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 📨

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Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

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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 📨

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SHOP EBOOKS, PAPERBACK, & AUDIOBOOKS:

Blood Ex Libris

Blood Demands

Blood Ad Infinitum

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!

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!

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! ?

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! ?