Pre-Order The Immigrants, by Constance 'Dusty' Miller.

Constancee 'Dusty' Miller

My new romantic short story, The Immigrants, is now available for pre-order on various platforms. The book will go live on July 26, 2015 and pre-orders will be charged and delivered on that date to customer accounts from participating online bookstores.

It’s a first for us here at Long Cool One Books, and in terms of publishing, it’s easier than we expected. The only exception would be Kobo, where publishing assistant Ivan P. Krumholtz says he can’t find a delayed publishing or pre-order button. He got around that by basically entering all the information and then just saving it without publishing, (see: save and go back to library button on Kobo Writing Life.)

In the past, we sort of shied away from pre-orders, which was basically just a case of negative thinking. The assumption was that no one was going to order it anyways, and so why do it? 

We were basically just opening ourselves up for heartache and disappointment. If you read this Smashwords blog post, you’ll see that there are plenty of things an author can do to support a pre-order. There’s also some flexibility. If something’s a real pain in the ass, we just won’t do it. If something, (chapter reveals for example) promises or shows effectiveness, then we’ll focus on that. That’s an opportunity, and pessimism goes out the window. That’s a step forward on our own personal journey, no matter how many people pre-order the book.

This time around we’re going to challenge some assumptions. Why not start right here at home, right?

We’ve been thinking about this for some time. What decided us was getting an email notification of assetless pre-orders from Smashwords. We’re a bit leery about promising something we haven’t finished yet, but it was interesting to fill out all the metadata, upload and check the formatting, knowing the book wouldn’t come out for over a month. In the past, we basically published it and it came live right away. That way we got some instant feedback, and maybe that was the attraction in terms of author satisfaction or something.

They also say this is a business.

Here’s our sales copy:

Maria sets out on the adventure of a lifetime. She’s leaving France, now decadent and corrupt, and heading for America, which is still young, and strong and vigorous. Travelling on the S.S. France on the Atlantic crossing has its own perils. She’s been getting an awful lot of male attention, and she’s realistic enough to know that it’s a ship. They have six days and six nights, and then none of them will never see each other again. As for a certain Monsieur Yusuf Khoury, there’s something just a little bit different about that one. Dusty Miller’s The Immigrants is a short and romantic story of young love and long odds.

This is a romance of about 15,000 words and is priced at $0.99.

Smashwords.

OmniLit.

The Immigrants will become available for pre-order on the following platforms after internal review:

iTunes.

Kobo.

Google Play.

Amazon.

Readers will be find it at other fine bookstores including Barnes & Noble, Chapters/Indigo, Oyster, Overdrive, etc.

Thank you for reading.

END

On the Importance of Not Listening.

"Ignore them? Wow."

Constance 'Dusty' Miller

I think that my first novel is done.

It’s kind of hard to say.

That’s it? It’s over?

But of course it’s not really over until the book is published.

For some reason I’m a bit shy about doing that.

It’s not like there’s a big deadline for it.

I can sit down and try to read the thing three or four times, and there is no doubt that once I tuck into it, there are changes that can be made.

I could screw around with the ending a bit.

I tried to explain the feeling to a buddy.

Let’s call him Mike.

Mike laughed.

“How long have you been doing this?”

I told him a couple of years. I didn’t know what to say.

“The problem is that you are still listening.”

“What?”

“You’re still listening.”

“To what? The book?” (Mike really is a bit nuts sometimes.)

“No.” He looked me right in the eye. “No. You’re still listening to them.”

Them.

Oh, yeah, here we go.

He sat back a little bit, and then he took a long, slow breath. There was some hesitation there.

“You’re still listening to the other writers. You’re still listening to the people who are telling you how to write a story. You’re still listening to the people who are telling you how to manage a career, and this is your first fucking book for Christ’s sake. You’re still listening to the dos and don’ts and the whatnots, the fucking adverbs and dialogue tags and prepositions and it’s all fucking bullshit.”

“And you’re saying I shouldn’t do that?”

“I’m saying you’ve had enough. At some point, it is extremely important that you stop fucking listening to all of them other voices. For if you don’t…they will go on forever. And nothing is more guaranteed to fuck you up as a writer, quicker than listening to a bunch of other writers. All the fucking time. Look. Read their stories—their fiction, for crying out loud, and stop reading their fucking opinions. They don't know anything more than you do. Ignore all that other bullshit about craft, and business, and publishing, and How to Write a Fucking Book, and all that shit about the industry. Just forget it. It’s nonsense, Dusty. All of it.”

Whoa.

Shit.

“So…so…”

“So what?”  (Man, you smoke a lot. I could see it in his eyes.)

“So what do I do?”

“Listen to yourself. What’s your next story? That's the only thing that's important. Follow your own instincts. And ignore everything and everyone else. Otherwise, you are fucking doomed to follow them. And I don’t see you as a follower at all. You've got all kinds of stuff. It's busting out at the seams. You're the only one who don't fucking see it.”

That fucking guy was dead serious, too.

(Wow.)

“Okay.” I thought about it for a minute. “You mean, everyone who comes after this, right?”

He grinned from ear to ear.

“Now you’re catching on.”

What the hell.

I will try anything once.

I have to admit, though. That was a new one on me.

It does make a weird kind of sense, though.

END

(Dusty’s just a bit shy, ladies and gentlemen. She’s put a lot of work into it. It’s not a bad book and if she can’t think of anything to add, then the thing is done, isn’t it? I promise that I won’t let her stew too long.– ed.)

"What's the Plan?"

"So what's the plan, anyways?"

by Dusty Miller

My new story, Throwing Chocolate, is now live on Smashwords, soon to be followed by Kindle and OmniLit, all in various formats.

Love is all about making the connection. How Mommy and Daddy actually met, all those years ago, really is a cute little story. 'Throwing Chocolate' has a romantic Valentine's Day theme. A short story.

***

So I write, big deal.

What is the plan?

Until you’ve actually written something, you don’t need a plan. However, my first really good story, Project: Passion, clearly led somewhere, and thus it spawned Rendezvous and Escape from Bondage. That’s still only three novellas.

However, a few sales showed that there is some potential here for someone interested in writing or any home-based business. With the internet and the rise of digital publishing for everywoman, the potential to at least make some money, maybe not big bucks or anything, is clearly there.

So I had some funny little idea and I basically just wrote it up.

Voila.

Four stories, or ‘products,’ if you care to think of it in those terms. I think that was Selena’s Escape.

Notice the elegant dress, the hair, the makeup. That's clearly not The Sasquatch Sex Tapes, right?

That one also allowed me to escape from the naked butts and go for something a lot more tasteful, more aspirational for the target readers. 

(No honest effort is truly wasted.)

However, it really is true that once you have a few titles, each one is somehow less significant, but then, just think about it—your first book or story, or maybe a poem, really is a big thing.

It’s an important event in your life.

Ah, but for the true professional writer, it's all in a day’s work.

***

A short story is nice and easy to format, and the reason is because it doesn’t take too long—with a ten year-old running around, and some sort of frickin’ crisis around here every day it seems sometimes, that’s important because writing, editing, making images, even simple uploading, requires tight focus on detail. The less time you spend on routine tasks, the better off you are because there are fewer interruptions…(yeah, that’s what I said.)

Put those energies into the creation of the works.

***

You want a good cover, even if you do it on the cheap. Don’t let the cost deter you—learn how.

Once you’ve done a few, it rarely takes more than a few tries to sort it out, and you get an eye for the potential layout of a cover before buying an image.

That’s what my buddy said, and I think he was right. Now he’s telling me that lately my covers are better than his. (He might even be right, and I concede that so rarely with males these days.)

So the novella serial trilogy, (whatever,) has the first book for free. That sucks ‘em in. However, any promotion, even perpetual freebies, grows stale over time.

Ah, but now I’m up to ten or eleven products. Why not write something specifically to give away?

It doesn’t even have to be a 10,000-word story.

Throwing Chocolate is themed for Valentine’s Day. It’s less than 2,500 words.

And, I can give it away for two weeks, maybe a month, then set the price thereafter, and hey, presto!

I have another story up for sale, and oddly enough I might be able to give it away next year.

This is where the marketing goes into subtle levels. They all build on one another in terms of exposure, attracting new readers at minimal cost in time and money, creating simple awareness of the brand or author name. It builds sales overall and supports priced products that are presently out there.

Now, my buddy, who shall remain nameless, says all of this is cumulative.

The effects of all this builds up gradually over time and at some point it gathers its own momentum.

The more you write and publish, the better your chances of success, which he described as a graph, with a vector, traveling a set distance over time. The only thing sales can do he told me is to bend that vector.

It can go up or it can go down…

My plan is to make it go up.

It’s crazy enough, it just might work.

I love you all. 

I hope you'll take the time to check out and maybe download a copy of ‘Throwing Chocolate.’ 

Enjoy the story.

(Smooch.)

Bye, y’all.

End