Author: karennacolcroft

Why My Books Are Only On Amazon

Posted on by karennacolcroft

(I also posted this on Facebook over the weekend, so if you follow me there, you’ll have already read most of this. However, I did expand on what I’m currently planning as far as non-Amazon distribution of my books.)

I got an email the other day from a reader who wanted to know if there was a way to get my books without buying from Amazon.

I really appreciated them emailing me! I love hearing from readers, and this gives me a direction to go for the future.

However, as I told this reader, at the moment the answer is no. There is no other way to get my books other than buying from Amazon.

I know there are some readers who don’t want to buy from the giant conglomerate that’s trying to take over the universe, and I completely respect that choice. I also know there are some readers who will *only* go to Amazon; in some cases it’s because they can’t afford to buy all the books they want, so they have a Kindle Unlimited subscription that allows them to read as much as they like.

Books enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program must be Amazon-exclusive; I’ve seen some authors who have gotten booted from KU because their books were pirated, and Amazon deemed that a violation of the exclusivity requirement.

As a side note: If you take an author’s book and toss it up on a “torrents” site or free download site or whatever, that is piracy. If you are committing book piracy, you are STEALING. Don’t be a dick; don’t steal authors’ work.

When I started self-publishing last year, I chose to put my books in Kindle Unlimited because I am one of those people who can’t afford to buy as many books as I would like, and I wanted my books to be available to people with a KU subscription. Also, we do get paid very minimal royalties based on pages read through Kindle Unlimited, and I hoped that would be a way to boost my earnings. And Amazon’s publishing platform is pretty easy for someone like me, who gets bogged down with technology and too many instructions, to use. Amazon also enables authors to at least try to protect their books against being pirated.

(The tendency for people to pirate books is another reason mine are not available through any other sources–including me giving them away; I used to give my books during release parties and such, but two got pirated before the release day even ended, so I said F it, if people are going to steal my shit, I’m going to stop giving them the opportunity.)

Things have changed in the past year and a half. Amazon has cut the amount authors earn for page reads through Kindle Unlimited, and more readers are refusing to spend their money with the universe-gobbling conglomerate. More authors I know are choosing to “go wide” with their books (i.e. have their books available through vendors other than or in addition to Amazon).

I am one of those authors. I am planning, beginning in 2024, to have my books available “wide.” But that’s going to take me some time.

I have to learn the other platforms. There are a few that allow authors to upload their books and distribute to multiple vendors; I will probably use one of those. I think I even have an account with one or two of them from when I self-published a couple of short stories a decade or so ago, so I just have to find the info again. But technology marches on, so I need to make sure I know what I’m doing with those platforms.

Which is another point: I have to find out what other platforms exist and which one(s) most authors in my genre (male/male romance) use and prefer. This involves some relatively easy research, but it’s still a thing I need to do.

I also have to go through my Amazon account and make sure my books *stop* being in Kindle Unlimited. When you enroll a book in KU, it’s a 90-day period that renews automatically unless you make sure it doesn’t. I have to make sure I uncheck the box (or whatever I need to do) so that the current books finish their enrollment and it *doesn’t* renew.

And I have to revamp my marketing strategy to accommodate marketing books that are available on sites other than/in addition to Amazon.

All of those things take time and mental bandwidth. I’m low on bandwidth much of the time; I have chronic health conditions that impact my ability to do the things. And some of my limited bandwidth is currently being occupied by a whole bunch of personal-life stuff that needs to be my priority right now.

I am going to be putting the time and bandwidth into making my books wide, but it’s going to be a little longer before I get there. In addition to the health and the other stuff I was already dealing with, I started a new job this past week that is VERY physically challenging for me and is wreaking havoc with the health. (I’m hoping it’s just a matter of needing another week or so to adjust; if not, I’m going to have to reconsider the job. But that’s a separate issue.)

So, for the time being, my books are Amazon-only. That includes Fill the Empty Spaces, which will be up for Kindle preorder on Sept. 28 and will release in Kindle and paperback formats on Oct. 12. I am sorry to those readers who won’t buy books from Amazon; I hope you’ll give me the grace and patience to stick around another few months until I am ready to go wide.

Currently, the plan is that Tempeh for Two (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 5) will be released in January 2024 as an Amazon exclusive for only the *first* 90-day enrollment period for Kindle Unlimited. Once that 90 days is up (mid-April), Tempeh and the other four RWDEM books will go wide. Stay tuned for info about which sites they’ll be available through. I have not yet decided whether the new books of the series, beginning with Take Some Tahini in July of 2024, will be enrolled in KU for the first 90 days or will just release wide right out of the gate, but I’ll keep readers informed when I decide.

For Chance Met and Fill the Empty Spaces, the current plan is to set those wide at the same time as the first five RWDEM books. I would *like* to make these two wide in mid-January 2024, after Fill the Empty Spaces completes its first 90-day enrollment period in Kindle Unlimited, but I’m not a hundred percent sure I’ll have everything in place by January, and I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.

Beginning in March 2024, all future books that are *not* part of the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series, including books like Chance Met that have ties to the series but aren’t directly *in* the series, will be released wide from the beginning and will therefore not be available through Kindle Unlimited at all.

These plans, of course, are subject to change depending on what is happening in my non-writing life that takes up time and bandwidth, but currently this is what I intend to put into place.

Meanwhile, although I know some people prefer ebooks only and some of my readers are overseas, I do have paperbacks available. Amazon’s exclusivity requirement only applies to ebooks; paperbacks aren’t part of it. And all of my books are available in paperback because personally, I prefer having a hard-copy book that I can hold in my hands and flip the pages. So if you’d like paperback copies of any of my books and are willing to cover shipping costs as well as the cost of the book itself, feel free to message me!

Fill the Empty Spaces Cover!

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Now that I’ve done the cover reveal for my newsletter subscribers, I’m sharing the Fill the Empty Spaces cover here as well. (And if you want to subscribe to my newsletter so you get future exclusive content, you can go to my free short story page to sign up for the newsletter and get the link to download an exclusive Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat short story.)

The cat in the image is Charlie the Sweater Cat, who was a resident of the cat cafe where I volunteer. Charlie was found as a stray, with fur so matted he had to be shaved. He also had multiple health conditions that kept his fur from growing back properly. When a little girl visiting the cafe swaddled Charlie in a blanket, the cafe staff and volunteers realized Charlie felt comforted, so one of the volunteers started knitting sweaters for him to wear so he would always be warm and feel safe.

In the story, Del volunteers at a cat cafe modeled on the real-life one, and Charlie (and other feline residents of the real cafe) became characters. Charlie, in the story, winds up adopted by Del and goes home with him.

Sadly, Charlie in real life was in too much pain from conditions that couldn’t be treated. He crossed the Rainbow Bridge on July 7 of this year. The cafe has a small memorial to him on top of one of the shelves (where the other cats can’t get to it), and the cafe’s owner gave me permission to use one of my photos of Charlie as part of the cover art for this book.

To find out more about the Kitty Cat Cafe and Adoption Lounge, located in Peabody, Massachusetts, visit their website, where you can learn how the cafe operates, schedule a visit, and/or make a donation to help them care for the current kitty residents.

Fill the Empty Spaces will be available for Kindle preorder on Sept. 28, and will be released for Kindle and in paperback on Oct. 12.

One More Week…

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Of not working full-time, that is. On Monday the 18th, I start my new job as a preschool teacher’s aide. To the best of my knowledge, this is a full-time job (I’m still waiting for some final details from the school and staffing agency, and I have to admit I’m a bit irked/anxious about not having gotten all the info yet…), which will mean some experimenting and juggling as I try to form a new routine that includes time for writing and promoting my books, time to run errands and do housework, and, perhaps most importantly, time to relax and sleep. I’ve learned the hard way over the past several years that short-changing myself on time to just exist (and rest, and sleep) leads to health issues that keep me from doing *anything*, so I will be prioritizing myself and my needs over everything else as I adjust to having this job.

So far, that doesn’t look like it will affect my writing or the releases I’ve already planned for the rest of this year and 2024. But, as I wound up having to do this year, I will adjust things if needed to free up the time I need to take care of myself. Fill the Empty Spaces, slated for October 12, is still a definite, and so are the next two Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat books, Tempeh for Two in January 2024 and Take Some Tahini in July 2024, but beyond that, I’m not making any concrete plans until I see how working impacts my health, focus, and time management.

Writing Updates

Posted on by karennacolcroft

I’ve been working on a few things this past week, trying to get some stuff done and some stuff started as I prepare to go back to work. I start a new job on the 18th! Which I’m honestly a bit nervous about; it’s been a long time since I worked a full-time job, and part of me worries that my physical and mental health won’t be up to it. But I’ve made my employer aware that I have health issues, and I’m looking at this as a good stepping stone. We’ll see how it goes.

Meanwhile:

  • I’ve still been working on A Fighting Chance. And fighting *with* it. I had ideas of where the story was going to go, but the story doesn’t seem to want to go there. Even so, I think I’m hitting a good stride with it and hope to have the first draft finished before I start my job. Assuming all goes as planned, A Fighting Chance is slated for release in March.
  • I finished editing Tempeh for Two (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 5, the last book of the originally-published series). This involved scrapping a few plot points that I’d added the last time I edited, which were no longer relevant to the series as a whole; they’d come from a heterosexual romance novel I’d written that was intended to be part of the companion series to this one. Since I scrapped the hetero series, I decided the plot points I’d added to Tempeh not only didn’t work anymore but weren’t really needed, so I removed them. Which, fortunately, streamlined the story and re-increased the action. Tempeh for Two is slated for release in January.
  • I did final(ish) proofreading of Fill the Empty Spaces and created the cover for it! I wasn’t sure I liked the cover at first, especially since one of the features I needed in the GIMP program to make the cover I wanted doesn’t seem to be working on the newest version of the program so I had to find a workaround. But the cover has grown on me, and I’m particularly happy to have been permitted to include Charlie the Sweater Cat on it. Charlie was a resident at the cat cafe where I volunteer; due to a cluster of health issues, he unfortunately had to be put down at the beginning of July. He became a character of sorts in Fill the Empty Spaces, though, and the owner of the cafe approved that and granted me permission to use one of the photos I took of Charlie as part of the cover art. Fill the Empty Spaces will be available for preorder on the 28th of this month, and will be released in Kindle and paperback formats on Oct. 12! (Stay tuned for whether I put this one in KU; based on some issues other authors have been experiencing lately with KU, I’m considering not going that route with this book, but I haven’t completely decided yet.) I’ll share the cover here soon, but I’ve promised to reveal it in my newsletter first.
  • I started plotting the rewrite I’ve decided I need to do on Take Some Tahini (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 6, the first *new* RWDEM book since 2014!) I love this book as I’ve written it, but it’s kind of a “breather episode” of the series, and I have the feeling the lower-stakes, lower-action nature of it won’t meet reader wants or expectations. So I’m revamping it to match the stakes and action level to the previous books of the series, and I will probably be pulling the “breather” aspects of the story to release as a freebie or a newsletter subscriber perk. Take Some Tahini is slated for release in July 2024.

 

Skipping This Week

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Yes, I’m doing a blog post saying that I’m skipping doing a blog post… Because making sense is not part of being a writer, at least in my case. I have quite a few things going on this week, including trying to make the cover for Fill the Empty Spaces, which would be going much more easily if the developers of the GIMP program would fix the known bug that’s causing me to be unable to use one of the program functions I need…

Anyway, so I’ll be spending my day dealing with that, because there’s now less than a month until Fill the Empty Spaces goes up for preorder! I hope your August has gone well and that you have an easy transition into September.

This is the picture I’ve chosen to represent Del, the main character of Fill the Empty Spaces, though I might change my mind between now and the time I actually finish the cover…

Kitty Cats!

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Content notes: Partner loss, animal euthanasia

 

In my novel Fill the Empty Spaces (releasing October 12), the main character, Del Nethercott, starts volunteering at a cat cafe as part of his journey to heal his grief over the loss of his long-term partner. While I’ve heavily fictionalized the setting and humans involved in the story’s cat cafe, the cats are real. Slightly fictionalized, but real.

In my nonwriting life, I volunteer at a cat cafe near me. The real-life cafe is called Kitty Cat Cafe and Adoption Center, and it is a nonprofit organization that provides a home, care, and cuddles for cats who are the wards of two local rescue organizations. Most cats are available for adoption, though some are permanent residents of the cafe due to health concerns. Some of the cats named in the book (Ice, Lord Purrington, Piper, and Choco Chip–who in real life is named Chips Ahoy, but I changed it to avoid trademark infringement) have been adopted since I wrote the book.

One cat, though, tried to take over the entire story. In the fictional version, Del adopts Charlie, who he calls Charlie the Sweater Cat. Charlie is a senior cat with health issues, and in the story, he’s stabilized enough to be adopted. Since Del approves of Charlie’s disgruntled old man demeanor, he chooses to bring Charlie home.

In real life, sadly, Charlie the Sweater Cat was never adopted. Due to multiple health concerns, he remained at Kitty Cat Cafe on hospice care. He received plenty of pets, scritches, and treats while making it known that he was, in fact, the king of the cafe. On July 3, the veterinarian determined that Charlie was in too much pain and his health had deteriorated past the point of being treatable, and Charlie crossed the Rainbow Bridge.

I’ve kept the owner of the cafe informed about Fill the Empty Spaces. I’ll be including an author’s note about the cafe and the cats, and I will be donating a portion of royalties to Kitty Cat Cafe. The owner has given me permission to use one of my photos of Charlie on the book’s cover, and I wanted to share Charlie’s picture here as well. If you want to help support Kitty Cat Cafe and Adoption Center (or visit if you’re in or near northeastern Massachusetts), please visit their website.

And here’s Charlie:

My Book Hates Me

Posted on by karennacolcroft

I’ve been working for the past several weeks on a novel with the working title A Fighting Chance. This is a follow-up to Chance Met, the novel I released in March, and continues the story of werewolf Trey Damone and psychic Jeremiah Crawford, along with Trey’s seven-year-old son Mikey. (For those who’ve read Chance Met and Hummus on Rye: Mikey was 6 in those books. His birthday occurs between books in the universe’s timeline, so he’s 7 by the time this book takes place.)

I was excited about this book when I started working on it. I liked getting back into Trey’s and Jeremiah’s minds and continuing the storyline of their relationship and Trey’s efforts to protect Mikey from the family who is trying to take Mikey away.

But, as sometimes happens with writing, now I’m getting stuck in various points of the story. I can’t quite get the plot to cooperate and fit with what happens in other books that take place in the same universe and the same approximate time frame. And I can’t manage to get Trey and Jeremiah in bed together, which…it’s a romance, sex is kinda supposed to happen between these characters. (Note: Romance with one or more asexual characters and no sexual activity at all is completely valid; it just doesn’t work for *these* characters given that there is sexual attraction and activity in Chance Met.) But the other pieces of the plot are taking up so much page count and story time that there just hasn’t been a point where Trey and Jeremiah have been able to do anything sexual. They aren’t even together for a good third of the story so far.

I don’t know if this book is going to work out as I planned. Right now part of me wants to scrap the whole thing and give up on it entirely; part wants to scrap most of what I’ve written so far and start over from scratch; and part wants to keep going with the way the story is and see if it pulls itself together and starts cooperating with me.

I love being a writer. But I’m a far bigger fan of *having written* than I am of *writing* sometimes…

A Lot Going On…

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Over the coming weeks, I might be blogging less often. I have a lot of things happening in my personal life that are going to be taking time and attention, and since I have a finite amount of time and attention, I have to pull it from somewhere. Blogging is one of the things that might get less while I put more into the other stuff that’s happening. In related news, because of the other things happening as well as having paid attention to comments and thoughts from readers, I am likely to drop my newsletter back to once a month rather than the current twice-monthly mailing; I will still have two newsletters this month as I’ve agreed to host another author in the second August newsletter, but beginning in September I will probably do one newsletter per month plus a “bonus” issue for preorders.

In the next few months, I have to find a “day job,” which is a process I’ve been in for several months already with no results. All the people who say “No one wants to work anymore!” don’t seem to count those of us who *do* want to work but are physically and/or mentally unable to do certain jobs. (For example, I literally pass out if I’m on my feet for more than 30 minutes at a stretch, and sometimes 30 minutes is more than I can handle, which means any jobs that require me to stand without breaks–i.e. most retail and food service jobs–are out of the question for me.) But I’m continuing to job hunt and narrow things down to the junction of my skills/education and the jobs I’m physically and mentally capable of doing.

I’m also very likely to be moving to a new home within the next few months. There are a few factors behind this that I’d rather not go into right now, but let’s just say that while I do want to move to a quieter location (I live about 15 miles from Boston, Massachusetts, so a very urban area), *needing* to move and the timeline for moving are not entirely my choice or within my control. There are going to be a number of smaller changes involved in this big one, and in addition to the time and attention it will take, it’s going to take a lot of my mental/emotional bandwidth to handle everything. If you’ve ever moved, particularly from one state (U.S.) to another, you know that it isn’t always a simple process.

Through all of this, I am continuing to write and revise/re-edit and plan releases. I’m currently working on a novel with the working title of A Fighting Chance, which is the sequel to Chance Met (released in March of this year), and hope to have the first draft of that finished within the next couple of weeks; the book is tentatively planned for release in March 2024. I’m also at work on another round of edits for Fill the Empty Spaces, my new novel that is planned for release on October 12 of this year. I’m looking ahead to what I’ll be writing (or rewriting, or at least revising and re-editing) going forward into 2024, and I’ll make announcements about upcoming books as I firm up those plans.

I plan to still *try* to blog weekly, but life–and my mental and physical health–are my top priority. So if a week goes by without a blog post, that’s why.

And for something positive to end this post on, here’s a pair of cats.

I’m Traveling…

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Last week, I journeyed to Canada to visit my kid, who is in veterinary school up here. Since I’m traveling and spending time with my kid, I’m not doing a long blog post this week. But I did want to share a picture I took on my drive up: The world’s longest covered bridge, which is in Hartland, New Brunswick. The bridge is part of a road, so people actually drive through it; I was able to drive through twice (once on my way to the bridge-side restaurant I’d chosen for lunch, and again on the way back to the highway). This bridge will quite likely show up in a book at some point!

May be an image of covered bridge

Snippet from A Fighting Chance

Posted on by karennacolcroft

A Fighting Chance is the book I’m currently working on. It’s the follow-up to Chance Met, continuing Trey and Jeremiah’s story. Writing it hasn’t been exactly easy; I keep writing things that I then realize belong later in the story, so then I have to rearrange things. (This is what happens when I don’t thoroughly plot the book in advance; I’m doing the “follow the characters where they lead” thing with this one.)

Since I’m deeply involved in trying to finish writing the first draft of this book by my target date of August 6, and I’m also preparing for a trip to Prince Edward Island this week, instead of writing a longer blog post I’m choosing to just share a tidbit from A Fighting Chance. So here we go:

For only a moment, Trey wasn’t sure he’d heard Jeremiah correctly. He’d just confessed to Jeremiah that he was a frigging werewolf, for crying out loud. Jeremiah’s reaction couldn’t have been to say he loved Trey.

But that was exactly what he’d said. He loved Trey. And Trey loved him. Having heard Jeremiah say it, Trey was easily able to say it back.

Jeremiah’s arms tightened around him. “I’m so glad you said that.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Trey said, trying to keep his tone light. “How could you not know?”

“I don’t read your mind without your permission.” Jeremiah made a soft sound that might have been a laugh. “And I knowing and believing aren’t always the same thing.”

“That they aren’t.” Trey nuzzled the other man’s throat then pulled away. “This was not the reaction I pictured when I rehearsed telling you about the werewolf thing. I was kind of envisioning you running screaming out of here.”

“That might worry your neighbors.” Jeremiah grinned. “I already knew, Trey, remember? And it would take a lot more than that to scare me away.”

“Daddy, can I come back yet?” Mikey asked from the kitchen.

Trey rolled his eyes. The apartment wasn’t all that big, and he and Jeremiah hadn’t exactly kept their voices down. Mikey had probably heard every word they’d said. Not that they had discussed anything Mikey couldn’t hear. Privacy simply would have been nice. “Yes, bud, you can come back.”

Mikey walked in and knelt beside the coffee table. “Can I have another piece of pizza? I ate all of the other one. Even the crust.”

“Go ahead.” Bemused, Trey watched his son pull another slice out of the pizza box and take a bite. “Thank you for being patient.”

“You’re welcome,” Mikey said through a mouthful of pizza.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Trey said automatically. “Were you listening while you were in the kitchen?”

Mikey shook his head and swallowed loudly. “You didn’t want me to. Except it’s hard not to hear you, so I was making up a song in my head so I wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t know you made up songs.” Looking interested, Jeremiah leaned forward and took a piece of pizza. “Will you sing it for me?”

“Maybe, but it’s not done yet.” Mikey put down his pizza. “Are you going to be here more, Jeremiah?”

“What do you mean?” Jeremiah bit into his pizza.

“Daddy and you are boyfriends, right? And you just had a ‘grownup talk.’” The boy made air quotes with his fingers. “Did you talk about living with us?”

Trey snorted, and Jeremiah started coughing and pounding his chest with a fist. Concerned, Trey patted Jeremiah’s back. “Choking isn’t recommended.”

“When pizza attacks,” Jeremiah gasped between coughs.

“I guess that’s a no.” Mikey looked disappointed. “But you’d need to ask if it’s okay to live here anyway.”

“I would?” Jeremiah asked.

“Yeah, ’cause…” Mikey looked at Trey. “Never mind.”

“Because the landlord won’t let people just randomly move in,” Trey filled in smoothly. His heart pounded. Thank god Jeremiah didn’t have werewolf-level senses; hopefully he wouldn’t notice Trey’s anxiousness. Mikey knew he had to watch what he said about Trey and the other pack members, but the kid was only seven. Seven-year-olds sometimes forgot to be careful.

Fortunately, Jeremiah seemed to accept the landlord excuse. “Yeah, I’d have to be on the lease or something. Anyway, Mikey, I’m honored that you want me to move in, but it isn’t the right time just yet.” To Trey’s relief, he sounded amused.

To fend off any further questions, Trey decided to just tell Mikey what he and Jeremiah had discussed. “I told Jeremiah that I’m a werewolf.”

“Oh.” Mikey picked up his pizza slice again. “He knew, right?”

Jeremiah laughed. “Yes, Mikey. I knew something, anyway. And now I know the truth, and it’s okay.”

“Good. Daddy can’t help it.” Mikey looked at the pizza slice and set it back down. “Maybe I don’t want this. Sorry, Daddy.”

“It’s all right. I’ll eat it.” Trey’s head was spinning. The conversation with Jeremiah had gone far too smoothly, and he couldn’t help feeling like something was about to go horribly wrong. The post-hunt fog in his brain wasn’t helping. “Jeremiah, I told you now because…Well, because I love you, like I said. But because if something’s happening with Mikey, I need you to know the truth so you can help us.”

“I’m here.” Jeremiah spoke quietly, but those two words carried such strong emotion Trey’s eyes watered. “Whatever you need. Including someone to take care of the small fry on full moon nights.”