So, this happened right before my hand surgery, and then it kinda got lost in the noise of post-op recovery shenanigans, but it’s proper exciting news and deserved a spotlight in this newsletter…

Blood Eternal has a song written for it (specifically about the conflict between Bagamil and V’ukh in the am’r origin story) by the band Die Feen. If you have not heard of them yet, here’s a description from Nocturnazine’s Scott Baker Graham: “Die Feen is a blistering, yet soulful Post-Punk band dispensing the truth from the capital of lies—Washington, DC. Chris Best’s deep and powerful baritone is reminiscent of Peter Murphy of Bauhaus and Ian Curtis of Joy Division, but Die Feen possesses catchy New Wave-tinged melodies and pop-song craftsmanship that these bands lacked. If you’re longing for the past but want to rock out in the present, Die Feen has you covered. Plus, their bass player goes by the handle of Dick Thunder. ‘Nuff said.”

Below is an interview from Nocturnazine with Die Feen and me.

And here are some places to listen:

Die Feen – Mistakes Listen to Mistakes on TIDAL tidal.com/browse/track/414326292?u

Mistakes Die Feen · Mistakes · Song · 2025 open.spotify.com/track/0L3jT8V9EOu9wPcEjJMxeY

Mistakes – Single by Die Feen on Apple Music Album · 2025 · 1 Song music.apple.com/us/album/mistakes-single/1793484926

Chris and I have known each other forever. Here’s the first picture I have of us together, getting sushi to celebrate my 19^th birthday.

We’ve eaten a vast amount of sushi and KBBQ over the years

This is why cherishing old friends and making sure to stay in touch is so vital. Because, someday, decades later, you might get to collaborate in mixing your art in exciting new ways. Thank you, Chris, for being inspired to give voice to Bagamil in such a way, and bringing the Blood & Ancient Scrolls Series to an entirely new medium!

We Slayed It At Ve Neil’s Vampire Weekend Convention

Sadly, due to my surgery, I couldn’t fly out to one of this year’s events I was super excited about: Ve Neil’s Vampire Weekend

So the other half of Immoral Influence Publications, Lore, stepped up to run the whole show and accomplished what can only be called a miracle. The booth was stupendous, there was brand new swag to test-drive, and the whole thing was an unqualified triumph, and I cannot thank her enough for all the kick-ass energy she brought to it: like Noosh running through the gory mêlée in Blood Demands! (Only in this case, people just brought books and left smiling.)

The new Noosh-kicking-ass & Oscar Wilde cups were a surprise hit!

Lestat and Louis meet the am’r…now I kinda wanna write that story!

Lore wants to thank everyone who stopped by the IIP booth and let her nerd out about the books to them! She also wants to know what fun things you want to see at the booth next time, from new merch, to raffles, and games: if you have a blood demand (haha) just hit reply and tell us!

(And don’t worry if you missed the sneaky new cup releases, Lore is going to figure out how to photograph them in their blood and glitter glory so we can list them for sale on the site soon!)

LibGen & Meta & (the bad kind of) Pirates

For those who have not been following along, here’s this ugly bit of news.

When I tested The Atlantic’s LibGen search engine, none of my books were stolen by Meta to train their A.I.

At first, I just breathed a sigh of relief, and then I kind of chuckled ruefully about how big the series has not yet become….

And then it hit me: I’ve been really vigorous with searching my out books on pirated sites and issuing takedown notices. My first publisher got very grumpy about it. “There are always going to be pirates,” they whined, “It’s not worth the time to go after every one. You’ll never find them all. Just go on with writing other books and forget about it.”

But. Many of the books that were used in LibGen came from pirated sites. If I had not been so motivated to get every pirated copy of my books I could find taken down, perhaps the results of my search would have been rather different…

This is all to say, if you think something is important, don’t let people who do not care as much as you talk you out of it. And yet again to raise a middle finger to my horrible old publisher. I did a quick search, and pretty much EVERY book by their lead author is on the LibGen list. So I hope they are happy with their choices, and whether they are or not: they can go suck an egg. 🥚

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Boycotting That Company With The Name Of A South American River

If you have any friends who want to be part of the boycott of companies who have slashed and burned their DEI policies after the Tangerine Tyrant took office, but are worried about indie authors suffering, just send them this:

Clearly, I have exciting new swag to talk about in the next newsletter, but that won’t be all… To everyone who made it this far, you’re fucking amazing! Until next time, be good or be good at it! 😘

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

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Snag the audiobooks from your preferred vendor

I’m so excited to finally have this book, the third of the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series, in its final form. Blood Eternal has been on a real journey. 

I first wrote it when I was under contract for three books to my previous publisher. You know, the horrible one. I had to write this book knowing that I would get no support in marketing it, and that even my editor did not understand or appreciate my writing. I felt very alone as I was writing it, and threw myself into the story for the escapism of it just as much as any reader.

Blood Eternal was the most challenging thing I’d written to date, especially the central story at the literal and figurative heart of the book: the origin story of the am’r.

I won’t say I didn’t feel the challenge, but I held myself open to it, and the story just poured out of me and now when I look back on it, it’s hard to imagine there was ever a time that story was not written, there are truths in it that are universal truths, and it feels almost like a real history that I uncovered, not created.

So there was joy in writing it, as well as stress and loneliness. But as soon as it was done, the editor at the former company tried to force me to just accept all her edits without having input (and she had given me very flawed edits in the past, including changing words to ones that meant the exact opposite (in Blood Ex Libris, she changed “voluptuous” to “slender”!!!) and in this book she had chopped my sentences down with no aesthetic sense at all – to the point that some no longer made any sense. She threatened that she was going to just throw out my revision after her edits, and I had to take it to the boss of the company to save my book from that.

My book was published, and no one in the world took notice except the few fans I’d already built up on the strength of the writing. (And thank you [you know who you are!] for sticking around through that and the years since!)

Then I was done with meeting the obligations of the contract, and could finally begin the legal process of having my rights reverted to me, which leads directly to where we are now!

You will remember that Blood Eternal was first Blood Ad Infinitum, and was part of the two books who had their titles changed last year, in an effort to reduce confusion—some people assumed the books were not written in English, because they didn’t recognize the Latin in the titles—and increase readership.

I wrote all about the painful process during the renaming of Blood Demands, and Blood Eternal was only slightly less intense and stressful a process, but now, finally, the listings online seem to be starting to be corrected, and just at the same time, the paperbacks have made their way to me so I can do signed copies for people!

Finally, finally, this book is in a finished place, and ready to start getting the reads it deserves.

Post-Op News

You may notice this is a longer email than that last one: I can type again! Once the cast came off (a week and half after surgery), I am now able to get the right angle to actually type with my left hand again (and thumbs are not used much in typing) so at least that terrible roadblock to productivity is gone.

To be honest, I was in a pretty bad place when I got out last week’s newsletter. I went into surgery completely ignorant, and had actually thought I’d be functional again within a few days of the procedure. But when I wrote that newsletter I was only able to sit at the computer for a couple hours, and then I wobbled unsteadily back to bed.

But the first few days after the surgery were a true ordeal, as they hadn’t given me strong enough pain medication, and my immediate post-op pain was not managed well at all. Also, I was really woozy and unsteady (not just because of the pain medication), and barely able to care for myself, never mind care for Archie. I had to get in an emergency dog-walker, and I leaned far too heavily on the people I live with. Lesson learned: if I ever get surgery again, I will book a home healthcare nurse for the three days immediately post-op (and a dog walker in advance!) so that I can get actual adequate care from a professional. File it under “lessons learned the hard way”—which I have far too many of in my life, sigh.

I am good now, however. The healing is going slowly of course, but the pain is manageable, and I start official PT today. (I’ve been doing prescribed exercises 6 times a day already. They hurt, but I do them.) And I have been able to cook dinners, can now walk the dog by myself (it took over a week to get there!), and type out newsletters for you!

I am stuck in business tax prep this week (Wheee!) but I am hopeful that after the taxes are done and dusted for the year, I can finally get into finishing that novella .. which I have officially decided will simply be titled That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story—not just because I can’t think of anything else, but because now everybody is demanding it 😂

Although a friend of mine pointed out the other night that the perfect portmanteau of “vampirates” is just waiting to be used, so I am now claiming that term and will be using it henceforth. You heard it here first, baby!

That novella already has cover art done, so expect a cover release in March, at the very least!

Strong female characters and a teaser for Book IV… 💥

International Women’s Day was on Saturday March 8^th . If you did not see the cool image I posted to socials, here it is:

Kick-ass female characters from Blood Ex Libris, Blood Demands, & Blood Triad

This is the first time this image of Araceli (who is a reader favorite, and also the reason I get bitched out by almost everyone who reads Blood Demands…)

The backstory here is that the original cover had Noosh in her blood-soaked glory dead center, and then relevant faces were going to surround her: Bagamil, Araceli, Lope, and our Baddies Orélie, and Julio Popper. Each face was drawn amazingly by Kwasi…but the cover was just too damn busy, and once they were taken out, it was magically perfect. So I’ve had all those faces waiting for the right moment for other little things, and it was time to feature Araceli.

As you know, my books feature strong female characters. I’ve been an angry lil’ feminist since nursery school. There was one day that my father came in to help out (all parents were encouraged to do so several times a year, but not a lot of fathers did, back in the day) and it was a day where we were playing this dumbass game where the boys marched around as soldiers, and the girls stayed together and made a big pot of soup for the hungry soldiers. (I think it was imaginary soup, but whatever.) My dad was tasked to lead the soldiers—and I wanted to be a soldier! I was told I could not be, and I had to make soup because I was a girl.

The feminist fire that started in my belly that day has never died down.

I might be smiling here, but trust I was about to get on a Hot Wheel and drive with feminist road rage 😉

I have had a complaint (from author Chaz Brenchley) that I have not had enough female villains in my books. (Although who can forget Bat Bitch?) I took it to heart, and you can expect the Big Bad in Book IV to be both female and our scariest villain so far! This is the official first teaser for the book!

Also, That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story is going to introduce you to a bunch of characters you’ll be hanging out with (or desperately fighting) in “Book IV Vampirates Galore” (now my new working title 😂) In fact, all the short stories that have come out and are about to come out are introducing characters from the upcoming novel. That’s the one silver lining from this novel taking much longer than expected to be written, is that I can build up the side characters in advance, so that readers can be delighted to bump into characters they have already met when they finally read the novel.

OK, my wrist is getting sore (thumb surgery impacts a much larger area than just the thumb), so I’m gonna call it quits for today. But stay tuned for more exciting news as the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series finally starts rolling again, now that the retitling project is finally complete! 🏆

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To everyone who made it this far, you’re fucking amazing! Until next time, be good or be good at it! 😘

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

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Snag the audiobooks from your preferred vendor

So the newsletter this week is being transcribed because it turns out that I cannot type with the cast on after my surgery that happened last week…

For those of you who didn’t keep up on social media, I went in to get surgery on my left hand. And it was quite exciting. I’ve been dealing with the excitement of Post-Op ever since. I had assumed I would be able to type, with my fingers being free. That I could keep up with work, you know, as soon as I could sort of stumble out of bed. But in actuality, the way the cast is set, I cannot get my fingers down onto the keys. So minor hiccup, and one I hope that I can figure out some workarounds in the next 4 weeks in which this cast is on…

This really sucks

I don’t like the transcription because it really slows me down. And honestly, the pain levels are distraction, and my frustration levels are high. So this week’s newsletter will be short.

The exciting results for the Valentines 2025 poll are in and here they are:

I think you guys chose wisely! And it’s clear you can’t wait to meet Lady Ruthven!

I’m delighted to say there’s another exciting bit of news.

In the last letter newsletter, I sent out an update on the story “Finding Bela Lugosi,” and it turns out that one of the awesome readers of this newsletter actually works in the music rights industry, and was able to give me some more information heading towards me actually getting the rights to use the song Belo Lugosi’s dead in that story‼️

Hopefully in the next newsletter there will be news letting you know when that story will be put into your hot lil hands! (Also hopefully I will have found a better way to work around my cast!)

Here’s a video on my thoughts on the mustache in Nosferatu. This obviously is a vital piece of discussion in the world that we’re living in today. And so you know, please make time for it 😉

I’m really just going to be on the down low for the next few weeks. I’m on some pretty heavy duty painkillers and it’s slowing my roll pretty considerably. So, as always, please just keep recommending the series to friends and family and asking for them to be carried at your local library and local bookstores, and I will on my end be figuring out how to type as fast as I can, and in the meantime, spinning up story ideas in my head and getting them ready to roll for you to enjoy.

I just wanted to say thank you so much for being such great newsletter readers. It means so much to me that so many of you actually read the newsletter. I try every two weeks to make it be a newsletter you actually do want to open, but the fact that you DO and that so many of you participate in the polls and in all of that silly stuff I put in here, it just means so much to me and I just want you to know that you are the best newsletter readers that an author could hope for, and I really value and appreciate you! 🥰🥰🥰

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

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Snag the audiobooks from your preferred vendor

Happy Villaintine’s Day! 💘⚔️❤️‍🔥

It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the annual vote for the best Villaintine Card!

Here are your choices:

Option 1: “Let me take a stab at being your valentine…”

Option 2: “I love you to pieces, Valentine!”

Option 3: “I know the quickest way to your heart, Valentine!”

Problems with Amazon

If you have looked at the listings for Blood Ex Libris or Blood Demands on Amazon in the past months, you will notice the prices were strangely high and not my usual prices. No matter what I did on my end, I could not get the price I had set in KDP to show up on my page. It turns out Amazon has an “issue”  (ya think?!) with prices being listed as abnormally high and “they are working very hard to fix this.” (Not noticeably, since it’s still an issue halfway through February.)

Anyway, if you are an Amazon customer, and you see abnormally high prices, take a moment to let the seller know. (If you are a seller on Amazon, go check your prices! There may be a reason why sales have slumped for no obvious reason…!)

Anyway, I’m bringing this up because in the coming months I’m going to make a real shift to direct sales and minimizing Amazon links, because I can never tell when Amazon is going to do some shenanigans which destroy my sales goals for months at a time—which is just no way for me to grow my business to a sustainability level.

The ebooks are now entirely moved into KU, and my best audiobook sales are from Audible, so I cannot stop doing business with them entirely, but from this point forward, the best way to buy paperbacks is directly from me: and I will both be matching the Amazon price and also adding signatures to the books and swag to the packages—which you can’t get on Amazon!

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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 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

SHOP PAPERBACKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Eternal

Blood Triad

SHOP EBOOKS & AUDIOBOOKS:

Grab the whole series in Amazon’s KU

Snag the audiobooks from your preferred vendor

I’m writing this through a horrific cold (which I’ve been bitching about over on Bluesky) and I could have just stayed in bed and continued binging Star Trek: TNG, but no, I have dragged my ailing ass over to the computer to write this for you. Be very glad emails cannot pass along germs, because this has been the Cold From Hell, and I hope you steer clear of it!

It all always bunches up 🙄

I have worked on both these new stories in the am’r world over very different months, but for some reason, they are both finally going to be available to read around the same time. “It never rains but it pours” and all.

I have worked on both these new stories in the am’r world over very different months, but for some reason, they are both finally going to be available to read around the same time. “It never rains but it pours” and all.

Firstly, you’ll be meeting Lady Ankaret Isobel L’Estrange Ruthven in the annual Villaintine’s Day Card. You haven’t met her yet, but she will be grabbing your attention by the short-n-curlies in the upcoming novella (which is still only titled “That Lesbian Vampire Pirates Story” and I’m starting to consider just shrugging and naming it “Friggin’ in the Riggin’” because a more useful name is just not coming to me…

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 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

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 📨

💞 Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here.

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! ?