Elizabeth McCoy's Blog

...continue to conspire to steal writing brain.

Not too keen on finding that someone's gotten my books from Amazon and put them on a "free-to-read" site, though. If you find them there, please know that they're stolen. (And if I don't see results from the "DMCA takedown" clickie that I clicked, in the next 2 days, I am going to get verrrrrry annoyed at a certain pirate site.)

1: Still working on Copper Leaf Bargains. Life up and hit me with a large bat studded with nails, and my creative energies kind of crashed. So it's been going... slowly.

1a: On the plus side, I managed an actually respectable word-count today. I will not count my chapters until they're written, but progress is welcome.

2: Fiction is hard when the Plot-related part of the brain is metaphorically crushed. Fictional non-fiction can be easier. I wrote something for the GURPS tabletop roleplaying system. (Well, adapted and expanded on prior material.) Sparrials show up in my Kintaran stories, and, well... Now there's a lot more Sparrial material. That's at warehouse23.com.

3: I dug up a couple of mostly-finished (or finished) short stories for anthology requests. I forget if I mentioned What Happens Next or not, but Dogs of War is certainly recent.
What Happens Next (includes a Kintaran story):
http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?i...
Dogs of War (the story is SF, but not the Kintaraverse):
https://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?...

I believe both are likely to be available at Amazon as well.

4: Wish me luck. I know what I want to do, but getting there... that's the hard part.

Life has been hitting me like a large, heavy thing that requires a lot of attention. But I uploaded the first four chapters of Herb-Witch, in a bare-bones PDF form, to Goodreads. It's formatted to be read on an iPad Air, which means it's going to be a bit small on phones and have a lot of wasted space if you printed it out, but the Goodreads upload page specifies "PDF." Note that you can sample half the book at Smashwords, in a variety of formats, so you can really decide if you like it or not!

Good thoughts appreciated. It would be nice to be able to concentrate on writing.

So far only Smashwords and Amazon, but it should propagate! ...it is a big book, has a big glossary (which contains some easter eggs as well as some spoilers), and adds a fair amount of word-count in the Table of Contents and various authorial notes.

It is a darker book than All That Glitters; some readers may wish to be aware of emotional health before starting.

That said, I hope that people enjoy it anyway.

Here's hoping that none of them are finding things that will require me to rewrite huge swaths.

(Crucible's original working title was Dar's Horrible Road Trip. So, well, companion/sequel to All That Glitters.)

Got "The Bear Prince" translated and posted -- Smashwords only, for now, but percolating its way through the other sites, no doubt. (Not on Amazon, though. Amazon doesn't take Russian-language ebooks.)

Someday, I shall have enough credit with my translator to get one of the novels done! ...probably Glitters, as it's the shortest. Or I might go for one of the Kintaran short stories, like "What Really Matters," or even "Blackest Before the Dawn," which is in the What Happens Next anthology.

I still need to find a prettier Russian font.

I got one of my short stories ("The Legend of the Morning Star") translated into Russian (okay, admittedly somewhat for a lark, because I had the chance to do a work-trade for it) -- and it's up on Smashwords. It's currently 99c. I may drop it to free as I get more works translated.

Then I heard that Amazon is going to be moving into Russia at some point! Unfortunately for me, they don't yet accept Russian-language books. *facepalm* Well, I'll leave it there in "draft" form till they do!

As you've probably already seen if you're following me at all, there's a short story uploaded. It's a prequel. It is not fluffy. It is not a fantasy-romance. (Darn.) It's 99c. It's "in review" at Amazon as I write this and should be available in about 12 hours or hopefully less. It's at Smashwords.com right now, and should propagate to the other sites Smashwords distributes to... Eventually. Never fast enough for my tastes, anyway.

Belatedly -- way, way belatedly -- happy new year, everyone. :)

For Herb-Witch, at least -- though it is (finally!) up on B&N, the GoodReads button doesn't find it. Type in the name, and there would be more success. Y'know, if you care. *wry*

In the meantime, Sony has finally gotten the books up, but has not put in all the meta-data. In particular, the "what this book is about" blurb (aka "overview") is quite missing.

I'm sure there's a wall to smack my head against somewhere...

(In non-self-serving news, I have been sick for some weeks with a low-threat-but-irritating-cough, which may or may not have turned into pneumonia, and now I have antibiotics. Has nothing to do with books, and everything to do with self-pity...)

The technical difficulties with B&N seem to be being straightened out -- both Herb-Witch and Queen of Roses have appeared there. Hopefully Herb-Wife will ship in the next few days... Next Thursday or Friday at the latest, then add a couple weeks for B&N to do whatever conversions it does, and plonk it up there.

Meanwhile, it seems Sony has continuing technical difficulties as well, since, to drop into family accent... ain't nuttin' shown up there 'tall for a while now. *grumble*