Isis Sousa's Blog: Tragic Books' news - Posts Tagged "self-publishing"

Hey everybody! I am completely broken with pain all over my body because I was gardening this afternoon (yes! o.O). But I gathered my last bit of energy to share something nice and special with you - readers and fellow indie authors: an interview Kent Hall from BLURB.COM did to me.

There we talked about The Night of Elisa and how to promote books when you are an indie author. I share what has worked for me so far.

You can read it here: http://www.blurb.com/blog/how-to-prom...
..............................
Back to gardening: I have been planting seeds on some plastic, mini green-houses, which I have/had on my windows.

I planted the first plants in my garden a week ago - only to be disappointed by the snow, frost and hale which killed them a day later and remained for the past week :P I thought the cold was gone then...

On the weather preview, from today on, it looks like Spring is really here to stay. I took a chance again today, planted new plants and seeds and hope the snow and frost will be gone for good for now! :P
...............................
So I am off to rest (seriously, I feel like I have ran a marathon!!!) and keep reading and hopefully post new reviews soon!

Good weekend!
PS: Do you have plants? Inside or outside? Do you do gardening?



PS2: If you think my Spring sounds like kind of late, it is because IT IS! Spring comes late when you live close to the North Pole ;)

It’s been a while since I have posted any interviews on this blog. The last one was with indie author Anthony Avina , which you can read here: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Today I am sharing with you guys a very special interview, done with a writing duo, Tiffany AND Robert, a married couple who write under the pen name Tiffany Roberts.

I have made the covers for 3 of their books so far, and am currently making the third of Isle of The Forgotten, a Fantasy Romance trilogy. I share them here as well with you.


Make Me Burn

Let’s begin with the beginning. Who is Tiffany Roberts and how did the writing of Make Me Burn (Isle of The Forgotten 1) take place?

Tiffany: Well, I’m Tiffany.

Robert: And I’m Robert.

Tiffany: We didn’t want a pseudonym, but we knew in the romance community, female authors are more likely to be read as the majority of readers are female. We also wanted a way to incorporate both of us as authors because we are a team. So we decided to take both of our first names and put them together.

Robert: This really is a team effort, and it falls apart if either of us is absent. Using our first names to create the pseudonym gave it more meaning to us. We can look at one of our books and know that we are both represented in the name on the cover. We complement each other and balance out our individual weaknesses rather well in our mutual writing, and the end product is always something unique that couldn’t have been produced by either of us alone.

For Make Me Burn, we had actually roleplayed out the whole thing in text back in 2012, which left us with a very rough rough draft.

Tiffany: It wasn’t until 2015, after we wrote Ice Bound, that we decided to take on a larger project. As we went through our various logs, we settled on Morthanion and Aria.

Robert: We printed the logs, wrote up an outline, and started writing. It took about two months to write the first draft, and we went through about three rounds of revisions as we waited to get it off to our editor, Lora Gasway. A lot of the process, actually, was waiting. We don’t have that luxury anymore, now that we’re creating stricter deadlines for ourselves…

What’s your writing process like? Do you write every day?

Tiffany: We have kids, so there is no way writing is getting done during the daylight hours, when everything is loud and chaotic. Far too many disturbances. However, as soon as their little heads hit their pillows, I start cracking the whip. Rob would call me a slave driver, and it’s true. Without my drive, nothing would get done. I make sure we write every night when possible.

Robert: Tiffany really is the driving force behind anything getting done. One of my weaknesses as a writer is lack of motivation, so she props that up rather well. Once we get going, however, it’s a full-blown team effort. We keep two keyboards hooked up to one computer so we can directly work together (our floor didn’t like chairs rolling back and forth constantly), and even though it’s usually just one of us as the main writer of any given scene, the other is always heavily involved with suggestions, comments, and help when things get difficult. We can flow rather seamlessly, jumping in when necessary and adding things the other wouldn’t necessarily think about.


Make Me Hunger - coming this Autumn/Winter

What inspired you for the characters and environment of this series?

Tiffany: I honestly can’t remember what my inspiration was for Aria, only that she needed to be the opposite of Morthanion. Someone to gentle him and give him the love he never had, but also outsmart him. Ithoriel was only supposed to be a side-kick. It wasn’t until we were over halfway through our roleplay that we decided he would be the true surprise villain. I liked Baltherus too much by then, despite what he’d done, and wanted him to have his own story.

Robert: Tiffany had to remind me of this, but Morthanion was inspired heavily by a character from the Twilight series, of all things. Before anyone flips out, I’ll get a little more specific: Michael Sheen’s depiction of Aro, the leader of the Volturi, stuck with me. The crazed gleam in his eyes, his delightfully insane laughter; I enjoyed his performance quite a bit. Certainly some of that carried over into Morthanion, who is on the edge of insanity himself and reveling in every moment of it. We already had something of a history fleshed out for demons in our world, so it was only natural to take advantage of some of it.

Tiffany: Rob and I used to be big time text-based role players (it was how we met). We played in a few games on mIRC, until we finally decided to create our own. Talikar was a very small setting I used for my writing when I was younger, but we both expanded upon it and came up with what we have today. The Isle of the Forgotten (originally Isle of the Lost) was added in 2012 when we came up the idea and the characters to go along with it.

Robert: What we certainly weren’t inspired by was the television show Lost. Neither of us have seen even a single episode, but the similarities — at least in the higher levels of our concept — were pointed out to us during our early blurb-writing struggles. The Island of the Lost was just a location Tiffany had in her early map of Talikar, and when we really started to build the setting in a more serious fashion, it naturally evolved into the mage-prison it is in Make Me Burn, the Isle of the Forgotten.

What genres and authors you like to read? Print or E-book?

Tiffany: I might get long-winded with this one. I’ll start with how I hated reading in school. The books we were forced to read in English class never held my interest. Of course I enjoyed To Kill a Mocking Bird and Lord of the Flies, but nothing else really clicked with me. My mother ended up taking me to our small town library. The first book that caught my interest was IT by Stephen King. I’m a huge horror movie fanatic, so of course it would be my first choice. With Stephen, I found my love for reading.

We were finally given a choice in one of my English classes in high school — 1984 by George Orwell or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Of course I chose Frankenstein. While dark, the elements of romance immediately snagged my attention. During a trip to the store, I stood in the book aisle staring at the romance and selected my first romance book — Gentle Rogue by Johanna Lindsey. My love for romance was born. I literally gobbled that up and couldn’t wait to check out more from the library. I read anything and everything if it had a romantic element to it, learning which subgenres were my favorite and which I didn’t care for. But the one genre I loved the most was Fantasy Romance. Back then, it was so hard to find, and some of what I found was short on the romantic element and left me disappointed. Thankfully, the genre is growing and it’s so much easier to find!

So to finally answer your question: Romance. I enjoyed Horror, but Romance is where it’s at for me. With Amazon and Indie publishing, it’s allowed me to easily discover new authors. I’ve joined the ebook/kindle club despite my love for paperbacks, but I still continue to purchase paperbacks for the books/authors I love. There are two authors who are auto-buys for me — Fantasy Romance writer Grace Draven and Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Romance Writer R. Lee Smith. I also love everything from Kresley Cole and Karen Marie Moning, and recently discovered Sarah J. Maas.

Robert: I really got into reading around seventh or eighth grade. My memory isn’t great, so I can’t recall the particulars, but it was around that point I was introduced to Lord of the Rings. It ate it up, read it and reread it, even devoured the entirety of The Silmarillion. I realize now that I’m older that I probably didn’t understand much of the latter, but it led to my love of fantasy literature. Over the years, I’ve branched out a little more and delved into science fiction and — with Tiffany’s influence — romance, and on the cusp of twenty years old finally discovered the joys of Stephen King. I’ll have to echo Tiffany a little here though, and second R. Lee Smith. She has an undeniable talent for storytelling and once I start reading one of her books, no matter how dark and depressing it gets, I can’t put it down.

Why did you take the indie path and what are the biggest challenges on self-publishing?

Tiffany: Freedom. By publishing as an independent author, we’re allowed to go at our own pace and write what we want. The biggest challenge is getting our name out there. We’re still new and not many people know who we are, but I believe we’re off to a good start.

Robert: Definitely the freedom. We met as teenagers, and back then we both wrote all the time and talked about writing constantly. It was our dream. Real life has a way of holding dreams down and trying to suffocate them, but we clung to it through all the difficulties and discouragement, always telling ourselves that we’d get to it when the kids were a little older, when we had a little more time to ourselves. In 2014, we took part in a small independent anthology, authoring a romance story together, Ice Bound. The experience opened our eyes. It was around that same time that Tiffany began to discover many amazing indie authors, and we knew then that we needed to take the plunge and follow our dream without any more hesitation.

It’s a lot of work, and we’ve invested time and money into it, but we’ve met a lot of amazing people (Tiffany: Looking at you, Isis!) in the process and it has proven to be more rewarding than we could have imagined.


Dustwalker - coming 2017

What are your plans for the future?

Tiffany: Our goal is for both of us to be full-time writers. I’m lucky to be able to be a stay at home mom, but would love for Rob to be able to quit his day job to stay at home and do what he loves.

Robert: That really is the main goal. In the short-term, we plan to have new books finished and released in fall of this year, and then in spring and summer of next year. We hope that our writing will speak for itself and that eventually this will become a career. Either way, we’re sticking to it.

What do you think about social media and platforms like GoodReads? (And which one is your favorite and why?)

Tiffany: I’m still very new to Goodreads, but I love how it works in creating your own virtual library. It’s allowed me to discover new books and authors, to see who is reading what, and what people think. As an indie author, social media is incredibly important and plays a big role when interacting with friends and readers. I would have to say Facebook is my favorite.

Robert: I have to admit that I don’t do much with social media. I scroll through Facebook occasionally, but it’s mostly to check on family and friends. It’s handy for that sort of thing. I’m only a little familiar with Goodreads, but I think it is a valuable tool for readers, especially for finding new authors. The vast majority of Tiffany Roberts’s online interactions are all Tiffany and no Robert.

~ * ~ *~ * ~ *~ * ~ *

Connect with Tiffany Roberts on GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Visit their website: https://authortiffanyroberts.wordpres...
Visit their Amazon Page: http://www.amazon.com/Tiffany-Roberts...
Add them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorTiffan...

~ * ~ *~ * ~ *~ * ~ *

And here are other interviews I have shared in this blog, including the one with my lovely (and much recommended) copyeditor, Clare Diston: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Ben Starling: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

K. J. Nessly: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

~ * ~ *~ * ~ *~ * ~ *

And there is more on the way, so stay tuned :)
That’s all folks!

I am an indie author who writes on her free time and benefits of using FREE self-publishing services. If it wasn’t for these platforms, I probably would not be publishing books right now, since I wouldn’t be able to afford paid services and my work would most likely not interest bigger presses.

In my two years self-publishing journey I have tested both print and e-book publishing platforms and now I’d like to share some of my insights with you.

This a looong article, but hope it will be helpful to you: https://tragicbooks.com/2017/01/02/my...

...And Happy New Year! :D

When I first started the creative process for The Night of Elisa, my idea was to have a fully painted portrait for each character in the book as well as paintings of scenes, environments and objects. I actually started some of these illustrations and had to put the dream on stand-by for someday in the future.

Leonhard

At the time – as it is now, I had no funding to take hours and hours to make a fully illustrated/graphical edition of the work. To embark in such endeavour, I would need to stop client work, and doing that would mean I would starve to death and sleep under the bridge before I completed the project and my business as illustrator would come to an end. Such a dreadful reality!

Berenice

There was yet another issue that weighted on me never finishing the original project, and that was the print costs. A fully graphical book the way I wanted would need to be printed in color and due to the length of the story, the final price would be heavy for the readers.

Elisa

Depending on crowdfunding platforms was not an option. I see them as me, the creative mind, being at the mercy of people. In other words: If they backed my project I would make it, if not, I would be frustrated and back to square 1. No! I am not that kind of person. If I want to do something, I just do it, regardless of people’s approval, as long as I have the means to do it.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Please, continue reading at my website, where you can also see the rest of the concepts :)
https://tragicbooks.com/2017/01/30/th...

Do you like them? Feel free to share your thoughts!

I first came across Rupert's work through Harry Whitewolf, Janie C and Jason, great GR friends, who were reading The Rebel's Sketchbook. Well, I am an artist and I am a rebel by nature. I loved that title and the cover, so 'explosive'! I thought it was some kind of punk-ish real sketchbook, but it turned out it was a collection of short stories, rather than an art book, and guess what? It was one of the coolest books I have ever read! For some, the stories are 'dark humour', for me, an 'acurate picture of reality.'

Indulge in this interview I did with Rupert Dreyfus:

1) When did you start writing and which are your main influences?
I’ve written on and off since I was a kid. It was mostly self-indulgent, artless drivel. Then when I turned thirty, something clicked and I realised that writing literary fiction isn’t for everyone so no need to try imitating it anymore. After a little experimenting I discovered a style and a subject matter that seemed to compliment each other. The rest is a blur.

As for influences: it’s hard to say who or what my main influences are. We always think of influences as having to be other writers but we all know this isn’t strictly speaking the case. For example music is a massive influence on my writing; specifically the old punk bands and their approach to using the arts as a nailbomb against the established order.

When it comes to literary influences, over the years I’ve enjoyed the works of Orwell, Poe, Kafka, Dashiell Hammett, Irvine Welsh, William Burroughs, Cornell Woolrich, Edward Carey, Oscar Wilde and Patrick McGrath to name a few. I have also discovered some incredibly raw poetry in recent years; poets such as Raegan Butcher, Harry Whitewolf and Andy Carrington. Can’t get enough of it.

2) Do you live off writing or do you balance it with another job? How easy/difficult is it to make it as an author?
I don’t make anywhere near enough money to survive off writing stories so a day job subsidises my savage addiction to ink and paper. Needless to say I’m not in it for the money anyway. I mean it’d be lovely to wake up to having enough money to switch the world off and make a lifestyle out of writing stories, but I can’t see that happening any time soon. Leeching off creativity is reserved for the privileged among us.

As for how easy/ difficult it is to make it as an author: it depends what we mean by ‘make it’. I think it’s a fallacy to link ‘making it’ to financial success because profit isn’t a useful yardstick for the true value of art. I think getting just one stranger to read your book is making it; even if they think it’s eternally wank. Better still each time we bypass the gatekeepers and take back control of the arts we’ve made it.

3) How do you connect with readers? How has been the response towards your work, which is quite polemical?
I mostly connect with readers through social media and by email. Pretty much every day I send DMs and emails to friends and readers. I love to connect with anyone who has taken time out to read my books and support me. The old days of pretentious authors living in their ivory towers are numbered. It’s all about community and caring for your readers as much as they care for you.

To answer your second question: the response to my work has been largely positive which, given the subject matter, is surprising really. Back in 2014 I set off expecting most people to have a negative gut reaction to what I write because counterculture in the Digital Age is deader than Hugh Hefner’s libido. The only difficulty I’ve had so far is getting my stories firmly on to the cannon. But it’s a work in progress…

4) Which of your books/projects is your favourite and why?
Without a shadow of a doubting Thomas my latest novella Prezident Scumbag! has been my favourite project. It was certainly the most fun to write and allowed me to vent about some pretty serious stuff. I was in an awful place in my personal life, too, and it turned out to be perfect for finding the narrator’s inner-voice.

The subject matter is also close to my heart. If I could write only one story in my entire career then it would be centred around calling out the racists and the fascists in society, and doing everything I possibly can to extinguish their nasty, disgusting views.

5) What is your biggest dream as an indie author?
I deep down hope to make enough money out of writing to purchase an island and turn it into a self-sufficient anarchist community. There’d be some spare rooms for visitors to seek refuge; particularly vulnerable people from around the world. Like an open house for free spirits. And everyone’s welcome. Except for Trumpets. They can fuck right off.

The characters of your stories, are they inspired on people you know? Or people you observe through the media?
Some characters and their personalities are drawn from people I know in the real world; others are satirical swipes at political and cultural figures of the day. I always try to choose my targets wisely and make sure I’m not slapping about harmless people.

If you could recommend 3 books to the readers, which would they be?
Brilliant question! The first three books that came to mind are Profit Over People by Noam Chomsky, New Beat Newbie by Whitewolf and Coming Up for Air by Orwell.

Thanks for the interview, Isis, and peace be with you.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Connect with Rupert:
Website: http://www.rupertdreyfus.co.uk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rupert_Dreyfus
The Rebel's Sketchbook on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/151474895...
Prezident Scumbag! on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...
Spark on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spark-Rupert...

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

SPOTLIGHT
Rupert's Books:
Click on the covers to check their GoodReads official pages.

The Rebel's Sketchbook

Prezident Scumbag! A Sick Bastard Novella

Spark




If you like unsettling criticism, dark humour, and polemic observations about the condition of mankind and politics, don't waist another bloody second. Go there and check out his books!