Category: Writing

Going “Wide”

Posted on by karennacolcroft

I posted several weeks ago about why my books are currently only available through Amazon. However, that will be changing in 2024.

Amazon has a subscription service called Kindle Unlimited, which allows people to pay a monthly cost and access a large number of Kindle books that they can read; those books are removed from their device after a certain amount of time, if I’ve understood correctly. This enables people who can’t necessarily afford to buy every single book they want to read, to be able to read the books they want. For a book to be included in Kindle Unlimited, it must be exclusive to Amazon, meaning that the *digital* version of the book cannot be available anywhere else, including as a giveaway (again, as I understand it, though I might be wrong about that). The print version can be available through other sales or giveaway channels, because Kindle Unlimited only deals with e-books.

When I started self-publishing my books in spring 2022, I chose to go Amazon exclusive because I wanted my books to be available through Kindle Unlimited. I knew authors who were making the bulk of their income through “page reads” in KU, and as someone who myself can’t afford to buy all the books I want, I thought it would be good to make them available to my readers who might not be able to buy my books.

However, Amazon keeps changing the rules for how they pay authors for Kindle Unlimited page reads. They’ve also made the decision to allow AI-generated books, which not only will flood the market (further reducing the amount that authors receive) but also is problematic because of how artificial intelligence is trained. Generative AI, the programs people use to “create” art, books, etc., is trained through use of existing art and books–for which the human creators of those things are NOT asked for permission and receive no compensation. One of my young adult novels has been essentially stolen to train AI to “create,” and I only knew about it because someone spotted it on a list and informed me. (I’m not going to get into all the problems with AI. Nor am I going to respond to people who say “But some of us need AI!” AI does have its place.. but that place should not be stealing the work of human creators in order to enable machines to “create” things. You can Google if you want more info about this, or check out authors like Lori Gallagher Witt who are talking more extensively about it.)

Because of those issues, I’ve made the decision that beginning in 2024, I will be pulling my books out of Kindle Unlimited as their terms expire (KU books are signed up for 90 days at a time, which automatically renews unless we opt out). I will also be releasing some short stories and shorter novellas in addition to the novels I’m planning to release in 2024, and that will start in a couple of weeks with a Christmas short story, “Christmas Eve Snow,” which will be released wide. (This story is also an alternate gift to those who subscribe to my newsletter; details are on the https://karennacolcroft.com/get-your-free-story/ page.)

Due to when the expiration dates fall, some of the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat books will still be in Kindle Unlimited when I release Tempeh for Two in January. Because of that, I will be releasing Tempeh for Two as an Amazon exclusive (and available in Kindle Unlimited) for the first 90 days of its existence; it will be available wide in April, and between February and April the rest of the books in that series will also be going wide. Beginning with my April 2024 release, which currently is slated to be the sequel to Chance Met, all books will be released wide; none will be available through Kindle Unlimited at any point. (As with everything I determine about my writing, this decision is subject to change, so stay tuned for updates.)

I still believe Kindle Unlimited is a great service for readers. But it’s no longer such a great thing for authors.

Psychopomps

Posted on by karennacolcroft

A psychopomp is a being (sometimes human, sometimes not) who guides spirits into or through the afterlife. Psychopomps appear in various world mythologies as well as in popular culture; for example, Stephen King’s The Dark Half references psychopomps represented by a flock of sparrows.

While people tend to think that a psychopomp is purely a fictional or mythological thing, there are those of us in real life who consider ourselves psychopomps.

Yeah, I said “us.”

I was about five years old the first time I “saw” a spirit. I put that in quotation marks because it wasn’t so much something I saw with my physical eyes as it was a mental image that my brain sort of projected into reality. My great-grandmother had passed away, and I saw her as my parents were discussing or preparing for the funeral. It’s been 48 years, so I don’t remember the exact context, but I do remember seeing my great-grandmother. I didn’t know why I was seeing her or why my parents got upset when I mentioned it, but I did learn pretty fast that seeing dead people wasn’t something I was supposed to talk about.

Since then, nearly every time someone with a connection to me has passed away (and even sometimes with people who have no connection to me), I’ve “seen” them in a similar way. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to identify whether they’re just appearing because they want to say goodbye or whether they need help finding where they’re supposed to go next. When they need help, I try to help them. It’s a process of visualization, mostly, in which I bring them to someplace that has meaning for them and help them find the light they’re supposed to cross into. If you’ve seen the TV series Ghost Whisperer, it’s similar to that, except I don’t solve crimes. And I do have a choice; if a spirit comes to me and I’m not comfortable helping them, I say so and my guides help them find someone else to assist. Sometimes my guides run interference for me when they believe it would be detrimental for me to work with a certain spirit, as they did last year when my mother passed away.

I know all this sounds kind of weird and “out there,” and that’s fine. You don’t have to believe in anything you’d rather not believe in. But there are those who do this work intentionally, sometimes assisting spirits after they pass and sometimes assisting them in the passing.

As I was starting work on Fill the Empty Spaces, I was also rewatching Ghost Whisperer and thought, “It would be cool to have a romance character who’s a psychopomp. I don’t think I’ve seen that in any of the books I’ve read.” And then I thought, “I’m writing a book. And I have a character who could be a psychopomp; why not?” Thus was born Lochlan, the friend-with-potential who my main character Del meets when he starts volunteering at a cat cafe.

Like me, Lochlan had his first experience as a psychopomp at age five with his late great-grandmother. The way Lochlan guides spirits is similar to how it works for me as well; after all, “write what you know” is one of the most common pieces of advice for authors. But his experiences and the spirits he guides during the story or tells Del about are not at all similar to anything I’ve dealt with. For which I’m thankful; Lochlan gets put through the wringer.

Fill the Empty Spaces is available now in Kindle and paperback formats on Amazon. To thank the Kitty Cat Cafe and Adoption Lounge in Peabody, MA, for allowing me to use the names of some of their real-life cat residents and the picture of Charlie the Sweater Cat on the cover, I am donating a portion of my royalties to the cafe, so your purchase of the book (or should I say “purr-chase”… sorry, I blame the bad pun on not having had enough coffee this morning) will help feed, house, and provide medical care for multiple furry (and, currently, one not-furry) feline friends. If you want to help support the cafe or pay a visit, you can also check out their website.

 

Exhausted

Posted on by karennacolcroft

A few weeks ago, I started a new job. Within the first week, I realized it was more than I would be able to handle owing to the amount of physical involvement. I had told the employment agency I was hired through that I can’t do a lot of standing and walking, and yet they put me in a preschool classroom. If you know anything at all about preschool-aged kids, you know that sitting is not a thing adults get to do often when preschoolers are around! So after a week and a half of trying, I gave my notice and said I would stay until they found someone else, but that I wanted to be finished within two weeks.

It’s been a week and a half, and as of yesterday, they haven’t replaced me yet. I’ve been asked to work another full week. I agreed but told them very emphatically (and barely suppressing a couple of swear words) that I will do ONE AND ONLY ONE more week, and after that I don’t care if they’ve replaced me or not, my health is more important.

I love the kids I’m working with, and I get along well with ALL of the adults I’m working with. (Which is VERY rare for me; I struggle with social skills and social cues, and usually when I’ve had jobs in the past, I’ve been the odd one out and people either barely tolerated me or full-on bullied me. Yes, including jobs in public schools.) But I have physical and mental health conditions that mean this job simply isn’t a viable thing for me, and I’ve had to acknowledge that. Meanwhile, over the past week, at least four kids have come down sick, including one who was at school with an active fever. So I’m feeling kind of blah and seriously overtired and not really in the mood for writing the blog post I’d planned.

On Thursday, I’ll be releasing Fill the Empty Spaces! It will be available for Kindle, including Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback. This is one of the books that I’m planning to bring “wide” (in other words, available through a variety of sources) in spring 2024, but for the next six months or so, it will be Amazon exclusive. The Kindle preorder is live now. I’ll share more about the book and the psychopomp involved in it in my next post. Right now, I think I need a nap…

Fill the Empty Spaces Preorder!

Posted on by karennacolcroft

Last week, I put Fill the Empty Spaces up for preorder! For the time being, Fill the Empty Spaces will be available only on Amazon, with both Kindle and paperback formats releasing on October 12. It will also be available through Kindle Unlimited as long as it’s an Amazon exclusive title. (In 2024, I will be working on making all of my books, including this one, available on a variety of platforms, which will mean not being able to participate in Kindle Unlimited.) The preorder is only for the Kindle version, since at the moment, Amazon doesn’t allow paperback preorders.

You can preorder your copy on Amazon now!

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: