Sarah Scheele's Blog

Hello again, everyone!

(waves.)

Hi, I'm Sarah Scheele. By now you may hardly remember me, since you haven't heard from me in a year, and that would be assuming you opened last year's email. If you opened even farther back, then it's been years since you got one of my little notes.  Last year was quietly monumental and steadily busy. A lot of relationships really changed in our lives. I feel like someone who has left a bad marriage and is now single and moving to a new country. Looking, I might add, for a lot more fun this time around! A trend for a few previous years continued as writing took a backburner position in my life. I grew used to saying, "Oh, I've never had time to get back to it. I barely even think about it" when people brought up my writing. Or "writing thing," sometimes abbreviated to "your thing" or "that thing." But I started to enjoy not hearing clever responses to efforts to talk about my books, including my all-time favorite "just keep writing."  In fact, continuing to write was not what I needed to do, and I've greatly benefitted from some time away. Instead, learning other aspects of the craft, especially marketing, and just plain old working on myself as a person were more important. I'm sure these types of statements sounded very smart to them at the time, a subtle way to get rid of reading my boring, annoying writing without being caught. I thought they sounded like people picking on a married woman who can't get pregnant. Like her, I should just keep trying. Minus, the husband, of course, since I don't have one.
One of the major milestones of development as a human being--of gaining maturity--is when things that offended you start to look just funny. It shows you've learned your lessons and seen how transient negative actions can often be. Many times we lose a sense of what's important. In a world where so many tragic and dark things happen every day, maybe it doesn't matter if people are arrogant, snobbish, rude, belittling, selfish, and unsupportive. As Gui-Gon Jinn says, "there's always a bigger fish." And this applies to bullies too. Gradually, I found the time away was absolutely wonderful. I now chuckle at many things that used to anger me. And I've put my life where it belongs, focusing on my personal well-being, physical health, spiritual strength and faith, and rudimentary efforts at what I hope one day will be called wisdom. In terms of my actual writing goals mentioned last year, I did turn the Birthday Present cover more grayish to match Victoria's black and white. I won't write a third book for this series as I think the concepts behind these two books are old and I think they don't need particularly to be rehashed again. So The Prince's Invite became a duology.

Ironically, after saying that, I actually have a large amount of Millhaven/Alyce material still in my desk drawer, including a long novel spinoff called The Rubric Plate; a screenplay version of Millhaven Castle which I had copyrighted over 15 years ago without remembering I'd done so; some original skits of the Milland world that go back to my teens and contain many characters who never appeared in the published stories; and more. I would like to work with some of this material again. In writing advice to a kid who asked him, C.S. Lewis said not to abandon these old manuscripts, as some of the best stories come from old forgotten stuff that is dug up and reused. But I want to give it a fresh spin instead of using the exact same Girl-Gets-Invited-By-Man-Who-Is-Threatened-By-Her plot and tying it into two older, already published books. 

I moved Bellevere House officially into the Americana Trilogy and this listing is now visible everywhere including Amazon. Normally, updates on Amazon take a few hours, but this one took DAYS. It worked out fine though. I wrote little teaser epilogues that lead into the next book, for The Americana Trilogy and the Prince's Invite Duology. In plain, simple speak, that means I put a little extra bit at the ends of The Test of Devotion, Bellevere House, and The Birthday Present. This worked excellently, I felt, when I did it with The Palladia Trilogy, so I did it for these 2 series as well. The Worlds Across Time Fantasy series has not been internally linked in this way yet, just placed as a series on retailers. All the other books were worked on in a burst of about 2 weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas and I want to give WAT a little more time so its growth is unique. If I write everything at once, it will sound too similar. 

Most of my old manuscripts (the infamous ones that lie in writer's desk drawers) aren't in my desk anymore, but in a large gray storage box in the guest bedroom with many older family papers. Literally, I would not care if guests went through them, although I fear they could not read my handwriting! However, that extra Millhaven Castle stuff, an original copy of The Trouble with Taranui before it became City of the Invaders, some skits about Shakespeare and the classics, and a limited amount of extra Heroes and Halogens material remain in my desk. Heroes and Halogens had a small appearance as Halogen Crossing in Facets of Fantasy. But it was once much larger and had many arcs and characters that didn't appear in the short novella available in print. I even printed out some of this material instead of just writing it down, but I never used it. About 70% of it is useless, but I did find a few threads I thought were kind of interesting to build on. And as with the Milland world, I have started to wonder why all this stuff was hidden/purged in favor of a much abbreviated storyline with a different plot, which is what got published. 

Not that I dislike what I did publish, but it isn't the same, and a lot of the stuff that never saw the light was maybe more interesting. Just maybe. Readers would have to be the judge of that. 

So yes, I am still here. If you look forward to hearing from me again, I hope to send you many more emails. If you didn't want me to continue--sorry to disappoint you, and you can always unsubscribe.

(winks and makes little finger heart gestures.)

​And there will be more updates. 

Happy New Year Everyone!

As you might remember from last year, I intend to release anthologies of my previous work. Three anthologies are still in working cover design stage (I like the designs, not sure about the colors for them) and each anthology will have three books in it, grouped by theme. Birthday and Victoria aren't in an anthology because there isn't a third book to go with them. The reason for the anthologies is obviously practical efficiency. I have published a lot over the years and the books can look cluttered, especially to a first-time reader. While interest in the individual books of course remains, they are starting to unify into broader general categories rather than loads of individual titles. It's much less overwhelming to show people five books instead of eleven. 

I have not published these anthologies because of two factors. The first is that I'd like to write a small story, at least one per anthology, that is unique new material exclusive to the anthology and not available elsewhere. I haven't had time to do this because the last six months have been hysterically busy. Our family has been in a state of transition as a beloved older relative died, one of my sisters had a lot of trouble at work, another sister is in the final semesters of medical school, my mother had heart surgery, and I spent all my time keeping the household running over a slew of continual emergencies and the hottest summer I've literally ever experienced. (And yes, I've lived in Texas my whole life. I'm quite heat tolerant.) I also made a commitment to much better fitness and exercise, which often left me tired, but I feel great about my new body even though it's been less than a year of changed lifestyle. So I did not have time to write anything new. Our house also went through a major upheaval as we wanted a lot of old stuff gone.  out out It's been over two years since I updated my picture. But this is the only new one I have, a random selfie, because I haven't had time to take serious author pictures. You know, the ones where you dress up and smile like you're wearing a wig even if you aren't? Don't worry, I will take some of those in the spring. 

The second reason I haven't done the anthologies yet is that there IS still some individual attachment to some of the books. Readers feel these stick out from the others in the planned anthologies. This attitude is natural and it takes time to change. If you read the book pages on my website, you'll find a structured logic that I've applied to the anthologies when grouping books. For instance, if you look at Bellevere House outside of its original multi-author project, you'll see it has a lot of similarities with Devotion and Harrisons. But many people will struggle to see Bellevere that way because the Vintage Jane Austen is where they first got to know the book. Gradually it will make sense to think of Bellevere not as "that book that wasn't as liked, but very often read, in that series of books" and more to think "what genre is this book? It's a similar setting and genre to the other two books."

Other prickly bug areas included The Birthday Present, (because readers didn't want to accept moving Millhaven Castle away from Facets of Fantasy), and Ryan and Essie (because readers didn't like this book and didn't want it included with a book they'd had interest in, Facets of Fantasy.) So really, the prickly bug is actually Facets of Fantasy. lol. But nothing in Facets needs to be changed, it's just melding it with other placement of books that's a problem.  However, Ryan and Essie became quite different last year and the cover was redone to this lovely green color. Nice, huh? I noticed no books I've published currently have green covers and I was like "so that's what is missing." It's nice to find those leaks and patch them up. Not to mention, the cover is flat-out gorgeous. 

I am planning a new cover for The Birthday Present because it and Facets are both blue and that helps link it to Facets, an outdated idea I'm getting tired of. Instead, I need Birthday to unify better with Victoria, which has a regal and austere black and gold. I just haven't had time to do the new cover yet. 

And yes, that third book in the Birthday trilogy is poking along, with a new working title "All My Brother's Friends." I am REALLY hoping I get a chance to put a book with a fun title like that into a published form. Don't you think I should?

And there will be more updates.

In my last post, I detailed how I would be minimizing Facets of Fantasy, Ryan and Essie, and Bellevere House because they didn't match with my target audience of young adults--middle school and high school kids. Yes, I know these kids are not adults in the real world, but in Bookland this age bracket is called Young Adult. And that was fine until I began examining more books and realized I'd have to cut even more. These were more subtle--This Merry Summertime, The Test of Devotion, and A Year with the Harrisons were often about teenagers, but were teenagers usually the audience?

The answer was no. They are mostly interesting to adults, perhaps even seniors in the case of This Merry Summertime. And also at times to children because they are a "for the whole family" sort of genre and kids like that genre a lot more than teenagers do. So I was like "I have to find a solution to this instead of cutting out the books."

Then I went back to an idea from last year, which was to divide into 4 genres that I do and put that on my business cards. These genres are Science Fiction; Coming of Age; Short Stories; and Middle Grade. The Science Fiction is especially a young adult area, whereas the books that would be cut more landed in the Coming of Age and Short Stories categories especially. We're talking 100% of books from those two categories!

I decided to stick with this, with a twist--I would place each book into a trilogy and replace individual book pages on my website with trilogy pages that least each book in the trilogy on that page. It helps keep track of them and make sure they are evenly divided across 4 categories. In reality, I feel a lot of these books represented interpolation of other audiences than mine into my written work. It's a bit sad that so few of my books were really for MY audience, meaning few of the people who followed me were really that audience either. But since these books DO exist now, I have to find a way to manage them.

Trilogy 1: The Palladia Trilogy. Science Fiction. Obviously, this is the 3 Palladia books already written into a series.

​​​​The Palladia Trilogy of YA action-adventure stories is set in the future civilization of Palladia, a country that exists 300 years from now. This future society puts people into contrived divisive groups, and it opposes rebels who try to ignore these artificial differences and build a shared world. The three books focus on Palladia, but also include the countries of Belaria and Dorilantz.


Trilogy 2: The Americana Trilogy. Coming of Age. (The Test of Devotion; Bellevere House; and A Year with the Harrisons.) At first this seems crazy because Bellevere is already in a series, but after reading the description it does make sense.

The Americana Trilogy is a loose umbrella term for three novels for adults written with a realistic American setting. The books are set approximately 100 years from each other (1850; 1937; & 2015) and explore American small-town, rural, archetypical western, and religious life. They were not originally written as a series and Bellevere House, the second book in the trilogy, is listed with its original publication grouping, the Vintage Jane Austen, on some retailers. But they are often linked together because of their shared genre and themes.

Trilogy 3: The Worlds Across Time Trilogy. Short Stories. (This Merry Summertime; Ryan and Essie; and Facets of Fantasy.) Largely, this is anything fantasy and it also comprises a large bulk of my older writing, some of it gestated long before it was published.

The Worlds Across Time Trilogy is a group of for-the-whole-family short story collections. They showcase teen or 20-something protagonists as well as older adults and children for a balanced aesthetic that offers something for everyone. Fantasy, historical eras shown in a light-hearted way with modernized dialogue, and daily contemporary life mixed with a dose of fantasy are the primary genres.

Trilogy 4: The Prince's Invite Series. Middle Grade. This has the 2 remaining books in it (Victoria: A Tale of Spain and The Birthday Present) and I decided to play off of the fact that one was partly a rewrite of the other. I need a third book for this series so I can (FINALLY) get back to work on Temmark Osteraith also sometimes called The Prince's Ball. It uses the same plot devices and is I guess a rewrite of first two.

The Prince's Invite Trilogy is an informal grouping of three stories for middle-school girls. Each book in the trilogy uses a similar storyline--the first half sets up a historical or adventure story about a young girl. In the second half of each book, a girl is invited to a dance by a wealthy ruler of her country, who is threatened because she owns something that discredits him. The third book, Temmark Osteraith, is planned for publication in 2024.

I also plan to release a Complete Trilogy Anthology of each book because it will be so much faster and easier for reviewers to have the books all in one volume. Sending series to reviewers can be really clunky because you have to give copies of every book in the series along with whichever one they are reviewing. Unless they are reviewing the first one, but of course I want them to move on and read later ones!

And there will be more updates.

Over the past few months, I did some evaluation of being an author at this point in my life and I began to get over my fear of bad reviews. I'll be honest, nothing rankles me more than the unfairness of a bad review that isn't deserved. (Wait, there is one thing that is more annoying, and that is when unworthy books get good reviews!) And when a combination occurs, such as my books being criticized while works that aren't better are praised like bread that can't ever be buttered enough, it has been enough to make me distrust the review process.

I hope that everyone reading this understands that those books, like heavily buttered bread, are likely to be toast. :)

I'm fine with a book being praised if it is superior to the book that was trashed. I am perfectly comfortable with other people being praised instead of me if they really deserve it. This is like feeling ok when other people are in relationships and you're not. I am single and I am not sitting around being miserable about it. It's also true that some of my books have received good ratings, and they are much better than the books that have lower star ratings. But when that nightmare situation happens--Book A, by me, is treated as if it were much lesser than Book B, which is in no way superior--I become uncertain about continuing to interact with readers. It's clear that judging the storytelling is on a backburner with them compared to other activities over which I have no control and which shouldn't obtrude themselves on my work.

But last week I went into Amazon again for the first time in years--not with flight syndrome about comparing my books to others or even comparing my books to each other. I just examined the book section as if I was new to reading, like a potential audience for a book--an increasingly disengaged, only-reads-a-little-bit type of reader. In short, the way most people browse Amazon books. It was both eye-opening and fun. I really, really enjoyed it. After looking at each genre, I noticed readership patterns, types of books that were popular, and levels of engagement with entire genres that surprised me. (Some have MUCH less than you'd think, some much more.)

I found myself in the Teen and Young Adult Category, which is how I've marketed myself over the past year and in fact for basically all my writing career. But a problem arose as I noticed that three of my books didn't really fit into the category. Ryan and Essie is a children's book, a genre I don't normally write as I have no dedicated interest in the category and this book was a one-time event. Facets of Fantasy is a speculative anthology more for adults than adolescents, a genre I have always had interest in, but it's not broad enough for me to write a lot more. And Bellevere House is mainstream (for adults) Literature and Fiction, specifically in the Adaptations category which is 90% Jane Austen retellings. The book is out of step with my other works and has no relevance to them since I only wrote it to spend time with some friends I knew years ago. So for various reasons, these three books keep my marketing from being sufficiently focused on a category.

These books have not been deleted. They are still available for sale on all digital storefronts and I have added hardcover editions of them on Amazon along with the hardcovers for all my other books. I simply mean I am removing them as part of my overall author image. For instance, they don't appear on my website; they won't be featured in any new stories that use characters from my books (after consideration, I have changed my mind from a few months ago when I planned to use more elements from Bellevere); and they will not be promoted through review or book promotion sites. While these books are fine in themselves, it's important not to confuse a new reader about what you are offering. I need to be very clearly a Young Adult Author. If after they feel comfortable with me, readers want to branch out and explore some of these more unusual titles of mine, all well and good. But the easiest way to lose readers is for them to be uncertain that you are even focused on them at all.

And there will be more updates.

Hi!
I’m excited to announce that my entire collection of books is available as part of the Smashwords 2022 End of Year Sale! This is a chance to get my book, along with books from many other great authors, at a promotional discount. Each author chooses the discount level--mine is at 50%. That's 50% off every one of my books. Prices now range from free to $1.99!
You can find the promo here:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SarahScheele1998

This sale runs from December 15th through January 1st. Smashwords is a huge indie publishing site. For years it was the primary alternative to Amazon for self-publishers, and this year-end sale will be advertised to about 1 million readers! Since the merge between Smashwords and Draft2Digital, D2D authors like me are now part of Smashwords. I had made an account with them before, but they use a complicated file conversion method and I could not get it to work. Now D2D does the conversions for me, so except for some tweaks to Ryan and Essie, where a small area of front matter needed its own separate heading, every one of my files converted nicely. My books are on a new account created this month when Smashwords opened to D2D authors.

Making an account at Smashwords is very easy. It was the file conversion step that got me. As readers you will find the site lovely to use because you can download books in non-Kindle formats and read them on your computer or phone. They also stay in your account on Smashwords so you can always access them. And if you wouldn't mind lending a hand to me and the other indie authors taking part in this sale, you can share this promo with your friends and family. Just copy the link I put above and send it to anyone who would love a chance to find their next favorite book!
Thank you for your help and support!

This weekend I'm traveling into the Texas panhandle, a 14-hour trip driving both ways, to the wedding of an old family friend. I'll stay overnight with my sister for three nights over the weekend to cut the driving into stages because we have to be at the wedding at a certain time. (Duh.) I haven't traveled much at all for many years, so it feels quite different. I have to remind myself that the natives (gasp) speak English! Even Texas English. Really, it's not that far from home. But if you look at a Google map of where I've been recently, there are like 5 dots pointing to places I went last year to visit my sister in Oklahoma and then about 200 dots all clustered in 4 towns close together. This will be a much-needed change of pace.

Similarly, I am looking into a much-needed change of pace with my published works. I've traveled the same ground with them many times by now. The idea I last pitched to you, of writing a story that linked all of them together, grew in my mind into separate stories, one about each of the books. So really, it's like a reloaded version of the original book. Why is this necessary? Because I've taken to looking at these books in the same way and my readers have done the same.

In fact, a lot of readers have become like robots when they read any book, with predictable reactions that show a lack of real involvement. They praise every book the same way based on their having liked the cover, been assured it was their kind of story, and then skimmed through to find a few plot points they wanted to be there. Their negative reviews are also hack--they dislike every story for identical reasons, don't like the cover, skim through and find it missing those few plot points they like, and then complain it's poorly written!

They also can't accept rewrites or changes. Once they've skimmed the book, they go on robotically treating it the same way because their actions are not dictated by observation of the book, more by habit. If they find they can't get away with the same opinions because the book has changed too much, they just huff and ignore it because they certainly can't be bothered to read the book again, which is odd for self-proclaimed bibliophiles who say they love reading. People often joke anxiously that there are real predictions AI could write the next bestseller because the formulas are becoming so uncreative. But readers can act like droids too.

First book I'm going to tackle is Bellevere House, because it was treated in a linear way over the years even though the book has been changed in important respects. A lot of reactions are just imitative of initial BETA readers. These beta readers published reviews of how they felt about the pre-publication manuscript. I am quite suspicious that one such reviewer, based on her comments to me, didn't even get past the third chapter! But she felt that was not important since she was not really reading, just skimming to look for elements to appear at set intervals. Once they did not appear when she wanted, sometime in the first three chapters, she just gave up, but that didn't stop her from being critical and many others from imitating her with assembly-line produced reviews for years. No matter what changes I made to the book, the underlying attitude in reviews never changed. It was like they were encoded with a computer virus.

There is no mandate that any particular elements must appear in a good story--just that the story uses some of the many possible elements for correct storytelling and no incorrect elements. That's not the point though, as Bellevere was quite a bad story. You'd think they would feel much fondness for something as flawed as this book (I can hear Emperor Palpatine chuckling "good, good. You are writing this in my voice!") because they are very flawed people. But for some reason they didn't and unlike other books, they've continued to give this one a lot of robotic attention. One reviewer of this type could be forgiven since we've all had immature moments. But after almost 6 years it has gotten quite stale. So I am going to write a little reboot of Bellevere that gives it a few twists, takes place about 10 years after the end of the book we have now, and focuses on Ed's internal struggle. And yes, it will be neatly edited without typos. At one time Bellevere, like many of my books, had quite a few errors, but it's hard to keep your mind on little details when you know it doesn't matter what you do.

I do intend to use just a newsletter template in future! I know this is still a blog post, but setting up a newsletter direct from my provider instead of the blog format I've been doing takes a little time. I need to make the header and other elements match the one my newsletter subscribers have been receiving. I will get onto that soon.

So do please check out the Smashwords sale! You won't regret it as this is a great chance to explore a bunch of authors discounted from 25% to 100% off!

And there will be more updates.

I was shocked when I looked at the calendar and realized it’s been three months already. I was supposed to come back with lots of publication-type-things to unveil! I have collected a lot of writing-related items and ideas, including new folders, new notebooks, and a commitment to writing by hand (used to do it all the time as a teenager and I think I had more fun writing that way.) 😊 I got a book of writing prompts, that I picked up for $2 in a resale shop, and a brand new workspace complete with a lovely organizer set that has each item in a different pattern in shades of blue. I’ve also decided to include The Palladia Trilogy, Devotion, Birthday Present, Facets, and Victoria in the new time-travel reader magnet—and to not include Harrisons, Bellevere, MerrySummer, or Ryan and Essie. Just could not think of interesting continuing storylines, or much of any storylines, for those characters.

This summer I spent a lot of time working in the house, reorganizing and renovating it. Writing fell by the wayside as a complete restructuring of our living space became a priority. My sister and I woke up one day in late April and realized we had never adjusted our home to accommodate two adults living alone, no children and just one small cat. Our changes had been gradual before, still keeping lots of old habits, as two sisters left the house and our parents moved down the road into our grandfather’s house. But except for some stuff that left the house when these people did, our structure remained the same on a daily basis. We were occupied with routines and never looked at items we had placed years before because they had always been there and we don’t spend most of each day thinking about household physical objects. But this year we saw that we hadn’t caught up to where our lives are really at. We were living in a house that was for a different family at a different time of life.

For instance we moved two musical instruments (our piano and also one of those huge old Conn electric organs that someone gave to us years ago so they could get rid of it) out of our bedrooms where they were taking up large amounts of space. From the sound of "piano and organ" you might think our house is sizable, but it is SMALL and that's the reason they hijacked our bedrooms. They had been put there to keep them safe as there was literally no place for them anywhere else, but honestly it’s been a decade since the youngest of us was under 13 and nobody is going to be kicking, scratching, or crayoning on these instruments now. I was especially glad to get a chest of drawers and my sister to get a desk, now there was actually space to put these things in our rooms! In fact, I made my new motto be “STOP keeping stuff in my room for later, to keep it safe. My room is MY room, all mine!” 😊 We also discovered a lot of gaps as we made the house better organized—for instance, we never kept bathrobes in the bathroom although there are hooks for them, because our house used to be very crowded so we kept our clothes near where we slept. But as we looked around the house we saw it was virtually empty these days. In fact we even have a SPARE bedroom now! (My parent’s room, vacated after they moved out.) We’d been using it as a sort of garage for junk we didn’t have time to go through. So we made time this summer and are turning the room into a den. Having suddenly much more space in the house also means we can create a small dining room area adjacent to the kitchen. We had no room for this before because the only table was used for both schoolwork and food preparation. I look forward to hanging some china plates on the wall.

Anyway, in the midst of all that, I got a nice computer and tidied up massive amounts of stuff from my desk (a lot of the stuff was stashed there to keep it for later and didn’t even belong to me.) I’m getting all set to write some more. I also uploaded about 18 months worth of new reviews to my book reviews blog, as I tend to get behind on that aspect of my website, and I redid the back covers for my books because when I finally got them out of a crowded closet box and onto a bookshelf I noticed too many of the spines were similar and too many of them were black. But I’d never put them in a bookcase before, so I hadn’t noticed. I like the new prompt book I got because writing prompts have always annoyed me. They are everywhere, often given as links or emails. But I don’t have a place to write the story immediately once I see the prompt. This book has a page below each prompt for writing. I’ve never used prompts before, but I’ve been so distracted lately I’m going to need them to get back in the writing game as I start the time-travel magnet.

​AND I am going to send out the newsletter only when I have an announcement about a new book, a sale on older books, or other stuff like that. That way you’ll know when you open my email that you’re getting something big and that I’m expecting action on it, instead of you just receiving and languidly browsing a stream of updates about my life. Many authors both blog and send newsletters, but they often don’t combine them as I’ve been doing. Sending only every 2-3 months when there is something to announce is what I’ve seen other authors do more frequently that sending out constant blog posts to a newsletter. They might send these to a blog audience but not double it with a newsletter audience. So that is what I will switch to as well.

Until my next announcement, best wishes to all of you!

I mentioned in my last newsletter that I'm getting really busy these days. Not to go into particulars, but getting lots of newsletter posts written and published last year while I was also writing and publishing Celestine was a strain because it's hard for me to find time and proper environment to write. This is not an excuse or a subtle way of signing off--the old "I'm just so busy" phrase is a catch-all for gently eliminating any socializing that has become an unnecessary part of your life. Let's admit it, we've all done this when we have too many things on our plate and need to cut back. It's not lying to say we're busy. It's quite truthful. We are busy and that means we need to prioritize some things over others. But "I'm busy" sounds much kinder than "I'm deprioritizing you" which is why this excuse is so ubiquitous!

This blog post isn't such an excuse. I am not deprioritizing my newsletter subscribers because without you I can't share my book concepts, bounce off ideas, spout about reviews and reader/author culture, and talk shop generally. (Well, that's not technically accurate. I share a lot with my sister, Sister 4, who still lives with me at home.) But having a close relative listen to you, while invaluable emotional support, isn't quite like a newsletter or beta reader circle because she's always so loving. This type of support is crucial, and without it authors will wither up, but authors also need a sampling--or warning--of what potential readers, strangers, people stumbling into your genre by mistake, and those looking for faults in presentation and editing might be examining in your work.

But right now time taken writing blog posts is time taken away from writing books. And I've got to get back to writing--the reader magnet I planned, the series of time-travel stories for sale on my website, and then later books. I need to return to my story set in Scotland (which has moved from a historical story to a contemporary comedy with some romance) and then there's that epic fantasy book I've always wanted to get back to. Plus there is The Prince's Ball, a rework of an old manuscript with so much extra material that never made it into the story we call Millhaven Castle. I've floated this idea around for years, but never quite found an opportune slot for publishing it as other projects got in the way. In short, I have a lot of things in the queue like lava in a volcano when the vent is blocked. If I can get the time to work on these, they're going to explode out. lol

So I'm going to take the next 3 months off from all online activity outside of a once-weekly post on FB just to show I'm still alive. Could be longer than 3, but that depends on how much new writing I get done in that 3 months. If I get a lot done, I'll come back with new announcements. If I need more time, then the online vacation will stretch until I'm ready to return. This hiatus includes my blog and newsletter as well. I am going to hibernate and write, write, write. If you want to follow me on FB, feel free to. I no longer use my official author page, though it still exists, because it so boring and clunky to toggle 2 FB accounts and FB won't let most people see my author page posts anyway. Here's a link to my personal profile where you can Follow me or you can add me as a friend if you prefer. I confirm requests from women. Men--just send me a message with your request, saying that you are from my newsletter and that's how you found me. If you're already on my FB, good for you. You are a valued friend. :)

In a few months I will have a lot more to share with you!

If you're an author, you'll hear a lot of advice about making most of your books link together into a series. Preferably a long series, perhaps with connected novellas, prequels, and other baggage/perks. The reasons usually given are: that it's honestly easier to keep writing in a world that's already been created, spinning out more stories in that world, than to invent new worlds and characters from scratch every time; and also that it gives readers a feeling of continuity. They know pretty much what they are going to get from you because it's all in the same world, whereas if you do lots of standalone projects, lovely and unique as each might be, readers aren't sure they will have the same feelings about your new book as about your last one because it's simply 100% different.

Ease of writing--what I call "lazily churning out"--books isn't appealing for me, nor should it be to anyone who is thinking carefully. Readers can always tell when an author has put in a thorough effort and as a series or loose set of interconnected books, shorts, and prequels drags on, they will come to resent that dialed-in feeling. I read an interesting article recently, when I was looking up behind-the-scenes on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (a great old western, by the way.) When I scrolled down, I saw bits of an interview with two actors in the series Yellowstone, about what it was like to work with Kevin Costner. Kevin Costner has been around a long time. He made some of his famous movies when I was a kid. So by now he has been a household name for years. The others said they were surprised by how hardworking and humble he was. He never treated the production in a cavalier way, he was never arrogant, and he never expected to do less because he was a big star. The quality of the work remained as important to him as it was when he first started acting. The article clearly portrayed their respect for this man.

So interconnecting my books because it's sheerly easier to get readers involved in the same world over and over, with minimal effort from me, is definitely not my goal. It usually becomes obvious the author feels they've mastered read-through percentages to get readers into the later books and the actual storytelling tends to go downhill because they think readers are already sold. BUT there is a good reason to link my books more closely. The reason is not author comfort, it's reader comfort. I've bounced all over the place in many genres and while I have certainly taken the time to work hard on each book, readers might not be sure what they're getting. (Other than that it is a quality story, of course.) Exactly what quality story, though? In a time when about 80% of books are a burn experience for readers--and trust me, I read a lot because I love books and I've been burned many times--trust is really important.

So I've been mulling for a while now about how to connect my stories better. I do have one trilogy, but the rest are all stand-alones in different genres. How could I link them? The best way is of course to write a reader magnet--a story meant to be given away as a sample--because I need one anyway. In the past I've given away my actual books in place of a dedicated magnet and that's not a great strategy. For several months I've been planning to write a new story to be used promotionally that will link all my stories together through the element of time travel. Because I have historical eras I'll need a way to get those characters to interact with modern ones and since I have science fiction books, a character in one of them can find a time-travel machine. Time-travel also makes it possible to alter the ages of the characters so they can be older or younger or even meet an older version of themselves. The concept is for a few selected characters from each book to bump into each other using time-travel and then have an adventure together, with a small appendix in the back that lists which books they came from so you can read more about a character you really enjoyed in the sample. I'm also planning additional stories using the same idea (episodic adventures for my characters in time travel) to be sold as exclusive content on my website and I hope to add other products besides fiction into the webstore.

The last few months have been so busy I keep putting it off. I haven't found the time to just sit down and write a story these days. Guess I'm overcommitted! But I'm going to get this story written very soon, so consider this announcement a prophecy of sorts. I will put up a short-term link for you to get the story when it's done. Its main purpose is to attract newsletter subscribers, after all, and to start readers off with a linked, connected view of all my stories and how they fit together. The link will expire quickly though so you'll want to snap it up when you open that email.

​And there will be more updates.

Last Sunday I had a nice time out with two of my sisters, visiting the Renaissance Faire up in Waxahachie, Texas. You see, it works like this—I am the oldest. Then there is Sister 2 (Hannah.) She got married at this Renaissance Faire in 2018. So when Sister 3 (Andrea) invited Sister 4 (Marianne) and I to go to the Faire with her this month, I agreed because I wanted to see the pavilion where the wedding had been held. The wedding day was freaky—extremely cold for the time of year and the guests were freezing our toes off standing outside, some of us in costumes, others in bridal attire. (Me personally in plain street clothes, but still cold.) Think Pepa's wedding day being ruined by a hurricane type of freak weather. Encanto!

Wedding pictures were cut short because of the cold. Sister 4 and I went back to thaw out in our motel and didn't stay to enjoy the icy, windy Faire. Which meant, I realized when I revisited it, that I'd missed 98% of it. It was nostalgic to see the Pavilion again, now filled with some sort of crowd, so I didn't enter it because I was afraid I would disturb an event. I had really wanted to sit again in the bench I had sat at during the wedding to take a trip down memory lane. But this visit was different—hot and humid. I saw some jousting (huzzah) toured many shops but purchased only a few things, learned court dances, and admired some majestic birds of prey and the great skill of falconers who run a non-profit that cares for injured birds of prey.

Here are some pictures of the bits of merchandise that I got. A set of art cards signed by the artist; a little pottery sculpture of mushrooms (my aunt used to make things like this); some tiny earrings from a shopkeeper who helped us out and then we bought from him; and specialty lip butter from Sister 3, who likes the soap and candle stores in the Faire. I did not notice until Sister 4 pointed it out to me, but I bought the lip butter flavor Redrum—which is actually murdeR spelled backwards. Wow. Not sure what to think about that!​ ​I also got some business cards made last week (finally) as well as some bookmarks, which means I now have something to give people when they ask about my work. I've been meaning to do this for literally years, but never got around to it. My first efforts at business cards were homemade affairs, about 15 years ago, because I couldn't afford anything else, but recently I've often wished I had real business cards or bookmarks to hand out. So I got those done at last—more pro than the last time!--so my name and website are written down and people can remember them after talking to me. Celestine Princess rounds out the Palladia Trilogy. It was published late after my other books—4 years after my last book, Bellevere House, and it was created to fill a need. When I started out, long ago now, I just tried to get stories towards to whoever would take a chance on reading them. But after 2017, something changed. For the first time there was an actual audience for these books. So it was like “what type person gets which book” and that process went on for about 2 years until I started to run out of books. At that point I rewrote the forgotten Test of Devotion, but it still wasn't enough because there were more readers who wanted a book and didn't have one. So I brought back some old skits from my blog, digging deep to find more material for people--This Merry Summertime—which filled a gap. But there were still some who didn't feel like they had a book. It's that moment of "Oh No, I missed something." Finally I realized I just did not have anything for these people, so I had to write one for them, and the obvious place to put it amongst my other books would be to tie up loose ends in Palladia. So Celestine was written to be a completion—and that's what is so great about it. If more and more people had not gotten interested in my work over the last few years, Celestine would never have been written.

My name is Arielle. I’m the one who doesn't like people who can't fit in.

Even when I'm one of them. In Dorilantz the conflict between the EC and Invaders isn’t a circular rigmarole between similar factions. It’s war. War on my village and my family, in particular. Which turns into a war on me.

You think I’m being angsty, don’t you? It can’t be that bad, you say. I’m exaggerating. But after a masked leader of the Invaders kidnaps you and forces you into a ritual of being shamed and mocked and yelled at over nothing, it’s hard not to draw your own conclusions. He’s out to get me. And he sure likes to tell me what to do.

He's terrifying. Everyone is so afraid of him they can barely speak in his presence. He carries a big heavy metal stick and he’ll hit you on the head with it too. And he used to be EC, it seems. When two girls from Palladia, named Katia and Consuela, came to help me, I learned the danger from The Man isn’t that he wants to hurt me. It’s that I could so easily become just like him. The line between EC and Invader was always murky—and it has never been thinner than now.

And there will be more updates.

Last month I listened to a webinar on how to do audiobooks. I’d always considered them out of my range because it was way (and I do mean WAY) too expensive to hire out the work and DIY was hopelessly technical. I knew the market for audio was huge, but I always thought of it as a somewhat optional format and not only because of cost. It was because unless you can get Shakespearean actors or better yet a cast recording with multiple voices (both of which were what I listened to on cassette tape growing up) listening to an audiobook doesn't half match what you can imagine in your head while reading. But there's actually a pretty big market for simple author recordings because readers want to feel close to authors and hearing their voice adds that sense of trust, like they know how the author perceives and intends the book to be.

While nothing really comes close to equalling an ensemble with multiple voices for recording fiction, especially if it's a complex book with lots of characters, it's fairly straightforward and inexpensive to do simple author recordings yourself. Once I realized there is actually a market for authors reading their own books (rather than author reading being a necessity when other narrators aren't possible), I came away from the webinar buzzing with questions, plans, and movements towards creating my own audiobooks. There are three primary reasons for my doing audiobooks. It gives readers a chance to explore my books in a new way. After years and years of working on these same books, I have their presentation down to a science but the reader excitement about them is pretty much gone. That’s because familiarity makes us skim over things. When something is new, we have to pay attention to get our brains to catch up and process new material. There are some readers who go for audio material exclusively. They never even look at the written word formats, ebook and print. Some people need to multi-task, listening to audio while doing other things. But many simply have a bias towards audio. They feel audio is automatically better and more interesting. This does create a lot of kindness towards anything audio. Audio doesn’t have to be perfect. Some readers simply want it on audio period. I have been training my voice informally for over 30 years. I grew up reading books aloud to my siblings, over and over again while doing all the voices. When I was about 8 years old I was already trying to record myself reading aloud a book on a cassette tape. I also listened to a lot of recorded audio, including plays, poetry, and children’s classics read aloud by really good actors and I started doing that very young.
It will take a little while to get the ball rolling on this, because there is a learning curve involved. But having mastered all the formatting of print and ebooks, it is really exciting for me to break into something new. Suddenly everything feels so fresh. My books come alive in my head in an entirely new way and I’m sure they’ll do that for readers (cough, listeners) as well. With this Sunday being Easter, it’s amazing how much of a quiet rebirth is taking place in my writing. Those dead times of very little engagement are part of the journey. This will happen to every writer eventually. But it doesn’t have to be the end of the story and for me personally, as a Christian, renewal after everything falls apart is what I truly believe in. The second Palladia book, Consuela, is a story that came back from nothing. And like most things that were resurrected, it looks quite different in its new form. It was the middle part of a series, wedged between two halves of what became Victoria: A Tale of Spain. Although it was a lively story, it wasn’t doing anything for anyone, really. My sister once told me frankly she didn’t know why I wrote it and I think at the time that’s how a lot of people felt about my writing overall! Victoria was really a sort of biopic about my family and my trip to Europe in 2011. Consuela, however, was a work of fiction. It was a very, very loose spinoff retelling of a classic novel and the characters are exclusively fiction. After its publication in 2014, it was also abruptly discontinued. While I didn’t know why way back in 2018. I did start to realize it should separate from Victoria, so I revived it in an entirely new form. It took a while for this transition to solidify because people can have trouble accepting a big change like that. (This actually happened to Jesus during the Easter story, by the way. "You can't be here. You're dead, right?") So many out there will be a doubting Thomas when faced with something that goes against what they expect. The actual narrative in Consuela really hasn't changed that much—but the way it is placed among my works means everything.

My name is Consuela. I’m the one who doesn’t want to fit in.

In 2335 on Earth almost everybody is either EC or Invader. If you’re caught in between them or mixed-class, it’s tough. I’m bored by the whole thing, though. I’m an Invader to the core—I’ve got everything down pat. And I wish I wasn’t just exactly what I’m supposed to be.
​
My secret is I’ve always wanted to know more about the EC. I don’t know why we’re supposed to hate them. And when this random old EC woman asks me to come with her as a translator (because guess what, centuries of fighting between our two groups has created lots of barriers!) I couldn’t turn it down. What I didn’t anticipate was how much trouble my new friend is in. I always thought EC were pack-minded and loyal, but it seems I was wrong. I might turn a few heads by spending time with Miss Plummer—but if your friends turn out to be your enemies, maybe you need your enemies to become your friends.

It's Palladia, though. Here both enemy and friend are words that so often mean the same thing. Would you trust me? I’ve got to shrug and say maybe you shouldn’t.

And there will be more updates.