Nicky Spencer's Blog

Hi everyone! I haven’t updated my blog in forever, so I figured it was time to let you all know what’s going on!

First of all, the release of my first novel in November went great. I had no idea what to expect, and considering the fact that it’s my first book, no one knows who I am and I self-pubbed, I am thrilled with the results. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy or read through Kindle Unlimited, and everyone who took the time to leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon. It is much appreciated! I do plan to take it off of KU and make it available on all the other platforms at some point, but I haven’t fully decided whether to let it run for only one 90 day cycle or two. So we’ll see.

Now we’re at the beginning of a brand new year, I may as well let you know what my plan is for 2018! I have great intentions…maybe making them public will hold me accountable? Feel free to pressure me on social media to help keep me motivated. If I know people actually want to read what I’m writing I’m more likely to do it.

It’s been awhile since I wrote a blog post, so I thought I’d check in with y’all and let you know what’s going on.

Biggest news: Only two more weeks until the official release of A Bolt of Blue. You’ll be able to buy it for just $3.99, which is a STEAL you guys because it’s pretty long and represents like, two years of work. Or you can read it for FREE if you have Kindle Unlimited.

If you’re a paperback person, don’t tell anyone (just kidding, tell everyone) but the paperback is already live. You can buy it NOW! goo.gl/SU5zya 

There will be a release blitz on several blogs on release day, and then I’ll be doing a blog tour the following week. There will be some fun Q&A’s with both me and the main characters from the book, a couple exclusive excerpts and I’ll let you in on some of the stuff that didn’t make the cut into the final novel.

Speaking of which…if you sign up for my newsletter, you can read an exclusive, FREE deleted scene from A Bolt of Blue. It’s a sexy one, you don’t want to miss it.

Launching a book for the first time is hard work.

Writing it is only the first step. Once it’s written, there’s rounds upon rounds upon rounds of edits. Honestly, you could edit your book forever. So another step is to know when to stop.

If you’re self-publishing, like I am, you can choose to pay for professional editing. I chose not to. I wrote the book with the help of absolutely invaluable critique partners who really helped shape it. Without them it would be a much different (and not nearly as good) book. So it was in decent shape to start with, and I’m now relying on beta readers to help me buff it to a shine.

While I wait for most of the betas to get back to me, I am working on editing based on the first beta’s comments. Which were awesome, but definitely more work than I was expecting.

And I’m also trying to get all my marketing in place. This is basically a full time job. Like I should be taking time off from my day job to focus on this, it’s that time consuming. Here’s what I have done so far:

-Create a website

-Add your book to Goodreads

-Create an author profile on Goodreads

-Create a Twitter account

-Create a Facebook page/account

-Hire a cover artist

-Hire a marketing coordinator

-Upload to Amazon so you have a pre-order button

-Create an author page on Amazon

-Create promotional graphics for Facebook and Twitter

-Join Goodreads and Facebook groups to promote the book

-Started working on a mailing list

-Permission to use song lyrics (this is a blog post in itself!)

Here’s what I still have to do:

-Finish editing

-Create ARCs

-Send out ARCs to individual (non-blog) reviewer friends

-Obtain cover art from artist

-Upload final version to Amazon

-Continue promoting on social media

-Finish the mailing list (create landing page)

-Come up with some exclusive content for the mailing list

-Blog tour during the first week after release

-Thank God for the marketing coordinator that’s handling the review copies and the blogs. If I had to personally reach out to every blog and ask them to review my book I’m pretty sure I would explode. Worth the money to save my sanity, and hopefully it will get me in front of enough eyes that I can re-coop what I spent.

And then of course there’s the whole writing part of this gig. I have a WIP that’s being sorely neglected, and a holiday short story that I’ve barely even started that I need to finish writing by the end of the month.

Here’s the thing though: I love this. I really do wish I could do it full time. I don’t know if that will ever happen for me, but I’m sure going to try.

It’s kind of weird to work so hard on something that you have to be so careful about discussing with people. I’ve been writing for years and I’m finally getting to a point where I’m ready to publish and start making an actual thing out of this and I’m so excited! I want to be able to share it with everyone! And yet…

I don’t really keep it a secret. All the people closest to me know. But of the people who know, very few are people I would feel comfortable actually reading my book. And then every time I meet someone new (or run into someone old), there’s that moment where you have to decide if you’re going to tell them.

I am a Mormon.

Not an ex-Mormon. Not a kinda-Mormon who doesn’t go to church and drinks alcohol sometimes. No, I’m a full, bonafide Mormon. I go to church every week, I keep the Word of Wisdom, I pay tithing, the whole nine yards. So my choice of genre for writing is a little odd. And I can’t really tell everyone about it. It gets mixed reactions and I just don’t like opening that can of worms.

Example. My nephew recently returned from a two-year LDS mission. It is tradition for newly returned missionaries to speak in church, and then afterward there’s usually a little open house so everyone can come over and eat food and talk to the young missionary that no one has seen in two years.

My nephew gave his “homecoming talk” in his ward this past Sunday. I used to go to that ward with my sister’s family, and I know a lot of their friends from when they lived there, so of course when I went to hear him speak, I saw plenty of people that I know. One was a former neighbor of my sister’s. As I was leaving the building after the meeting, he stopped me to say hello. “How are you? What have you been doing?”

My 10-year-old niece was with me. She’s the daughter of my other sister, cousin of the missionary, so she didn’t really know the guy I was talking to. Now, I haven’t really spoken to my niece about my writing, but I have told both of my sisters, and my sister told her daughter. So as I’m talking to this Mormon acquaintance, my niece pipes in and says, “She wrote a book!”

Oh great. Thanks, Madi.

He says, “You did? That’s great!” And proceeds to ask me about it. So awkward, I didn’t know what to say! I got out of it without having to be too specific. I did have to say it was a romance. I left out the “sexually explicit, polyamorous gay” part. He said, “Is it published?” and I said no, but I’m working on it. He said, “Well, tell us when it comes out, we’ll buy it and read it!”

I had to say, “Oh no, you don’t want to read it. Trust me.”

I hate that. I wish I had written a book that I could tell EVERYONE about. When I announced on Facebook, I had to weed through my contacts so the post only showed up for people I thought would be friendly to it. I wish I didn’t have to. I wish I could announce to everyone I’d ever known so that they would all buy my book and read it and support me. But I can’t do that.

I know this is so miniscule compared to what LGBTQA people go through in their lives. Who can I tell? Who can I not tell? Constantly having to guard parts of themselves and be so careful about who knows what. It must be exhausting. I’m proud of you all, really.

Any other writers out there who know this feeling? What do you do when you want to tell everyone how excited you are every time you reach a writing milestone, but you can’t? I’m so thankful for all my online friends in the m/m community who get it. I can share my victories with them but the real world is a whole other story.

How do published authors deal with deadlines?

I’ll be honest–I don’t totally understand where these deadlines come from. If you go the traditional publishing route and you submit a book and then they say, “You’re edits are due by X date” – that makes sense. But I don’t know where the rest of the deadlines come from. Is it common to contract a book before you even write it? In this genre, I mean.

But that’s neither here nor there. All I have right now are arbitrary deadlines I have made up in my head and I’m struggling with them.

As I mentioned in my first blog post, I have two main priorities right now:

1. Finish editing my full length m/m/m novel and get it out to betas so I can publish.

2. Finish writing my YA m/m novella

The m/m/m book is 49 chapters plus an epilogue. The YA novella is going to be between 30,000 and 35,000 words when done. So for the month of August, I committed to writing 3-4,000 words a week on the novella, and editing 10 chapters of the m/m/m. This goal meant that I would be done with both by the end of August. I could spend September sending the m/m/m to betas and editing the novella.

But I did nothing last week.

I made an aggressive goal for myself that’s going to be pretty much impossible to meet now. I can’t see myself doing double the work this week to catch up, so now I’m a week behind.

How do published authors meet deadlines?

I also had a goal of publishing my m/m/m on October 27. This means I need to get my cover request to the cover artist soon. Like by the end of this month. But I have a problem:

The title of the book is based on the use of song lyrics in the story. I have submitted a request to Alfred publishing for permission to use the lyrics, but it could be several more weeks before I hear back from them. If they come back with a price that’s too high, I’m going to have to change the title of my book. And all of my ideas on cover art were kind of specific to the title, so basically…I can’t submit my cover request until I have an answer from the publisher on whether or not I can use those lyrics. I have put myself in a jam.

How does ANYONE meet deadlines???

I guess I’m glad I don’t have any real deadlines. If everything gets pushed back a week, or a month, it’s not that big of a deal. I just change my timeline. I haven’t committed to anything. But I’ll be disappointed. I’m impatient to get my book out there! I’ve already wasted so much time, I don’t want to push everything back another week or more.

Patience sucks.

Deadlines suck.

Mondays suck.

So…have a great week, everyone!

Time to do this, you guys! I’m going to be a published author. (That’s me using affirmations!) And published authors need websites.

Here’s what’s in the works:

I have a draft of one novel. It’s not a first draft – it’s been through way too much editing for that. But it’s not a final draft either. I’m currently trying to get it to a point where I really love it, and then I’m going to send it out to beta readers to tear apart. Then I’ll edit again and hopefully that will be my final draft and it will be ready for publishing. I plan to self-pub. I don’t know what date I’m shooting for. October? November?

I am currently in the writing stage of a novella that will hopefully be ready to publish 2-3 months after the above novel.

And I am just beginning a short story to be included in a free holiday anthology I’m putting out with a few of my critique partners. We’re shooting for a black Friday release.

All of the above projects are m/m pairings. (Well, the first one is actually m/m/m!) I also have f/f and m/f pairings in the works. No timeline for those, they’re backburner projects right now. I only mention it so it’s clear I don’t plan to limit myself to any particular pairing. I will write whatever I feel like writing!

So here’s my to-do list for August:

Get custom graphics for my website
Finish editing my draft and get it out to betas
Stay on schedule with the current WIP
Write that holiday story!

Wish me luck.