Happy Spooky Season! 🎃
So this is not going to be an image-rich newsletter, because my desktop computer had an emotional meltdown and is off at a spa-getaway at the computer repair shop. Without that desktop, I can’t create any of my planned marketing or promotion for this Spooky Season, so it’s been a nasty little setback.
That said, the upcoming next vending event is this coming Saturday!
This is your excuse to wander around Salem MA in full vamp costume!
I will be vending at the Vampfangs Salem Vampire Market, which is on the same day as their Vampire Salon and can be attended in conjunction with each other!
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Vampfangs Salem Vampire Market
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Sept 20th 2025
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3PM-9PM
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Old Town Hall
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32 Derby Square, Salem, MA 01970
This is your excuse to roam Salem in full vampire mode, support local goth artists and artisans, and then party with the undead. It’s a perfect warm-up for Halloween!
Stickers!
In strangely thrilling news, the stickers I ordered back in the beginning of August have finally come in (I was supposed to have them for the DFO Expo, dammit) and they are really gorgeous and I’m so excited about them!
It’s the subtlety I love most about them…
These will be available for free to newsletter subscribers if you come down to a future event to say hi, or if you order something from ravenbelas.co you will absolutely get a sticker in the package. (If you have been putting off ordering one or two of the gorgeous leather bookmarks, this is your sign…!)
That Lesbian Vampire Pirate Story still desperately needs reviews 🙏
If you’ve read this novelette and haven’t left a review yet, I still seriously need reviews because I cannot start marketing the book properly until I have met a certain threshold of reviews. Please blame Amazon for me being annoying about this, but this sweet little story has the potential to really get wider attention, and one of the things holding it back is the lack of reviews. People are reading it, loving it—and just not reviewing it. So pretty pretty please, just give a few moments of your day 🙏 It doesn’t need to be a long review, even just a sentence will do. You will have my eternal gratitude!
Here is a link that takes you directly to the review page.
An author’s eye view of the Dark Forest Oddities Expo
As you’ll remember, the last event I did was a brand new goth/queer/freaks, geeks, and weirdos kind of event, that mixed vendors with burlesque performances, drag numbers, and general delightful chaos.
It was a mixed bag event for me. On the plus side, I did reach a new audience who hopefully will stick around (welcome to those of you reading this newsletter after signing up at or after the expo!) and in particular, met these fantastic old school goths who brought great conversation to my table, and then bought a copy of every book I had to sell. Future customers have a lot to live up to!
Duck Duck Goose is so over. Now we play Goth Goth Pirate!
On the downside, however, the table itself was so expensive that I only made $5 over that expense in sales, meaning I really can’t afford to do that event again. It also was a physically grueling day (trying to shout about the books to potential customers over the throbbing music of the performances takes a lot out of you) and I ended up too sick to get out of bed for three days after it, which is always a scary risk for a chronically ill person like me doing vending. So on every level the costs of doing this event were too high, but I am glad I tried it, and I made some great connections with new readers and fellow vendors, so it was not a disaster, just not something I should repeat.
Blood Depths (Book IV) finally back at sea! 🌊
After the saga of me losing my sensitivity reader and deciding to just do a bunch more research and hoping that, by the time I find a replacement this new character has had enough thought and new knowledge/understanding go into her that the reader won’t suggest any massive rewrites at the eleventh hour, I’ve finally gotten into a good place with Blood Depths again.
After I had crammed a massive amount of information into my brain, I realized that what I needed to do was an actual writing exercise. I sat down and wrote the new character’s auto-biography, up to where we meet her in Blood Depths.
This is a new thing for me. I’ve always just been able to create, hold, and understand my characters in my mind, not needing external stuff. But this complex character is going to require a lot from me to get her right, so I wanted to intimately know every detail of her life and how she felt about the things that had happened to her, the choices she’d made, etc. it also gave me a most-perfect opportunity to fully discover her voice, so that writing her can be as easy as writing Noosh or any other character.
What do you know? It worked! I had a great time doing the exercise, and now I am able to take what I have and rework this new character’s chapters so that she is consistent and fully-realized (and also I am hopefully not seriously messing up culturally or otherwise on that level.)
So now I can happily sink back into crafting the story, making it better than it was before, and then finally start rolling out new chapters. I feel really good about the choices I’ve made and the writing I am now doing…which to be painfully honest is a relief, because I was feeling a bit lost at sea (pun, hahaha) for a few weeks there.
Being a writer is really hard, you know! 😂
In great news, my computer guy just called to let me know that I can come in and pick up my now relaxed and revived machine 💃 (When do I get my own spa week, is what I’d like to know?!🤷♀️) so the next newsletter will be back up to the usual standards!
Thanks, as always, for your patience and support as I navigate through the challenges of being an indie author. I really rely upon you newsletter readers as my rock, the people who are seriously there for me, who actually read the whole damn thing and take the time to click on stuff. A lot of other author’s newsletter have vastly less numbers of people even opening the email, and the fact that so many of you do is something that bolsters me through the rougher parts of trying to make it as an author. So please know how much you are appreciated!
There’s still time to have your vote counted…
As always, 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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