A'mara Books Update - November 2019

This past month at A’mara Books:

I like this monthly thing – maybe this is where it will stay for the time being…

I’ve been getting good support this month, which has been exciting. The hysteria regarding Steem’s Hard Fork 22 has died down and people are back to business. One of the biggest changes was how people curated content. Some of the big upvoters on Steem were forced to start seeking good content to upvote – which has been nothing but good, I think. Newbies still have the challenge of getting discovered, but once you’re on the radar, the potential for support is much superior now to what it was 6 months ago.

For me, this means that between 40-50% of my posts are now rewarding over 1 SBD, and at least half of those are over 4 SBD. So, this is a HUGE boost for me. So much so that Curie no longer visits me because I don’t require their help so much. In a real sense (figuring that SBD is currently around $0.67), my story chapters alone are earning maybe $10/week. (So, like 4 book sales/week.) We’re not rolling in dough, but they are “selling” even if it’s just in upvote value.

Knowing that people like my work and are willing to support it on Steem means that I feel more encouraged to write more. (My husband keeps asking if I’m “done”… I tell him, I will never be “done” - there will always be another story to write!)

During the month of November, I racked up…

About 50,000 new words!

So, an average of 12.5k words per week for four weeks…

• Freyja’s Fire received almost all of these as that was my Nanowrimo work-in-progress…

NaNoWriMo

National November Writing Month… I guess it must be… (I’m not good with acronyms and random sets of letters like this.)

The challenge is to write 50,000 words in November to get a novel off the ground and written.
Technically, 50k is only a “novella” not quite a novel (which begins around 80k), but artistic license and all that rot…

For me, it happened to coincide with finishing Pawn of the Neví, so I had a bit of time to work on Freyja’s Fire, which I had been thinking about for over a year since finishing Brighid’s Blood. I figured that this was a great opportunity to get the job done – and it was.

I spent some time in October preparing for this challenge, putting together the basic plotline, developing my new characters and everything. This prep time ended up being a wonderful time investment – and will change some of the way I approach new books from here on out.

I cheated a tad in using two previous freewrites (for challenges) – so, I started the month with 2k words, but I also went over 51k words… so I suspect it balances out. I also have about 2k that will be cut out when I go to edit this work. I expect it will end at about 50k.

I did make it though!

I don't think I will do Nano again in the future because it really got in the way of simply being a mother/wife - and getting ready for Thanksgiving, etc. Maybe next year if I happen to be ready to do it (there's another story or two after Freyja's Fire after all), but I'm not going to stress over it.

What’s funny is that this book isn’t currently scheduled… I want to finish the 830TCE set first, which will be another three books including the one I’m working on now. Then, maybe I’ll stick Freyja’s Fire in before I do the 852TCE set… It’s weird working on multiple points on the same timeline all at once. (You should see my folders full of partially-developed plots… I’m working at around half-a-dozen timeline points – whatever fits the story the best.)

Teaser: For Black Friday, I spent a little money on a DAZ 3D horse – and some wings… As well as the hair I want for several characters, both in Freyja’s Fire and other works – finding good long hair for men is difficult. I’m *really looking forward to putting this cover image together!

WeKu stories coming!

Okay, I’m still a little slow on this one, but I wanted to redo my covers for this set, so that they were more *mine rather than a free photo for which I can no longer find the original credits for! (And which didn’t *quite work for me anyway.)

I had five covers to do and just finished the third one today… so two more. But I feel I can probably start the series (again) on WeKu on Monday morning. Maybe I’ll do a prep post tomorrow morning.

Here’s the new cover for Courage to Trust. I’m not going to do a separate post on this one this time because I didn’t break down the steps this time. I probably will for one of the final two covers for this set – and I definitely will when I do the cover for Freyja’s Fire as I’ve never used a posable animal before, so that’s going to be fun.

Reading this month

I’ve said before that every author should also be a reader – ideally in the same genre, though that’s not essential. Expanding your experience, however, is very much essential!

This month, I discovered the “risque” romantic novel Skye O’Malley by Bertrice Small, who (alas) is no longer with us, but I find it interesting that (like me), she hit her writing stride in her 40s and continued writing for about 30 years. I think now, she would be considered more “erotic romance.” I’m not sure my husband is completely sure about me reading her – let alone writing like her… but I like the style and feel it helps me to hone my own a bit more. She also reinforces some of my feelings about what is normal for our species.

Although Bertice Small is very much “risque” in her style, bad relationships have bad endings and good ones help form a good character… She looks through a historical lens (in which women have often had a very bad plight when it came to sexual relationships) with an eye sympathetic to how women were treated and some of the results (both good and bad) of that.

I’m looking forward to reading more of her work.

Erotic romance

I’ve been feeling my style evolving in this direction as I become more comfortable with sharing some of the work I have enjoyed writing the most. Within my world of Terrenden, it will still make sense… the A’mara have a higher set or morals than the Balan, Neví and Yerdua (I will explain more of that distinction soon…) but I will share more and more of what’s going on in the underworld as well.

I hesitated before yesterday’s chapter (Pawn of the Neví – on Steem), which describes a date-rape situation. I hesitated because I felt that it was borderline NSFW, but I wasn’t confident on which side of the border it fell. (Looking it up, it is not a very well-defined line.) The reason why I’m hesitant to use the NSFW tag is because previously, those chapters have done poorly at payout. But, I decided that it warranted the warning for anyone who might be less comfortable with the more sexual scenes – and used it.

As if in confirmation, it almost instantly got a really nice couple of upvotes which make it one of my most valuable posts in recent weeks, so that was good – though I can’t share it on CreativeCoin because they (apparently) don’t allow NSFW tags (it doesn’t even show up there). Previously, the tag did show up though – so maybe the fact I added the dporn tag to grab some extra NSFW support did the final damage on it. This isn’t really porn, it’s erotica (almost.) Erotica includes romance… porn doesn’t. (Erotic romance is even more about romance, so that’s where I think my work falls now.)

No matter whether the stories I write are basic sweet romance, more of an adventure, or more erotic, there will always be plot points that pertain to the understanding of my world.

Coming in December

• Pawn of the Neví continues just into the new year.
• Neví 6 – the pressure is on to finish it in time to start in early January! Can I do it???
• Rebound of Power will begin on WeKu - if you have missed the stories before, now is the time to jump in.
• Neví 6 – mapping and cover work!
  (Or maybe Freyja’s Fire will happen sooner...)

Reviews?

If you have liked any of my books, please take the time to leave me a review/rating at Goodreads

Anyway, that’s what’s been going on here at A’mara Books this week! I hope you manage to take a few minutes to immerse yourself in my world of Terrenden – which I’m so delighted to share with you!