Author and Lightspeed mag editor Wendy N. Wagner discussed how returns affected her royalties. My first advance was hefty and my first royalty high thanks to book making bank on preorders. My publisher dealt with mostly indie bookstores and thus, next royalty check reflected returns. -$80 (such a relief tbh).
Wagner also talks about dwindling sales of aging titles - and it's so spot on. The fact that my old titles still net at least $20 a month is a miracle.
1/5 Got tagged by @madikonrad over at Tumblr for the 'Questions For Your OC'!! – answer 3 questions as your main OC(s) – since we’re #writers, we can write this as a narrative, first-person, or RPG style - anyway we wish.
When done, provide 3 new questions to pass on to the next creator. (you then tag others with 3 new questions)
My main OC’s are Aedan the Ancalite and Lucius Scipio Servius, and the following questions are from sapphic author, Madeline Konrad.
I will legit bookmark posts like this because knowing every gemstone's name and color is important shit to a #writer even if they never write a story about gemstones. #writerdons#writingcommunity#writerscoffeeclub
#WordWeavers MAR-02 Do you prefer writing series or stand-alone books? Why?
My two published novels are two halves of the same story, I would return to the world but without putting the Myers at the centre of it. It always had to be two books about them, not three.
The WIP was written hoping for a series/ sequel/ same world followup. Currently that depends on Trad Publishing.
My books take a lot of work. I like to revisit where I can.
#PennedPossibilities 159 — So far, what part of your WIP was the most fun to write?
I never thought I would get to say this, but great big scenes with all your characters are so much fun to write! Once you know what they all want, what they all sound like, and what the scene is supposed to be about, you really can just let them go!
"Two days a week, I get to skip fight training and go to the hydroponics levels or even the outside farm! It's not outside. It's domed. And the sun is so far away that they used UV lights. But there's plants and soil. And nobody fights. I love it there."
#WordWeavers Nov 26: What question would your antagonist dread being asked by an interviewing journalist?
"Why did you leave? Why didn't you ask your dad for help, call out for your mom, even try to wake up your brother? Why did you go with that stranger, leave your home, without even a goodbye?"
No! She is 16 and under tremendous amounts of stress, so she cannot even think about that stuff for now. Adolescence will have to wait until she's escaped from and/or defeated a cult-like, quasi-religious, paramilitary order that's been abducting children and training them as child soldiers. (They're Jedi. Basically Jedi.)
#WordWeavers 20: What's your antagonist's soft spot?
She's willing to overlook a LOT of my protagonist's unwillingness to participate in mass murder because said protagonist is a REALLY good fighter. If she'd been willing to take on a less talented student, well, certain things would not have happened in the way that they happened.
#WritersCoffeeClub Nov 18. How do you do research for your writing? Do you ask specialists?
Professor DuckDuckGo. It's not quite as quick on the upstate as Professor Google, but Prof DDG isn't evil, so there's that.
It's fiction, not scholarship (which I also do). For fiction, I treat research as source material. It's super fun to dig into, but it shouldn't get in the way.
#WritersCoffeeClub Nov 12. Desktop, laptop, typewriter, pen and paper, quill and parchment, blood and stone?
Scrivener. It's changed everything. I can write out of order. Throw out a landmark of a scene I can see clearly, and then keep filling in scenes I can see based on that one, and eventually I go, hey, that's four chapters! It works for me.