To AI or Not to AI

Yep, that's the question these days. Especially when it comes to cover art for my books.

Will I ever use AI for writing a book? No, because it kind of defeats the purpose of writing. For me, writing is almost the same as reading. I'm often surprised by what my Imagination can come up with.

Like the zombie Andean condor forcing down a plane in Blood Sacrifice.

But for cover art, I've been reluctant to use AI. There's more than a few ongoing lawsuits in regards to training the AIs with copyrighted material and no permission from or recompense to the artists.

At the same time, the US Copyright Office has deemed AI-generated items as non-copyrightable since they were produced by a non-human. Kind of like the Monkey Selfie or the paintings of elephants, chimpanzees, and gorillas. On the other hand, the EU says that AI-generated art is copyrightable because it's generation is directed by a human's instructions.

 However, the Bern Convention currently fails to address who owns the copyright to an AI generated image because the treaty is massively behind the times.

In an effort to make people comfortable with using their AI, Adobe offers indemnification. Does this indemnification hold up in court? It hasn't been tested yet, so only the Creator and the Supreme Court knows if the indemnification will hold up.

And I can guarantee if Adobe loses its first lawsuit over the matter, it'll rip that clause out of its Terms and Conditions and hang its users out to dry.

I've talked to the cover artists I've used about the matter. Frankly, none of us quite know which way to jump, but one thing was glaringly obvious. AI is not going away.

Even Alexa on my Echo Dot agrees.

Consequences

This picture in the form of a magnet rests on my refrigerator door. There's two reasons for it.

Reason #1: In any career, a person must continue to learn new things. Sometimes though, the lessons become so embedded in the subconscious that you don't realize you've learned it until you use it.

Reason #2: I love the TV show Supernatural. I didn't watch it for the first four seasons because I was afraid I'd jinx it.

On a side note: Every frickin' time I fall in love with a show in it's first season, it gets canceled. Misfits of Science. Cancelled. Quark. Cancelled. Almost Human. Cancelled. Hell, I didn't watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer until the John Ritter episode late in the second season because I didn't want it to get cancelled.

Anyway, back to Supernatural. Once the producers and writers got past creator Eric Kripke's original five-season story arc of stopping the Christian apocalypse, the following season dealt with the ramifications of Sam's last episode of Season 5 decision.  Subsequent seasons create a gigantic pile of decision/consequence until the stack tumbles with the twelfth (current) season back to the variation of the original problem, stopping Lucifer.

Consequences of past decisions has been an occurring theme over the last two seasons of The Walking Dead and in the last several books of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series as well.

As I'm working on the last three books of the Bloodlines series, I already knew they dealt with the consequences of Sam's creation. But I started wondering how to work in the consequences of the other characters' decisions into the last volumes.

And when I was re-reading a section of Ravaged the other night, I realized I had already done so. Specifically, the consequences of Bebe's decision in Blood Magick and Alex's in Blood Sacrifice. I knew these two characters need to be in Ravaged, but I didn't know why until I watched the mid-season finales of both The Walking Dead and Supernatural. And in separate conversations, Logan (who made a very brief appearance in Zombie Love) and Alyson (a new to readers character) come right out and say, "Yeah, it's your fault because of what you did/failed to do, but now, we need to figure out how to clean up the mess."

Wow! Talk about an epiphany.

So, keep studying the things you like, understand why you like them, and it'll improve your writing.

Back in the Saddle!

Things on the home front finally settled down last weekend. Our impromptu houseguest moved out ten days ago, and as of Monday, September 20, I'm back to working full-time.

Hallelujah!

Or it was. On Friday, we found out my father-in-law needed to go in Monday to have a pacemaker surgically implanted. Then Genius Kid came down with some bug Saturday night that required a trip to our doctor.

On the plus side, I got a lot done last week. I've prepped Amish, Vamp & Thieves for my formatter, entered the data for the paperback's ISBN, finished the front matter and delivered everything to her. Bless her, she had everything back to me on Sunday for review.

Next up is getting Blood Sacrifice ready for paper printing.

A Question of Balance is done, and is in what I call it's resting phase. That means I write something else before I start editing. Sort of like a palate cleansing. While I hope to have it ready around Sword and Sorceress 30's release date, I won't make any promise because I'll jinx the process. *smile*

So what am I doing to cleanse my palate? Zombie Goddess hit 27K last week. I'll work on it for the rest of September and October, keeping my fingers crossed that I get it done before NaNoWriMo starts. For this year's NaNo, I want to get the bulk of Ravaged, Bloodlines #7, done.

The Nnnnnnnnnnnn series is currently on hold. My co-writer Xxxxx Yyyyyy bowed out for personal reasons, but she released her rights to the story and characters and gave me her blessing for finishing the project. If I can get the other three books mentioned above written, edited and published by the end of the year, I'm hoping to pick it up again in January.

It'll be a busy last three months of the year, but it really feels good to be working again. Now, if I can only keep everyone healthy and out of my hair...

FINALLY! Blood Sacrifice is out!!

I stayed up last night until effing four in the morning, but dammit, this book was getting uploaded! (Many thanks to Pepsi, Inc. LOL)

It seems appropriate that Alex and Phil's book comes out Halloween week since they literally go to Uku Pacha, the Incan Underworld.

I'll be posting sales links as they go live during the next couple of days (yes, I'm talking to you, Barnes & Noble). I want to thank all of my readers for your incredible patience!

Blurb
Alex Stanton is done being Phillippa Mann’s whipping boy. She made it perfectly clear she preferred him only when his body temperature was human. And he would keep his distance from the Amazon if his vampire master didn’t value Phil’s business relationship.

But when someone breaks into Phil’s antique shop and steals a replica of an Incan artifact called a tumi, Alex discovers she’s in deep trouble. The tumi isn’t a fake after all, and the original owner wants it back. Can he and Phil mollify a ticked off god of death long enough to find the thief and retrieve the god’s property, or will the Incan deity decide he’ll take their souls in exchange for his lost weapon?

Novel, approximately 76,000 words or 277 printed pages

Sales Links
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords

Status Report - October 2013

As the Celtic year winds down (yes, folks, Halloween, or Samhain if you will, was the Celtic equivalent of New Year's Eve except with a lot less glitter and champagne), I'm looking at what I've accomplished.

Sales have been down over September and October, just like they have been for the last three years. Why? Because readers are dealing with school, kids, fall activities like football, and holidays. Oh, and October is when trad publishing unleashes a flurry of paper books, especially hardbacks, in preparation for the Christmas rush.

A lot of folks in indie world are panicking, but they've panicked every fall for the last three years.What they need to be looking at is the long-term implications. The initial gold rush in self-publishing is over. Thank Djehuti!

Why do I say that? Because the people who aren't serious about writing as a career are starting to give up. That doesn't mean the rest of us can relax. If anything, we need to up our game. We not only have to be better than other indies, we have to be better than trad published books in our production values.

Fortunately, that's not hard. *grin*

Here's some of the data you're looking for:

After Amazon's August surge, Apple sales are still beating the house that Bezos built as far as my books go in September. Barnes & Noble sales have dropped thanks their schizophrenic board of directors and total lack of direction. Frankly, I can't blame Nook owners for not wanting to invest any more money in their devices. Kobo and Smashwords sales have been non-existent since April. Sony is the retailer that surprises me because I'm starting to see 2-3 actual sales per month for the second half of 2013.

Total sales in August = 215
Total sales in September = 139
Total sales for October as of the 22nd = 74

I place a lot of the blame for October on Congress' shoulders because of the stupid-ass government shutdown. There was a marked increase in sales after 16th, and not just because Alter Ego published a new novella on the 18th.

The rest of the year will be interesting. Blood Sacrifice will be published by Halloween. Sword and Sorceress 28 with my short story "Justice" will be released November 2nd. Alter Ego will put out her first novel in December as well as the last novella of her current BDSM series. That will bring my total releases up to ten for the year.

And I've officially made more money in 2013 than I did in 2012, and I've still got two more months to go.

All-in-all, I think I've done pretty good this year for an average mid-lister.

When Bad Computer Problems Happen to Good Writers

After the computer kerfluffles in July and August, I've been limping along with an ancient laptop. Thursday night, I got to a good stopping point, took a shower, grabbed some tortilla chips and salsa, and sat down to watch The Big Bang Theory.

I went back to work after the show.

BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!

Somehow, I managed not to burst into tears, got DH and started going through the checklist. Number one being, "No, I did NOT spill salsa on the computer!"

The error messages were all over the place, but two of them indicated it might be the memory. Thankfully, I had the same type of memory card in a defunct computer that hadn't made it to the recycling center yet.

Yay! New memory worked.

But the problem with the old memory had corrupted my registry. *head desk*

All of this to say, I've got enough restored to get to try to finished the edits on Blood Sacrifice, which is what I would have been doing Thursday and Friday if this shit hadn't happened. *grrr*

So the rest of this week will be interesting links for y'all to check out while I try to get caught up on getting this @*$@@( book published!

Speed and First Drafts Are Not Your Enemy. Fear Is.

The reason this post is late today is I'm reticent to stir the controversy pot.

I can hear what thinking. Since when, Suzan?

It's the issue of speed when it comes to drafting a story.

Please understand that I'm not talking about physical limitations. And before anyone goes off on me in comments, yes, I do understand certain impediments. I'm in the early stages of arthritis thanks to the self-destructing chemical soup that is my body, and I'm losing my eyesight, even though my doctor has been running an a battery of tests since March, he can't figure out what the problem is, and he's more frustrated about the situation than I am.

Maybe it's my own impending problems that spurs my need for speed. I've got so many ideas in my head that demand to be told. I started watching how many books were put out per year by my favorite authors. The only one who really talks about his process is Dean Wesley Smith.

When I started writing with the intent to publish back in 2004, I was doing great to get down 250 per hour. At the beginning of the year, I could do 500 words per hour. Dean's 7500 words per day seemed an impossible thing to achieve unless I went without sleep, food or potty breaks.

So instead of the impossible, I went for the possible. I'd done NaNoWriMo before. 50K words in 30 days comes out to 1,667 words per day. What if I bumped that up to 2K per day?

And it worked! Despite the craziness of homeschooling and packing, it worked. I finished five novellas, three short stories and the infamous novel Blood Sacrifice since January 1, 2013.

Which brings me to the other problem--rewriting. Maybe it's the flippant answer I gave in a recent interview. Maybe it's something Dean said in his blog, but I've given up on rewriting pieces ad nauseum.

Why? Because when I do, the book doesn't sound like me anymore. It reads like every piece of pablum coming out of New York these days. Oh, there's definitely times when I, my editor or beta readers say, "Hey! This piece here doesn't match the rest!"

But to me, that's content editing, not a complete rewrite. And I'm not saying a rewrite is never necessary.

Blood Sacrifice is a prime example. I started it in 2009, and I had to scrap it after seeing Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull because Steven Spielberg and I had the same frickin' plot. In 2010, I tried again, but I realized I had a problem with who the Big Bad was. It needed to be someone worthy of Alex and Phil.

I sat down for a brainstorming session over pumpkin lattes with my friend Jody in 2011. "The Aztecs and Mayans are overdone right now," she said. "Go farther south."

She had lived in Peru during the 1968 military coup. (I really think she needs to write about her life, but she thinks she's boring. Goddess, she so is not!)  She had a ton of books (most of which I couldn't read because they were in Spanish) and native music recordings she let me borrow, but it was her photos and recounting of the the Day of the Dead festivals that caught my warped attention.

Again, I started Blood Sacrifice. Again, I ran into a problem. I set it aside and concentrated on Alter Ego's career. This year, as I was wrapping breakables for packing, the solution popped into my head.

The only other time I rewrote a novel was to satisfy the bizarre whims of agents. (Zombie Love if you're curious. The published version is very close to the original version once I gave up trying to please a bunch of strangers who didn't give a shit about my story.) It's one thing when my perfectionistic streak comes into play. It's another when someone arbitrarily dictates changes.

Anything else I've written and published is the first draft. Including the short story "Justice" which I sold to Elisabeth Waters, the editor of Sword and Sorceress 28.

I can go into all the psychology of why writers think slow drafting and multiple drafts are a good thing, but I won't since Dean covers it pretty well in his Killing the Sacred Cows series on his blog.

It all comes down to one word--fear.

It's amazing how good writing feels once you let go of that fear.

So I challenge all of you to write FAST, write FEARLESSLY and have FUN!

Emerging Markets and Other Publishing Ephemera

I really shouldn't have stayed up until two a.m. to work on Blood Sacrifice. The problem is that the book's done in my head, but since I can't beam images directly to readers' brains, I have to actually write down what happens.

And I really want to work Zombie Goddess, which isn't quite done in my head. I'm already fifteen pages into that novel, so hopefully it won't take over a year to finish the f***ing thing. Keep your fingers crossed. I might have it done by Christmas.

Ah, such is the life of a writer!

Several odds and ends have happened over the last week that don't require a full post, but are worth a mention.

Amazon has started a new program called Kindle Matchbook. Basically, it offers your print book and the same e-book for one low price. It shows that Amazon is thinking of the customer first, something the BPHs and other retailers just aren't getting. I generally buy the Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital packages for movies (if they're available), so it makes perfect sense to me. I just need to get my act together and release print versions of my books.

Over at Smashwords, Mark Coker has introduced two new markets, FlipKart and Oyster.

Flipkart is an Indian online bookseller. I don't know about anyone else, but my Asian sales have sucked. I understand that India has the largest English-speaking population in Asia, but I'm not sure my style of books will fly there due to language, violence and sex. This one of those "we'll see" things.

Oyster is a booklending service on par with Netflix for TV shows and movies, i.e. unlimited consumption for one low price per month. On the consumer side, I LOVE the idea. From the provider side, I have a lot of concerns, especially when Smashwords arbitrarily signs everyone up for the service without detailing how we are to be compensated. If you don't believe me, go check out your Channel Manager. I've opted out of the program until I get more details.

Writer Paul Cook tried to stir the bigotry fire in sci-fi/fantasy once again with a misogynistic opinion piece at Amazing Stories, then got pissed off when the heat fried his ass. Here's my take:

1) "There's girl cooties on my sci-fi" was old back in the '70's when I started reading SF as a kid. Get over yourself, Paul.

2) He didn't even compare hard sf to hard sf. He pulled science fantasy and steampunk out of his ass to compare to Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series, which is military SF, not romance as he claims. WTF?

The scary part is that this guy teaches literature, but can't tell the difference between subgenres in his field.

Okays, folks, I'm off to get a pizza to munch on while I try to tie up this novel. Hang loose and have a great weekend!

Results of the J.A. Konrath 8 Hour Challenge (and a Free Story)

As many of you know, I broke down and tackled Joe Konrath's short story challenge a week ago Thursday. Joe's kind enough to promote our books this weekend. He also encouraged us to try out KDP Select, which I planned to do later, but what the hey?

For those of you awaiting patiently for Blood Sacrifice, this challenge really helped spur me into getting the damn novel done. As in 10,00 words written since I completed the challenge. And I'm literally writing the story backwards, but I'm not going to question this method since the book is getting finished.

Love, War and a Bulldog takes place once everyone returns to Los Angeles after the events of Amish, Vamps & Thieves and Blood Sacrifice. There's no major spoilers.

Okay, maybe a minor one. But seriously, folks, if you haven't figured out who Phil's dad is by now, look up "Amazons" on Wikipedia.

So here's the deal--

1) Love, War and a Bulldog is free now through Tuesday, September 3, on Amazon US only. Click here to download.

[Edit: Amazon has made it free on other country sites as well. It already has downloads from UK and Germany. I've changed the link so it will take you to the appropriate store. Please let me know if you have a problem.]

2) If you're a pure-ist, don't read it until after you've read Blood Sacrifice.

3) Love, War and a Bulldog won't be available at other online stores until December 1.

4) I'll try to do a free period at the other sites, but the best I can guarantee is a Smashwords coupon. (I know. You'd think Apple, B&N, etc. would get a clue about these types of temporary sales.)

5) If you absolutely want it now, but you don't have a Kindle or you absolutely refuse to get a Kindle app, my books are DRM-free, You can always convert the file through Calibre or any other conversion software.

So what the hell is this story about?

Emerson O’Malley, a were-bulldog, has been trapped in his canine form since the day he was born. Even worse, the likelihood of him losing his virginity is zero. But when he rushes in to rescue three nymphs, he pisses off the Greek goddess Aphrodite, who curses him into human form. Does he take advantage of his one night with the woman he loves or does he save Los Angeles from the goddess’s wrath?

P.S. Emerson and his ladylove Agnes made their first appearance in Zombie Love.

Fear of Failure

Last night, I was working on Blood Sacrifice when I realized I need a scene that tied the primary climax of Blood Magick into the events of this story. For the first time in writing this book, I simply wrote a two-page prologue without overthinking it.

Why all the problems with this particular book? What it all comes down to is fear of failure. I've never let this fear stop me before, but now, it became a HUGE problem with Blood Sacrifice. It's been so bad that I'm finally admitting to you all, this is the third fucking draft of this book.

What has happened to me with this novel? It hasn't been just one thing. Phillippa was literally the first character to pop in my head for the saga that eventually became the Bloodlines series. As a result, I'm super-protective of her, which if she were a real person, she would kick my ass for doing so.

This story is not a new romance, or a continuation thereof, like the other couples in the series. Phil and Alex were parted by circumstance beyond their control, only to have successive events drive them further and further apart. Part of me is very nervous about the getting the nuances of a reunion story just right.

Then there is the plot itself. Blood Sacrifice is the major turning point in the over-arching saga where the reader learns just what those damn nanites are turning Sam into (even though she's not in the book) and the ramifications of her transformation.

So what it comes down to is I'm putting so much pressure on myself to be perfect that nothing has been working quite right.

Until last night. The proverbial lightbulb went off, I wrote the prologue, and I know what to do with the story now to fix my previous dissatisfaction.

Then this morning, Dean Wesley Smith posted about a personal anecdote that really hit home. I wasn't the me who loves to make up stories in the driver's seat. It was the fearful, tentative kid who tried to be perfect in the hope that her mom would love her.

A few choice expletives went through my head at that realization.

But I have passed the halfway point and I'm on the downhill slide. The right person is in the driver's seat again. I'm feeling pretty good about the story.

Now, I just have to get Phil and Alex out of Hell...

Where the Hell Is the Next Book?

The last two-and-a-half months have been...weird, I guess is the best way to put it.

First, back-to-back colds waylaid me. It's one of the drawbacks of having a chronic health condition that leaves me immune deficient. A friend blames my diseases of the month on my trips to the B&N Cafe' or Starbucks, but there are times when you just need to get out of the house. And I can stay away from strangers, but that doesn't mean DH or GK won't carry some germ home that doesn't affect them in the slightest but sends me to the hospital.

On top of my illnesses, one of GK's wisdom impacted against the twelve-year molar that hadn't erupted yet, shoving it under the six-year molar. This happened in the two months between regular dentist and orthodontist visits (I saw the x-rays), which meant it had to be dealt with NOW. Of course, the kid bounced right back within two hours after surgery.

Mom, on the other hand, had massive amounts of parental stress and financial anxiety. First, the orthodontist and the oral surgeon decided to put me in this middle of their argument over the best course of treatment. Then, the money I had put aside from this summer's excellent sales for the fall slow down had to be used for GK's surgery because the insurance company decided to be dicks about covering the amount that, according their own f***ing policy, should have been covered.

Unfortunately, illnesses, the professional prick-waving contest, and yelling at insurance personnel over the phone meant I fell wa-a-ay behind on my word output for both the Suzan books and the Alter Ego's holiday release. And we won't even talk about editing.

I got the final edits done on Season of Magick: Winter and uploaded the story two weeks ago. That means it was only five weeks late.

I thought if I plowed through, I might get Blood Sacrifice finished and up before the end of this month. Then this weekend happened.

In the wake of certain events, I realized how little time I was spending with GK, how damn lucky I am to have him. I spent a lot of time hugging him over the last three days. At twelve, he's starting to hit the "Mo-o-o-m, really?" stage when it comes to displays of affection. But he's been pretty tolerant after what happened in Connecticut.

On top of everything else, GK found a stray dog in our driveway when he went out to bring in our garbage can Thursday night. Buddy (we had to call him something) appears to be a full-bred Yorkie about four-five years old. We've spent the last four days combing the neighborhood for his owner, posting his picture on our subdivision's Facebook page, and hitting the local vets and pet stores.

The three of us humans agreed we couldn't take him to a shelter. We also couldn't leave him outside when the temps were dipping into the thirties, and a coyote pack has been known to eat other small pets from the neighborhood. Dax the Wonder Dog gave in when he realized he had a playmate closer to his size.

So Buddy the Elf Dog is staying with us until we can locate the owner. This means I get to referee between a long-legged beagle and a Yorkie whose balls are bigger than his brain. It's been interesting.

So what does this all mean?

Hug your kids. Cuddle your puppies. And you'll see Blood Sacrifice sometime in 2013.

Blood Sacrifice Soundtrack - No. 13

I don't think I have to tell you what happens here. *grin*

Blood Sacrifice Soundtrack - No. 12

I can't tell you why this is Alex's song without revealing a major secret. SORRY!

Blood Sacrifice Soundtrack - No. 11

Alex was one of the very first medical students at Johns Hopkins, but much to his father's concernation, he left school to join the Texas Rangers.

Blood Sacrifice Soundtrack - No. 10

Phillippa realizes she still loves Alex, but is it too late?

Blood Sacrifice Soundtrack No. 9

Phillippa blames her father for the deaths of her mother and sisters, believing that as a god, he could have interevened and saved their lives.

Blood Sacrifice Soundtrack - No. 8

The infamous practical joke for which Phillippa has held a grudge for over a century? Alex jury-rigged a canister of molasses and a box of flour above the front door of the San Francisco vampire coven house (featured in Blood Magick). His intended target was Selene.

Blood Sacrifice Soundtrack No. 7

Phillippa's biggest fear is losing Alex again. She believed she'd already buried him once.

Blood Sacrifice Soundtrack No. 6

Phillippa doesn't want to acknowledge her loneliness. So she treats Alex's feelings for her as a child's crush.

Blood Sacrifice Soundtrack No. 5

Phillippa discovered Alex was alive and now a vampire when she visited Caesar in his new capital of Los Angeles in 1910.