Kinley Grey's Blog

Sunday, November 4th is the last day I'll be offering Playing to Win free at Amazon, so if you haven't picked it up yet, make sure you get a copy while you can!



Unfortunately, my writing plans for this Fall haven't been coming together like I wanted.  This is due to a couple of things:


Part of it's my own fault - I decided to tell my next story from a 1st person present point of view.  It's fun, but it doesn't come as naturally for me.  I've got to work at it more, and it's slowing me down a bit.  
The bigger part of the problem is that my husband and I both lost our jobs.  It's pretty common in the game industry, but even when you see it coming it's still hard and scary.  At first I thought, "Great, now I'll be home more so I'll have more free time for writing!"  Yes, I really thought I'd have free time while looking for jobs for both of us and taking care of the kids full-time.  Aren't I cute?  :)





I'm still plugging away though, and I really really want to finish two more stories before the end of the year.  I'll keep you posted, and in the mean-time - go pick up Playing to Win tomorrow while it's on its final free promotion!

Celebrate my birthday with a free copy of Playing to Win on Amazon!  Free promotions are at least as much fun for me as they are for you, so I'm launching 2 free days of Playing to Win starting Wednesday.  

For those of you here from Barnes and Noble, I'll be launching the book there in November when my exclusive contract with Amazon ends.  If you just can't wait, pick it up free this week and read it on your browser.

I'm also excited to say I'm making progress on my next mini-series.  I outlined it last night and the characters are starting to talk to me.  I think you're going to like this one.  It probably won't have as many multi-partner scenes (do you guys know how hard it is to deal with the pronouns in an all-female three-way?!) but I'm aiming to show a little more depth in my characters.

I also have an idea about doing a book of short stories about Violet.  I'd love to explore how she got to be such a sex fiend.  Amber too, but I admit I'm biased towards Violet.  Maybe because I painted her.

Anyway, enjoy a free book on me, and keep an eye out for "His Patronage" (name might not be final) in early October.

I got the 3rd part of Mountain Menage submitted this morning and it's in the Amazon store as of a few minutes ago.  Hooray!  

It was so exciting to see the story come together and find out how it would end.  I had an initial idea, but there were a few surprises for me too.

This is the first story I've published without a painting to go with it.  Eventually I may try to do an art piece for it, but so far I haven't gotten any feedback about the inclusion of my paintings in the books, so this time I left it out and we'll see if people have an opinion about it.  I'll just go paint some nice trees or something for a while.  ;)

I'm looking forward to doing another stand-alone story before I jump back in to series writing, but my next series is already spinning around in my head.  We'll see how hard it's going to fight to get out.  It's about an artist, so it's already got an advantage over the competition.

Now, go read Mountain Menage if you haven't yet!

-Kinley

Late last night I got back from my camping trip to the Idaho mountains.  It was gorgeous and so fun to be camping with family.  We were tent camping right next to a beautiful lake (with a nearby bathroom, thank goodness) with 5 families and more than a dozen kids.  While we were there I did some more work on Part 3 of Mountain Menage.  I was looking forward to being inspired by the beauty of the scenery, and I wasn't disappointed.  



However, I was also reminded of how filthy and bug-bitten you get while camping.  There were swarms of mosquitoes every night and I think I was spraying on repellent every 20 minutes.  Despite this I still came home with at least 5 bites.  I still haven't bathed the kids but I am certain there will be a major ring around the tub when I get them out.



Do you think I should work in a little more realism to the sex scenes?  Being bitten by mosquitoes at the height of passion during outdoor love-making?  Grimy neck kissing?  Chasing aggressive crickets out of the tent in the middle of the night?



I don't think so either.  ;)

In a previous post I mentioned that I was working on a short erotica story with an Olympic theme.  I was well into it and it was turning out really fun.  The story is about a women's volleyball team (country unspecified) at the Olympics (venue unspecified), and how their coach tells them not to have sex until they've either won the gold or been eliminated.  The story has 6 chapters, one for each girl, and describes (in steamy detail) how their sexual escapades eventually get them focused and working together to win a gold medal.



I know that the Olympic symbol is a heavy protected trademark, so I wasn't planning to use the rings on the cover or use Olympics as part of the title, but as I was double-checking to make sure I wouldn't run into trouble using the Olympic village as a setting, I discovered that the use of words like, "Olympics," "Olympiad," and "Olympian," are also all protected by the same trademark.  Apparently, there's really no legal way I can tell this story.



Of course, I could just make up my own athletic event with a village of 10,000 horny athletes in top physical condition and 150,000 free condoms.  But that is still walking a very fine legal line, and it somehow spoils the fun of it.  Eventually I may still try to salvage it because it really was going to be so much fun, but for now there are plenty of other sexy stories waiting to be told.

I know there are a few of you that have read Parts 1 and 2 of my new serial, "Mountain Menage" and are probably wondering when they can expect Part 3.  I've got it outlined and a couple of scenes written, but I'm saving the rest for next week on my actual camping trip to the area where I set the story.  My entire family is meeting in Idaho next week for a big family camp-out, and I'm so excited to do some on-location writing.



If all goes well, I'll finish Part 3 this week on my trip, and then it will take me a while for editing, sanity checks, and maybe even a painting.  Look for it in mid-August at the latest.




I've also started working on a series of short stories that take place in Olympic Village.  Now if only I could go on-location for that!

Total number of downloads:  2,439

Amazon.com:  2039

Amazon.uk:  297

Amazon.de:  99

Amazon.es:  4

It was a great experience and so fun to think of all the people that could potentially be enjoying "Playing to Win" at any given time.  I sold a few copies of my other books that have been out for less than 2 weeks and I also got some visits to my website.  I made a few new friends and got myself set up on Facebook and Pinterest.  Not a bad week at all.  :)

Be sure to check out www.kinleygrey.com if you want to see an illustration from Mountain Menage Part 2.  I can't gauge if people like the paintings in the books, so I'm trying this for now.



I just want to thank everyone that has downloaded "Playing to Win" during my free promotion, and that's a lot of thanking!



Day 1: 600 downloads
Day 2: 650 downloads
Days 3-4: 750 downloads
Day 5: Still to be seen



Last night I made a Facebook page and a Pinterest page to try to get the word out to a few more people.  I know it's probably a little too late for it to make a difference in this promotion, but it was good incentive for me to do something I've been meaning to do anyway.  I also ran an Adwords ad for a few days during the campaign.  It got a lot of clicks but there's no way for me to tell how many people downloaded the book once they got to the page.




And for anyone interested, only a tiny fraction of people that downloaded the free book also bought another book from my list.  However, I'm still a new author and that tiny fraction tripled my normal book sales for the week.  =)



So yes, thanks to everyone that bought or downloaded my books this week!

Wow, I'm speechless.  Playing to Win had over 600 downloads on its first free day, with no marketing.  Here's the ranking 25 hours after the promotion started:



Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #465 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

#28 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction >  Erotica

I was hoping more people would want to try my other books after reading Playing to Win and I'm not seeing much indication of that, so I'm going to put Part 1 on a $.99 sale for a few days and see if a few more people will be interested.  I know I don't have a huge library available, but I'd like people to enjoy Mountain Menage.



Tonight I painted a scene inspired by Book 2 - James and Heather on the picnic table.  It's hard to judge your own work, but from my husband's reaction it's my best one yet.  ;)  I'm debating editing the book to add the painting, but so far I haven't heard whether people like the art in their books or not, so maybe I'll hold off and just put it on the website for now.  I'd post it tonight but it's late and I really need sunshine to get a good photo.

Mountain Menage Part 2 has been submitted!

I pulled an all-nighter doing the final formatting pass on it, and I'm a little tired this morning, but it'll be oh so worth it tonight when the second part of the story hits the store so soon after the first.  I thought it would take me longer, but I'm so excited to tell the story and didn't want to make you wait any more.  

The painting inspired by this story will only be available on my site, and I'll hopefully add it around the same time the book goes live.  This one is sooo hot.

I've still got quite a bit of work to do on part 3 of Mountain Menage, so look for it until some time in August.  In the meantime, I'm hoping to add a couple of mini surprises to my book list.  :)

Now go get Playing to Win while it's FREE!