Smattering and Inspiration Alley

Holy crap…huge spike in views yesterday.  And confirmation as usual–everybody loves the idea of my kitchen witch.  Lorelei, do you hear that?  Tell me your flipping story, woman!

Amazon apparently changed its reporting system in Digital Text Platform from monthly sales tracking to weekly.  BEFORE THE FLIPPING END OF THE MONTH!  Damn you!  Now I can’t figure out how many sales I have by the end because the first week you report has part of May in it, and I have to wait on you to generate the monthly sales report, which inexplicably takes a week!  Why couldn’t you wait until TOMORROW?  Me wonders whether this update is what caused the massive Amazon fail yesterday wherein most of the books on the site weren’t buyable for a few hours.

I had a freakish and bizarre dream wherein I met the CEO of Barnes and Noble while waiting for a connecting flight in the Detroit airport, and in a conversation during which he bemoaned lagging sales, I gave him an earful about all the things they need to do to improve their ebook sales.  AKA when you list format, list an actual FORMAT.  Ebook does not qualify as a format!  Among other things.  It was actually the plane crash, bioterrorism, and parachutes that made the dream weird.  Don’t ask.

So I had a huge pity party yesterday.  I won’t recount the details as they annoyed even me and my bad mood was banished by the fortuitous arrival of a couple of puppies at the office.  It is a scientifically proven fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE to stay pissy with a 6 week old ball of cuddly fluff in your lap.  Anyway the end result left me wondering whether I am a mental trainwreck (in terms of my ability to focus) in general this year or whether I have some kind of block on this book in particular and am merely suffering from a raging case of second-book-itis (wherein one is terrified that the book they are writing to follow the current debut release is not up to snuff).

So last night I made a plot bunny.  You know, plot bunnies, generally the random ideas that spring up and have a habit of multiplying at alarming rates when you’re supposed to be working on something else?  Also known as squirrels (because they distract you like a dog is distracted by squirrels).  Usually they just pop up without any intervention from you.  This time I deliberately went looking for one.  I started wondering who else escaped from Fort Hurley at the end of Forsaken By Shadow.  There were a few details I didn’t clarify, some questions I didn’t answer.  Or I implied the answer without stating it outright.  I’m thinking of taking a different tack. Three weeks or so pass between the end of FBS and the beginning of Revelation.  There’s time for something to happen.  And there’s this whole other faction that’s in opposition to the Council that I haven’t introduced yet…

I’m not going to abandon Revelation–it’s too important to the overall series plot–but I really wanted another novella to follow up FBS.  Partially as an issue of my workload this year–trying to do a full other novel just now is kicking my tush–and partially because in the long run I’d like to do a print release with a pair of novellas to be the first official book in the series.  Much like Zoe is doing with Blood Lust, which is a compilation of her three novellas.

So that’s what I’m playing with just now.  I’ve got the vaguest of sketches, a setup, a goal, working on the obstacles, and I know more about the hero so far than the heroine, though he has no name.  I know the very basics about the heroine, including her name–Kayla–what she is, but not much else yet.  Working on more character stuff today and trying to come up with plot points.  I’m giving myself this week to play with this and see if it comes together.  If it doesn’t, I’ll go back to Revelation.

9 thoughts on “Smattering and Inspiration Alley

  1. I hate the new Amazon view! I like the old running total for the month. But are you sure part of May was in the first week? When I look at my records, it doesn’t look like May 30-31 was in the totals. But I could be wrong.

    About the dogs…we have a company mascot and it really keeps my spirits up when I’m feeling down. Cuddly balls of fur are awesome!

    I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do with your ideas. Keep us posted. Sounds VERY interesting.

    1. I’m not POSITIVE, but it says week ending 6/5 (doesn’t specify one way or the other where it starts) and if that includes May, then that’s 2 days of May because it looks like the weeks run from Sunday to Saturday. Either way, now I need to totally redo my spreadsheet to follow stuff. Grr.

      We shall see what happens with the potential new novella.

      1. I know that week ending includes May, but I don’t know if they started it new in June and made it only 5 days for that week. When I figure out the money for the previous weeks, plus the money for this week so far, it matches the spreadsheet that I have. (I keep up with dollar amount as well as book sales.) I guess we’ll see when the monthly record comes out.

        1. I’m cool if it is (it would mean I sold like 10 copies while I slept), but it irks me that they haven’t sent us out anything to let us know. Don’t they know we stats junkies are unstable!!! 😀

        2. Ah ha! Zoe just pointed out that they aren’t changing how they pay (monthly) and they’ve already calculated what they owe us for May so that first week of June CAN’T include the last 2 days of may. We just have to add everything up.

          1. Leave it to Zoe to be the logical one. LOL I just knew that if it DID include those two days, something was really off with my sales. I wouldn’t mind them leaving the new reports on there if they would just also give us a running month to date total. I’ve been on the DTP forums and everyone is upset about losing the MTD data.

  2. Plot bunnies! That’s delightful! I try to keep them grazing in the back of my mind and not intrude too much cos I can’t seem to work on more than one story idea at a time…
    I love your kitchen witch! That is sooo the type of series I’d devour – not to gush or anything 🙂

    1. I think it’ll work out quite well once I finally get around to writing it. It has morphed a LOT from the original idea, which was a culinary mystery series. But it wasn’t until I realized that she was actually a kitchen witch that things started getting interesting. I’ve decided on the kind of formula for each book (you know like in a mystery it would be a mystery to solve–in her case, it’s some kind of paranormal creature/person to help out with something, which is what her Gram did), so I’m just working out some more details as they occur to me.

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