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! ?

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! ???

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!