Woot — finally got a theme that has a static home page with an integrated blog. I am a happy camper. So come here for all the latest news or whatever else is on my mind.
Bits and Pieces
Just a few bibs and bobs — first off, I’d like to say congratulations to Cathy in California, who is the winner of my Valentine Blog Hop giveaway. She’ll receive a $25 Amazon gift card and a print copy of Heart of Gold. If you’d still like a chance at a free copy of the book, go on over to Joanne Renaud’s blog and comment on my interview there before midnight, February 16. Also, I’m happy to say that Heart of Gold is now available in the iTunes store for immediate download to your favorite iThing.
On the writing front, I’m making great headway with the first draft of my Heart of Gold sequel/tie-in, Taming the Earl, thanks in no small part to the Pomodoro Technique. I tend to be the world’s worst procrastinator when it comes to getting my butt in the seat and actually writing, but I downloaded a Pomodoro app for my MacBook, and voilà! instant productivity. I urge all you procrastinators out there to give it a try. I have to say hearing that little ticking noise in the background just makes the words start flowing. At this rate I should be finished with my first draft in the next couple of weeks, which keeps me on track for a mid- to late March release.
That’s all for now…that little Pomodoro only gave me a 15-minute break!
The Bad Vibrations Magical Mystery Tour
Because I’m offering Bad Vibrations for free on February 12-13 (to celebrate my anniversary!), I thought it might be fun to create a sort of travelogue of the places mentioned in the book. I tend to be a very visual writer, so I have these images in my head as I’m writing (especially if I’m writing about places I’ve been or at least driven by). However, just because I know what they look like doesn’t mean you do — although if I’ve done my job right, you should at least have an impression — and that’s why I went out and found as many elements I could from the various settings in the books. So here they are, more or less in the order they appear in the book.
“El Churro” isn’t a real restaurant in West Hollywood — I made that up — but I did base it on the famous “El Cholo” here in Los Angeles. Things get pretty hopping in there, even on a weeknight, so you can see why Persephone and Ginger had a hard time even finding a place to stand.
Darn it…now I want a margarita!
Here’s the bar at the Sheraton Universal Hotel. Yes, it’s a real hotel, and that’s the real bar (two bars in a row…am I sensing a theme here?). One of the first science fiction conventions I ever attended was held at this hotel, back in 198-…mumble. Okay, I’m not going to name the date, but my friends and I dressed up as Pris, Rachel, and Zora from Blade Runner, so that should give you an idea. And no, I’ve never been to a UFO convention at this particular hotel, but I did go to one at the Hyatt in Irvine — purely in the name of research, I assure you.
The name is different, but this is the motel I had in mind for the place where Persephone and Paul hide out in Pomona. It’s right on Foothill Blvd., and there is indeed a Carrows less than a block down the street. I think I may even have eaten at it once or twice. Whether or not the motel is actually used as a party spot for local teenagers, I have no idea.
The café in Claremont where Persephone and Paul have breakfast. And yes, I’ve eaten here, too, but inside, as it was early December and approximately 55 degrees outside. Of course, there were still people sitting at the outside tables, as Southern Californians are generally nuts about exercising their right to eat al fresco even when the weather doesn’t oblige.
The inspiration for the “UFO Depot.” You didn’t think I made this stuff up, did you? (Okay, the alien conspiracy and the underground base at Secret Canyon and human/alien hybrid soldiers…maybe.) I do like to ground the craziness in some truth, though…it makes it a little more believable. They looked extremely closed and gone when we went to Sedona in November 2011, which saddens me. But maybe they were abducted? 
The approach to Secret Canyon. It does look rather dark and mysterious, as if it’s hiding something. We didn’t get this far in when we went to Sedona, as many of these roads are best accessed with a four-wheel drive, which we don’t have. However, the next time we go we’re thinking about renting a tomcar so we can zip around in some of the more isolated locations.
This is Oak Creek at Red Rock Crossing. The spot is a favorite with hikers, tourists, picnickers, and anyone who wants to get up and personal with the creek. You really can walk across the red rocks to get to the other side. That is — I was too chicken to do it, but my husband took off his shoes and rolled up his pants and went all the way across. Even with all the people around, there is something exceptionally soothing about the sound of the water and the rustle of the wind in the leaves. No wonder that Persephone had a sort of “breakthrough” while standing in this spot.
And now for something completely different… This is the lovely Fairmont Hotel in Santa Monica, or, to be more specific, one of the bungalows. I figured Paul and Persephone deserved some privacy in five-star surroundings after being drugged, tortured, and shot at by alien hybrid soldiers and rogue government agents.
Kara’s cozy living room, where the gang enjoyed pizza and beer after successfully routing the alien horde. I know I always want pizza after I’ve spent a day kicking alien butt. This living room is also featured in the sequel to Bad Vibrations…if I ever get around to writing the rest of it.
Just because… Sedona seriously is one of the most beautiful places on earth. How can you have anything but a happily ever after if you’re living in a place like this?
No Return…and Why I Decided to Repackage It
Before I go any further, No Return is free on February 4th, 2012. Go forth and download.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way, I thought I’d talk a little bit about the book and why it’s now a part of my catalogue, as it had actually been out and about on Lulu, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble for some time before that. When I wrote No Return, I had just come out of a major writing slump. Huge. We’re talking almost seven years where I hardly did any writing. Yes, you read that correctly — seven years. And the thing that brought me out of it (horrible as the movie turned out to be) was the film version of Phantom of the Opera. In poking around and trying to get advance information on the film, I found out about something I’d never heard of before: fanfiction. (Okay, so I’m a late bloomer.) More specifically, I discovered Phantom of the Opera fanfiction…and I got the idea for a contemporary retelling of the story.
I’m not going to go into the whole fanfiction debate here (you can look up my “fanfiction” tag if you want to see more thoughts on the subject). However, POTO is in the public domain. I honestly don’t see a huge difference between writing Phantom spinoffs and writing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, to be perfectly honest. No Return had a very good response from the POTO fanfic community, and then I got the idea of publishing it on Lulu, which was about the only game in town back then when it came to do-it-yourself print-on-demand publishing. Then Amazon’s KDP came along, and I digitized it and put it there, and also on B&N’s PubIt service. The whole time it sold steadily, not in huge numbers, but enough that I earned back my initial investment in the ISBN and other associated costs many times over.
Time moved along, and I was definitely out of my writing slump. In fact, I started writing in earnest, both fanfiction and original fiction. My contemporary romance, Fringe Benefits, was published by Pink Petal Books, and my next two books as well, before I made the decision to go indie. More followed. I was starting to build a decent backlist. But it always bothered me that No Return, which I’d published under a different name, couldn’t be connected with my other books. I asked for the opinions of other indie writers on the Kindleboards as to whether they thought it would be kosher for me to update and re-edit the book, give it a new cover, and then republish it with the Christine Pope name. Everyone thought that sounded like a great idea, so here we are.
In many ways, I think No Return is my most lushly romantic book, for a variety of reasons. Part of that is just the bones of the story itself — a man so completely obsessed with a woman that he’s willing to kidnap her in a mad attempt to make her fall in love with him. In real life, of course, this little scenario wouldn’t play out quite so nicely. But this is a fantasy, a trope that some people seem to really enjoy. Not everyone, of course, and I’m fine with that. There are lots of tropes out there that I’m not all that into (sports romances, anyone?). Coming back to it after I’d been working in other genres allowed me to tighten the writing a little bit, and smooth out a few of the bumps. The story is still basically the same, but I think people who’ve read the earlier version will find enough changed to make the experience new and fresh.
And hey, you can’t beat free. Go on and check it out for yourself.
Heart of Gold Is Now Available!
I am so happy to announce that my latest full-length novel, Heart of Gold, has now been released! This was my 2009 NaNoWriMo project (okay, some books take me longer than others to finish!), a steampunk/gaslight fantasy romance that was so much fun, I’m already working on the sequel! (All right, more of a tie-in than a sequel, because I firmly believe that all my books should stand on their own, although some are interconnected through various characters or through the world itself.) Here’s the description:
In a Victorian England not so different from our own, Lavinia Greene has been raised to be a proper young lady. When she receives a summons to Romania from her eccentric Uncle Malcolm, Lavinia finds herself drawn into a web of mayhem and murder as foreign agents attempt to seize her uncle’s latest invention. She flees for her life, accompanied by her uncle’s assistant, the diverting Joshua Jones, but when he fails to join her in England, she fears the worst has happened. However, she attempts to put the disastrous events in Romania behind her, even as she draws the attentions of the oh-so-eligible Earl of Langdon. As Lavinia finds solace in the earl’s arms, she begins to realize that the secret her uncle had been hiding affects not only her, but the entire world as well.
The book is currently available on Amazon and All Romance Ebooks, and should be up on B&N some time over the weekend. It’s also been uploaded to the iBooks store, but your guess is as good as mine as to when it will actually appear there. Last time it took two weeks. A print version is in the works, but that will take a little longer because of approving proofs, etc. I’ll post again when I have more news.
Valentine Blog Hop Starts Today!
It’s February 1st, and that means the Book Luvin Babes Valentine Blog Hop has officially started! The Hop runs from the 1st through the 14th, and there are lots of great prizes to be had. Go to the Valentine Blog Hop page on this site to get the details on the contest I’m running, and then check out the Book Luvin Babes Valentine Blog Hop page to find out what you need to do to be entered in the contest for the Grand Prize.
Breath of Life Now on iBooks…Finally!
After waiting almost two weeks for hate mail from Apple telling me that I don’t know how to format an .epub file, I just found out today that Breath of Life is now available in the iBooks store (and through iTunes). I can’t really provide a link, since you can only find it by searching within the app, but I swear it’s there. 
Of course, it would have been nice to have Apple inform me that it had been accepted (Amazon KDP always sends an email once a book is live on the site), but, based on how un-user-friendly the whole iTunes Connect platform is, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Don’t get me wrong — I am a serious Apple fangirl and have been from way back. My house contains an iMac, a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, an iPad, and an iPod Touch. What I’m trying to say is that we’re some major Apple consumers over here. However, Apple has a long way to go before it comes even close to the streamlined interface Amazon has for uploading books.
Then again, I’m engaged in a battle of the wills with Amazon (okay, a one-sided battle of wills, since their side mostly consists of ignoring my emails) because I’ve been trying for almost a week to get some data corrected in a book file I uploaded last week. Basically, I have a book I published years ago under a different name. I revised and updated it, gave it a new cover, and uploaded the new files, changing the information in the author information field at the same time. Well, the new book is there, and the new cover is there…but the Christine Pope name isn’t. Le sigh. So I’ve been emailing and emailing to get them to correct that, because I can’t use that book as a promotional tool (I enrolled it in KDP Select), and I can’t do much with it at all until it’s got “Christine Pope” on the cover. Double le sigh.
I just checked, and Mercury isn’t retrograde, so I can’t blame it on that. Anyway, as soon as I get that mess straightened out, I’ll post links and more info here. At the rate I’m going, that should be sometime next week.
Why My Love for Scrivener Is Neverending…
I think I’ve commented a time or two about how much I love Scrivener, and how much it’s helped me as a writer. I can keep better track of my files, and it’s lovely to have all the chapters and all the research for a particular project all in one neat little package so I don’t have to hunt all over my hard drive for the pertinent information.
What I just discovered, however, is that Scrivener 2.0 has this unbelievably helpful feature where you can compile a project directly into a .mobi or an .epub file. That’s right — if I’m doing something e-only, I don’t have to mess around with laying it out in InDesign to generate the .epub file (which I then would have to import into Calibre to convert it to .mobi). I don’t think I need to spell out how much time this is going to save me. In addition, I think the .mobi file Scrivener produces actually looks better than the ones I’ve been making in InDesign/Calibre. You can set the spacing, enter all your meta-data, add the cover, and do all sorts of really neat stuff.
This is really going to streamline my production process, especially since I’m probably going to produce fewer and fewer print versions of my books. I don’t sell all that many, and the royalty I get off them is paltry, since I refuse to make the cover price correspondingly high so I earn a royalty similar to what I get from the e-versions. And any time saved on the technical end just means more time for writing!
In fact, I put together a book of my short stories yesterday and already have it up on Amazon. True, you can find the stories in various places around the web, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have them all in one place, and I’m pricing the collection at just $1.99, which isn’t bad for almost 25,000 words. I just love the fact that in about an hour or so, I was able to format a novella-length book and test it on my Kindle app. This opens up all sorts of possibilities for me — and, I hope, for lots of indie authors who’ve been struggling with the formatting part of getting their books out there.
*Note: All this refers to the Mac version of Scrivener. I haven’t used the Windows version, but I’ve heard that, since it’s newer, it doesn’t have all the same bells and whistles. Still, it’s worth looking into. It’ll probably be the best $45 you’ll ever spend.
** And no, the people at Literature and Latte aren’t paying me to write this.
Scratching My Head Over Smashwords
So it’s been almost two weeks since my month of freebies over at Smashwords ended, and first off, let me just say wow! over how many free copies of my stories have been downloaded. In the past I’ve sort of brushed off Smashwords, mostly because I really dislike the fact that they won’t let you submit an .epub file to upload books, but instead have to use a Word document and their clunky meatgrinder. However, since almost everything I uploaded was a short story, the formatting wasn’t quite as much work as it would have been for a novel or a novella.
What I’m finding very interesting is that, although it was the last story uploaded (on December 30th, to be precise), my novella Welcome to Skullcrusher Mountain has outstripped every other thing I put up there, including “The Queen of Frost and Darkness,” which wasn’t even one of my December freebies and has actually been on the site since early November. I’m not sure if this is because there are a lot of Jonathan Coulton fans hanging out on Smashwords, or whether, when given the choice, people are going to download a longer work (the longest of my short stories is a little over 6,000 words, while Skullcrusher is almost 25K). Maybe it’s simply because it’s the only story up there that has anything remotely approaching a “clinch” cover — okay, they’re kissing, not lolling half-naked on a couch, but still.
I have no idea what to make of any of this, but I have to say that it’s interesting at least to see which items perform best, and which perform the least well. For example, my Snow White pastiche, “Hunter’s Heart,” has the lowest number of downloads on Smashwords. Is that because it’s the shortest story (barely 2,000 words), or because people aren’t interested in fairytale retellings? On the other hand, of my paid work Breath of Life sells the best, and that’s basically Beauty and the Beast set in space, so there goes my theory about fairytales.
If anyone has any theories about this, I’d love to hear them.
New Year, New Look
I thought I’d start out 2012 with a new design for the website. Not that there was anything wrong with the other one, but it did have a sort of science fiction vibe to it. Since my planned releases for 2012 are steampunk romance, historical mystery/romance, and fantasy romance, I decided to overhaul things a bit and go for a look that was a bit more in line with my upcoming offerings.
Of course, I’d be lying if I said this was all for purely thematic reasons. No, I have a weakness for messing around in Photoshop and tweaking my web design. I find something zen about it, same as with twiddling with book covers. It’s a very different creative process from writing a book, but it’s still engaging parts of my brain. (Although sometimes hacking my WordPress theme’s CSS gets a little too close to homework for my taste.) And I suppose it’s also a way to distract myself from immediately diving into editing the first draft of my steampunk romance, which I just finished but which needs to marinate at least a leetle while before I start looking at it again.
So for now we’re all sepia and dreamy and vintage-y around here, and I plan to keep it that way for awhile. We’ll see if I can stick to that resolution better than some of my other ones.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Final Freebie Friday – Skullcrusher Mountain
Wow, December flew by. As in, literally flew. It’s the 30th? Yikes! Anyway, the fifth and final Freebie Friday story is now posted at Smashwords. This is a novella-length piece inspired by Jonathan Coulton’s truly amazing song, “Skullcrusher Mountain.” If you haven’t heard it, click on this link and check it out (the images in the fanvid are awesome, but my own version features a much taller hero). I’ll wait while you do that. Okay, now that you’ve heard the song, go download my story. Thanks to everyone for all the downloads — more than a thousand have gone out this month!
