems.

My agent caught it because he reads royalty statements. He mentioned it when he forwarded the statements. I would have caught it as well because I read royalty statements. Every single one. And I compare them to the previous statement. And often, I compare them to the contract.

Is this “error” a function of the modern publishing environment? No, not like e-book royalties, which we’ll get back to in a moment. I’m sure publishers have played this kind of trick since time immemorial. Royalty statements are fascinating for what they don’t say rather than for what they say.

For example, on this particular (messed up) royalty statement, e-books are listed as one item, without any identification. The e-books should be listed separately (according to ISBN) because Amazon has its own edition, as does Apple, as does B&N. Just like publishers must track the hardcover, trade paper, and mass market editions under different ISBNs, they should track e-books the same way.

The publisher that made the “error” with my books had no identifying number, and only one line for e-books. Does that mean that this figure included all e-books, from the Amazon edition to the B&N edition to the Apple edition? Or is this publisher, which has trouble getting its books on various sites (go figure), is only tracking Amazon? From the numbers, it would seem so. Because the numbers are somewhat lower than books in the same series that I have on Amazon, but nowhere near the numbers of the books in the same series if you add in Apple and B&N.

I can’t track this because the royalty statement has given me no way to track it. I would have to run an audit on the company. I’m not sure I want to do that because it would take my time, and I’m moving forward.

That’s the dilemma for writers. Do we take on our publishers individually? Because—for the most part—our agents aren’t doing it. The big agencies, the ones who actually have the clout and the numbers to defend their clients, are doing what they can for their big clients and leaving the rest in the dust.

Writers’ organizations seem to be silent on this. And honestly, it’s tough for an organization to take on a massive audit. It’s tough financially and it’s tough politically. I know one writer who headed a writer’s organization a few decades ago. She spearheaded an audit of major publishers, and it cost her her writing career. Not many heads of organizations have the stomach for that.

As for intellectual property attorneys (or any attorney for that matter), very few handle class actions. Most handle cases individually for individual clients. I know of several writers who’ve gone to attorneys and have gotten settlements from publishers. The problem here is that these settlements only benefit one writer, who often must sign a confidentiality agreement so he can’t even talk about what benefit he got from that agreement.

One company that I know of has revamped its royalty statements. They appear to be clearer. The original novel that I have with that company isn’t selling real well as an e-book, and that makes complete sense since the e-book costs damn near $20. (Ridiculous.) The other books that I have with that company, collaborations and tie-ins, seem to be accurately reported, although I have no way to know. I do appreciate that this company has now separated out every single e-book venue into its own category (B&N, Amazon, Apple) via ISBN, and I can actually see the sales breakdown.

So that’s a positive (I think). Some of the smaller companies have accurate statements as well—or at least, statements that match or improve upon the sales figures I’m seeing on indie projects.

This is all a long answer to a very simple question: What’s happened on the royalty statement front in the past year?

A lot less than I had hoped.

So here’s what you traditionally published writers can do. Track your royalty statements. Compare them to your contracts. Make sure the companies are reporting what they should be reporting.

If you’re combining indie and traditional, like I am, make sure the numbers are in the same ballpark. Make sure your traditional Amazon numbers are around the same numbers you get for your indie titles. If they aren’t, look at one thing first: Price. I expect sales to be much lower on that ridiculous $20 e-book. If your e-books through your traditional publisher are $15 or more, then sales will be down. If the e-books from your traditional publisher are priced around $10 or less, then they should be somewhat close in sales to your indie titles. (Or, if traditional publishers are doing the promotion they claim to do, the sales should be better.)

What to do if they’re not close at all? I have no idea. I still think there’s a benefit to contacting your writers’ organizations. Maybe if the organization keeps getting reports of badly done royalty statements, someone will take action.

If you want to hire an attorney or an auditor, remember doing that will cost both time and money. If you’re a bestseller, you might want to consider it. If you’re a midlist writer, it’s probably not worth the time and effort you’ll put in.

But do yourself a favor. Read those royalty statements. If you think they’re bad, then don’t sign a new contract with that publisher. Go somewhere else with your next book.

I wish I could give you better advice. I wish the big agencies actually tried to use their clout for good instead of their own personal profits. I wish the writers’ organizations had done something.

As usual, it’s up to individual writers.

Don’t let anyone screw you. You might not be able to fight the bad accounting on past books, but make sure you don’t allow it to happen on future books.

That means that you negotiate good contracts, you make sure your royalty statements match those contracts, and you don’t sign with a company that puts out royalty statements that don’t reflect your book deal.

I’m quite happy that I walked away from the publisher I mentioned above years ago. I did so because I didn’t like the treatment I got from the financial and production side. The editor was—as editors often are—great. Everything else at the company sucked.

The royalty statement was just confirmation of a good decision for me.

I hope you make good decisions going forward.

Remember: read your royalty statements.

Good luck.

I need to thank everyone who commented, e-mailed, donated, and called because of last week’s post. When I wrote it, all I meant to do was discuss how we all go through tough times and how we, as writers, need to recognize when we’ve hit a wall. It seems I hit a nerve. I forget sometimes that most writers work in a complete vacuum, with no writer friends, no one except family, who much as they care, don’t always understand.

So if you haven’t read last week’s post, take a peek [link]. More importantly, look at the comments for great advice and some wonderful sharing. I appreciate them—and how much they expanded, added, and improved what I had to say. Thanks for that, everyone.

The donate button is below. As always, if you’ve received anything of value from this post or previous posts, please leave a tip on the way out.

Thanks!

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“The Business Rusch: “Royalty Statement Update 2012,” copyright © 2012 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

Apparently someone didn’t like what Kris Rusch posted yesterday about missing royalties. Her websites. yes plural, are down. One, it could be random. Two…ehhh. More than two? I’d say this is an attack and given the nature of her posts, it makes me think that maybe someone wants her to stop posting. Which I don’t think is going to happen.

Here is her mirrored link  http://kriswrites.livejournal.com/ however according to PG, his antivirus software told him there was malware in the coding, so instead I’ll do what he and several other did, copy and paste her post here, in essential hosting the information which I feel is very important.

Kris –  Hope it all gets sorted out soon.

Beginning of post:

Welcome to one of my other websites. This one is for my mystery persona Paladin, from my Spade/Paladin short stories. She has a website in the stories, and I thought it would be cool to have the website online. It’s currently the least active of my sites, so I figured it was perfect for what I needed today.

Someone hacked my website. Ye Olde Website Guru and I are repairing the damage but it will take some time. The hacker timed the hack to coincide with the posting of my Business Rusch column. Since the hack happened 12 hours after I originally posted the column, I’m assuming that the hacker doesn’t like what I wrote, and is trying to shut me down. Aaaaah. Poor hacker. Can’t argue on logic, merits, or with words, so must use brute force to make his/her/its point. Poor thing.

Since someone didn’t want you to see this post, I figure I’d better get it up ASAP. Obviously there’s something here someone objects to–which makes it a bit more valuable than usual.

Here’s the post, which I am reloading from my word file, so that I don’t embed any malicious code here. I’m even leaving off the atrocious artwork (which we’re redesigning) just to make sure nothing got corrupted from there.

The post directs you to a few links from my website. Obviously, those are inactive at the moment. Sorry about that. I hope you get something out of this post.

I’m also shutting off comments here, just to prevent another short-term hack. Also, I don’t want to transfer them over. If you have comments, send them via e-mail and when the site comes back up, I’ll post them. Mark them “comment” in the header of the e-mail. Thanks!

The Business Rusch: Royalty Statement Update 2012

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the fact that my e-book royalties from a couple of my traditional publishers looked wrong. Significantly wrong. After I posted that blog, dozens of writers contacted me with similar information. More disturbingly, some of these writers had evidence that their paper book royalties were also significantly wrong.

Writers contacted their writers’ organizations. Agents got the news. Everyone in the industry, it seemed, read those blogs, and many of the writers/agents/organizations vowed to do something. And some of them did.

I hoped to do an update within a few weeks after the initial post. I thought my update would come no later than summer of 2011.

I had no idea the update would take a year, and what I can tell you is—

Bupkis. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.

That doesn’t mean that nothing happened. I personally spoke to the heads of two different writers’ organizations who promised to look into this. I spoke to half a dozen attorneys active in the publishing field who were, as I mentioned in those posts, unsurprised. I spoke to a lot of agents, via e-mail and in person, and I spoke to even more writers.

The writers have kept me informed. It seems, from the information I’m still getting, that nothing has changed. The publishers that last year used a formula to calculate e-book royalties (rather than report actual sales) still use the formula to calculate e-book royalties this year.

I just got one such royalty statement in April from one of those companies and my e-book sales from them for six months were a laughable ten per novel. My worst selling e-books, with awful covers, have sold more than that. Significantly more.

To this day, writers continue to notify their writers’ organizations, and if those organizations are doing anything, no one has bothered to tell me. Not that they have to. I’m only a member of one writers’ organizations, and I know for fact that one is doing nothing.

But the heads of the organizations I spoke to haven’t kept me apprised. I see nothing in the industry news about writers’ organizations approaching/auditing/dealing with the problems with royalty statements. Sometimes these things take place behind the scenes, and I understand that. So, if your organization is taking action, please do let me know so that I can update the folks here.

The attorneys I spoke to are handling cases, but most of those cases are individual cases. An attorney represents a single writer with a complaint about royalties. Several of those cases got settled out of court. Others are still pending or are “in review.” I keep hearing noises about class actions, but so far, I haven’t seen any of them, nor has anyone notified me.

The agents disappointed me the most. Dean personally called an agent friend of ours whose agency handles two of the biggest stars in the writing firmament. That agent (having previously read my blog) promised the agency was aware of the problem and was “handling it.”

Two weeks later, I got an e-mail from a writer with that agency asking me if I knew about the new e-book addendum to all of her contracts that the agency had sent out. The agency had sent the addendum with a “sign immediately” letter. I hadn’t heard any of this. I asked to see the letter and the addendum.

This writer was disturbed that the addendum was generic. It had arrived on her desk—get this—without her name or the name of the book typed in. She was supposed to fill out the contract number, the book’s title, her name, and all that pertinent information.

I had her send me her original contracts, which she did. The addendum destroyed her excellent e-book rights in that contract, substituting better terms for the publisher. Said publisher handled both of that agency’s bright writing stars.

So I contacted other friends with that agency. They had all received the addendum. Most had just signed the addendum without comparing it to the original contract, trusting their agent who was (after all) supposed to protect them.

Wrong-o. The agency, it turned out, had made a deal with the publisher. The publisher would correct the royalties for the big names if agency sent out the addendum to every contract it had negotiated with that contract. The publisher and the agency both knew that not all writers would sign the addendum, but the publisher (and probably the agency) also knew that a good percentage of the writers would sign without reading it.

In other words, the publisher took the money it was originally paying to small fish and paid it to the big fish—with the small fish’s permission.

Yes, I’m furious about this, but not at the publisher. I’m mad at the authors who signed, but mostly, I’m mad at the agency that made this deal. This agency had a chance to make a good decision for all of its clients. Instead, it opted to make a good deal for only its big names.

Do I know for a fact that this is what happened? Yeah, I do. Can I prove it? No. Which is why I won’t tell you the name of the agency, nor the name of the bestsellers involved. (Who, I’m sure, have no idea what was done in their names.)

On a business level what the agency did makes sense. The agency pocketed millions in future commissions without costing itself a dime on the other side, since most of the writers who signed the addendum probably hadn’t earned out their advances, and probably never would.

On an ethical level it pisses me off. You’ll note that my language about agents has gotten harsher over the past year, and this single incident had something to do with it. Other incidents later added fuel to the fire, but they’re not relevant here. I’ll deal with them in a future post.

Yes, there are good agents in the world. Some work for unethical agencies. Some work for themselves. I still work with an agent who is also a lawyer, and is probably more ethical than I am.

But there are yahoos in the agenting business who make the slimy used car salesmen from 1970s films look like action heroes. But, as I said, that’s a future post.

I have a lot of information from writers, most of which is in private correspondence, none of which I can share, that leads me to believe that this particular agency isn’t the only one that used my blog on royalty statements to benefit their bestsellers and hurt their midlist writers. But again, I can’t prove it.

So I’m sad to report that nothing has changed from last year on the royalty statement front.

Except…

The reason I was so excited about the Department of Justice lawsuit against the five publishers wasn’t because of the anti-trust issues (which do exist on a variety of levels in publishing, in my opinion), but because the DOJ accountants will dig, and dig, and dig into the records of these traditional publishers, particularly one company named in the suit that’s got truly egregious business practices.

Those practices will change, if only because the DOJ’s forensic accountants will request information that the current accounting systems in most publishing houses do not track. The accounting system in all five of these houses will get overhauled, and brought into the 21st century, and that will benefit writers. It will be an accidental benefit, but it will occur.

The audits alone will unearth a lot of problems. I know that some writers were skeptical that the auditors would look for problems in the royalty statements, but all that shows is a lack of understanding of how forensic accounting works. In the weeks since the DOJ suit, I’ve contacted several accountants, including two forensic accountants, and they all agree that every pebble, every grain of sand, will be inspected because the best way to hide funds in an accounting audit is to move them to a part of the accounting system not being audited.

So when an organization like the DOJ audits, they get a blanket warrant to look at all of the accounting, not just the files in question. Yes, that’s a massive task. Yes, it will take years. But the change is gonna come.

From the outside.

Those of you in Europe might be seeing some of that change as well, since similar lawsuits are going on in Europe.

I do know that several writers from European countries, New Zealand, and Australia have written to me about similar problems in their royalty statements. The unifying factor in those statements is the companies involved. Again, you’d recognize the names because they’ve been in the news lately…dealing with lawsuits.

Ironically for me, those two blog posts benefitted me greatly. I had been struggling to get my rights back from one publisher (who is the biggest problem publisher), and the week I posted the blog, I got contacted by my former editor there, who told me that my rights would come back to me ASAP. Because, the former editor told me (as a friend), things had changed since Thursday (the day I post my blog), and I would get everything I needed.

In other words, let’s get the troublemaker out of the house now. Fine with me.

Later, I discovered some problems with a former agency. I pointed out the problems in a letter, and those problems got solved immediately. I have several friends who’ve been dealing with similar things from that agency, and they can’t even get a return e-mail. I know that the quick response I got is because of this blog.

I also know that many writers used the blog posts from last year to negotiate more accountability from their publishers for future royalties. That’s a real plus. Whether or not it happens is another matter because I noted something else in this round of royalty statements.

Actually, that’s not fair. My agent caught it first. I need to give credit where credit is due, and since so many folks believe I bash agents, let me say again that my current agent is quite good, quite sharp, and quite ethical.

My agent noticed that the royalty statements from one of my publishers were basket accounted on the statement itself. Which is odd, considering there is no clause in any of the contracts I have with that company that allows for basket accounting.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with basket accounting, this is what it means:

A writer signs a contract with Publisher A for three books. The contract is a three-book contract. One contract, three books. Got that?

Okay, a contract with a basket-accounting clause allows the publisher to put all three books in the same accounting “basket” as if the books are one entity. So let’s say that book one does poorly, book two does better, and book three blows out of the water.

If book three earns royalties, those royalties go toward paying off the advances on books one and two.

Like this:

Advance for book one: $10,000

Advance for book two: $10,000

Advance for book three: $10,000

Book one only earned back $5,000 toward its advance. Book two only earned $6,000 toward its advance.

Book three earned $12,000—paying off its advance, with a $2,000 profit.

In a standard contract without basket accounting, the writer would have received the $2,000 as a royalty payment.

But with basket accounting, the writer receives nothing. That accounting looks like this:

Advance on contract 1: $30,000

Earnings on contract 1: $23,000

Amount still owed before the advance earns out: $7,000

Instead of getting $2,000, the writer looks at the contract and realizes she still has $7,000 before earning out.

Without basket accounting, she would have to earn $5,000 to earn out Book 1, and $4,000 to earn out Book 2, but Book 3 would be paying her cold hard cash.

Got the difference?

Now, let’s go back to my royalty statement. It covered three books. All three books had three different one-book contracts, signed years apart. You can’t have basket accounting without a basket (or more than one book), but I checked to see if sneaky lawyers had inserted a clause that I missed which allowed the publisher to basket account any books with that publisher that the publisher chose.

Nope.

I got a royalty statement with all of my advances basket accounted because…well, because. The royalty statement doesn’t follow the contract(s) at all.

Accounting error? No. These books had be added separately. Accounting program error (meaning once my name was added, did the program automatically basket account)? Maybe.

But I’ve suspected for nearly three years now that this company (not one of the big traditional publishers, but a smaller [still large] company) has been having serious financial problems. The company has played all kinds of games with my checks, with payments, with fulfilling promises that cost money.

This is just another one of those problems.

My agent caught it because he reads royalty statements. He mentioned it when he forwarded the statements. I would have caught it as well because I read royalty statements. Every single one. And I compare them to the previous statement. And often, I compare them to the contract.

Is this “error” a function of the modern publishing environment? No, not like e-book royalties, which we’ll get back to in a moment. I’m sure publishers have played this kind of trick since time immemorial. Royalty statements are fascinating for what they don’t say rather than for what they say.

For example, on this particular (messed up) royalty statement, e-books are listed as one item, without any identification. The e-books should be listed separately (according to ISBN) because Amazon has its own edition, as does Apple, as does B&N. Just like publishers must track the hardcover, trade paper, and mass market editions under different ISBNs, they should track e-books the same way.

The publisher that made the “error” with my books had no identifying number, and only one line for e-books. Does that mean that this figure included all e-books, from the Amazon edition to the B&N edition to the Apple edition? Or is this publisher, which has trouble getting its books on various sites (go figure), is only tracking Amazon? From the numbers, it would seem so. Because the numbers are somewhat lower than books in the same series that I have on Amazon, but nowhere near the numbers of the books in the same series if you add in Apple and B&N.

I can’t track this because the royalty statement has given me no way to track it. I would have to run an audit on the company. I’m not sure I want to do that because it would take my time, and I’m moving forward.

That’s the dilemma for writers. Do we take on our publishers individually? Because—for the most part—our agents aren’t doing it. The big agencies, the ones who actually have the clout and the numbers to defend their clients, are doing what they can for their big clients and leaving the rest in the dust.

Writers’ organizations seem to be silent on this. And honestly, it’s tough for an organization to take on a massive audit. It’s tough financially and it’s tough politically. I know one writer who headed a writer’s organization a few decades ago. She spearheaded an audit of major publishers, and it cost her her writing career. Not many heads of organizations have the stomach for that.

As for intellectual property attorneys (or any attorney for that matter), very few handle class actions. Most handle cases individually for individual clients. I know of several writers who’ve gone to attorneys and have gotten settlements from publishers. The problem here is that these settlements only benefit one writer, who often must sign a confidentiality agreement so he can’t even talk about what benefit he got from that agreement.

One company that I know of has revamped its royalty statements. They appear to be clearer. The original novel that I have with that company isn’t selling real well as an e-book, and that makes complete sense since the e-book costs damn near $20. (Ridiculous.) The other books that I have with that company, collaborations and tie-ins, seem to be accurately reported, although I have no way to know. I do appreciate that this company has now separated out every single e-book venue into its own category (B&N, Amazon, Apple) via ISBN, and I can actually see the sales breakdown.

So that’s a positive (I think). Some of the smaller companies have accurate statements as well—or at least, statements that match or improve upon the sales figures I’m seeing on indie projects.

This is all a long answer to a very simple question: What’s happened on the royalty statement front in the past year?

A lot less than I had hoped.

So here’s what you traditionally published writers can do. Track your royalty statements. Compare them to your contracts. Make sure the companies are reporting what they should be reporting.

If you’re combining indie and traditional, like I am, make sure the numbers are in the same ballpark. Make sure your traditional Amazon numbers are around the same numbers you get for your indie titles. If they aren’t, look at one thing first: Price. I expect sales to be much lower on that ridiculous $20 e-book. If your e-books through your traditional publisher are $15 or more, then sales will be down. If the e-books from your traditional publisher are priced around $10 or less, then they should be somewhat close in sales to your indie titles. (Or, if traditional publishers are doing the promotion they claim to do, the sales should be better.)

What to do if they’re not close at all? I have no idea. I still think there’s a benefit to contacting your writers’ organizations. Maybe if the organization keeps getting reports of badly done royalty statements, someone will take action.

If you want to hire an attorney or an auditor, remember doing that will cost both time and money. If you’re a bestseller, you might want to consider it. If you’re a midlist writer, it’s probably not worth the time and effort you’ll put in.

But do yourself a favor. Read those royalty statements. If you think they’re bad, then don’t sign a new contract with that publisher. Go somewhere else with your next book.

I wish I could give you better advice. I wish the big agencies actually tried to use their clout for good instead of their own personal profits. I wish the writers’ organizations had done something.

As usual, it’s up to individual writers.

Don’t let anyone screw you. You might not be able to fight the bad accounting on past books, but make sure you don’t allow it to happen on future books.

That means that you negotiate good contracts, you make sure your royalty statements match those contracts, and you don’t sign with a company that puts out royalty statements that don’t reflect your book deal.

I’m quite happy that I walked away from the publisher I mentioned above years ago. I did so because I didn’t like the treatment I got from the financial and production side. The editor was—as editors often are—great. Everything else at the company sucked.

The royalty statement was just confirmation of a good decision for me.

I hope you make good decisions going forward.

Remember: read your royalty statements.

Good luck.

I need to thank everyone who commented, e-mailed, donated, and called because of last week’s post. When I wrote it, all I meant to do was discuss how we all go through tough times and how we, as writers, need to recognize when we’ve hit a wall. It seems I hit a nerve. I forget sometimes that most writers work in a complete vacuum, with no writer friends, no one except family, who much as they care, don’t always understand.

So if you haven’t read last week’s post, take a peek [link]. More importantly, look at the comments for great advice and some wonderful sharing. I appreciate them—and how much they expanded, added, and improved what I had to say. Thanks for that, everyone.

The donate button is below. As always, if you’ve received anything of value from this post or previous posts, please leave a tip on the way out.

Thanks!

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“The Business Rusch: “Royalty Statement Update 2012,” copyright © 2012 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

Apparently someone didn’t like what Kris Rusch posted yesterday about missing royalties. Her websites. yes plural, are down.One, it could be random, two…ehhh more than two, this is an attack and given the nature of her it makes me think that maybe someone wants her to stop posting.

Here is her mirrored link  http://kriswrites.livejournal.com/ however according to PG, his antivirus software told him there was malware in the coding, so instead I’ll do what he and several other did, copy and paste her post here, in essential hosting the information which I feel is very important.

Kris –  Hope it all gets sorted out soon.

Beginning of post:

Welcome to one of my other websites. This one is for my mystery persona Paladin, from my Spade/Paladin short stories. She has a website in the stories, and I thought it would be cool to have the website online. It’s currently the least active of my sites, so I figured it was perfect for what I needed today.

Someone hacked my website. Ye Olde Website Guru and I are repairing the damage but it will take some time. The hacker timed the hack to coincide with the posting of my Business Rusch column. Since the hack happened 12 hours after I originally posted the column, I’m assuming that the hacker doesn’t like what I wrote, and is trying to shut me down. Aaaaah. Poor hacker. Can’t argue on logic, merits, or with words, so must use brute force to make his/her/its point. Poor thing.

Since someone didn’t want you to see this post, I figure I’d better get it up ASAP. Obviously there’s something here someone objects to–which makes it a bit more valuable than usual.

Here’s the post, which I am reloading from my word file, so that I don’t embed any malicious code here. I’m even leaving off the atrocious artwork (which we’re redesigning) just to make sure nothing got corrupted from there.

The post directs you to a few links from my website. Obviously, those are inactive at the moment. Sorry about that. I hope you get something out of this post.

I’m also shutting off comments here, just to prevent another short-term hack. Also, I don’t want to transfer them over. If you have comments, send them via e-mail and when the site comes back up, I’ll post them. Mark them “comment” in the header of the e-mail. Thanks!

The Business Rusch: Royalty Statement Update 2012

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about the fact that my e-book royalties from a couple of my traditional publishers looked wrong. Significantly wrong. After I posted that blog, dozens of writers contacted me with similar information. More disturbingly, some of these writers had evidence that their paper book royalties were also significantly wrong.

Writers contacted their writers’ organizations. Agents got the news. Everyone in the industry, it seemed, read those blogs, and many of the writers/agents/organizations vowed to do something. And some of them did.

I hoped to do an update within a few weeks after the initial post. I thought my update would come no later than summer of 2011.

I had no idea the update would take a year, and what I can tell you is—

Bupkis. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch.

That doesn’t mean that nothing happened. I personally spoke to the heads of two different writers’ organizations who promised to look into this. I spoke to half a dozen attorneys active in the publishing field who were, as I mentioned in those posts, unsurprised. I spoke to a lot of agents, via e-mail and in person, and I spoke to even more writers.

The writers have kept me informed. It seems, from the information I’m still getting, that nothing has changed. The publishers that last year used a formula to calculate e-book royalties (rather than report actual sales) still use the formula to calculate e-book royalties this year.

I just got one such royalty statement in April from one of those companies and my e-book sales from them for six months were a laughable ten per novel. My worst selling e-books, with awful covers, have sold more than that. Significantly more.

To this day, writers continue to notify their writers’ organizations, and if those organizations are doing anything, no one has bothered to tell me. Not that they have to. I’m only a member of one writers’ organizations, and I know for fact that one is doing nothing.

But the heads of the organizations I spoke to haven’t kept me apprised. I see nothing in the industry news about writers’ organizations approaching/auditing/dealing with the problems with royalty statements. Sometimes these things take place behind the scenes, and I understand that. So, if your organization is taking action, please do let me know so that I can update the folks here.

The attorneys I spoke to are handling cases, but most of those cases are individual cases. An attorney represents a single writer with a complaint about royalties. Several of those cases got settled out of court. Others are still pending or are “in review.” I keep hearing noises about class actions, but so far, I haven’t seen any of them, nor has anyone notified me.

The agents disappointed me the most. Dean personally called an agent friend of ours whose agency handles two of the biggest stars in the writing firmament. That agent (having previously read my blog) promised the agency was aware of the problem and was “handling it.”

Two weeks later, I got an e-mail from a writer with that agency asking me if I knew about the new e-book addendum to all of her contracts that the agency had sent out. The agency had sent the addendum with a “sign immediately” letter. I hadn’t heard any of this. I asked to see the letter and the addendum.

This writer was disturbed that the addendum was generic. It had arrived on her desk—get this—without her name or the name of the book typed in. She was supposed to fill out the contract number, the book’s title, her name, and all that pertinent information.

I had her send me her original contracts, which she did. The addendum destroyed her excellent e-book rights in that contract, substituting better terms for the publisher. Said publisher handled both of that agency’s bright writing stars.

So I contacted other friends with that agency. They had all received the addendum. Most had just signed the addendum without comparing it to the original contract, trusting their agent who was (after all) supposed to protect them.

Wrong-o. The agency, it turned out, had made a deal with the publisher. The publisher would correct the royalties for the big names if agency sent out the addendum to every contract it had negotiated with that contract. The publisher and the agency both knew that not all writers would sign the addendum, but the publisher (and probably the agency) also knew that a good percentage of the writers would sign without reading it.

In other words, the publisher took the money it was originally paying to small fish and paid it to the big fish—with the small fish’s permission.

Yes, I’m furious about this, but not at the publisher. I’m mad at the authors who signed, but mostly, I’m mad at the agency that made this deal. This agency had a chance to make a good decision for all of its clients. Instead, it opted to make a good deal for only its big names.

Do I know for a fact that this is what happened? Yeah, I do. Can I prove it? No. Which is why I won’t tell you the name of the agency, nor the name of the bestsellers involved. (Who, I’m sure, have no idea what was done in their names.)

On a business level what the agency did makes sense. The agency pocketed millions in future commissions without costing itself a dime on the other side, since most of the writers who signed the addendum probably hadn’t earned out their advances, and probably never would.

On an ethical level it pisses me off. You’ll note that my language about agents has gotten harsher over the past year, and this single incident had something to do with it. Other incidents later added fuel to the fire, but they’re not relevant here. I’ll deal with them in a future post.

Yes, there are good agents in the world. Some work for unethical agencies. Some work for themselves. I still work with an agent who is also a lawyer, and is probably more ethical than I am.

But there are yahoos in the agenting business who make the slimy used car salesmen from 1970s films look like action heroes. But, as I said, that’s a future post.

I have a lot of information from writers, most of which is in private correspondence, none of which I can share, that leads me to believe that this particular agency isn’t the only one that used my blog on royalty statements to benefit their bestsellers and hurt their midlist writers. But again, I can’t prove it.

So I’m sad to report that nothing has changed from last year on the royalty statement front.

Except…

The reason I was so excited about the Department of Justice lawsuit against the five publishers wasn’t because of the anti-trust issues (which do exist on a variety of levels in publishing, in my opinion), but because the DOJ accountants will dig, and dig, and dig into the records of these traditional publishers, particularly one company named in the suit that’s got truly egregious business practices.

Those practices will change, if only because the DOJ’s forensic accountants will request information that the current accounting systems in most publishing houses do not track. The accounting system in all five of these houses will get overhauled, and brought into the 21st century, and that will benefit writers. It will be an accidental benefit, but it will occur.

The audits alone will unearth a lot of problems. I know that some writers were skeptical that the auditors would look for problems in the royalty statements, but all that shows is a lack of understanding of how forensic accounting works. In the weeks since the DOJ suit, I’ve contacted several accountants, including two forensic accountants, and they all agree that every pebble, every grain of sand, will be inspected because the best way to hide funds in an accounting audit is to move them to a part of the accounting system not being audited.

So when an organization like the DOJ audits, they get a blanket warrant to look at all of the accounting, not just the files in question. Yes, that’s a massive task. Yes, it will take years. But the change is gonna come.

From the outside.

Those of you in Europe might be seeing some of that change as well, since similar lawsuits are going on in Europe.

I do know that several writers from European countries, New Zealand, and Australia have written to me about similar problems in their royalty statements. The unifying factor in those statements is the companies involved. Again, you’d recognize the names because they’ve been in the news lately…dealing with lawsuits.

Ironically for me, those two blog posts benefitted me greatly. I had been struggling to get my rights back from one publisher (who is the biggest problem publisher), and the week I posted the blog, I got contacted by my former editor there, who told me that my rights would come back to me ASAP. Because, the former editor told me (as a friend), things had changed since Thursday (the day I post my blog), and I would get everything I needed.

In other words, let’s get the troublemaker out of the house now. Fine with me.

Later, I discovered some problems with a former agency. I pointed out the problems in a letter, and those problems got solved immediately. I have several friends who’ve been dealing with similar things from that agency, and they can’t even get a return e-mail. I know that the quick response I got is because of this blog.

I also know that many writers used the blog posts from last year to negotiate more accountability from their publishers for future royalties. That’s a real plus. Whether or not it happens is another matter because I noted something else in this round of royalty statements.

Actually, that’s not fair. My agent caught it first. I need to give credit where credit is due, and since so many folks believe I bash agents, let me say again that my current agent is quite good, quite sharp, and quite ethical.

My agent noticed that the royalty statements from one of my publishers were basket accounted on the statement itself. Which is odd, considering there is no clause in any of the contracts I have with that company that allows for basket accounting.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with basket accounting, this is what it means:

A writer signs a contract with Publisher A for three books. The contract is a three-book contract. One contract, three books. Got that?

Okay, a contract with a basket-accounting clause allows the publisher to put all three books in the same accounting “basket” as if the books are one entity. So let’s say that book one does poorly, book two does better, and book three blows out of the water.

If book three earns royalties, those royalties go toward paying off the advances on books one and two.

Like this:

Advance for book one: $10,000

Advance for book two: $10,000

Advance for book three: $10,000

Book one only earned back $5,000 toward its advance. Book two only earned $6,000 toward its advance.

Book three earned $12,000—paying off its advance, with a $2,000 profit.

In a standard contract without basket accounting, the writer would have received the $2,000 as a royalty payment.

But with basket accounting, the writer receives nothing. That accounting looks like this:

Advance on contract 1: $30,000

Earnings on contract 1: $23,000

Amount still owed before the advance earns out: $7,000

Instead of getting $2,000, the writer looks at the contract and realizes she still has $7,000 before earning out.

Without basket accounting, she would have to earn $5,000 to earn out Book 1, and $4,000 to earn out Book 2, but Book 3 would be paying her cold hard cash.

Got the difference?

Now, let’s go back to my royalty statement. It covered three books. All three books had three different one-book contracts, signed years apart. You can’t have basket accounting without a basket (or more than one book), but I checked to see if sneaky lawyers had inserted a clause that I missed which allowed the publisher to basket account any books with that publisher that the publisher chose.

Nope.

I got a royalty statement with all of my advances basket accounted because…well, because. The royalty statement doesn’t follow the contract(s) at all.

Accounting error? No. These books had be added separately. Accounting program error (meaning once my name was added, did the program automatically basket account)? Maybe.

But I’ve suspected for nearly three years now that this company (not one of the big traditional publishers, but a smaller [still large] company) has been having serious financial problems. The company has played all kinds of games with my checks, with payments, with fulfilling promises that cost money.

This is just another one of those problems.

My agent caught it because he reads royalty statements. He mentioned it when he forwarded the statements. I would have caught it as well because I read royalty statements. Every single one. And I compare them to the previous statement. And often, I compare them to the contract.

Is this “error” a function of the modern publishing environment? No, not like e-book royalties, which we’ll get back to in a moment. I’m sure publishers have played this kind of trick since time immemorial. Royalty statements are fascinating for what they don’t say rather than for what they say.

For example, on this particular (messed up) royalty statement, e-books are listed as one item, without any identification. The e-books should be listed separately (according to ISBN) because Amazon has its own edition, as does Apple, as does B&N. Just like publishers must track the hardcover, trade paper, and mass market editions under different ISBNs, they should track e-books the same way.

The publisher that made the “error” with my books had no identifying number, and only one line for e-books. Does that mean that this figure included all e-books, from the Amazon edition to the B&N edition to the Apple edition? Or is this publisher, which has trouble getting its books on various sites (go figure), is only tracking Amazon? From the numbers, it would seem so. Because the numbers are somewhat lower than books in the same series that I have on Amazon, but nowhere near the numbers of the books in the same series if you add in Apple and B&N.

I can’t track this because the royalty statement has given me no way to track it. I would have to run an audit on the company. I’m not sure I want to do that because it would take my time, and I’m moving forward.

That’s the dilemma for writers. Do we take on our publishers individually? Because—for the most part—our agents aren’t doing it. The big agencies, the ones who actually have the clout and the numbers to defend their clients, are doing what they can for their big clients and leaving the rest in the dust.

Writers’ organizations seem to be silent on this. And honestly, it’s tough for an organization to take on a massive audit. It’s tough financially and it’s tough politically. I know one writer who headed a writer’s organization a few decades ago. She spearheaded an audit of major publishers, and it cost her her writing career. Not many heads of organizations have the stomach for that.

As for intellectual property attorneys (or any attorney for that matter), very few handle class actions. Most handle cases individually for individual clients. I know of several writers who’ve gone to attorneys and have gotten settlements from publishers. The problem here is that these settlements only benefit one writer, who often must sign a confidentiality agreement so he can’t even talk about what benefit he got from that agreement.

One company that I know of has revamped its royalty statements. They appear to be clearer. The original novel that I have with that company isn’t selling real well as an e-book, and that makes complete sense since the e-book costs damn near $20. (Ridiculous.) The other books that I have with that company, collaborations and tie-ins, seem to be accurately reported, although I have no way to know. I do appreciate that this company has now separated out every single e-book venue into its own category (B&N, Amazon, Apple) via ISBN, and I can actually see the sales breakdown.

So that’s a positive (I think). Some of the smaller companies have accurate statements as well—or at least, statements that match or improve upon the sales figures I’m seeing on indie projects.

This is all a long answer to a very simple question: What’s happened on the royalty statement front in the past year?

A lot less than I had hoped.

So here’s what you traditionally published writers can do. Track your royalty statements. Compare them to your contracts. Make sure the companies are reporting what they should be reporting.

If you’re combining indie and traditional, like I am, make sure the numbers are in the same ballpark. Make sure your traditional Amazon numbers are around the same numbers you get for your indie titles. If they aren’t, look at one thing first: Price. I expect sales to be much lower on that ridiculous $20 e-book. If your e-books through your traditional publisher are $15 or more, then sales will be down. If the e-books from your traditional publisher are priced around $10 or less, then they should be somewhat close in sales to your indie titles. (Or, if traditional publishers are doing the promotion they claim to do, the sales should be better.)

What to do if they’re not close at all? I have no idea. I still think there’s a benefit to contacting your writers’ organizations. Maybe if the organization keeps getting reports of badly done royalty statements, someone will take action.

If you want to hire an attorney or an auditor, remember doing that will cost both time and money. If you’re a bestseller, you might want to consider it. If you’re a midlist writer, it’s probably not worth the time and effort you’ll put in.

But do yourself a favor. Read those royalty statements. If you think they’re bad, then don’t sign a new contract with that publisher. Go somewhere else with your next book.

I wish I could give you better advice. I wish the big agencies actually tried to use their clout for good instead of their own personal profits. I wish the writers’ organizations had done something.

As usual, it’s up to individual writers.

Don’t let anyone screw you. You might not be able to fight the bad accounting on past books, but make sure you don’t allow it to happen on future books.

That means that you negotiate good contracts, you make sure your royalty statements match those contracts, and you don’t sign with a company that puts out royalty statements that don’t reflect your book deal.

I’m quite happy that I walked away from the publisher I mentioned above years ago. I did so because I didn’t like the treatment I got from the financial and production side. The editor was—as editors often are—great. Everything else at the company sucked.

The royalty statement was just confirmation of a good decision for me.

I hope you make good decisions going forward.

Remember: read your royalty statements.

Good luck.

I need to thank everyone who commented, e-mailed, donated, and called because of last week’s post. When I wrote it, all I meant to do was discuss how we all go through tough times and how we, as writers, need to recognize when we’ve hit a wall. It seems I hit a nerve. I forget sometimes that most writers work in a complete vacuum, with no writer friends, no one except family, who much as they care, don’t always understand.

So if you haven’t read last week’s post, take a peek [link]. More importantly, look at the comments for great advice and some wonderful sharing. I appreciate them—and how much they expanded, added, and improved what I had to say. Thanks for that, everyone.

The donate button is below. As always, if you’ve received anything of value from this post or previous posts, please leave a tip on the way out.

Thanks!

Click Here to Go To PayPal.

“The Business Rusch: “Royalty Statement Update 2012,” copyright © 2012 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

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The beginning of this year, writing wise, is pretty much shot. Real Life was the priority and though there is still RL to handle, I can finally turn my focus towards my writing business. I have projects, lots of them, and I want them all finished yesterday. This impatience, along with a huge dose of perfectionism, sometimes makes my progress feel as though it is going backwards. I need to get a better grip on edits/revisions. I realize this. When I come up on an edit I get avoidant. What should take a day or two to write out, stretches for WEEKS, and sometimes even months.

I recognize this fault in myself. I am working on it.

So here we are, almost into May and nothing I wanted to get done has been done. As my darling SO says; It is what it is. I still have 8 months of the year left. I want to make those months count.

I have two projects that need an edit/rewrite. And at least 4 projects I want to write on if not write draft 1 completely. BUT I am a very busy person, so I don’t want to get too ahead of myself because with my life, nothing ever seems to go to plan.

So before June 30^th I want the two edit/rewrite projects done. Those would be Help Never Came aka The #Zombiething, and Elemental Truth aka #E1 (yes those ARE twitter hashtags, in case you are interested in following that).

I want to write out Crown of Bones(#cob), at least draft one. I started it, but it wasn’t jiving with me, am considering restarting it. Who knows. I want to get Elemental Flame(#E2) written also and try to re-restart Bastard Prince (#zanderstory), now that I realized why I was balking at certain areas.

So to be totally OCD here all nicely listed out:

• Edit Zombiething
• Edit E1
• Write COB
• Write E2
• Write Zonder’s story
• HAVE FUN WHILE DOING THE ABOVE

I think that should work for now. I have some reading and catching up to do with the blogs I follow.

~

About Editing.

Someone in chat asked me, the other day, when I say editing what does that entail for me?

I was a bit flabbergasted. I have heard so many different methods/theories/suggestions falling under the umbrella of editing, that I just sorta do what I do and call it editing. For me, I responded, it is tightening up the story, cleaning things up, rewriting, filling in plot holes, that sort of thing. And though that answer seemed to satisfy the fellow chatter, it bothered me. My OCD grabbed onto the thought  and twisted it to; What is the proper definition of editing? I have not had the time to properly research it just yet, that is on the list of things to do , but I was curious how other writers define editing. And if there are any editors reading this, by all means please share! It kept me up late last night bugging me while I tried to get to sleep. I suspect that what I am calling editing in regards to the #zombiething, is actually revising or rewriting, but I’m not too sure if that’s correct.

Time to get to work. Take care all.

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I’m trying to decide on a cover for this #zombiething. I think I know the title, but the cover is aggravating me. So here are a few versions, input always welcome.

Trying to get the setup to have these side by side, doesn’t seem to be working.

So that’s what I am doing right now, I REALLY like the top one, but the teddy bear is too dark. The white teddy in the second one doesn’t look right, the third one is close to what I envisioned for this project’s cover, but I keep going back to the first one thinking but, but, but…

Anyways, there’s a new post up by J.A. Marlow on ebook pricing over here, well worth the read. Dean Wesley Smith also has an updated post on ebook pricing over here. I will admit, I have few thoughts on the matter at the moment. I need to sit down and really do a in depth read and think about it.

Agent Rachelle Gardner posted 6 Reasons Authors Self-Publish, which is not a bashing post, which I was happy to see. Kudos to her for that!  The comments are also very interesting and enlightning. Check it out.

This move has been brutal on me and I’m just barely getting back on track, please forgive me.

I’m still writing, still happy with self publishing. Just very, very; distracted. 

Anyways, any suggestions on the covers are more than welcome.

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Where did March go?

I am so sorry. Life hijacked me. Getting things situated, still. Working on edits for the zombie thing, and thinking over projects for the rest of the year.

There have been some rl hiccups but I think I am getting back on track. Anyways, back to the edits.

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I wanted to write out some profound,deep, philosophical post, but alas, my three year old and five year old are sick and the three year old hasn’t stopped whining/crying for the past 3 hours. Makes writing, editing, plotting and business planning difficult.

Still trying to find my daily routine and my balance. I’m closer, but not just there yet. I’ve been doing a lot of video gaming and reading, in between the unpacking and child chasing. I was also poking at my personal wikis for my projects. And thinking, lots of thinking.

So there you have it. Happy Tuesday!

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Smashwords is doing a week long promo Read an EBook Week,  in which many authors have put their books on special with coupon codes listed on the book page. I signed mine up also, and the first of my Inside the Author’s Mind series, The Shiny, is actually free with the coupon!

There are a lot of good reads in that catalog which is over here. I suggest you take a look and go through it, you might find some stuff you’ll enjoy.

In other words, I did a add up of the sales from last year, a total of 22 between Amazon and Smashwords. Ok, doesn’t look too impressive. But think about this, it is 22 sales I would never have made if I left those stories unwritten/on my computer. And that was just between Aug and Dec 31st. With little, if any marketing. It looks like The Magic Maker seems to be my best selling title. So far.

I consider this as an ongoing success. It makes me happy to know I’m doing this.

Now to editing and figuring out what next.

Happy Monday.

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My cat passed away this morning.

This was going to be a promo post about the smashwords thing, but I’ll do that later, don’t have the heart to do it right now, though I need to.

RIP Anubis, my pretty kitty. We will miss you.

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I started writing this post, then got sidetracked with the whole unpacking thing. We are moved, life is beginning to resume a somewhat normal pace. I need to sit down and rethink my goals and what projects are going to be worked on when. That post will be later. Right now, I’ve printed out the zombiething and will be red-penning it this evening. I think it needs to go up for sale, sooner than later.

Starting on March 4th (tomorrow), Smashwords is going to be doing a Read an EBook Week which will go until March 10th. My stories will be part of that promo. More info as soon as I have it.

In other news;

Tornados, in feb. My heart goes out to the families and communities who have been affected by these storms.

Now it is time to get back to unpacking. **waves**

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Well we have moved, but are still in transition. Might be a couple more weeks before things get back to somewhat settled. I am trying to get to writing, in between looking for a house, but I don’t know that the quality of what I’ve written is worth sharing.

I just wanted to let yall know that we are safe and still working towards getting settled. **waves**

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We are go for launch.

In other words, this weekend we are moving. For sure. Now I will be offline (mostly) until we get things settled in our new place and get settled. I’ll be twittering the adventure (cause that is what moving is, a grande adventure!) from my personal twitter, emmigeek, if you are that curious.

I will resume posting here after things get sorted out.

Take care all. See you on the flip side.

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It looks like we may move this upcoming weekend. I spent this morning clearing out stuff, tossing and sorting stuff. So I’ve earned a break…right?

Anyways, this is a bit of a smorgass board of thoughts as I help daughter sort through an old dresser-turned-desk-full-of-hastily-put-away-stuff.

Covers;

I did some fiddling with the Redshirts cover:

I mean really, it’s about redshirts…it NEEDED the bloodsplatter. Not to sure on the red text though… hmmm

I’ve also been doing some fiddling with an idea for The Shiny’s cover. i don’t like it. Simply put. So here is the begining of a mockup:

I love the dress, the pose, the lighting, the sparklies, the background however totally sucks. I know this. Still working on it.

Here is a fascinating post about internet kerfluffles, lack of followup (or news about followup) and a giveaway! Internet Kerfluffles and Followup. Go read and ponder and spread the word, getting outraged on the internet brought about a great change and people really should know about it.

Ok now to tackle the mess I call my dining room table….

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I have been battling rl stuff (move preparation and kids with the flu) so my writing and editing, as I suspected it would this month, has ground to a halt. This morning, in between sanitizing my house post some upset stomachs, and making some mad dashes to the bathroom (yes, I know my life is soooo glamorous) I went over to Dean Wesley Smith’s* site to see what posts he has done since my last check in (about a week ago I think). His post was short, but linked to Kristine Rusch’s post on Bestseller Lists, and Joe Konrath’s post The Myth of the Bestseller.

Now I’ve heard, for quite some time actually, that the bestseller lists were not entirely accurate portrayals of who/what is selling well. Kris breaks it down very well (IMO) and the commentors are as informative as her post itself.

I’m not too familiar with Konrath’s blog, I’ve found his manner a bit brusque at times in the past, and the swearing does make me cringe (which is weird because I am worse than a sailor when it comes to swearing) but he’s very informative and well worth taking a read through his posts if you don’t already.  I don’t totally agree with his delivery , but that’s personal preference. That said, his post was exactly what I needed to read and I suggest you read it too.

Any writer who puts food on the table with their writing is successful. It doesn’t matter if it is a box of mac and cheese, or caviar and champagne. Taking your career into your own hands, giving it your best shot, striving to do better… that’s the American Dream, baby.

Are the bestseller lists important? I can’t answer that. For the brownie points, for the thrill of saying “I made it! Looksee!”, well if that what geeks you out then sure, they’re important. I can’t comment on the money side of it as I, personally, do not know authors who are on bestsellers lists and are willing to discuss their finances with me.  I have however read about bestsellers who are still struggling to pay the bills.

Are the lists important to me?

I don’t honestly know how to answer that question. In the past I wanted to see one of   my stories on the NYT Bestseller’s list. Why? Because I erroneously thought  that would show that I was a success. But lately it doesn’t seem to matter because those lists rarely contain books I actually would want to read. Now?  It would certainly feed my ego to say “I was #____ on the NYT Bestseller List”, I won’t lie, that sort of thing would have me grinning for a month. But I don’t need that list to validate me being a success.

I AM a success. I have written and I continue to write, and I have published my work. It is up, available. And people seem to like it, I’m selling a bit. And what is really cool is it will be available to readers. For as long as I choose it to be.  If I don’t sell a huge amount in the first week of putting it up, I won’t have to worry about my publisher not picking up my next story. I’m not going to fire me.

I’m putting mac n cheese on the table man!

As always, your thoughts and opinions are welcome. And thanks to Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Rusch and Joe Konrath for sharing their experiences in publishing with the rest of us. Have a great day peoples!

ooo  Bonus link: 25 Things Writers Should Know About Agents.

*I try not to spend too much time reading blogs. I read Dean and Kris’s, and I skim over my livejournals which I have rssfeeds of other blogs. Other than that I just don’t have the time.

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I am packing. OMG we have so much stuff! Well I just found notes from a project idea dating 2005. I thought I would share, I have no idea where I was going with this.

The paper says:

3 Major gangs
2 arch enemies
1 thief with a case of bad luck
and the world is the gameboard…

~*~

Nadine* knows something. Something so damaging she could change the course of the future.
And Everybody wants to know what it is…

~*~

Imprisoned for years
Driven by revenge
The problem?
One child
One woman
One City
One hundred thousand men standing between him and his goal.

What the hell was I thinking? This is the only paper written on in this note book… o.O it sounds like a kickass idea (if not a bit over-dramatic), or maybe it is 3 ideas on one page, but I have no memory of writing it down.

Paper is going to get packed, but pondered over…

Time to finish clearing this stuff off the table and get myself moving for the day. Have a great day folks!

*I have a character with this name in a story that is half written.

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There are many things I could say, but it is being said elseware.

This is the entire speech “I have a dream”. We listened to it this morning, my children and I, and discussed the changes in our world since this man gave that speech. The irony of the current political situation and the protests around the world*. To understand the reasons for the “I have a dream” statement you have to hear the entire speech. To gain deeper understanding of what came before, listen to the whole thing then dust off your history books. Though, warning, history books often feed my plotbunnies, they may do the same with yours!

~*~

Dr. King did not just hop up one day and march up on Washington to give that one speech, he had others as powerful and potent as his “I have a Dream” speech. Here are other quotes of his.

*I aim to avoid political talk on this blog, just fyi.

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I put together a new cover for Muse Interrupted yesterday, which has me chortling as much as I was when writing the story;

This is cute, I don’t care what you say it made me giggle. Still does. However for some reason Amazon, though I have changed the cover, isn’t showing the new cover. I need to go see what’s up with that and maybe re-upload it.

Since I had the program open anyways I went ahead and fiddled with a cover concept idea for the still unnamed zombie thing, though the more I think about it the more I lean towards the title “Help never came“

This one: then this one

I like the creepy of the first one but not the colors, white bear didn’t fit in that color scheme at all. When I put brown bear in the setting with the house it didn’t look right, i didn’t even try to render it. The white bear stands out more in this. Still fiddling with it while I try to get rid of the plague I seem to have caught. I need more sinister in this I think, though every one seems to think the eyes are still freaky.

What about you, interwebs? Which of the two seem to work better? Or is there another background I ought to try. The teddy and the gun are going to stay… hmmm I do need grass….

What is your agenda for the day?

**putters back to the digi art**

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Whenever I edit, whenever I outline, this scene runs through my head, specifically “Onions have layers, ogres have layers!”  Except I tweak the words in my head. I think to myself “Onions have layers, I write in layers!”.

And for the longest time I tried to write it all in one sit, get it all in so I didn’t have to go over and over and over it. Only recently have Ibegun to allow myself to just writeit the way it comes to mind.

I write the scene, usually pretty basic then when the story is down I go back and fill things in.

Example from the Zombie thing:

Kas and O worked on the truck while the rest of them secured office area of the auto shop, taking out two of the rotting Zs that were dressed in tattered blue jumpsuits. They hadn’t seen many fresh Zs lately. Chris wondered, securing the door, if perhaps the plague was wearing itself out. Four and a half years on, those who died were still becoming those things. But there were fewer people. Far fewer. Those left were far from the civilized people they’d once been.

It is basic, got the scene down, but for me it just wasn’t enough. So I went back and fiddled with it and came up with this:

The town sported one auto shop tucked into a building that lined the main street downtown. Despite the truck’s heavy thumping engine, no Z’s stumbled after them. It was all a matter of time. They would show, eventually. The auto shop carried the faint smell of grease and decay. Shuffling in circles in the bays were several Zs in tattered, bloodstained blue jumpsuits. It didn’t take long to dispatch them, tossing the remains out the back-door while Kas and O pulled the truck into one of the bays, securing the door to keep any curious Z’s away.

Chris did a quick walk through of the waiting area and the office. No more Zs, but plenty of evidence of a lost battle. A body, most of it consumed by the Z’s, lay contorted behind the desk. Chris stepped past it, doing a quick search of the desk. A box of.45’s and revolver. Tina was staring at the corpse.

“Anything good?” She asked.

Chris showed her the revolver and box of ammo, setting them on the counter.

“Those Z’s back there were old.” She commented, following him out of the office.

“Probably here when it went down. This place was pretty secure.” Ahmad said from his corner by the register.

“Been a while since we saw any fresh meat.” Tina said. Fresh meat. Fresh Zs.

Chris shrugged and double checked the door. Had they seen the last of the plague? He didn’t dare to hope. Four and a half years on, freshly dead sometimes reanimated, but lately the recently departed were staying dead. There were so few people left, though. Far fewer. Those left crept close to the animals they once set themselves apart. How long before they rejoined the great animal kingdom? He paced by the window, staring out into the street. No Z’s, no people.

It isn’t done, isn’t perfect, and still needs a bit of tweaking, but you see how I did that? For me, I had to layer the emotional response in AFTER I knew what the actions and setting was. When I wrote it I stared at that first paragraph knowing that was too short, to distant.

I figured that out after going brain dead trying to get it all down, emotion and everything. But my brain doesn’t work that way.

So often we hear these conflicting myths, that you should be able to just get it all down in one sitting, and the other myth that a good story only comes by tweaking it for years and years. I, personally, am of the opinion that for some people these myths are true. For some people it does take years, for others a one sit write out and it’s as good as it’s going to get. But those methods aren’t for everyone. And it’s not me. And it’s alright to not be either of these.

I am a firm believer in there not being any ONE way for EVERYONE. It is impossible. Not doable. And if anyone tells you differently, they don’t know what they are talking about.

Anyways, it is time to get to writing, finish tweaking the zombie thing. Take care, happy writing!

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Kristine Rusch continues discussing the publishing business with the post Why Not? Well worth taking the time to sit down and reading it over. I like the post because of the questions she poses.

Dean Wesley Smith has a new post up about Investing in your Future as a writer. It is a good post, interesting. With some good suggestions on goal making and sales as a   self pubber.

I’m sure you have heard of the KDP Select thing with Amazon.com, while I am not entirely well versed with the program I’ve been hearing some interesting viewpoints for and against it. I have been flirting with the idea of putting one of my projects on it, Playing For The Dead or Magic Maker but I need to do more reading up on it and I don’t know that I have the time to do so at this point in time. ANYWAYS here is a Early Eval of KDP Select written by Kevin O. Mclaughlin over here. Now it was written last month so the numbers could be different now, I don’t know.

Now on to other news, a friend of mine has a new book out today The Between by L.J. Cohen. I haven’t had a chance to get my hands on it yet but don’t let that stop you! Here is a good review by PBackWriter who is doing a contest to win a copy of this awesome sounding book!

Lets see what else…

Today is friday the 13th, a day that some people get all weird about. I wish i had realized sooner, I’d have put something up.

I apparently sold a copy of Playing for the Dead to someone in AU. Austria? Belgium? that is absolutely wow.

I keep thinking there was something in particular I was going to mention here andI can’t remember what it was. hmm…

Have a Happy Friday!

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Somehow my brain connected the Marianas Trench with an intergalactic war in the stars and a space fighter doing a routine survey of a water-logged world. And a rookie screaming “We’re gonna crash!” to which the pilot asks “Will someone shut this damn greenhorne up?”

Really not sure where it would go from there. But it sounds fun.

Last night I finished the rough outline for Crossroads, and squeed muchly. Now since we are planning a major move in the next few weeks I really don’t think getting sucked into a project would be good, for the move or the project so I decided to go ahead and outline the next book in the series*. That led me to skim through some of my half finished, or finished projects from years ago.

A couple of them hold up surprisingly well. They are rough and awkward and dear gods need to be reworked, but over all… wow I’m impressed. Which one do I work on next?  I’m not sure. But I know this, I think I’ll write a prologue for all of them just to piss off the people who love to complain about prologues. Like writing about a bastard prince to annoy the people obsessed with avoiding cliches.

I write what I love to read. The problem with the so called ‘cliches’ is EVERYTHING written has, in some form or another, been done before. They can be done well and they can be done crappily. And there will be people who love it, and there will be people who love to bash it. The question is; is this what you love to read?  Then why not? If you love it, chances are other people do to. If it is something you love to read, then write it.

Don’t halt your writing because of worrying about what nameless unknowns might say. Write what you enjoy. Learn to write it well. Chances are you aren’t the only one**.

That said I am going to totally muddy the waters with this one; all of this does, of course, depend on what your goals are.

If your goals are to “bag an agent, be trad published” you might want to follow the agents of your dreams via twitter or their blogs (if they have one)  to see what they complain about and then not do it. Common sense imo, but doing your research before querying might be a good idea. That in itself is another post for another time.

and now for another shift in thought. Dean Wesley Smith has another post here About being a Writer vs Being an Author.

— A Writer is a person who writes.

— An Author is a person who has written.

A writer focuses on the next project and keeps moving forward, while the Author focuses on the last project. It is an interesting view, and one worth thinking about.

Personally, if I follow that set of definitions, I’m a Writer. That makes me really, really happy.

and to wrap up this smorgasboard of a post I’d like to know what you all might suggest for other topics? Do you want me to host guest bloggers here? **pokes unseen readers** what would you like to see here?

oh speaking of guest bloggers, J.A. Marlow, author of the Salmon Run books (my recent reading obsession) did a guest blog over at Valerie Griswold-Ford‘s blog over here on Being Brave for 2012. Good post. Go read. And then go check out her Salmon Run books over on amazon or smashwords. Good stories.

Edited to add; Jim Hines wins the internet again Bravo sir!

* I should outline Crown of Bones since I need to get that project written before oct.
**For what it is worth I ENJOY the underdog farmkid who discovers he is the last line of a monarchy long thought to be dead. DAMNIT those are fun books.

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It is looking up on my end, what about yours?

so I sat down a couple days ago to look over the goals I made and **sigh** decided that they need to be adjusted. I am very tuned to RL right now, not writing so much, and until we get ourselves moved I don’t know that my writing will be successful. So you know what? Not gonna stress about it.

I’ve been playing with another zombie idea, the Christmas story. I realized I needed to do research to get Bastard Prince right. So when I am not fiddling with the zombie thing I think I’ll play with the outline for Crossroads and the rest of the series. Perhaps Bastard Prince will end up as a prequel…

We shall see.

In other news, a dear friend of mine has a new ebook out, a christmas story entitled Snow;

It’s Christmas. The Solstice Covenant is in full effect. So when the StarChild sends her to the North Pole to investigate the disappearance of an Earth Lord, Nikki Jeffries has to rely on something other than her normal habit of killing anyone who crosses her. Luckily, a sexy Jack Frost is there to help her out.

Check it out! **waves at val** Now the cover was done by an awesome Starla who is offering a limited time discount on covers. From her twitter: For a LIMITED time, I will do ebook covers for $75, and printed book covers for $100.

Up there is an example of her breathtaking work, I really think this is a good deal folks.

Now to go figure out if I am going to pack or write or read….

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If you don’t read Kristine Kathryn Rusch, I highly suggest you start. She presents an interesting view of the business side of writing. Her last post, The Business Rusch: The Holiday Surprise, has some interesting observations about ebooks, this Christmas season and some very interesting thoughts about the patterns we saw last year…

But publishing itself, that grand old business that we writers form the foundation for, is doing better than ever. Our business is healthier than it’s been in decades—and it’s working its way toward robust.

 

That said, have you guys, fellow writers, given any thoughts to your goals for 2012? Have you worked up a business plan for next year? Dean Wesley Smith has a series he’s doing entitled Goals and Dreams 2012. The first two are up and I recommend you take a few min to really read them and take a look at how you form your goals with writing.

So many great points to those two posts,

Failure is an Option. Quitting is not.

When setting goals, everything about your goal must be in your control. Completely.

Shifting Goals in This New World

The point of a goal is to help set guidelines on work and maybe deadlines on that work that help drive the work forward.

 

And there is this beautiful gem which, once I am able to replace my printer AKA paperweight, I am going to print up and frame:

Success is often buried in what seems like failure.

 

My goals are here, if you want a gander, and feel free to share yours, I’d love to see them. Have a Happy New Year, stay safe!

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

I was talking, last night, with a writer friend about a mutual writer friend whom we absolutely adore. We were discussing the fact that some writers, like this one friend, was in constant edit mode, tweaking mode, and didn’t see how wonderful her stories are. It occurred to me, and I have heard this expressed on other blogs, that this is a rut, a cycle of always reaching for perfection. No book is ever going to be perfect, that is an impossibility. As my one friend stated, since the opinions of what is perfect is so varied, getting a perfect book is not achievable.

Improvements can ALWAYS be made. But there comes a time when one must step back, take a deep breath, and really ask ones’ self if you are overdoing a bit? if one has been going over and over and over the same project could it be that you have gotten it as good as it can get? That perhaps now is the time to let it fly free.

Now I totally understand how hard it is to let go of it and say “This is as good as I can get it.” And shove it out into the grand wide world. I have stories I am still clinging to and think, “I can get it better!” Even when a part of me knows that this is as close to perfect as this particular project is going to get.

Dean Wesley Smith put out a blog post a while back entitled Dare to be Bad in which he discusses this very issue. I think it is well worth the read.

I see people, who’s writing I love and adore, caught in this mucky unending cycle of editing, rewriting, tossing stuff out, starting again from scratch, and I have caught myself doing it too (Bastard Prince anyone?:P). I have to shake myself, tell myself “Knock it off! At this rate the other stories will never get written cause you are constantly tweaking this one!”

People, i think you may know who you are, your writing is far better than you realize. Is it good enough to submit? (The people I have in mind have dreams of going trad) YES IT IS! Submit it damnit! Dare to be bad! So you can get on to the other stories you have in your hearts waiting to be told.

And with that, though I am still on vacation, I’ll go back to tweaking Bastard Prince. I am going to finish it, because there are other stories in that series to be told and other projects are waiting.

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Really I am.

The Zombie Christmas thing is shelved till next fall. I have Bastard Prince to finish before we move. But for now, through the 1st, I am on vacation.

This year has been a tough and amazing one. I am published, by my own means and it feels damn good. I have plans for next year writing and other. But for now I am going to unwind, maybe poke at BP. And read. Yes that thing called reading, I amso behind on it…

Happy Holidays, hope yours are wonderful.

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W00t! It is done, it needs so much work. I have a Zombie Christmas story to write before certain people hit me over the head with frozen seafood…

So close to the next year and I am close to flailing. I have lots of stuff I wanted to have done but it didn’t happen. Real life just kicked my arse.

So. On the list;

• Do the zombie christmas thing
• work on Bastard Prince, get as much as I can before we move.

Happy Holidays, whatever holiday you celebrate, or if you don’t celebrate any I hope you have a calm weekend.

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

In 2003 I discovered the internet and the fact that there were other writers as crazy about story-telling as I am. One thing led to another and I landed at Forward Motion, a writer forum which has, over the years, helped me oh so much! There are many things I love about the site, though tbh I am not as active as I was (RL can be a pain at times) but I have made friends there who have helped me grow, helped me learn, helped me improve.

I found a community of people whom I feel comfortable.

I saw this just a little bit ago, and it made me think about everything I have done writing wise over the past 8 years (OMG 8 YEARS?!?) and I can pin it down to one site,  the one place that was my learning center. where I continue to find great info and get to talk and interact with other writerly types as crazy as I am. Forward Motion.

So Zette, if you read this I would just like to say, Thanks. Thanks for keeping it going. Thanks for having a place where I’ve been able togo, for setting up the chat where I have made dear friends whom I am blessed to have had the opportunity to get to know. Thank you for taking your time and funds to make this slice of internet calm available to us writers.

Take care, stay warm and don’t let the cats hide your outlines!

See you on the flip side!

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

It was supposed to be a piece of flash fiction. It is 6200 words and counting. I don’t know how to feel about this except it is the thing that just.wont.die.  **coughs** Bad pun. Sorry. So, I feel like I should have this wrapped up already. Silly brain not cooperating. I need to finish this story, I want to finish it today. And it needs a title. Zombie thing just doesn’t work…

#

“Chris?” Tina’s voice was very loud in the dark cab. “Where is the ferry?”

Chris ignored her, he scrambled out of the driver’s seat into the back of the truck where he pushed the sunroof open and half hauled himself onto the roof of the truck. He squinted at the far bank, the moon peeking from the clouds, reflected off of the choppy water. He couldn’t see the other side clearly.

“Where are the night vision goggles?” He called down.

“Peter had them.” Kas said, her voice bland. Chris swore looking back across the river. Peter died. Clouds moved across the sky, and the river was only illuminated by the headlights of the truck.

“Here.”

Chris glanced down. The blond girl they’d plucked from the tree was handing him a pair of military issue night vision goggles. He took them and nodded his thanks before looking.

He wished he hadn’t. He could see the ferry, resting against the far side of the river. He could see the landing and the figures of Z’s hunched over…

He dropped back into the truck, silently handed the girl her goggles back and closed the sun roof. He went back to the driver’s seat, sliding into it with a frown.

“Chris?”

“Ferry ain’t comin.” He reached over to the glove box and pulled out the map, mind running in circles. He didn’t remember lighting the cigarette and was startled when the ash dropped to the map, on the marks they’d made over the towns they’d declared clear.

“Nearest bridge?” Tina asked.

Chris blinked and looked at her then glanced into the back of the truck, illuminated by the mini lantern. 7 sets of wary eyes watched him. How the hell did that happen? Why did they keep looking at him like he’d have all the damn answers? Wasn’t this supposed to be Kas’s show? But she looked as terrified as he felt. The ferry was their ticket home, a few hours up the road was base. The nearest bridge was miles away, and with the lack of road care what used to be a couple hours of driving was now a few days of rough terrain.

“Have to go towards the coast and up the _______ highway.” He blew the ashes off the map and handed it back to Tina.

“And Lou?” Kas asked.

Chris didn’t look back at her, didn’t have the guts to. Lou, the guy that manned the ferry, was her baby brother. “Lou’s dead.”

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

I love digi art. I love playing with programs such as Poser and Daz3d. I love being able to look at a piece of art I have made using those programs and “see” the characters I write about. So yesterday I kinda took a break and just *played* and came up with this:

Zander test render 2

I am quite proud of this picture. Despite the fact the clothes aren’t aligned right at the legs and arms and the hair is not exactly right… And I just noticed he doesn’t have eyebrows… **snerk** I find that funny

It is still very close to how I picture him, in his youth. Before shit hits the fan.mwahahaha **coughs**

#

We’ve been, in chat, having an ongoing discussion of traditional publishing verses self publishing. There is a lot of distrust between the two sides. Which makes me very sad. There is a lot we, as authors, should be able to do. Respecting others’ decisions on how they want to distribute and manage their writing career should be paramount. Luckily, for the most part, the folks I chat with have this respect, and are willing to accept other folks’ decisions… as long as they aren’t pressured to go the route they don’t feel comfortable with.

When I was working on the Zombie thing the other day, a friend advised me to find a publisher for it. And I realized, I’m having far too much fun to do that.

There is a lot of trad publishing hate out there. And it is not very surprising. They’ve been underpaying and mistreating their writers for years. (not getting on that soapbox) I have multiple reasons why I am just not comfortable with going the traditional route. So much is changing, so fast and the publishers, agents and writers are scrambling to figure out what next. I could list off things and reasons why I choose not to trad publish, but there are so many of those declarative posts out there that it feel like it is feeding a negative air that surrounds self pubbing. Honestly, when it all boils down to it, I’d rather list off reasons why I choose to self publish.

• I love making covers. I am such a geek. I love fiddling with the digi art, I love putting together concepts, I love knowing that if I screw up on the cover it is MY fault not an underpaid and over worked artist who is given minimal information about book they are doing a cover for.
• Time frame. Instead of wasting my time sitting on pins and needles waiting for a YAY or NAY from an editor/agent, as soon as my work is deemed publishable, it takes about a day or two to format and do the cover and then put it up. Months/years vs a day or three… Yeah
• More freedom to write what I want. I am not locked into a genre, so if I want to explore doing sci-fi stories instead of fantasy or maybe a zombie thing or two… I CAN without needing to ask an agent or editor if I should or not. I have trouble with that idea.
• If I need to handle real life I can give myself more time. (like the past three or four months) I don’t have to ask for patience from someone who has their bosses breathing down their neck because their author hasn’t delivered yet. That would make me feel real bad.
• It is fun. Just, fun. I love the community, I love the people I have gotten to know. I love the options. I love seeing what I can do.
• I love waking up to see sales. I won’t lie. That is one of the coolest things. I woke up the other day after having a series of minor disasters (flooded basement, leaky water heater, out furnace in 30 degree weather…) and saw sales. And I geeked, it made me smile big. Reviews would be nice but hey you can’t have everything can you?
• Returns on sales. I get about 30% on every sale (for the .99 price range) from Amazon, I’d have to double check on the Smashwords sales. To my knowledge, based off of discussion with my friends who are trad pubbed, trad published authors get far lower percentage per sale than that. Which makes me very sad. You trad published writers work so hard for your publishers they should be paying you more per copy imo.

Now that I’ve procrastinated enough I have a zombie thing to finish (and find a title for), Bastard Prince to finish and Crossroads and Crown of Bones to outline all before the end of Jan.

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It is 4k and growing, my little zombie thing. Not sure how big it will be in the end, not sure if it will stay a short or a novella or what. Right now I am just trying to get it written and of course I have this hideous urge to make it a romancish thing. With zombies as the backdrop. WTF?

Anyways here is the opening section, thought I’d share for snippet saturday. Enjoy;

#

The front door lay in the yard, water collected in the grooves with little boats of peeling green paint on a mini-sea. Broken glass on the walkway reflected the clouds and patches of bright blue sky overhead. The screens hung at odd angles, bumping against the house with the wind. A teddy bear sat on the front porch, the thread that made up its mouth; unraveling and bleeding down its front. Its large button eyes watched him smoking his cancer stick on its front lawn.

Beyond the teddy bear, doll parts littered the foyer, Plaster and drywall, papers and wood covered the stairs and floor. Chris inhaled, dragging the stale cigarette smoke deep into his lungs and exhaled, flicking the butt into the muddy grass. Button eyes stared accusingly at him. He shook himself, it was just some old toy. The deep rumble of an engine announced the arrival of other survivors he was with.

“Hey man, I thought you was gonna investigate!” O yelled.

Chris ignored him, swearing under his breath. If there were any Zs around, they knew they were there now, noise always brought even stragglers. He shouldered his gun, said a silent prayer to the pepsi god, and stepped over the door onto the bottom step of the porch.

“We’ll be next door.” O called.

Chris waved, letting O know he’d heard, staring up at the house. It bothered him since they drove by a few days before. Once a tight knit community of fairly well-to-do folks, this little town had been devastated by the plague. After the initial outbreak many of the Z’s had headed south, towards the bigger cities in the south. Since arriving, no Z’s had been spotted. Chris wasn’t going to hold his breath. They always found Zs, eventually.

He stepped around the teddy bear into the foyer. Musty, moldy, it smelled of old abandoned house. And death. Old, dried out death. His boots crunched as he walked into what might have been a parlor. Bones littered the floor. A crushed skull and a whole collection of porcelain dolls were heaped by one of the walls. An old cuckoo clock, the hands broken off, stood out against the wallpaper. Chris felt the skin on the back of his neck tighten, prickling when he caught sight of the writing on the wall.

Help Never Came!

He swallowed, mouth dry. Brown paint. Gods, he hoped it was paint. He’d hate to think… He scanned the rest of the room. Broken furniture, a busted lamp. Nothing they could use in the compound. His eyes kept going back to the sign. Those last days, the radio dj’s were telling people to stay in their homes. Help was coming, just hang on.

Help Never Came!

The cool evening wind rustled papers in the next room, drawing his mind back from the chaos of the past. No point in worrying about it, nothing he could do now. He stepped through the far door into a small room It might have been an office, he couldn’t be sure, part of the roof had caved in. On the shelf, near the door, was a small book. A child’s diary.

A memory surfaced, buying his stepdaughter a similar diary. The kind with the little cheap locks that broke if pulled on too hard. He took it, shoving it into his shirt. Outside the truck pulled up, the engine thumping. They’d have to find a mechanic shop and soon if they were going to keep it going. He heard the heavy boot falls and crunching glass in the front yard.

“Hey man, you ok?” O called from the front door.

“Fine, clear on this side.”

“You go upstairs yet?”

“No.” Chris strode past the sign, trying not to look at the dried drips on the peeling, pale yellow wallpaper. “You get the rest of the downstairs, be careful, looks like the roof back there caved in.”

“Gotcha.”

There were signs of fighting, more bones, another skull, and children’s clothing down the narrow hallway. A room, looking like it might have been barricaded by furniture, beckoned. He shuddered and went, unable to refuse the urge. He stepped through the broken doorway, staring at the room with a sinking heart. A child’s room. A little girl, eight maybe? Ten? Dolls, horse toys, books and lots of pink ruffles filled what must have been a little girl’s dream room. The floor was littered with papers and there was a brown stained baseball bat.

He picked it up. A child’s bat, cheap wood, probably from some dollar store.

“Man did you see that sign downstairs? On the wall?” O was standing on the landing. “Shit musta been scary up here.”

“Yeah.” Chris tossed the baseball bat on the fancy bed with the faded pink comforter. He pulled out the pack of smokes, shook one out and gripped it with his lips while tucking the pack back into his pocket. He lit it, inhaled, and considered the room. Nothing they could use, nothing they needed. He exhaled, welcoming the smell of the smoke over the stale dead smell. He left the room, sliding past O without another word.

“Hey man, you ok?” O was one of those people, always trying to get down in other people’s business. Must have been a therapist before it all came crashing down.

“I’m fine.” Liar. Chris halted on the porch. The teddy bear was on its side. He inhaled, staring at the old stuffing. There were little bugs, black beetles of some kind crawling through the matted faux fur. He stepped to one side to let O slide by him.

“We found an auto shop, Kas says there ain’t anything left here.”

“Headin out then?”

“Yeah, I wanna look at the Golden Gate Bridge. Finish that smoke man, and come on.”

“Tell Kas I wanna see Hollywood.”

O laughed and trotted across the front door and back to the truck. Chris took his time, ignoring the calls from his fellow ‘friends’ to hurry up. They could kiss his ass. He flicked the butt into the grass, and started down the steps. He turned when he reached the door, going back to the porch and set the bear back upright before making his way to the truck.

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

Her job is to send ideas to the Author, however, not everyone appreciates new ideas and Muse is told to curb her idea gathering. But can you really tell a Muse to stop?

 Another one of the Inside the Author’s Mind series. It is available at Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and XinXii

I did that yesterday, taking a break from writing. Sometimes it is good to just take a breather, I’ve been going at a crazy pace since October. With the new year right around the corner it is time to evaluate what next year’s plan is. Put together a publishing schedule and figure out what my writing goals are.

Next year is going to be a bit crazy, at least the first part of the year will be. We are planning a cross-country move within the first three months or so of 2012, and for that time frame I will be offline while we get settled. How long will that take? I do not know. So much of it is in the air it is making me quite frustrated because I simply don’t know.

That said, in the last half of THIS year I have written a tremendous amount. I have pubbed 5 things, and if I can get a handle on this Zombie thing I may have a 6th story published by the 1st or shortly after. So I think I’ll do goals in short quarterly steps. The rest of this year will be to finish the zombie thing and Bastard Prince and possibly work on the outline for Crossroads

So;

• Jan thru April if I can finish editing E1 and get it to betas before the move, maybe start edit pass 1 on Bastard Prince, I’ll feel like I have accomplished something for the first part of the year. I would like to get the outline for the Epic Fantasy story idea done.
• May thru Aug should be a fairly good writing time, depending of course. Finishing and publishing E1, finishing edit pass 1 of BP and possibly start of Crossroads or start on Crown of Bones. Or both.
• Sept thru Dec we have NaNo prep. What am I going to do for nano? I don’t know.

Ok Time to get to work. Take care all.

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

I am fighting a headache. i know why I have a headache and it is my own damn fault. You see a few weeks ago I found this really nifty used book store about a mile or two from my house. I located a copy of the book Clan of the Cave Bear which I’d never read. I find it fascinating to read stories set in a per-historic time and so I bought it (and a bunch of other books). It got kicked around the room a bit before I finally, night before last, decided to read.

I was up till past 4am reading it thursday night and again last night when I finished it.

I am of many thoughts here on it. There were good points and bad points and so I thought I’d list it out here.

First of all I saw in this book great potential, but was put together in a very clumsy form. It wavered from a tight 3rd to a distant narration which bordered on a science teacher flavor and back. Headhopping was…. wow. I counted 5 POV switches in a single scene. And there were info dumps.

Now here’s something I wanted to think about and to mention, the author told me a bit of information, and after that, told me again, and again, and again the same piece of info. As if I would forget, as if I were stupid.

There were other things, stated facts about the Clan which I know now science has disproved but was accepted at the time the book was written. Attitudes the characters had, however, felt true to their culture.

The herbology lessons in the guise of the character’s conversation both bugged and intrigued me. It felt like a case of the author found some information and thought it was so cool she had to include it.

That said, my internal editor was screaming at me to start red-penning the book.

Yet I stayed up far too late, two nights in a row, to finish that horribly written book.

The story, with all its faults, was compelling. I wanted to honestly know what the heck was going to happen to Ayla, the main character. I wanted to see where she ended up. I wanted to know more about her world, her culture, and the people she called family. You see the author caught my attention, and despite the faults of how it was put together, kept my attention enough that I am sitting here nursing an eye-strain headache thinking about all the advice that flys around new writers; don’t do this, don’t do that… so on and so forth.

Sometimes the advice forgets one huge detail which ends up leaving a story a flat and uninteresting mess. What so many people tend to forget among the confusing clutter of how to put it all together, is….. a story. A story that sometimes pulls the reader along, unwilling, kicking, and screaming and won’t let go until they close that back cover and go WTF did I just read? <——– that was me at 4am

Now I am not going to say ignore all the advice. The cleaner the story, the easier to read. I think I wasted a lot of my reading time when reading that book, re-reading info covered in earlier chapters. But the story is what pulled me forward, my empathy with the mc. The tale behind the head-hopping and info dumps. When you are working on your story, try not to forget the concept, the idea, the premise of what made you want to write it in the first place.

Those are my thoughts, I welcome comments and thoughts.

Now, today, I am planning on trying to wrap up the zombie thing and work on Bastard Prince. Once I lose my headache.

For now? I think I’ll go to see what the next book is because I am curious and want to find out what happens to Ayla…

Happy Sat folks

ohohohohoh I should mention; this book is not one for minors. There are several rape scenes, brutality towards women, beatings and attitudes that are very primative. Those of you who might have issues with those sorts of scenes would do well to stay away from this book. I did have to grit my teeth a bit because of the attitudes, even of the “good” guys. Just fyi

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

What happened?

Wow. OK, so life is interesting.

Writing is too.

This months’ list is limited to finishing Bastard Prince and then playing with digi art and editing side projects.  I have this Zombie idea that has been growing on me. It is now sitting at over 1500 words and still going. Words that haunt:

My daddy always called me his Angel, but my mama called me born of the devil. 

I don’t know about you, but I “hear” a heavy southern accent.

Ok time to get to writing. Will check the sales later. I haven’t been marketing or anything because of RL issues. My sales are not the best atm but I am not too bothered by it.

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

I am too tired to mess with that right now.

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I am going to be playing with themes on this thing, not trying to break it, but if it does break…… now you know why

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Did it yesterday. Then sat up staring at the computer going… oook now what?

So I wrote out an 800 word… thing that I am not too sure of. It is a zombie scene. I don’t usually do Zombie stories but it has been beating around in my head since I hear the song by Rise Against entitled Help is on the Way. I am debating what to do with it, though I may just shelve it and let it marinate. I may post it here as a freebee and see what folks think, I’m not sure.

The nano project, while sitting over 50k, is not done. I have been skimming over the story and tweaking here and there, rearranging some of the scenes and noting where scenes need to be added in the next pass.

I seem to write in layers, I’ve noticed this with other projects and have gotten flak from people claiming I am getting bogged down in edits. I write bare bones, then go back and fill in scenes.

Oh I am bouncing all over the place here. Ok, time to get my butt moving. Just because nano is won doesn’t mean the writing stops. Bastard Prince isn’t finished yet, even my bare bones version.

Have a fun snip;

“The report from Auron has been disheartening to say the least.” The Commander said after raising an eyebrow and grinning at Zander in greeting. “The slayer has been very busy in the Shadowlands, though it isn’t mobilized, training camps have sprung up around the main cities. Dark Rahaun and others, some fae and even Sharin are being trained and readied for something. However, we have no idea what. Auron indicated in his report that he had to make a hasty exit from the Shadowlands and is currently in hiding, though where he wouldn’t specify.”

“Probably slept with someone’s wife and got caught.” One of the other rahaun muttered.

“Or daughter.” Someone else grumped. 

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The nano project is halfway complete, sitting at 40k. IfI can do 2 5k days I can call nano done and just focus on finishing the book itself. Then I will take about a month or two just to focus on playing with covers. Seeing as it looks like we may be moving sometime between Feb 1st and March 30th I don’t want to get too deep into another project. So I’ll probably be editing E1 and playing with digi art.

Here is a nano snip; hope you are all staying safe today.

“We think she was able to do what you did, are doing. Your abilities are suppressing your illness. If that could be… channeled, what an interesting thing that would be.” She leaned forward, the lite clatter sound from her armor as she moved seemed very loud. “Something changed, when you hauled Hayner up. We want to see if we can help you control this ability.”

“In return?” Zander glanced at Lord Merdoc.

“You would join the Sarukai. And all the…. fun that entails.” Lady Nyhavi said with a tight smile.

“There is a possibility that by using your abilities for other matters, beside suppressing the Wasting could bring an early onset of symptoms. We saw that with your mother.” Lord Merdoc cautioned. “It could bring you to an earlier grave. The choice is yours.”

Zander looked back down at the disk, not seeing the wood, the charring or the slight imperfections in the carving. He saw possibilities. “I’m a dead man either way.” He closed his fingers around the disk, feeling the sides of it digging into his palm. He met Lady Nyhavi’s cool gaze. “I’ll do it.”

“It is not an easy path. Death by Zarconis or the Dark Immortals is a very real possibility”  She nodded, made a slight gesture at Lord Merdoc who inclined his head and left.

“Everyone dies.” He said. “Even the gods”

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Quick pre-Thanksgiving post; I have a snip here that had me chuckling, hope you all don’t find it too confusing;

NaNo Snip:

“You know Immortals?” Zander asked, forcing the words.

Lord Merdoc eyed him. “Don’t believe in the Immortals, boy?”

Zander blinked, struggling to find something to say. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in them, more he’d never really thought of them.

“You have met at least three since coming up here, you know.” Lord Merdoc said, his lip twitching.

Zander looked over at Hayner who was nodding solemnly. “You have got to be joking.”

“Lady Nyhavi served in the last god war with Savna and the Shaderunner,” Merdoc pulled a small bag of smoked meat strips and tossed one at Zander then at Hayner. “The Gods asked her to sign on with one of them, but she declined.”

“Why?” Hayner asked.

Merdoc shrugged. “Ask her. The Third was born shortly before the humans arrived, used to serve Solur but gave up her commission after Savna died. And Nordel.”

“Nordel?” Zander frowned.

“I suspect he was sent here as a spy originally, though I’ve never been able to get him to admit it.”

“And you know he is an immortal, how?”

Lord Merdoc grinned, took a bite of the meat and went back to stand at his perch.

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For many of us there is someone in our life that so strongly influences us that we change the direction we are going in because of that person. For me it was Anne McCaffery. I never got to meet her. Never got to tell her “thank you” for her stories. I wanted too, oh man i wanted to see the Lady herself. But it never seemed to work out. Something always came up.

You see, when I was about 7, I “borrowed” a book off of my dad. It was a big hardback edition of Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon. I read it in a week and from that point on I was hooked. Anne McCaffery was my hero. I played dragons in the backyard. Pretending i had somehow made Earth into Pern. I don’t remember the logistics of the game but it involved a lot of running around the backyard with the dogs (big firelizards) and playing on the swing (fighting thread).

I read everything from her I could find. And i joined a pern fan club. Back before the internet when everything was snail mail. I wrote fanfic, and that is what got me started. You could, I suppose, say that Anne was responsible for me deciding to write. I discovered the world of reading, of writing, all because I crawled behind my couch with a flashlight and that big white book and was transported to another world.

She was my escape during High School. She was my hero. I wanted to be a writer. Just Like Anne.

My world is richer because of her writing.

I am thankful for having the opportunity to read her work, I am thankful for her stories. I am thankful she chose the path she did.

Good-bye Anne, thank you for your dragons. Thank you for your worlds.

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

Ok, spotty posting, sorry. Life just started itsholiday ramp up, joy of joys.

Anyways, nano is sitting at 33k and I am loving the way this story is falling together. Am busy with family stuff so here is a snip, and if I don’t get back to the blog before thursday;

Happy Thanksgiving!

NaNo Snip:  WARNING; THIS IS A BIT GROSS

“We’ll have to camp here,” Hayner said. “And go on after we rest. Sound good?”

Zander nodded, sinking down to the ground. He leaned back, tucked the light globe into his vest and closed his eyes.

“Zander wake up!” Hayner’s voice dragged at him, pulling him from the sleep that claimed him so easily.

He forced his eyes open, and sat up. In the edge of the light was movement.

“I’ve got this as bright as it will go. There’s something very large out there.” Hayner’s voice was very bland. He had drawn one of his swords and was crouched, just watching.

“What the hell is it?” Zander whispered. He scrambled to his feet, pulling his own blade.

“I don’t know.” Hayner “I haven’t…” his words faded as a very long sticklike something moved into the light, followed by another. Zander was reminded of a spider’s legs. He stepped back, barely breathing.

Into the light crept the large, bulbous body of something but it was the shape atop it that sent Zander to shaking.

“Holy fuck.” He whispered.

It looked like what might have been a man, might have been a rahaun. Flesh hung, dried and peeling from corded and dark looking muscle. Arms hung at either side, one hand which looked more skeletal than flesh, clutched a halberd. The face was more skull and peeling flesh. The nose long gone and most of the lower right jaw had no flesh whatsoever. The eyes were still there, gray, clouded and dead.

“Oh I am so going to kick Merdoc’s ass.” Hayner whispered.

As it moved closer, it’s spider like legs scraped and rustled against each other. Zander gritted his teeth, glancing back behind them. The tunnel loomed behind them.

“Should we make a break for it?”

Hayner shook his head, gritting his teeth. “We’re Bright Light. We can take it.”

“How?” Zander asked.

Hayner took a deep breath. “Take out the legs. Its…” he shook his head. “Just take out the legs and stay clear of the halberd.”

“In the dark?”

“It’s blind.” Hayner said.

“So are we.” Zander pointed out. Fear was fading fast. He darted forward, dodging one of the legs to slash at one of the shorter back ones. His sword crunched through it, the dead jaw opened and a long, low moan filled the air as it stumbled against the side of the ravine. It slashed blindly with the halberd, narrowly missing Zander. Hayner was darting in on it’s other side, his light flickering with each movement.

When all the legs were cut and lay twitching on the ground they stepped back. The body was covered in a thick shell up to where the corpse’s abdomen was attached. It flailed the halbred around making it difficult for them to get an easy blow. Zander blocked it and Hayner took the arm off. The arm, still clutching the Halbred twitched on the ground for a few heartbeats, dark liquid oozed from the stump.

“SSSsss… Sorcery and swords!” The whisper stopped them both in their tracks and they stared, horrified at the thing. “I wassss and honorable man once…”

Zander looked at Hayner who was shaking his head, whispering a prayer. He swung his sword in an arch cutting the other arm. The thing groaned again, turning its head in that direction.

“Gods forsook us,” It leaned forward. “Burn me.”

“It’s aware.” Zander whispered.

“The hell it is.” Hayner took its head off, the blow made his head roll into the darkness. The torso collapsed backwards, the front of it tearing away from base, the smell of rotting intestines filled the air as they dribbled out of its stomach.

Zander gagged, stumbling backwards as his own stomach tried to reject his meager dinner.

Hayner walked away blinking rapidly. “Lets get through that tunnel and onto the ______ plains.”

Zander stared at the thing nodding. “What was it?”

“Something that should have died in the last god war.”  

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

Oh man that is just plain cool.

Ok NaNo marches on. The story is fun and difficult and challenging and I think I have GOT it, you know?

No snip today. I’m sorry, suffering from “Oh god these words suck!”

Maybe tomorrow.

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

I crossed 20k last night. Am very proud of myself. I’m not stressing on wordcounts, as long as I have my daily 1700 I figure it was a good writing day, I refuse to freak out if my counts are lower. I’m having fun and that is the reason I do nano, to have fun. I love working with this story, am glad I decided to rewrite this. I am hitting some of the fun fun stuff and already suspect I have started it too early in the story.

So here is a snip, and off to do more writing today…

The shop was small and the windows dirty and dusty. The air was heavy with incense and tobacco and the shelved walls were lined with bottles, boxes and books. Little statuettes were inter-spaced on the shelves and on the narrow wooden counter, carved wooden and marble miniatures of the great statues of the gods in the temples. Zander recognized the Goddess Avari and the God Solur from his youthful trips to the temples in Purgatory. But there were others, ones whoes names he did not know. He leaned over the ebony statue of a woman, her race was unlike any he’d seen. Real cloth covered her slender form, a rich dark orange that contrasted with the shiny, dark wood. At her feet was carved  a broken sword and beside it, a wilted flower. He gripped his sword belt to keep from touching the dainty little statue.

“Even the gods die, hume.” The voice was rough, far from friendly and Zander straitened and found himself face to face with a fairly short rahaun. Black eyes peered from a pasty pale face, framed by dark hair, almost but not quite black. His one ear was double-tipped but looked odd, almost like webbing between the points, the other looked half torn off though both were decorated with fine chains and dangling round charms. “I’m dark rahaun, boy. You can stop staring.”

Zander blinked and felt his face heat up as the dark rahaun passed him. “Forgive me, I hadn’t realized I was.”

“Everyone stares at the dark rahaun.” He sniffed and moved behind the counter. He wore gray robes that looked threadbare. “It is a minor annoyance, one I am used to.” He lifted the little statuette Zander had been staring at, his long fingernails clacked on the wood. “This is the Goddess Vent.” He set it on the counter, tapping the head of the statuette. “She died, at the hands of the other gods, a long long time ago. Even the gods die.”

“I’m looking for Mage Nordel.” Zander said, trying to shake off the unease the dark rahaun’s words gave him.

The Dark Rahun’s eyebrows twitched and a strange smile curved his lips and he stroked the carved hair. “She was betrayed by the other gods, you know.” He looked up and placed both hands on the counter. “Some say she will come back, some say she waits for the right time.”

“My mother knew a dark rahaun whoes name is Nordel, if you are not he, can you tell me where to find him?”

“You don’t care for the gods?”

Zander gritted his teeth, unease replaced by irritation. “The gods can kiss my ass. Are you Mage Nordel?”

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

So I seem to be doing a hit and miss when it comes to posting nano progress over here. I apologize for slacking. In my defense, I’ve been on medications that have left me a wee bit loopy.

Today as I was tapping away I had the background of a fav character fall into my lap. I was floored at the implications, at what he, as a person, does for his people. I’ve always known he was going to feature in his own book, now I think I know why.

I also realized that one reason I feel the need to write Bastard Prince and Crossroads before any of the other stories is because it lays groundwork and setting down for the other books in the series. As always I worry that I will do it justice. But you know what? It is ready to be done.

NaNo Snip

When they returned Lady Tienovey was speaking softly in High Rahaun. Tears stood out on her cheeks and Lord Merdoc stood behind her. Her clothing even her hair and her skin began to glow. Zander shot a startled look at Hayner but the man had bowed his head.

“She’s asking the goddess to send their spirits to havna,” Hayner murmured without cracking an eyelid.

Zander looked back at the Lady. She stood with her hands spread out in front of her, palms down. The light that pulsed around her spiraled down her arms to her hands, falling in a golden waterfall over the bodies, scattering the little flying bugs. She closed her hands, letting them fall to her sides and said something else. The mound of dirt that was piled to the side moved in a fluid-like stream to the shallow graves, covering the bodies of the dead.

When it finished Lady Tienovey leaned back against Lord Merdoc, who, with an arm over her shoulders,  led her towards the head wagon, his expression blank. 

Happy Writing fellow writers!

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

I skipped a few days, and I apologize for that. Things have been rocky on the homefront.

Nano and writing.

Due to home issues my output has suffered, but that is all right, I’m still getting words, the story is still getting down. But I don’t think I’ll shoot for the double nano this year. Just regular nano is fine with me.

Each person has their own writing styles. I find that with every story I work on, I learn more about what works for me and what doesn’t. I love the fact that with writing I am always learning in someway, whether through research or just seeing a new method of putting things together.

I worked this up last night before crashing:

“Dark Rahaun?” Zander asked, tripping over the words. He wasn’t familiar with the term, but one of his letters was addressed to a Mage Nordel.

“years ago,one of the offspring of the first great Emperor of the Rahaun,”

“Tulel.” Valen interjected. Petlr scowled at him and continued.

“Decided to play with the dimensions, that is other-realms. Anyways he opened what they called Rift Gates and discovered a world they called the Shadowlands.” Petlr inhaled from his pipe and exhaled a long stream of sweet-smelling smoke before continuing. “Well, there was an uprising among the Rahaun, this happened thousands of years before the Humans arrived, by the way, this was toushish, long ago.” He hit the pipe again and spread his hands apart somehow managing to keep hold of it. “The emperor was almost killed and in retaliation he banished seven families, large families, through the Rift Gates and then ordered them torn down. For thousands of years no one knew what befell those families, until the war of Vent. It was that war, when the gods marched against her that the goddess Vent opened a rift across the Valley of Tour, what is now Pearthea,” he shot a direct look at Zander. “and let loose an army of Dark Rahaun, the descendants of those the emperor banished so long ago.”

NaNo count:  13,099 / 50,000

Book Count   13,099/ 150,000
And yes I am going to keep writing past the end of nano to simply finish this damn book. Then the plan is to finish Elemental Truth Edits to get that ready to publish after the first of the year. After that, Crossroads will need to be written.

That is the plan, and plans in my life have a tendency to change.

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

Well I was hoping to pass the 10k mark but I got far too exhausted by the time midnight rolled around. Yesterday’s total wordcount was 3207 bringing the NaNo total to 8307 words.I am pleased with my progress and have already pinpointed several things to change in the edits. If not for the time issue I’d go back but this is NaNo and I am just scribbling notes and moving forward! My overall goal is double nano, but I am just happy to be writing.

Jim Hines, Author of one of my favorite Fantasy books, The Stepsister Scheme has a Q&A about NaNo. It is full of beautiful snark and is over here. And check out his books while you are at it. The Stepsister Scheme is a great twist on fairy tales and I think it was totally well worth the money I spent.

NaNo Snip from Day 3:

“The Gray Dawn is the only tavern and inn in Savna.” Hayner was saying as they made their way down the darkened streets. The tall lamp-posts glowed a soft light which made the cobblestones and the walls of the buildings they passed, glitter like stars. The breeze rocked the branches of the Tree overhead and brought a soft flowery scent to Zander’s nose. He was having a hard time listening to Hayner.

“Up in Daglis there are a few inns and in Tweng is the Gates’ Bane among others, but here all we have is the Gray Dawn.” Hayner continued unaware of Zander’s distraction.

They stopped in front of a large wooden building, the only one Zander had yet seen, and Hayner pushed the double doors open.

The smell was a mixture of hops and hams, sweet and salty scents, none of the stale beer or vomit stench that permeated in the taverns in the south. A large fireplace dominated the room and lamps slung on thick chains hung from the ceiling, the light flickering and casting a gentle glow over the faces of the patrons. Humes and Rahaun alike were eating, talking, drinking and smoking and some were singing a song in the corner.

Zander followed Hayner to a large circular table and sat in the leather covered chair staring over the dining hall in mute disbelief. 

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday was one of my children’s birthday. I had to wait till after the birthday stuff before I was able to write. Then I was able to kick out 1700 words exactly (the last few words were a struggle).

Today is a bit calmer so I am hoping to kick out a large amount. **crosses fingers**

NaNo Snip, Day 2

“My mother spent time here years ago. She left behind letters to old friends. I’m delivering them.” Zander said.

Valen stilled and Nadja’s eyes went wide.

“Who was your mother lad?” Valen’s voice was flat, eyes narrow.

“The Lady Myrna. And old friend of mine.” Master Ander’s bumped into Valen as he struggled with an overlarge crate, pushing it into Valen’s arms. “Put this on the head wagon.”

Nadja’s eyes had gone wide and she and Hayner exchanged stunned looks.

“Zander, come help me with these wagons over here.” Master Anders took his arm and forcefully guided him to the other wagons. He felt the eyes of the others on him.

“I forgot about that.” Master Anders muttered. “Valen…”

“He knew my mother.” Zander said flatly.

“Not entirely. I did warn you, she made friends and enemies.”

“And Valen…”

“Not an enemy.” Valen interrupted. The man stared at Zander then glanced at Anders. “You are not your mother.” He extended a hand out. “There are others who will not be so amiable.”

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Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

Since my schedule allows for it I went ahead and stayed up for 12:00 to arrive then wrote 2036 in just over two hours. Was going to go for 3 k however one of my littlest ones woke up and I just couldn’t keep my eyes opened.

So some of you requested snips… Just keep in mind, it is NaNo and it is rough.

Snip # 1

He patted his vest and silently counted the street numbers of the warehouses. Finding the one he sought he hesitated, re-reading the script on the metal plaque. 

Master Anders

He took a deep breath. The first letter was to this stranger. He pushed the tall wooden door open. A wall of heat hit him as he entered. The room beyond was narrow, lined with tapestries and bookshelves and dominated by a large desk and a huge man sitting at it scribbling away at parchment with a feather quill.

“The ship has not yet arrived, I am waiting impatiently for the shipment also.” The man said in the rahaun language, not looking up. Zander was pleased, he understood it! A part of him feared he’d learned it wrong. “I will send word when it arrives!”

“I’m not here about a shipment.” Zander said, carefully. The man scratching on parchment paused but he didn’t look up.

“Interesting accent, one I haven’t heard in a long time. Where you from lad?” He dipped his quill into the small pot of ink in front of him and resumed his scratching on the parchment.

Zander frowned. “Pearthea. But I’ve been in Balinor for a couple years.”

The scratching stopped and the man looked up sharply, his eyes going wide staring at Zander.

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