12 Days of Creepfest! Come join the fun!

Today is the start of Creepfest; a special blog tour for Christmas from a whole heap of authors who like things a little more on the creepy side!

Each of the 12 days, I'll be hosting other authors on the hop and giving away copies of my books!

Here are just a few of the other blogs taking part. I hope you'll stop by and hopefully pick yourself up some goodies just in time for Christmas... or is it Creepmas???

R.L. Treadway's Ink
Julie Jansen: Science Fiction and Horror Writer
Jason Darrick's Fear in Words
Wrestling the Muse
No Vacation from Speculation
Thea Gregory's Zombie Bedtime Stories
The Zombie Bible
The Manicheans
Welcome to the Darkness
A Diamond in the Dark
Kraftmatic Adjustable Blog
Word Webbing
Patti Larsen: My Writing Life
Writecrastination

And to get the blog hop going, today I'm going to give away an e-copy of my novel, Alone! Just leave me a comment, or tweet or facebook about the hop to be in to win! And don't forget to leave your email address so I can get hold of you if you win!

Happy Hopping everyone!

The Arrival of KDP Select: What Does it Mean for Authors?

I woke up this morning to do my usual routine of sales checking, but when I logged onto Amazon KDP (the digital publishing platform that allows authors to publish eBooks direct to Amazon) I found a big sign with gold letters announcing '$500,000 available for December' staring back at me.

My first thought was that I'd won some kind of Amazon lottery (honestly, that's what the sign looks like - and I suspect that is not accidental!) but then realized that probably wasn't the case, so I looked into things further.

Basically, Amazon Select is a lending library set up through Amazon. To enrol books, the titles must be exclusive to Amazon for at least 90 days. They're allowed to be published in paperback and sold elsewhere, but not in digital format. The publisher of this book will then receive a percentage of the amount of money in the pot (for December it's $500,000, but next year they say it will be $6 million) according to the number of times a customer has borrowed the book.

So, the good points:

• Hopefully more money. It's another avenue in which to make royalties. Here is how Amazon explains it (though I think they've aimed high). 

For example, if the monthly fund amount is $500,000 and the total qualified borrows of all participating KDP titles is 100,000 in December and if your book was borrowed 1,500 times, you will earn 1.5% (1,500/100,000 = 1.5%), or $7,500 in December.

•  You'll also be allowed to make your book free for 5 days, so introducing your work to a whole heap of new readers (that is, if you don't already have free books on Amazon). 
• The exclusivity is only for 90 days, after which time your book will be able to be sold on other site.

And here are the bad bits.

• First of all, there's the exclusivity thing. I've often worried about the amount of control Amazon already has on an author's income. As it gets bigger and bigger, Amazon is effectively becoming a super-publisher, just without the quality control of acquisitions or editors. If something happened to Amazon (or it suddenly decided to pull all of my titles) I'll have lost about 75% of my income. Creating exclusivity only gives Amazon even more power. 
• A member of Kindle Owners Lenders Library will only be able to check out ONE book a month. This tells me the customer is going to be pretty picky about which title they choose. Are they really likely to chance that one title on a newbie, indie author? 
• Will it affect sales in the regular kindle store? If people can borrow the book for free, are they less likely to fork out the money to buy it?
• Once you sign up, you've got 3 days to change your mind, but then you're tied in for 90 days. Amazon then automatically re-signs you up for another 90 days once the first period has finish, UNLESS you go in a check a box on your bookshelf to say you don't want this to happen. Amazon does say they will send you an email 15 days before renewal, but we all know how easy it is to miss these things.

So what have I decided to do? Well, I'm in the lucky position of having numerous titles, two of which are new this month and as of yet (other than Amazon) are only available to buy on Smashwords. So this morning I've unpublished them from Smashwords and enrolled them in Amazon Select. This isn't too big a deal for me because sales on Smashwords are always small. The titles I've enrolled are two short story collections--one in my Marissa Farrar name, and one in M.K. Elliott. Choosing short story books could work against me. People are probably less likely to borrow the short story titles than if I'd enrolled my novels, but I didn't want to take that kind of risk just yet.

For now it's just a case of 'wait and see'. To be honest, I'll be surprised if I get many people borrowing my books at all, but I guess it depends on what my competition is. Either way, I'll be sure to report back and let you all know how it's going and whether it's worth enrolling in KDP Select.

~*~

Marissa Farrar's dark vampire 'Serenity' series, is available to buy from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Just click on the links to purchase the first in the series, 'Alone', for only $0.99.

NaNoWriMo done and dusted!

Well this years NaNo ended with the third book in my Serenity series at 50,046 words! Hurrah! I didn't write quite as much as I'd hoped (I was aiming for 60K) but as a lovely person I've recently met on twitter says, 'Aim for the stars and you'll land in the tree tops'! I guess that's what I did--I aimed big but got what I needed, so I'm happy with that.

For now, I'm taking a break from writing and I'm back to editing. Weirdly enough, after a month of pretty much no editing, I'm actually looking forward to getting back into it. My editor for The Dark Road, Shontrell Wade,  sent me her edits back at the end of November and I feel bad that I've only gone through a few chapters of them. However, now NaNo is over, all my attention will be going on Dark Road edits and I'm still hoping to  have the book out for the Xmas rush. Apparently there are going to be six million Kindle Fires sold this Xmas. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty excited about what that means for eBook sales!

Feeling Like a Fake...

I love my social networking sites. I love all the new writers and readers I've been introduced to through twitter and facebook, and all the new authors I've met and great reads I've discovered. Blogging has been a great way to meet other writers and I think all of the advice and tips I pick up on various sites or through other authors have helped my writing and promotional skills no end.

However, there are times when reading about how other authors work really makes me doubt myself. I read about authors who start with twenty-page outlines before they even write the first line. There are others who divide their stories into sub-plots and themes, and edit accordingly. There are more who understand every single grammar faux pas there is to know!

For me, I simply write the story as I go. Sometimes I don't even write the story in the right order; I just write the scenes that are shouting loudest to me at that time and re-jig it all around later! I started this month's NaNoWriMo with a single page of roughly scribbled notes and I haven't even stuck to that!

I know every writer writes in a different way, but there are definitely times when I wonder if I really have any clue if I know what I'm doing. I read all about how organised other authors seem to be, plotting every step of the way, when I've really no idea what my characters are going to do from one chapter to another, and I do get intimidated. The problem is, I honestly wouldn't know where to start when it came to plotting a novel. How are you supposed to write down what's going to happen, when it hasn't actually happened yet!

So what about you? Are you a writer? Can you not live without everything going exactly the way you planned it, or do even the super-organised find that their characters lead them astray sometimes? Is there anything out in the social networking world that leaves you doubting your own ability?

A New Release - 'The Company of the Dead'!

Hi lovely people! Today is release day for my latest collection of short stories, 'The Company of the Dead'! It's currently only available through Amazon, but will shortly be on Smashwords and then the other eBook stores in a couple of weeks.

This collection is most definitely of the horror variety. Here's the blurb...

A teenage girl living with a horrific birthmark down one side of her face discovers the cure may be worse than the affliction in ‘Stained’. 

A team of men digging the channel tunnel hit a coffin-like box buried deep under the ocean. Will opening it unleash the end of mankind? ‘The Tunnel’.

A drug addict wakes to find herself trapped in a room of her worst nightmare, in ‘The Tortured Room’.

A young girl suffering abuse at the hands of her father find solace in a porcelain doll, but the doll is out for revenge, in ‘Adeline’.

A woman suffering the loss of her husband in a car accident discovers her reality isn’t all it seems in ‘The Sickness of Grief’.

A hitchhiker gets the lift from hell in ‘Thumbing it.’

Six short stories of horror; ghosts, vampires and demonic dolls. This collection total 25K in length or approximately 65 pages. Several of these stories have been previously published in the anthologies, ‘Masters of Horror: Damned if you Don’t’; ‘Their Dark Masters: Extreme Vampire Horror’; ‘Demonic Dolls: Satan’s Toybox’. 

It's now available to buy from Amazon for only $2.99, so just click on the link here for your copy!

NaNoWriMo - Almost at the Halfway Mark!

Hi fellow NaNoWriMo peeps. How is November treating you? Are you racing on ahead with an amazing word count that makes your counterparts turn green with envy, or are you, like me, playing catch up?

So far, this month's been a difficult one for me. I've had the whole family down with a sickness bug, I've had our second car written off which means I've had to cut back on childcare for my youngest, and I've had no internet for a few days (although that last one probably helped my word count!). But hey, we've all got lives going on outside of the madness that is NaNo and the glorious idea of holing ourselves up inside our offices, bashing away at our computers with no interruptions from the outside world simply doesn't happen.

This morning I'm at 21K and I'm aiming to hit 23K (or just short of) by the end of the day. For those who don't know, my NaNo project is the third book in my 'Serenity Series', 'Captured'. Because I plan to have this book out in the first quarter of next year, it's been important for me to make sure the book is in good shape the first time round. I haven't turned off my 'inner editor' as much as I did last year, but I think this is a good thing. I want to have 50K at the end of the month that I'm not going to need to edit 25K out of! For me, writing 25K of fluff simply isn't good time management!

'Captured' will be the last in the 'Serenity Series' but I am planning a YA spin-off series, using one of the characters from the 'Serenity' books. The first book has the working title 'Enchanted' and will be all things witchy! I've not written YA before so I'm hoping to hook up with some fellow YA writers as crit partners. I'll need to find my YA voice and release my inner angsty teen (believe me, she was never far beneath the surface, and I was the epitome of the angsty teen when I was younger). It's going to take some hard work on my part but I'm looking forward to trying something new. Who knows where a new direction will take me and  stretching my skills will only help make me a better writer.

Head on Over to Something Wicked!

Hi guys, just a quickie today to let you know that to celebrate both Halloween and the release of 'Buried', I'm giving away copies of 'Alone' over at Something Wicked.

I hope you'll stop by and tell me all the fun stuff you love to do at Halloween!