The Emerald Prince is 99 Cents on Amazon July 4th-July 6th

In a kingdom faced with civil war, an idealistic prince must abandon the foreign princess he desires for an arranged marriage to an influential knight. Together, the prince and knight travel north to deal with an army marching on the kingdom’s borders, only to discover the biggest threat to the crown is the princess they left behind.


Buy it now on Amazon

Evan was accustomed to getting what he wanted, when he wanted it. So, when he turned his sights to his best friend, Carlos, he expected the maid's son to fall in line and be his. Much to Evan's surprise, Carlos refused his offer.

Carlos had spent his life taking care of his best friend. So when Evan declared his "love", Carlos wasn't willing to service his friend in that way too. For them to have anything resembling a real relationship, Evan would have to be the one to bend. So, Carlos gave him a test to prove the seriousness of his feelings.

Maid for You is a 3000 word short story involving cross-dressing, power play and new love.

Get it on Amazon

And in other news, my story Frat House Rulez released today.

Desperate for a place to stay while attending school, Mark pledges a frat he knows little about. Soon after his arrival on campus he starts to notice strange things about the frat he's chosen to rush. When he realizes he's pledging a gay frat Mark must decide between dropping out and possibly having to leave school, or continuing on and enduring each sexy trial his Big Brothers can come up with.

All Romance | Smashwords | Amazon

The more I write, the more I learn about the business of selling books. I think what I enjoy most about self-publishing is experimenting. Figuring out what works and what doesn't. It's like piecing together a big puzzle. One of the things I attempted was to publish under a male pen name. I did this with the two books below and they took off. Record sales. Both books ended up in the top ten of Amazon's best sellers list for their genre.

I can't be sure if it was the name or the timing or some other factor. But I was worried what if the stories were just that good, then my real pen name would suffer from using the faux one. So I switched them over to this name and sales plummeted within days of the name change.

Like I said, nothing conclusive one way or the other because of other untested factors but I might try this experiment again in the future.  I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Justin Smith was small for his age and constantly bullied. But as difficult as life was, he was surviving it. Then one day a new guy comes to his school and flips his world upside down.

Francis Scott is trying to start over. New school. New house. New life. But when he sees a student being bullied, his past comes back to haunt him and for once, he gets to do what's right.


Amazon | Smashwords | All Romance

When a gay rights activist is assigned to the same dorm room as a devout Christian, he prepares for a year of hell, but much to his surprise, him and his new roommate have more in common than either of them could have imagined.


Amazon | Smashwords | All Romance

It's been exactly six months since someone told me "no matter what you do, don't self-publish" and being the contrary person I am--I did exactly that.

I've read through a zillion blogs. I've looked at success stories and horror stories. I've been told what I should do, and what I should never do. And now I'm going to add to that abundance of unsolicited advice by sharing what I've learned in these past six months.

• Be a cheap-ass.  Almost all the horror stories I've read about self-publishing start with someone spending thousands of dollars on their book. Um...bad idea is bad. Sometimes, I see blogs/sites suggesting this. Before I self-published my first book, I had no experience in self-publishing. A few of my stories had been published but I had no idea about the process. Those works vanished into the ether after I signed my contract. Why would I spend thousands of dollars on a business I have no experience in? If I decided to sell cookies, I'd bake some, package them, sell them to neighbors and slowly expand bringing in help as needed (my first employees would just happen to be blood relatives), and maybe even starting my own website. I would not take out a loan and buy a bakery on day one.
  
  When it comes to your first book, you need to be Scrooge McDuck. Make them pry every penny out of your cold dead hands. Demand to know why you should spend 300 dollars on a professional cover when you can't tell any difference between that and the 30 dollar pre-made covers you can find on several website. Work under the assumption you will never get back a single penny you spend. Then you won't pour money down from the sky like you're a baller making it rain.
  
  

• Publish short stories individually. We're used to seeing short stories published in collections. And we are used to hearing how no one reads short stories anymore. I strongly believe those two things are connected. I'm not going to pay 6.99 for a book that has one story in it that I'm interested in reading. However, I would pay 1.99 for just that story.
  
  Plus, the more "books" even super short ones, you have out there, the more attention you draw to yourself as a writer. Every book you publish is an advertisement for the rest of them. Just don't publish a novel one chapter at a time. People realizing the power of multiple works have started doing that and it just makes readers angry.
  
  
• Have someone that doesn't like you read it. Your mom and closest friends think it's great. It must be ready to publish, right? Wrong! Your mom will lie. Your friends will lie. Or even if they aren't lying, they are so impressed you wrote it that they can't give an impartial view.
  
  Do not put your stories out there until you've gotten some hard hitting advice from people who have absolutely no investment in your happiness. Because people that buy the book, they'll write reviews as if the author can't even read them. So put forward your best work or you will be burned alive in the court of public opinion.
  
  
• Keep writing. So you've published your first book. Great! Now write another one. I know it took you ten years to get it just right. But guess what? How many famous writers can you think of with a single book? Off the top of my head I can think of one. The woman that wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. Other than that, famous writers have books, not a book. So, stop trying to pimp your book and start working on the next one. Books sell each other. Way better than you or I could.
  
  
• Dream moderately. People often use the statistic that half of self-published authors make less than 500 a year. I heard that and thought, wait! That means half make over 500 a year! Woot! So if I work hard, spend wisely, and get lucky. I may just make a profit off my passion. Sweet!
  
  I think a lot of sadness and disappointment comes when people think they will upload a book and be famous a day later. It doesn't work like that. Most of the time, these things take years of hard work and good planning. But if you're willing to invest in yourself and your writing. In time, you may come to find yourself extremely pleased with the result. It's only been six months and I'm damn proud of how far I've come in this venture.
  

Time and time again I hear that people should avoid friending other writers on Twitter. That writers are basically useless friends for other writers. That when promoting a book, a writer should seek out readers. I never understood this reasoning because:

Writers are readers.

I have always been a reader, even when I hadn't written anything in years. Most of the writers I know not only read, but read hundreds of books a year.

I could understand if we were trying to sell waffle cones. Then that logic would make perfect sense. If I own my own waffle cone factory, then I don't really need anyone else's waffle cones. But who reads their own books for entertainment? Books are a case where suppliers and consumers overlap.

But that's not the only reason it's great to have writer friends. When you are stuck or going insane or feel unmotivated, your writer friends understand the exact hill you're trying to climb because they've had to climb it too.

They are founts of valuable information. Just reading my friends' blogs about what has worked for them and what doesn't work for them gives me all kinds of ideas about writing, marketing, etc. And most importantly...

Writers aren't in competition with each other. No one reads just one book. That means there is no reason that writers can't work together to promote each others' books. When I read a book I like I scream it from the rooftops. Why? Because if I enjoy a book, then people that like my writing will probably like the books I enjoy. That way people get extra value for listening to me blather on.  I help them find things they like. And that makes me feel all warm inside.

So go hug a writer today.

Since my renewed interest in writing, I've come to realize that not every company that calls itself a "publisher" is what we imagine when we hear the word. While in some minds the word "publisher" is synonymous with the big six, anyone can call themselves a publisher. Even me.

Blue Kitty Publishing -- there now I'm a publisher, got a company name and everything. If you aren't jumping to mail me your manuscript, then read on. If you are, read on with attention and care...

There are three kinds of groups that call themselves publishers. The most dangerous of these groups are often referred to as "Vanity Publishers". These are companies whose goal isn't to sell books to the public, but instead to sell writers their own books. They are the lowest of the low, getting rich off the broken dreams of hopeful writers. Sometimes places you submit to will sell your information to these predators who will contact you making it seem like they are offering you a book contract, when really they only want to swindle you out of thousands of dollars.

Ways to Spot Vanity Publishers

• They contact you instead of the other way around
• They call over and over like bill collectors (The call center employees' job is to sell you copies of your own book. They have high sales quotas and are desperate to keep their job)
• Their website is geared towards writers and not readers
  
• They ask for money in exchange for print, marketing, proofread and editing services (some even promise to pay it back if you sell a certain number of books, they end up with your savings and you end up with a thousand copies of your poorly edited dreams)
  

The next group of publishers, I don't think have a commonly used name because they blend in with indie publishers. But for the sake of clarity I'll call them amateur publishers. Amateur publishers are everyday people like you and me, who have discovered self-publishing. And they decide wouldn't it be neato to run a publishing company. Their mom can do the editing, her BA was in English Lit. Their cousin Vinnie can draw, he can do the bookcovers. As for marketing, well, they have a Twitter account...

Amateur publishers aren't inherently bad or ill-willed. They aren't trying to jack you out of your money. They simply have about as much experience selling books as you do. Maybe a few months more. There is nothing wrong with using an amateur publisher, maybe their mom proofreads better than your mom, and their cousin makes nicer covers than any of your relatives. And if only six copies of the book sells because no one has heard of it, does it matter that the 18 bucks profit is being split down the middle? Just realize that this is pretty much the same as self-publishing, but someone else is uploading it to Amazon.

When you get published by an amateur, please don't brag about it in your queries to agents and traditional publishers, it makes you look like a n00b.

Ways to Spot Amateur Publishers

• Their webpage has "wordpress" or "blogger" in the URL
• Books? There isn't a single book on their webpage (because they haven't published any)
• Contracts? Who really needs those? (Or more accurately, who knows what they are for or where to get them)
• Marketing plan? We'll give copies of the book away for free using Amazon's KDP Select. That counts as a marketing plan, right?

The last group are the people we are really imagining when we say "publisher". People with years of experience, with staff that are paid salaries and don't stalk writers. The people who can send your books to reviewers and actually get a response back.

Ways to Spot Traditional Publishers

• They plan on selling your book to someone other than you
• They have contracts that clearly spell out your rights and responsibilities
• They offer an advance (gasp! money for the writer?!?! No way!)
• They have tons of books that are selling well (because it's what they do)
• They have marketing plans that will cost them money!
• When they accept your manuscript the attitude is that they are going to make an investment in you and your work and they expect for it to pay off

What people seem to have forgotten lately is the reason we hold publishers in such high regard wasn't because they were the gatekeepers of quality (they never were). It's because they were the people with the money. And as writers we were begging for that money like Oliver Twist holding out his empty bowl. So, of course they got to treat us like the broke orphans we were.

Before ebooks, being published meant that thousands upon thousands of dollars had to be invested in the writer to print his/her books and to bribe stores to sell them, then to convince readers to buy them. As writers we were asking for something. That's what gave the word "publisher" it's power.

But if the person calling themselves a publisher isn't offering what publishers used to offer, don't be so quick to bend your neck. There are options now. Amazon and Smashwords have offered to be our foster parents. We might not be eating fine cuisine, but we aren't going hungry anymore.

When it comes to your work, act like a diva. "What can you, do for me?" And if the answer is "nothing." Take your book and keep steppin'.*


*if the answer is "we can get you into Oprah's Book Club", pull out your rag and start spit shining those boots

I haven't spent much of my adult life thinking about reviews (thank goodness). The first time I ever really thought about reviews was when I was linked to a post about a man that made his living selling reviews. My response?

A thousand dollars for reviews? People will buy just about anything, won't they?

I couldn't fathom why someone would spend even a dollar, let alone a thousand dollars for someone else to review their work. Don't these people have mothers?

But of course, at the time, everything I had published was paid for with a flat fee. I had no investment on how the anthologies did because I had already gotten every penny I'd ever see from the story (at least for the next few years).

Then I took my first step into self-publishing and my eyes were opened. Learned all kinds of new things like Amazon's fancy pancy algorithms for which books show up first in searches. And I also learned the most important lesson regarding reviews.

Most of the time, people don't write reviews.

I don't know why this didn't occur to me. I mean I'd had an Amazon account for years, and I'd written maybe two reviews over a 10 year period. Why wouldn't I expect others to think and behave the same way I do?

So after my first promo, after I'd given away hundreds upon hundreds of books, I sat back and waited for my first reviews. And waited...and waited...

Were they not reading the book? No, my webpage was linked at the last page and my traffic soared. If they hadn't read it why would they go to my webpage?

Did they hate it and not want to say anything bad? No, people sent me fan mail. Bought the other books I had written. Gave ratings on Goodreads. But Amazon reviews weren't happening.

Then I remembered back to so long ago, when I wondered why someone would pay for a review and thought..."Oh...".

So what do you do when it looks like no one is reading your book? Hit up your friends and family for reviews. Let me tell you now, it's worse than begging for money. Can't do it. Mom raised me with too much pride. So really, this is all her fault. Wait! Mom!

Mom raves about my books (cept the one with torture, she had to put that one down). Surely, she'd transfer her love for her daughter and everything she creates into wonderful, adoring praise. Right?

To this day my mom has never reviewed a single one of my books. But she did do a review for Kresley Cole's book, where she gave it one star, ranted about how she hated it, and wanted to post the link to my books if people wanted to read something good instead.

"No, mommy. No!"

This is the part where I'm supposed to offer the solution that solves all your problems. Uh...I'm not that kind of blogger. Sorry.

Honestly, I'm still on the quest that leads to fair, honest reviews raining down upon me. When I figure it out. I promise to let you know.

But at the moment reviews are low on my list. There are only so many hours in a day, and I like to put most of it towards creating the best fiction I can (and fiddling with my blog layout).

Free on Amazon - May 1st and 2nd.

Four stories. One romance. Over the span of a decade, four people find each other and realize that together they make a family.

Jack of Hearts
When a young playboy starts to look at his best friend in a different light, will he risk a lifelong friendship for a chance at something more?

King of Clubs
An anti-social recluse meets a man that makes him feel alive, but he can't figure out why his new lover won't stay the night.

Queen of Spades
When an ice-cold corporate exec meets a man finds herself competing with a new coworker, she makes it her mission to destroy him...if only she could stop sleeping with him.

Ace of Diamonds
A hot shot broker meets the woman of his dreams, he'd happily make a life with her, if only her two boyfriends weren't in the way.