This January has been a unique kind of busy, and I have my fingers crossed that February might be a little more sane 🤞 But hey, it’s keeping me out of trouble 😉

As you remember with the change of Blood Sine Qua Non to Blood Demands, changing a book’s title is one of the Dantean levels of hell. But I am delighted to announce that Blood Eternal (formerly Blood Ad Infinitum) is now available at Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Eternal-Belasco/dp/1960942158/

(Ingram is, of course, being a problem, but that’s just honestly not a surprise anymore 🙄)

I desperately need reviews, because I cannot move reviews over from the old Blood Ad Infinitum page. So if you have read the book under the old title, or if you’re finally sagging a copy of the book now, please take a moment to leave a review. I’ve talked in previous emails about how vital this is for indie authors. Amazon treats books differently the more reviews it gets. A few minutes from your day is really the difference between a book selling or not selling for us 🙏

Here is an ad. I’m still excited about the fact that people want to run ads in my newsletter! Remember, I get paid if you just click on it, so if you have a moment, please just click. “Every little helps!”

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Raven to give talk at Emerson College on Friday

I already have butterflies in my tummy 🦋🦋🦋 This Friday I’ll be giving the presentation about being an indie author (along with the amazing Cecila Tan) at Emerson College. I will be getting video, so expect to see some clips of how it goes. Here is a graphic I made for it to illustrate the point of how people give indie authors advice like, “Oh, just get an audiobook made” (or “just do a podcast” is a common piece of advice) It’s super easy to give advice like that but it should never just be one line item on an author’s “To Do List.”

I honestly left a few steps off because I ran out of room…

The Terror

I just finished binging the amazing AMC show The Terror. I started watching on a whim, and then was like, why is this thing SO DAMN GOOD? Once I looked it up all became clear: it’s based on a Dan Simmons novel (that I now must read) and includes Ridley Scott among its executive producers. This first season is like a Patrick O’Brian novel smashed into the Predator franchise film Prey, and it’s about as perfect as television can get: amazing actors all giving it their best, amazing costuming and sets, and the FX is stupendous. Don’t miss this!

Thank you to everyone who got to the end of the newsletter: you fucking ROCK 🤘and I appreciate you! Until next time, BE GOOD OR BE GOOD AT IT! 😘

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

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SHOP EBOOKS, PAPERBACK, & AUDIOBOOKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

As those of you who were around for the title change on Book II (Blood Sine Qua Non ➡️ Blood Demands) will remember, changing a book title is a ridiculous process (and one I hope to never experience again after this!)

At least going through it the second time is a bit less overwhelming because I know what nonsense to expect. But please, all of you, cross your fingers for this one to go more smoothly than Blood Demands on the Ingram level.

Last time, Ingram messed up my name on their listing, as just “belasco.” I found it pretty quickly, and submitted that they change how the name was inputted, and after the usual thing where Ingram ignores your customer service request for a few weeks they finally did so. At the time of sending this email it is still not repaired, and so people who are looking for Blood Demands in non-Amazon places like B&N still can’t find it. Bookstores tell me “Ingram needs to fix it on their end,” and Ingram tells me, “It’s been fixed—bookstores need to update their systems” and rinse and repeat, with the problem never getting resolved.

So everyone, please cross your fingers for me that this time Ingram does not mess up the new book listing! 🤞🤞🤞

 In Conversation with Paulette Kennedy

If you remember the last newsletter, I was having a conversation about vampires with the brilliant author Paulette Kennedy. Well, it rocked even harder than I anticipated, and happily if you didn’t catch it live, it’s available for replay! It runs about an hour, so perfect for your drive or for playing while you do laundry or the dishes—or while settled into a luxurious hot bath.

Instagram post by @pkennedywrites

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Follow me to friendlier skies 🦋

Unless you’ve been living under a very nice rock and ignoring all the news (which is a valid lifestyle option!) you’ll be aware that Meta has been and continues to be up to some shady, shady shit.

I am less and less enjoying spending time on Facebook (wading through ads and random other account’s posts to get to my friend’s posts is not my idea of a good time, nevermind how toxic the site is becoming) and Instagram is now just a work place for me. I can’t look at any content except “bookish” content, because it messes up the algorithm that determines who sees my posts, so even my scrolling through the app must be optimized for sales. If I pause too long over an adorable corgi skateboarding, there goes my carefully curated blah blah blah.

Bluesky has become the place where I really have fun. I was a pretty early adopter, but I didn’t really click with the place at first. Now, I count on it for some fun moments in my day. If you have a bsky account, give me a follow so I can share those happy moments with you!

https://bsky.app/profile/ravenbelasco.bsky.social

Villaintine’s Day 2025 Update

For those of you who’ve been around for over a year, you’ll remember the Villaintine’s Day madness from last year. For those who are new, basically, I make Valentine’s Day cards for you featuring one of the villains from the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series, and you get to choose which you like best.

Here was the selection from last year:

“If evil, then why hot?”

“The things I’ll do to your ❤️, Valentine”

“Hey girl, I put the BIG in Big Bad”

This year will feature a surprise Baddie, from the upcoming still-untitled “lesbian pirate vampires” story, and she will be showing up in the fourth book in the series as well! So something to seriously look forward to in February!

 WIP update

If it seems like I spend all my time trying to learn marketing and doing the business stuff for the books, well, yeah, there is too much of that in my life. However, that doesn’t mean that writing isn’t happening (just not as fast as any of us would like.) Here’s the current status for all works-in-progress:

• Blood Eternal — at Ingram, going through their system for as many weeks as that takes. Once Ingram announces it published, I can do the same over at Amazon. (There is an order, and it Must Be Done In That Order.) And then it will be available to buy!

• Bela Lugosi’s Dead (short story) — with sensitivity editor

• “lesbian pirate vampires” story — with reviewer before final revision (and I still need a damn title!) Cover reveal coming soon!

• Book IV — to be resumed in March. Most research done and/or research materials acquired, so the story can just take off smoothly from the research runway and fly in the (hopefully) friendly skies of “pure imagination”

OK, this is shorter newsletter, because my every day this month has too many things for me to do in it. So I’m off to do those things, which will hopefully lead to me getting stories out in February…!

Looking at the analytics from previous newsletters, nobody is clicking on the music rec links, so I’m going to stop wasting time on that section. If this distresses you, hit reply to this email and tell me you want me to keep doing the music recs.

For those of you who have read to this point, I appreciate you! 😍 Until the next newsletter: be good or be good at it!

💭 I’d love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: drop me a note 📨

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SHOP EBOOKS, PAPERBACK, & AUDIOBOOKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Ad Infinitum

First off, I have to just say thank you to everyone who was so incredibly supportive in rushing off to sign up for this newsletter. You are all amazing and deeply appreciated. ? Writers really need support of the kind you’ve just gifted me. We really need to know someone is reading our words, whether it’s the books or a newsletter like this, because that gives us the ability to keep writing when the words aren’t flowing, or other stressors are competing for brain space.

I have been told for ages “You must have a newsletter!” But honestly, I only read a couple people’s newsletters (Chaz Brenchly and Warren Ellis —oh, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and I wasn’t convinced that most people have the time in their day for such things.

Indeed, I think the only reason I am finally getting around to doing this is simply because I miss LiveJournal (yeah, I’m old as the dinosaurs ?), and I’m kinda seeing this newsletter as my place to talk about the experiences of being an indie-published writer, in a way that Facebook never really has been. I’ll finally have a space to talk about how complicated and challenging it’s all been (as well as exciting and thrilling) with people who actually want to hear about it.

My plan for these newsletters is to have them be a mix of “What’s Raven Working On Now?” and “Where Can You Buy Raven’s New Thing?” (everyday I’m hustlin’ hustlin’) and then just me rambling on about my life, both as an author-trying-to-make-it, and just life in general. I think if I strike that balance right, these newsletters will be fun and rewarding for me to write, and for you to read, and I won’t just be shouting tedious self-promotion into a void.

We are getting closer to The Big Announcement, but I keep finding fiddling little details that need to get sorted out first. I hope this is resulting in a frisson of anticipatory delight for you all, and is not just completely annoying! Anyway, I keep having to tell various people about various things, so I’m not even sure it will be a surprise to anyone by the day of The Big Reveal. ?

The newsletters are going to be really stuffed with news for some time to come, after that, since I will finally be able to TALK ABOUT STUFF, which I’ve been desperately wanting to do for ages.

That New Orleans writer’s retreat

There was no formal event, I just really needed some space to focus on the next story in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series for a while. This is not Book IV, but a third novella in the series, and tells the story of Dubhghall and Wulfhram, whom you met in passing in Blood Ex Libris.

The downside of the “travel to go write somewhere” is that my chronic illness is not just something I can ignore when I feel like it. (If I could—!) So I lost the first three days of being down in N’awlins to an incapacitating migraine. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t do tourist stuff, just lie in a strange bed and be miserable that I’d been so foolish as to think my illness would let me have nice things.

But, as you probably saw from the socials, I eventually managed to shake that off, and the writing—and eating!—could commence. It was so wonderful to just be able to sit and write without anything else impinging on my thoughts or interrupting my flow.

Once the story starts rolling, I really need to be able to let it out onto the page, without interruption. In that way, the fact that I needed to crank out Blood Sine Qua Non and Blood Ad Infinitum on such tight deadlines is really what got me through the first two years of the Pandemic; I was kinda in the same universe as everyone else, but really I was escaping via the act of writing. Anyway, all the jokes about basement-dwelling misanthropic writers were basically true about me for all that time—our noble co-author was pretty much the only reason I ever saw the outdoors, because he demanded his walkies, dammit! ?

As I was giving Cairngorm his morning walkies today, however, a whole new aspect to the story unfolded in my head. Which would be great, except that I’d been planning on this being a roughly 10,000 word novella, and now we’ll be lucky if I manage to keep under 40,000. Which is going to throw off all my planning for everything else in my life. (Except dog walks, obvs!)

It’s the Bag Guy, again. ? If you’ll remember, in BSQN, Orélie-Antoine de Tounens (the “Self-Anointed”) wrote himself into the book when I already had one perfectly evil Baddie, which made me have to scramble and rework the whole second half of the book right when I was supposed to be tying everything up. Similar deal here. I basically have no control over these characters, they are just doing what they like and I have to try and keep up. ?

Signing off for now

OK, I’m going to go work on a thousand things, in hopes that if I get enough of them done, the next newsletter will be The Big Announcement. Have a great week, and thank you, thank you for supporting my writing! ???

Well. So it’s been a month since I sent the first newsletter out, and I intended to be doing this at least twice a month! But I assure you that I have an excellent excuse ?

I was hoping that the next newsletter would be The Big Announcement. But every time I get to an item on the to-do list, that item turns out to be comprised of 5-20 subitems, some of which are either quite complex, or just complicated because it’s my first time doing these things, and everything has to be set up or just figured out.

So I’m going crazy wanting to get this Big Announcement done, but I am committed to doing it at The Right Time, which means after I finish all the items on that list. So, I’m afraid that we shall all have to be content with a newsletter which does not yet have Big! Exciting! Thrilling! News!

In the interim, let me babble about Creole and Cajun food. As you know from the last newsletter, I spent ten wonderful days in New Orleans last month. I had planned to eat my way through all the classic dishes down there … but most of the places who made gumbo and other dishes guaranteed gluten free (which I need if I don’t want to experience debilitating migraines) were generally to be found in the French Quarter, and the whole place was so crawling with tourists, that after one adventure there to get Calas (rice fritters like beignets) I decided I basically wanted to go to any part of the city that wasn’t the French Quarter. Which I did, and had some amazing meals. But they were not those classic N’awlins dishes.

(Here’s a really cool article on how Calas helped some slaves to become free )

So the minute I got home, I started menu planning. The first dish I planned on was Jambalaya. And then I found out how different the Creole and Cajun versions were, so I had to make first one and then the other. Results are on my Instagram 

This week it was Gumbo. Which I had made before, but without quite as much research into the filé/okra/roux debate. My partner doesn’t like okra, so I settled on doing filé gumbo, and making oven-fried okra on the side, so I didn’t feel like I was missing an opportunity to put okra in my mouth ?

It was perfect—the spot was hit. AND, I learned about “seasoning ham”

Instagram Shenanigans

So, some of you may have noticed that I created a new Instagram account in the past month. There is a story behind it.

When I set up my author Instagram account it was very early in my getting published, and I was calling my vampire series, “Sex & Blood & Ancient Scrolls”, which was a pun on the seminal Ian Dury song, “Sex & Drugs and Rock & Roll” and I was very proud of myself for how perfect the pun was ?

But as I went to do my very first post about the first book in the series, I careful wrote up my text, and put the title of the series—of which I was so proud—in that text.

I went to post it, and Insta came up with a warning, that I was using an unacceptable word in my post.

That word was “sex.” Yes, really. It may be a perfectly acceptable word in the English language—in the dictionary and all!—but I couldn’t use it in a post, even though it was simply in the name of my book series.

I couldn’t believe it. And I certainly didn’t accept that one could discuss the film “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” or the song I was referencing, but I couldn’t post the amusing name of my book series. “This is ridiculous,” I thought, and I posted it because I figured if I had any trouble I could just explain the situation to someone and get it sorted out.

So, yes, I brought it on myself. It was, honestly, because I couldn’t believe they were serious; that I was going to be censored like that. I wasn’t swearing, or using violent language, or using derogatory terms. I was being told I couldn’t use a word that has a whole section of your science class devoted to it when you’re in fifth grade.

When I went ahead and used it, I was told I could not do any advertising on Instagram. “Whatever,” I thought, “I will just do normal posts, I don’t even want to pay Instagram money, I’m just trying to build a natural following.”

However, no matter how I used the right keywords and hashtags and followed the latest advice, I mostly got about 60 likes on my posts, when similar accounts were getting over 200, even 1000 likes every day. Following best practices, my account never grew.

That penalty was not just disallowing advertising, my account was being treated differently.

So I tried to get a review. I explained the situation, and further explained that I had very much learned my lesson, and I would be the most well-behaved Meta user henceforth, with every post since that first one as an example of my reformed character. I had even removed the “Sex &” from the title of the series, and it’s been just “Blood & Ancient Scrolls” ever since.

For years, Instagram just let my requests sit in a queue, unread. Finally, a few weeks ago, I submitted my request again … and in their infinite wisdom, they decided that I was indeed a nasty character, accused me of having repeated offensive posts (Huh? I always followed the rules perfectly after that first mistake!) and they pronounced the “decision is final.” Judge, jury, and executioner.

I made one beginner’s mistake, followed by four years of following the rules perfectly. But regardless of that, my Insta account was now tarred with this crazy brush, and I cannot use it to market my perfectly reasonable vampire series, which has a lot less objectionable material than many books I’ve read. (There was one paranormal romance I checked out from the library in all innocence, which had a threesome between a vampire, witch, and a werewolf … and let’s just say that the wolf didn’t stay “were” the whole time…! I can’t say I was shocked, but I was quite surprised! ?)

I had to build a new account from scratch, which is a super great use of time for a chronically ill person who is already desperately trying to keep up with everything that an author needs to do to try an succeed in a very difficult industry.

Everything seemed to be going really well with the new account, so I checked my Facebook account, and there was no penalty associated to that account; Facebook was perfect content to take my money for advertising. So I linked the new Instagram account to the Facebook account (to make posting to both easier) … and BOOM, the new account now had all the penalties of the old Insta account immediately applied to it, even though I have not done anything wrong in the few weeks I’ve had that account open.

So now I have to do all sorts of complicated gymnastics to try and get this sorted out. I have spoken to some people who have more experience with such things, and there is a plan on what to try next, although it’s not certain how things will work out. I may have to create a whole ‘nother Instagram account in the future. I wish I could just tell the whole platform to fuck off, but sadly, “Bookstagram” can really build an author’s audience, so for now it’s actually a problem I have to solve. I will keep you updated with my woes (or, possibly, with a success story…but don’t hold your breath!)

I’ll try to get the next newsletter out to you in two weeks, but until the next newsletter hits your inbox, stay well, and be good … or be good at it! ?

So I know that I said that these newsletters would A.) be bimonthly and B.) generally go out on Wednesday, but the fact that I couldn’t talk about so much stuff was making it hard for me to do the newsletter in the past month since the last one went out … but this reason this one goes out on a Friday is because TODAY IS THE BIG DAY for one of my BIG ANNOUNCEMENTS!

So, AT LONG LAST, here goes Announcement The First!

In early September 2001, the news I was hearing about the Supreme Court potentially overturning Roe v. Wade was freaking me out. (With good reason, we’ve since all discovered ?) I wanted to send lots of money to help the various causes and institutions that were trying to help women directly impacted, and protect the rights of all women. But I did not have the kind of money I wanted to donate.

But I did have some skills. And passion to spare. So, in the coming years, I reached out to authors asking for them to donate stories to an anthology. As that moved along, I reached out to publishers, to help me make this vision into reality. After landing with the  highly-respected Aqueduct Press, I could breathe a little easier, but there was still so much to do to ensure this project would make it to Actually Being A Thing In The World. (Which would be tedious to list, so I won’t, but let’s just say I truly stretched my previously assumed limits along the way.) Today we sent out the Press Release so I can FINALLY TALK ABOUT IT.

Here’s the blurb, which sums it up best:

Here’s the list of amazing authors who came in on this project with me: Kathleen Alcalá, Elizabeth Bear, Raven Belasco, Tara Campbell, Anya De Niro, Jaymee Goh, Cynthia Gralla, K Ibura, Ellen Klages, Annalee Newitz, Nisi Shawl, Cecilia Tan, Sonya Taaffe, Helena María Viramontes, and an introduction by international social justice activist Maggie Mayhem.

(See, I told you it was an amazing list ?)

And here’s the equally amazing cover, by brilliant artist Jenifer Prince

And here’s the Instagram, so you can keep up with all the news: https://www.instagram.com/adventuresinautonomy/

Of course, that’s not the only thing I’ve been doing with my time. I can’t actually talk directly about the other project YET, but I can talk about how it’s impacting my life, so it needs a codename. Because codenames are cool. Let’s call it Project Phoenix. You’ll see why that’s so meaningful as soon as I can move things along to the Announcement Day….

But at least today we get one Announcement Day. And it’s a pretty good one. I’m so proud of this baby, this absolute labor of love. Of course, now that it’s announced in the world, we hit a new stage of things, which is me marketing and promoting the hell out of this thing, so that we can raise as much money as possible for NARAL.

So. If you would like to review the book, please let me know. Even just on Amazon, you’d be amazed how much those little reviews matter. And, if you know someone who reviews books on a more professional level and might like to review this anthology, please get in touch. The most important thing right now is Getting The Word Out There, and I’ll take all the help I can get.

Of course, as soon as the pre-order link goes up, you, my adored newsletter readers, will be the first to know!

Shooting Things

If you follow my author Instagram you’ll know I’ve finally been granted good enough health to take up archery. I’m getting out to the “butt” (teehee?) set up at the end of the back garden. It’s very much swampland back there, so I do my practicing in wellies. And when I went out on Monday, the mosquitoes let me know it was now Their Time, so I will be trialing a lot of different bug sprays, this spring-summer-fall. But I am absolutely aware how lucky I am to have space to practice in, and I do not take it for granted.

Getting out there for practice always makes me feel so good. Well, emotionally. Physically, I am definitely dealing with building up muscle I lost during the periods where my spine was so bad I was basically bed-bound for a while. So that feels like you’d expect. But it’s totally worth it, because archery is totally a joy to me.

Yes, of course, bows and arrows will show up in future am’r stories. It obviously won’t stop an angry am’r altogether, but if your aim is good, you might slow them down in a beneficial way…. ?

In the meantime, when life hits me with frustrations, I can go out back and take aim at whatever the problem is with some arrows. Imaginary targets are reasonably satisfying, when you get a good grouping. ?

I’ll try to get the next newsletter out to you in two weeks, but until the next newsletter hits your inbox, stay well, and be good … or be good at it! ?

THIS is the announcement I’ve been waiting to make to the world. It goes out to you FIRST, loyal and (mostly) uncomplaining newsletter readers.

All three of the books in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series are being republished, with AMAZING new covers by Kwasi Amankwah (Kwasi81). Here’s the shiny new cover for Blood Ex Libris

And, since I know people will be demanding it, HERE IS THE PRESALE EBOOK LINK. Next week I’ll be getting out the presale link for print books! Publication date is SEPTEMBER 19th!

I will be talking unceasingly in newsletters to come about the challenges of starting up your own company to self-publish your books (and if people want to know why I decided on that direction, it’s a long story but I can share that as well), but first I wanted to talk about the final stage I’ve been in before I could make this announcement. (Which, SQUEEE, I’m finally making!)

This time, I can do things right.

I had caught Covid coming home from vacation, but my first thing I had to do upon returning home was the task of reading the proof of BXL with a very hard edit. Scheduling-wise, it couldn’t wait. So with both the virus and the Paxlovid buzzing through my system, I jumped in, a feverish experience in every way.

At first, I was just so focused on catching typos and ignoring symptoms that I didn’t really take in the profoundly meaningful moment I was in. But, reading some lines I first wrote about a decade ago, now, suddenly it all hit me.

These words came out of me pretty much the way you see them now. Lots of the book has been reworked, cut and rewritten, and some sentences have had the same punctuation moved around so many times as to redefine either “obsessive-compulsive” or “tragic-comic” or both. But I remember the first time I wrote those lines, sitting on the sofa in my apartment in San Francisco, my marriage falling apart but me being years from being able to admit or do anything about it, and my now elderly dog still a high-energy, disruptive puppy. I remember those words just flowing out of me, and that moments like those gave me hope that this crazy idea I was having that I could finish a novel and then perhaps get it published was not actually delusional.

(I had no concept about the fact that writing a good novel was very different from getting an agent or publisher to recognize it as such. All those lessons were to come after typing “the end.”)

After that moment of place (“Oh! That’s where I have been. Here is where I am now. Time is so very surreal.”) the rest of the editing had more profound moments for me. I had seen this as “just an edit that needs to be done,” but this final edit became so much more than that.

I had really wanted to get a good proofread before printing up the Advance Review Copies/proof. That didn’t work out, and I was pretty horrified (being my perfectionistic self) at how much stuff that needed work still existed in the document, in a book which had already been in print. (Albeit always with more typos than I was comfortable with.)

The reason for the amount of “unfinishedness” was because, after I got the rights back from the first publisher, I finally got a Turkish/Arabic sensitivity edit which should have been done before the book saw print. Before I got published, though, I always said to myself, “Oh, there is plenty of time, and you need to focus on just getting published.” And finding potential agents and publishers, jumping through the flaming hoops of their submission requirements, and then rinsing and repeating for years certainly was exhausting and completely burnt through focus and energy. When I finally did find the publisher, though, suddenly things were moving fast, and it was too late for me to get that sensitivity edit, and then BOOM the book was out in the world, which is what I had been fighting for, for so long.

And always in the back of my mind was the regret that I hadn’t managed to get the sensitivity edit done. I hadn’t realized there were services for such things (all the other expert reviews of my book, the biologist and the archivist, the Romanian reader for language and history, those had all been friends willing to share their time and expertise with me) and honestly, it would have been very hard to afford it, at that time.

But when I got my rights back, I was finally all set up for such things (my writing now being an actual business), and I was more than ready for this to finally happen. I found a perfect editor (specializing in the Turkish and Arabic languages and history and religious philosophies!) through a service, and sent over the manuscript, fingers crossed I hadn’t fucked up too egregiously, all this time.

She found … more than I’d hoped. For example, one section of the story had Noosh spending time in the hammam with the female “jinn,” getting to know the world of her enemies through a very female lens. I had written it with the intent to be supportive of women who cover, giving Noosh a more nuanced and complex and conflicting view, so that the “bad guys” were more than just “bad guys.”

But. But. It never occurred to me that putting Noosh into the hammam (which I did because the am’r are all very fastidious about regular bathing) and also having her see that the women were wearing colorful lingerie under their outer modest garments (I’d seen a special on how Arabic women are very individualistic and chose to express themselves in the clothing choices most people never see, and I wanted to work that into the story) could be perceived as me embracing the stereotype that Middle Eastern women are “exotic,” and all the Orientalist male fantasies that go along with that ?

That one hit like a kick to the stomach. I’d thought I’d done such a great job showing how multilayered and complex these characters were … and in the end I’d accidentally turned it into the most stereotyped trope.

Once I’d overcome the hit to my self-esteem, it actually took very little rewriting to sort it out, but it was a very important lesson, which I hope has made me a better writer, in that regard.

In other regards, I am already a vastly better writer. Going through BXL line by line made that clear. There were so many sentences that it was so easy to tighten up, to tweak to a much better way of expressing the thought. It was a profound relief to get the opportunity to take what I’ve learned writing all the am’r stories since and lavish it upon the first book. I love BXL. But after writing Blood Ad Infinitum, I was painfully aware how I’ve grown as a writer. Being able to go back and take what I’ve learned and give a kind of “spa day” to my first novel, the one that went through the fire with me, was a true gift.

I hope Blood Ex Libris, Version X with Upgrades, is as improved as I think it is. I hope you all love it even more than the first. (And that you think it’s worth paying for the second version, if you already own the first!) I hope it makes it even easier for you to slip into Noosh’s journey from bored, underchallenged small-town librarian toward the am’r-ass-kickin’, globe-trottin’, take-no-shit archivist she will become. I hope the flow of my writing now just floats you along, or crashes you through rapids, or otherwise utterly subsumes you until you come out the other end of the story.

Thank you all for coming along with me on MY journey, as well. As a perfectionist, I would really rather no one see my art until it is in a shiny, glorious final state. It’s kinda possible to do that with my photography—I can just work and rework images in Photoshop until I decide they are DONE. But, I have learned, I simply do not get to have that with writing. Various layers of editors and reviewers need to catch my errors. Fans want to see works in progress. Advance Review Copies must be sent out. Writing demands I not just share my soul (that’s OK, I’m an artist, I gotta do that anyway), but also my imperfections (still NOT OK. This will always be a painful challenge for me.) So thank you all for making it clear that you like my writing even when it has not be polished to its most perfect high-gloss, that I can get things a bit wrong and still have space to evolve them and myself. It is deeply valued and appreciated.

If you are still reading at this point, here is the link again for pre-ordering Blood Ex Libris in ebook format. The print link comes next week. The rest of the series will be rolled out over the next couple months. ?

OK, so when I last wrote to you lot, I was fighting to make my pre-sales of the paperback books go live on my website, and all I could give you was the ebook pre-sales link.

Since then has been one of those time periods where I really regret knowing enough web design that I just can’t hire someone else to do it, because I’ve already invested so much time in learning all that stuff, that I’m bloody well NOT going to pay someone else to make me a website. If I just honestly didn’t know, I could pay for it to be someone else’s headache. But nooooooo. I must keep this headache all for myself ?

I use Square for direct sales of the books. So I wanted to find a way to connect Square with my site (a WordPress site) so that the sales could be directly through my site. Square does not directly integrate with WP, so I needed a plugin. I dully found one that was well-rated, paid for the pro version, installed it … and thus began two weeks of increasing frustration. Finally, I gave up on the plugin, and made a separate webstore, as Square offers that service for free. At the end of a day of setting that up, Square offered me a button-builder for each product … and I realized that if I had known about the button-builder from the start, I wouldn’t have needed to go through ANY of the above kabuki ?‍♀️

But, anyways, it is done, and has been tested, and you can now go pre-order a signed paperback of Blood Ex Libris from me HERE.

Why order the signed paperback, you ask? Well, it’s a win-win. If you buy through Amazon or another webshop, they take 40% of the money. And it’s not lovingly dedicated to you. If you buy through my website, I get 100% of the profit (minus what I pay dear old USPS to ship it to you, but yay media mail for keeping it affordable!) and then, as I’m packing it up, I take the time to dedicate the book to you, and maybe even slip in a surprise swag item… ?‍?

So that’s that, and we are here. And this goes out on the 15th , so pre-ordering from me is practically the same as regular old ordering from me, but let’s all cheer ? for me resolving the problem before launch day! (Special shout-out here to a fellow fan of yours, who is a web-person, and who helped me both with technical stuff and in keeping me from imploding—you know who you are, and you are so appreciated! ?)

Also, huge thanks to the two fans of the series who jumped up to test the sales button on the website, and helped me find an issue that it was really good to get resolved before orders started pouring in ?

At this point, the amount of help I’ve had from friends is just bonkers. This is really a joint effort, here, and you lot are what’s making this thing happen. The learning curve on this has been sooooo steep, that I cannot express how much that has kept me moving forward in hope. I’m not a person who gives up easily, but the process of getting my books back from the publisher through relaunching them into the world would honest daunt pretty much anyone. I’m a much more knowledgeable person, these days, but almost none of that learning has been taking notes in a nice comfy classroom; it’s been done in the self-publishing trenches, which are as muddy and bloody as wartime trenches can be expected to be (in a metaphorical sense of course, but I still may need therapy…)

Tonight I Upload Final Things to Amazon, and then they have a Good Think About It, and then hopefully Amazon sales go live on the 19th , and then This Shit Gets Real ?

If you have extra good vibes to send, spiritually cross your fingers for me for in this coming time. You’d be amazed how many things that look easy in the description turn out to be much more complicated and/or have unforeseen issues as one tries to actually accomplish them ?

Meanwhile, things progress in the background for Books II and III, and I will hopefully be getting you pub dates in the next email. The both still need final proofing, but I have the actual printed proofs in hand, and that is how I will be keeping myself out of trouble once BXL is out in the world again.

Apparently, when people see my partner out at events now, with me nowhere to be seen, they ask, “Is Raven still working too hard on her books to be here today?” And, yeah, I’m back home dealing with one thing or another. So I do look forward to a day when I have enough “spoons” to do this AND to have a social life. (Of course that social life will probably immediately get subsumed by going to an endless round of conventions to sell the books in person, and being on panels talking about vampires and worldbuilding in fantasy, but hey, that’s still better than just being at home on the computer, learning everything I don’t know about indie publishing. At least I’ll get to wear my bat and dragon and hedgehog kigurumis and be nerdy with people!)

OK, I need to go off and do things, and you are to be commended for reading my always too-long newsletters. I’ll drop a quick newsletter — promise! — once BXL is finally fully out there in the world!

Yes, I know how belated this newsletter is… ?

I wrote 90% of a newsletter weeks ago, on my phone, and the document got lost and I didn’t have the heart or energy to redo it until now.

However, this is a very different newsletter than that one. Most of you know that my books are dedicated to my coauthor, my beloved dog Cairngorm McWomble the Terrible.

On November 19th he crossed the rainbow bridge.

His seizures started in early October. After that first terrible day, I spent most of October either in the emergency veterinary hospital, or holding Cairngorm through long nights of seizures which were happening every fifteen minutes. After ultrasounds and an MRI and a thousand other tests, they still had no idea what was actually causing the “neurologic events” but put him on an anti-seizure medication. The dosage had to be upped after a week, but for a couple weeks, it seemed like everything was stable. Then it wasn’t, and the meds needed to be upped again.

But by this time my poor little five pound boy was on just a massive amount of medications, including the anti-seizure ones, and what probably happened at this point was that his liver (which had been dodgy all his life) couldn’t cope with all of it. He stopped wanting to go for walks, which had been his absolute favorite thing all his life. About a week later, he told me he was ready to be done with the six-times-a-day medication schedule and leave his failing little body behind.

A wonderful vet who specializes in at-home euthanasia came to us, and his passing was less a death and more a floating away in a painless ocean of love and adoration.

I, the one remaining, am not OK. You could charitably call me a “complete and total wreck.”

Anyway, I’m supposed to be continuing on with life, and that involves heading into the season in which most indie writers sell most of their books and make the most profit for the year. Indie writers count on Black Friday and the rest of the holiday season to ensure their businesses make a profit, or at least break even.

And I can barely focus on marketing or promotional plans. So that’s all very optimal.

To that end, if you have friends or family who would enjoy the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series, I have a deal going on the website, where you can get all three of the freshly re-released books for a handsome discount, with free shipping and all! If you leave a note requesting it, I will also wrap all the books for you by hand! So you could just order the books to be delivered directly to your loved one, and be done and dusted with that item on your do-to list!

This is basically the best offer for anything you’ll see, this holiday season. So let me help you get your holiday shopping list crossed off! (And you won’t just be helping my lil indie business in return, but I actually really enjoy wrapping gifts, so you’ll be giving me healthy grief-displacement activities, as well.)

Right. Well, I had to try and do some promotional stuff, so that’s done, and I hope the offer is useful to you. But I know you’re also here for updates on upcoming books, and happily I have news for you ?

My little co-author took his job very seriously, and I had one novella unfinished. So on his penultimate day, he lay beside me and helped me hit “The End” on that story. He basically let me know I had to get it done on his schedule.

So that means the third story is done for the collection of three novellas that will be published in … drumroll please… Blood Triad in May 2024. It’s a simple name, but I’m pretty pleased with how perfect it is. ? It still needs to get out to the editor, of course, but I love this part of the process, editing the story up to a high gloss. I’ll be trying out a new cover artist for this book, and am waiting with much anticipation to see the rough draft for that.

A reminder, Blood Triad will be comprised of the story about Astryiah (Abyssinia), Zoraida (Teeth Are Bones), and the glorious bromance of Dubhghall and Wulfhram (the just-completed Blood Brothers). I’m pretty happy about the spread of characters through time and the world: Astryiah is from Roman-era Judea and the story is set in the 1930s in Philadelphia, Zoraida is from Haiti in the early 1900s, telling the story of how she became am’r to Noosh in current times, and Dubhghall & Wulfhram became am’r in the 900s and are also telling their origin stories (which include ending up in the Khazar Khaganate, like you do) to our favorite archivist for the am’r. (Both of those stories set after the end of Blood Ad Infinitum.) Having diverse am’r is really important to me, and I think this collection demonstrates that my am’r will never be a boringly homogenous buncha bloodsuckers.

Once that gets into production, that will leave me free to finally get back to writing Book IV in the series, the vampire pirates, which is what everyone wants most of all, I know! I never thought it would take so long to get to this place, but I’m so glad that I can get back to being a writer-who-writes, and not a writer-who-is-just-trying-to-build-a-small-business.

I think that’s enough from me, today. I will try to actually hit the “every two weeks” mark from now on. I never wrote about the new covers, and I really want to talk about those in the next newsletter, because they are amazing.

I hope your holiday season goes smoothly and unstressfully!