Cece and Her Scrunchie

Hi Ink Drinkers,

Today, I have the pleasure of announcing my new book.  Though it hardly feels like my book when Kaitlynn drew all the pictures.  This is a 75-page children's chapter book intended for kids between the ages of 6-11.  

Here's the synopsis:

Cece is an ordinary girl with a unique relationship with everything she owns.  Her umbrella talks things over with her when they walk in the rain, her remote control tells her which shows she'd enjoy, and her hair clips whisper different ideas in her ears.

Everything is wonderful in Cece's world until she fails to make a scrunchie as nicely as she imagined.  Watch how the queen of everything dodges hair clips and sets the dust bunnies running.

This year is the last year my sweet daughter, Kaitlynn, is in high school, so we made this book together to celebrate ourselves.  We go to craft fairs together and sell books and bookmarks to grandmothers and their sweet granddaughters.  Making them something like this to enjoy this Christmas was such a pleasure.  At the same time, I am filled with incredible sorrow at the unknown that will come with my little daughter turning into an adult.  We've made many things together with Kaitlynn drawing the pictures while I write the books.  I wish that our partnership could go on forever.  

I never imagined that she would become such a powerful artistic force when she was a little baby with eyelids like dragonfly wings.  

We don't really make babies inside us the same way we make things in real life: putting on ears, curling hair, and shading the skin.  As mothers, we let the seed of life be planted inside us and the rest that happens is the hand of nature, the hand of God, and we show our selflessness by allowing something that is not us to grow inside us.  A mother's heart swells to bursting when she looks at her children because inside herself, she is still a child even though she has become a mother.  We still have silly little dreams we never outgrew.  Like my silly little dream to write books for people who hate reading whether they are an adult or a child holding a reading wand.  I never thought that I'd give birth to a little girl who would become such an indispensable ally in my quest to improve the reading material of all.  

This book was made with love for people who are lonely, who don't easily see the needs of others, who fit in only in the places they make for themselves, for us, and for you!

All profits go to Kaitlynn who is still 17.  $9.99 CAD $7.33 USD

Amazon.ca link:

https://www.amazon.ca/Cece-Her-Scrunchie-Stephanie-Orman/dp/1990217125/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=stephanie+van+orman&qid=1667678320&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjk5IiwicXNhIjoiMS40MSIsInFzcCI6IjAuOTcifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=stephanie+van+o%2Caps%2C221&sr=8-2

Amazon.com link:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1990217125/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i10

Veda, Reviews, and Stats

 Hi Ink Drinkers,

Might I draw your attention to the beautiful creation to your right?

One of my beloved readers on Quotev, MemeQueenoftheworld, was so delightful as to put this together to represent Veda in Hidden Library.  The collage is called 'Witches of the Hidden Library'.  There are so many excellent elements of the book that have been added to this beautiful arrangement.  

In particular, I like the shot of the high heels at the bottom, so like the high heels of my imagination as I wrote the book.  Of course, I love the open book with the black rose flower crown.  The crystal ball is better than the one I pictured as I wrote the chapter with the crystal ball in the tea cozy by the front window (remember to keep those covered girls, cause if you don't, it could totally burn your house down).  I also like the headless girl, like a disembodied dress with only hands to spin with, hands to write with.  It's very lovely... like even the pictures are still in the first person.  We can't see her face, we can only see everything around her.  Very choice.

Let's give a huge round of applause for MemeQueen and her awesome vision of Veda!

Now, let's talk about If Diamonds Could Talk.  Though my launch for it was a stinky failure.  I can almost summon tears when I think about Booksprout.  Anyhoo... it hasn't been a total waste as I received two splendid reviews for it on Amazon.  Here they are:

"Well, once I finished the first book (His 16th Face) I thought I had a clue as to what the next book would be like but I was so wrong! Stephanie is an amazing writer! She has such an incredible imagination that she leaves me in awe at her writing! I was floored by what I read because it was not what I was expecting. The author had a way she weaved you into the story line and the chapters kept drawing me further into the story more. The book was not a typical love story but well worth your time in reading it. I enjoyed it and was shocked at several of the events that happened in the story. It's a great book!"
--DeAnn

"The follow-up story for 'His Sixteenth Face", this novel has deeper fantasy elements than its predecessor.  Doing so allows it to explore bigger themes of immortality, love, friendship, and oddly... damnation.  I was captured by its simple but powerful ideas of how immortality and power can be achieved.  Yet the heart of the story is about passionate love and the sacrifices required to achieve and sustain it.  Beth's journey is a worthy read and If Diamonds Could Talk is a romance novel strengthened by the elements that set it apart.  I appreciate that the author felt free to conclude the story on her own terms."
--Rob. S.

Those reviews really helped validate all the work I did on that book.  Thanks to DeAnn and Rob S. for writing such powerful and kind reviews.  Hearts for a week.

Moving on to Sleeping Prince.  I've been posting my stats for it because it's been a long time since I posted a book on the free sites before the full book sites.  I finished posting the book, so let's see how things worked out.  Lowest to highest.  Go!  

#4. Quotev

I let my feathers get quite ruffled before I got angry enough to huff down to the bottom of the webpage to file a complaint.  My complaint was that it was marked as an M-rated piece.  Well, it wasn't!  Grrr!  They didn't even write me back.  They just removed the M rating and we all lived happily ever after.  Except I don't think the piece ever recovered from the M rating.  There are a healthy number of views but it still clocks in at the lowest.

#3. Booknet

I have had quite a lot more reader feedback on Booknet than previously.  Except this really hilarious/not hilarious thing keeps happening.  I keep getting blocked from the site.  I can just hear you in my head asking, "Why would that happen, Stephanie?  You're always so nice when you talk to readers even if you're a complete cow elsewhere."  Yes, I know.  Here's the thing: if you post too much on one thread with too many tabs open, the system blocks you.  So, even though all I'm doing is writing my fans and followers on my own book's thread, I'm still getting my butt kicked.  I have been blocked four times on that site this week alone.  I'm blocked right now because I can't NOT answer the readers.  Dang!  Comments are what we authors live for!  When I'm blocked, no one can access my profile and my view stats stay the same until the admins extend the palm branch to me.  Then I immediately fall for my readers all over again, write them back, and get blocked again.  It's a vicious cycle.

#2. RoyalRoad

This site had the largest hit count for a really long time, but the story didn't seem to build momentum.  I finished the story and no one seemed to notice... not even the people who were reading it.  However, things can gain huge hit counts over years, so we'll do this again with maybe different results later on.

#1. Inkitt

Before I finished posting the book, I was a little cheesed at the lack of success on Inkitt.  When I was choosing the cover for the book, I was flopping between one that would appeal to the readers on Inkitt and one that would appeal to the readers on RoyalRoad.  I decided to go for Inkitt because there is no real reward for kicking butt on RoyalRoad, but there are publishing deals to be won on Inkitt.  So, I was a little sad when the stats were better for RoyalRoad for the whole release period.  When I marked Sleeping Prince as complete on Inkitt, the WORLD EXPLODED!  The hit count there has eaten the hit count on RoyalRoad and now it has my second-highest hit count on Inkitt.  Whenever You Want has the highest hit count, and yes, I got a publishing contract for it.  Yes, that contract didn't last but it did represent some very sweet paycheques.  The popularity has also had some very sweet overflow to my other books, getting some fresh notice for other things.  Yay!  

I'm gonna be straight with you.  There haven't been that many wins this year, so to have things work out on Inkitt really meant a lot to me.  Like... I was starting to wonder if doing any of this was really worth it.  Today it feels less stupid than usual.  For that, I am extremely grateful.  

New Covers for Fanfiction.net

Hi Ink Drinkers,

I started posting fanfiction on fanfiction.net when I was in my early twenties.  That was a really long time ago.   In those days, fanfiction.net did not have a function to give your book a cover, so when I was posting my Vision of Escaflowne and Slayers fanfic, I did not need a cover.  It's also fanfic, so if you want images to support your book, you either need to make fanart or get a little bit thiefy.  They didn't introduce the function to add a cover until I was very tired of trying to keep up with any fandom at all.  I'm not really much of a fan anyway.  The truth about my fanfiction is that most of it is not really fanfiction.  It is original fiction and I gave the characters the same names from the shows and called it 'alternative universe fanfiction' so that I could bum off the show's audience.  It worked well until the shows got too old and I couldn't really piggyback off them anymore.  

I'd forget all about my fanfiction roots, except occasionally, I go to fanfiction.net and look at my stunning stats.  At my peak, I was getting 50 people to write in when I released a chapter each week.  The hit counts are so gorgeous, it nearly blinds me to see them.  And the stats actually just keep going up over time.

Returning to the subject of the covers... I was really lazy.  Shamefully lazy.  I was using the cover of His 16th Face as the cover for every single book and for my profile picture to try to generate some interest in that book.  I don't think it worked.  Not only that but each one of those projects deserves a cover of its own.  So, yesterday, I got all chipper and created new covers for my fanfic, without getting theify, which means that they are somewhat generic, but I didn't steal anything, so good.  

I used Adobe Express, which is a free service where you can pay extra to unlock the awesome features.  When I say the 'awesome features', I mostly mean fonts.  The free fonts pretty much suck, but since everything else Adobe offers in the free version is top-notch, I just ignore the lack of diversity of fonts.  

Let's begin.

When you're designing a cover for a platform like this, you do not have a quarter of the design freedom that you do when you design an actual book cover.  The pixel count is 600x800 instead of 1600x2500.  Yes, those are not the same shape, but with the smaller image, it will always be displayed as a thumbnail--just a tiny little thing.  This means that there isn't room to have a detailed conversation with the audience about what they're going to get.  You are unwise to use more than two people in the picture and actually, just one central image of only one person is better.  You also can't have taglines, reviews, or any other words besides the name of the book and the pen name.  Basically, the size of the images you are seeing here is massive compared to the way they will be displayed on the actual webpage.

Adobe Express lets you use a variety of design elements for free with thousands of shapes that you can stack on top of each other and if you're clever and appreciate the intense beauty of a chess board, you can have quite a lot of fun.

You're noticing the lack of font diversity, aren't you?  The thing that is the most painful about the free fonts is that they don't have any fonts that really sprawl all over the page.  You wouldn't use those for the whole title, but for the first letters of the title words.  Gah... there are ways to get around it.  Not by hacking it, but by moving the image to another site that has a stronger free font catalog.  However, when the image requirements are this small, a sprawling font is not going to help you.  You need something readable.    

I guess I'll tell you a bit about the books.  The most important book here is this one: Mystic Wings.  This was the twelfth novel I wrote and actually, it is the first novel I wrote that was not a steaming pile of crap.  I'm really happy that the simple cover for it turned out so well.  The book that follows it, Mark of a Goddess is perfectly fine.  I had really got the hang of writing by the time I wrote it.  And actually, nothing I have written since has been a steaming pile of crap.  Some projects work out better than others and sometimes I'm surprised at how many mistakes I make, but everything I have written since Mystic Wings has something about it that makes it good.  I'm so glad I didn't waste my time.

Now about the Shadow Magic books above, I'll tell you more about them.  They are not a series.  They have similar subject matter, but they are not connected to each other in any way and I have Zelgadis fall in love with Amelia in one and fall in love with Lina in another.  The one where he falls in love with Lina is my favorite of the Slayers fanfiction that I wrote that is still posted.  I wrote a scene in that book where Zelgadis allows himself to be impaled the long way (which means that he has a sword pierce straight down his vertebrae, breaking one after another).  Naturally, he doesn't die, but is reborn as a monster, and he becomes the perfect person to love Lina.

Ah... if I read it now, I would probably die of cringe.  But that was the first time I wrote something that really spoke to me.

Because I have 16 projects on Fanfiction.net, I can't post the new covers for all of them here.  I'll give you the link, so you can go discover them for yourself.  Yes, I was young when I wrote all those things.  Yes, you have to be stupid before you can be less stupid.  Enjoy!

https://www.fanfiction.net/u/586657/Sapphirefly

More Sleeping Prince Stats (Because I still think this is interesting)

I don't know why I'm so deranged, but because I am, I'm going to post how my readerships are enjoying my new scifi novel, 'Sleeping Prince'.  Enjoy!

So, these are sites where it is free to write and free to read.  Let's start at the bottom!

#4. Quotev - I got slapped with an M rating and this story will never recover from an M rating.  Most of the readers on Quotev seem to be well under 20, so they're too young for the system to let them access my book.  It's doing so poorly that I have short stories that are posted on Quotev that have higher hit counts.  I started releasing 'Hidden Library' there, so we'll see if that perks the place up, but this book will not win the day on this site.

#3. Booknet - These guys aren't doing too bad.  I'm simultaneously releasing 'If I Tie U Down' there and it's doing much better.  They'll both do better once I'm finished posting them.

#2 Inkitt - I got slapped with some lowish reviews, so that looks bad.  A reader can give star ratings for four different categories: overall rating, plot, writing style, and grammar and punctuation.  I have actually never received such low reviews on Inkitt.  Usually, I get showered with five-star ratings.  I actually don't mind getting slapped with lower ratings for writing style, plot, and the overall rating.  Those things are subjective, so that's fine, but when I get slapped with a low rating for grammar and punctuation, I wanna draw blood.  That is not subjective, that's technical... and technically wrong to give me anything lower than a four.  Not only that, but these are prose, not technical writing, so... yeah... I can hear my own blood pounding in my ears.  HOWEVER!  Inkitt has been so good to me in the past that I will overlook this treason and continue on.

#1. Royal Road - This is a HUGE surprise.  Royal Road hates romance, girl things, falling in love, and all that jazz.  However, they do love outer space, chase scenes, hiding, sneaking around, abuse, trauma, torture, spaceships, and unnecessary surgery.  So, I'm winning there.  I compliment them all the time.  It's amazing.  Reviews there are few and far between, but I got a very flattering one and that's helpful.  

It's also interesting to note that of the places where my books are available for download, I recently noted that GooglePlay has been kicking Amazon's pants for download figures.  That's weird.  GooglePlay is also kicking the crap out of Smashwords.  Now that is really saying something because my Smashwords account covers AppleBooks, Barnes and Noble, KOBO, and a huge handful of other download locations.  

I also recently decided to give Wattpad another chance.  It's hard to say how that's going to go.  Whenever I go to their site, they're always promoting the same stuff.  It seems like it's really hard to get noticed there.  

Welp, it doesn't matter much anymore which way the cookie crumbles.  We'll see how it goes.     

Getcovers

 

Hi Ink Drinkers,

Normally, I design my book covers myself.  But, I had seen millions of ads for a design company called Getcovers, and their covers were totally decent.  So were their prices, so I decided to go ahead and hire them for a cover for a novelette I plan to release on OBOOKO.  Here is the finished cover.  It took them two days to finish the order.  

First thing, they had me hit a stock photo/illustration site to choose a central image.  On the site, I made a vision board that had a bunch of pictures of glass bottles, terrariums, crystals, and the like.  Then I grabbed my daughter, who is wise beyond her years, and asked her which of the pictures she thought was the most impressive.  She did not choose this image, but she chose one by the same artist that was part of the same collection.  I told her that this picture was my choice and she said this one was better because it was more purple and less orange.  Normally, buying a license for an image like this goes from $1.50 - $20.00 depending on what your plan is.  You can buy plans that let you download hundreds of files per month and then the price for a single image drops.  However, I am not going to use hundreds of files in a month.  Using the sort of plans I usually buy, an image like this one would cost approximately $13.00.

Then I sent the designer this image with a note attached as to what sort of thing I wanted.  My description was that I wanted the title in black flourishing text with the image in the middle and my name on the bottom.  I wanted a gold geometric border and possibly grey smudges in the background.  It was going to be a hopeful romance.  I wished them luck.

Let's cut it apart and talk about it.  

If I bought a license for the geometric border, it would be part of a geometric bundle with a bunch of different shapes in it.  It wouldn't matter that it came with a collection of other design assets, I would probably never have a use for the other shapes.  The bundle would cost another $13.00.

There are three fonts.  The one used for my author name and the subtitle would not have cost anything extra.  Those fonts are free for everyone to use.  However, the font used for the title is a little more complicated.  This font effect could be achieved in two different ways.  Either it's a cheap font that has had those flourishes added, or it's a font that just looks like that.  If it's the font, no one gives that kind of font away for free.  Free font letters don't get in each other's faces like that.  Each letter keeps to itself.  If I had to buy the fancy font (that I would only have been able to use once), that's another $13.00.  If the flourishes are added, then they are part of a flourish pack that again costs me another $13.00.  OR the graphic designer was a careful girl (they had a girl's name) who knows how to make up symmetrical swishes like this on the fly, then they may have been free.

If I was a betting girl, and maybe I am, my bet is that it is a cheap font that has stolen flourishes from a more expensive font pack they had on hand.  I really like it.  I certainly would never have thought to mash up a serif font with a flourish.  One of the benefits of working with a company like this is that they can reuse certain design assets, so it costs them a lot less to produce something like this than it would cost me.

Lastly, I asked for grey smudges and they gave me pink.  The pink is better.  Those would have been free.  

So, if I made this exact cover, it would have cost me $33.00 (approximately).

With taxes and everything, working with Getcovers, I got it for $13.00 (and change).

That is exceptional.  

The most they probably had to shell out for use of the image was probably $1.40 and the rest of the stuff would have been assets they had lying around.  Given the instructions I gave, it probably took the designer ten minutes to put this together.  Maybe less.  All the same, I really like it.  

I'd hire them again.

As for the novelette, it's not ready yet.  Later.

Free Books

Hi Ink Drinkers,

One of the keenest frustrations of my life has been my inability to turn my writing career into what I have always expected it to be.  I never expected to rake it in like Stephen King, but I did expect to make a little scratch so I felt validated.  Yeah, that has been really hard for me.

I'm frustrated because I'm blocked.

One of the reasons for writer's block is that there is a gap between what the author imagines versus the kind of writing the author is actually able to produce.   That's in regard to a particular piece we're working on, not our careers.  The way to break writer's block is to give up what you initially wanted and to work with the reality in front of you.  The more you work on it (that particular piece and other writing projects afterward), the more you're able to create things that match your expectations and eventually exceed them. 

But what about a career?  That's not something you can do on your own in the same way.  I wrestled my demon for long enough.  In this case, the demon is the image of what I have always wanted for myself as a novelist.  The way to break the block is to let go of what I wanted.  It's over now.

Goodbye, Emily Loring.

Goodbye, Anne Rice.  

Goodbye, Victoria Holt.

Goodbye, Monica Hughes.

Goodbye, Margaret Atwood.

Goodbye, L.M. Montgomery.  

Goodbye to the novelist of every book I ever cracked a spine on and looked at their list of books and thought that I would one day be like them.  I won't be joining them in the halls of the bookstores of our times.  I have already published a book that had ten other book credits in it.  I wrote them all.  That book and the other ten books didn't make much money, so I'm done.  

This feels like a suicide note... and in a way, it is.  For months, I have felt that there was change in the air.  How would it come?  What shape would it take?  How would I be reformed?  

From now on, I will no longer try to make money as a novelist.  

I went on Smashwords and reduced all my fiction to free.  Then I did the same on Draft2Digital, DriveThru Fiction, and GooglePlay.  I went on Wattpad and Fictionpress, and started releasing chapters for books I never intended to give away.  I put If I Tie U Down on OBOOKO and Free-Ebooks.net.  I had someone message me on Facebook asking where they could buy one of my books and I directed them to a place they could get it for free.  

I'm not sure if I can give away all my books for free on Amazon without bringing an angry amazon down on me, but I'll try to find a balance there.    

In any case, it is time to do the same thing I would do with a story that wasn't cooperating.  I will examine it objectively and make decisions based on reality, not fantasy.

The reality is that in August (a hard month to peddle books), I had close to a thousand downloads and over eighteen thousand views for my free books.  That's when everyone is out enjoying the good weather.  No one is reading in August.  I need to build on that because that's reality, not some dumb idea of mine.    

*Yawn* Honestly,  I wanna go quilt something.  More book-making can wait for another day.

Sleeping Prince Stats (because I think this is interesting)

I have been posting my novel 'Sleeping Prince' on four free ebook websites and doing two updates a week.  Two posts ago, I posted here how the stats were going.  They are different now.  Let's look at them.

#4. Booknet - As I said before, I took a break from Booknet because of the war and I'm being punished for it.  Winning back followers there is super hard.  But I have been getting a few likes and dozens of people have added the novel to their bookshelves.  When I finish the book, that may make the stats jump.

#3. Quotev - I got slapped with a Mature rating here, even though it is usually where I get my best stats, I'm unlikely to now.  I'm a little choked about the Mature rating.  I just watched 'Romy and Michele's High School Reunion'.  It was PG and had a ton of course language, adult themes, and smoking.  I love that movie but I am a little choked about the Mature rating when I compare my story with it.  Mature ratings mean that a lot of the readership there will not have access to the story.  It won't even appear unless they are over 18.   I don't know if very many people are over 18 there.  My story is not 18+.  I'm not sure what it is.  Gah!

#2. Royal Road - I got a very flattering review on Royal Road this week where the reviewer said that I was likely to get creamed there because my story is a romance and they don't like romances there.  True dat.  However, even so, my story is performing better there than on the other two and Booknet is a major romance novel site.  People who like romances don't like my books any more than people who don't.  I don't write erotica and I don't write hard action with no romance.  I'm in between and it makes me a little bit of a freak.   

#1. Inkitt - When I was choosing the cover for the book, I struggled because I had to choose between a book cover that would appeal to the audience of Royal Road or the audience of Inkitt.  No.  I would not have been able to find something that appealed to both audiences.  The one that would have appealed to the Royal Road audience was one of Gage wearing his blue and silver armor.   The one that would have worked for Inkitt was the one I chose.  Here's my reasoning: there is no reward for kicking butt on Royal Road that I know of.  If you get a high enough readership on Inkitt, you can land a contract with Galatea.  I did it before, but my book wasn't hot enough to keep the contract, so it was canceled after three months.  HOWEVER, three months of paychecks from Galatea paid all my writing debt and brought me back to zero.  That's pretty good for an uncompromising little brat who won't write even one detailed sex scene.  So, I chose Inkitt and Galatea because even though I'm unlikely to keep that contract, I could get one for three months if enough people come to read.  I'm really far from that threshold, but I still have twenty chapters to publish, so we'll see how it goes.

O.O  It's also summer.  Summer is death.  No one reads in August.  Things could really pick up all round.

Also, the scouts have come around.  That means I have been offered a collection of publishing contracts from novel aps for 'Sleeping Prince'.   Naturally, I have turned them all down.  The only one of these aps that I liked the contract for was Hinovel and I alienated them when I pulled 'Whenever You Want' from their site so I could give it to Galatea.  It was the right decision, but I handled it badly.  Why couldn't I have been cooler?  I'm so mad at myself.  Gah!

Anyway, don't take tiny contracts from little guys if you want to catch a big fish.  

Haha... ha... I'm actually crying.  It's so hard to do all this novelist stuff and not sell your soul.  

Getting on it with it now.  I don't know how much potential 'Sleeping Prince' has.  It's a scifi romance that is quite heavy in the action/adventure department.  That's not a super popular genre.  It's not like I wrote a billionaire romance, or a werewolf romance, or a shifter romance, or a reverse harem romance, or a BDSM romance.  LOL!  I'm joking.  All the other types of romance I just mentioned are all BDSM romances.  

It's like that amazing time on 'Daria' when Daria and Jane are giving new students a tour of their high school.  Jane's like, 'If you're good we'll tell you which of the shower stalls haven't been peed in.'  

And Daria is like, 'She's just joking.  They've all been peed in.'