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!