Alex Slade's Blog

I've eventually managed to overcome the absolute sense of dread and self-doubt that I've felt about actually finishing Amy and the Professor and letting it be seen by anyone in public.


It took me all of 8 months from writing the first line in mid-January to clicking the "Publish" button in the Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard. 8 months! Of course not all of that time was spent writing a short 35,000 word novella.

My time tracker shows that about 60% of the time I spent on the Amy project was spent on tasks other than writing. A lot of reading, (ironically, mostly about the art and act of writing itself), learning all I could about cover artwork, the technicalities of ebook and paperback formatting and layout, and hours toward the end on editing and rewriting. Maybe it gets easier from here on. But, holy heck, giving birth to Amy's story was a lot more complicated than I'd ever imagined. At least for me.

Two thirds of it was done for ages. And then it just sat there. Stagnated as I procrastinated. I'd find any and every excuse or reason not to fire up the laptop and finish writing. On my best day of writing, I got almost 4,000 words down. So it wasn't a case of not being able to write. The longer it dragged on the more obvious the problem became. I knew that once I finished writing, the only thing I could do with it was publish it. And that's what worried me.

I honestly still don't know whether doing it was the right thing. Don't know if I'm prepared for the potential criticisms and complaints. But I read something a week ago that lit the fire and got me to get it done, and get it out:
  And so, here we are.

Amy and the Professor is the first of the standalone stories that I hope to release in the Lipstick Alphabet series of stories. It's available exclusively on Amazon Kindle listed at $2.99. I've published in the Amazon Select program so it - and all future stories in the set - is available for free to Kindle Unlimited users.

A paperback version is also available on Amazon books if you prefer having your eromance books in a hard copy.

Alternatively, if you're still not ready to risk your coin on such an unknown, no-one - least of all me -would blame you. I have a few copies available for Free via Instafreebie (and if you're actually reading this, you deserve a free copy just for that - please take one!)

Hopefully #2 in the set will be a lot smoother. Look out for Calming Brooke, coming in sooner than 8 months time. Hopefully!

Super quick note to mention that the paperback version of Bookseller's Story has been approved and is now available for sale on the Amazon Book store. I even managed to get them to link it to the eBook version already.


I also published it via Createspace to non-Amazon and offline stores, but have absolutely no idea how long it takes, or where it goes. If you do stumble over a paperback version of it anywhere other than on Amazon, whether on- or off-line, please drop a note into the comments to let me know.

xoxoxo
A.

I think I've spent more time fiddling with covers and cover images this month than actually writing. In fact, I know I have. Getting back into writing regularly is hard y'all! And I do so put the 'pro' into 'procrastinate'. Despite committing myself to finishing the first draft of WE #2 by the end of this month, the weather here was a bit meh this weekend, so instead of writing, I messed about in Photoshop again.

It wasn't entirely wasted time I guess. I did decide on a look for the overall series, and I am not going to change it again. This is what all of my future Wicked Erotica series covers will look like. The only difference between them will be the color scheme. And the titles, obvs. Also, I wanted to see how to go about publishing a paperback through KDP - using The Bookseller's Story) - so I needed to make a cover for that anyway. Took the opportunity to update the cover for its' Kindle Edition and compiled and published a paperback version. Took a while, and needed a fair bit of web reading to work out the details, but I think it turned out alright. (More on the paperback of Bookseller in a while - once I get notified that the manuscript and cover have been approved and the book is avaialble).

With all that said, here's the revised (and now definitely final!) cover for The Bookseller's Story . This is a link to the Books2Read page which links to all the sites that offer Bookseller for Free. Amazon has still not! price-matched it, so it's still listed at $0.99 on their Kindle Page.  Of course, if you want to contribute 25c to my next cup of coffee, you're more than welcome to pick it up there: The Bookseller's Story on Kindle.

The Bookseller's Story - An Alex Slade Wicked Erotica Novelette






































And also, just for those of you who've scrolled down this far, a special sneak peek at the (first and definitely only!) cover for Wicked Erotica Book #2, The Professor's Pupil. That's the one I promised myself I'll finish a first draft of by tomorrow :). I'm not close...

The Professor's Pupil - An Alex Slade Wicked Erotica NoveletteLater
A.
-xxx-

 
 "The Bookseller's Story" is an erotic adult contemporary romance short story.

Her Story is one of loneliness and lost loves. Sex for her has always been routine and unexciting. Romance has never really entered the scene. Sex as a means to an get ahead perhaps, but never as an answer to her loneliness. Her love of books brings her into his life.

His Story is one of initial lust from the moment he first meets her in his bookstore. That lust turns into deep passion after they experience one highly charged erotic evening of intense sexual chemistry, and both begin a new chapter in their combined story.

Like most of my short erotic stories, I first wrote The Bookseller's Story in my head while out people watching.
I noticed a bookshop clerk flirting unsuccessfully with an attractive female customer. She initially seemed very aloof and a little bit snobbish to me, but after watching her for a while I started to think that perhaps she was just lonely, and that the standoffish attitude was really just a defense mechanism to protect herself from being hurt.

The scene described in the novelette grew from those initial observations to what it is now - a description of one of the hottest, sexiest, most erotic encounters I could imagine giving her. I like to hope that it helps to take some of her loneliness away.

Bookseller is also the very first thing I've ever actually published. In fact, I originally published it way back in 2013 partly to see what all this self-publishing fuss was all about, and partly to secure my writing name in the great word jungle that is Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. (Turns out, it's a good thing I did as in late 2016 an Australian guy published a sci-fi novel called Arrival using the same name. Sorry if it's caused any confusion for you Alex mate, but I did get there first :) Maybe we can colab on a sexy sci-fi scene or two to make for it?)
This version of The Bookseller's Story is textually identical to the original, but it has an updated cover - which is probably also going to change soon to better match the other novelettes in the series.
I'm still sort of, kinda, not 100% sure how I feel about it. It is really short, so it may put off some first time readers from potentially becoming regular readers as they may assume anything else I put out will be equally short. On the other hand, it is straight up damn hot, steamy and super sexy! Even if I do say so myself. 
Either way, good or bad idea, it's done. I've republished it recently as part of my New Alex outlook. I'm going to stop (well, I'm going to try to stop!) procrastinating as much as I do. I'm going to try to write more, write longer, write regularly. In the 4+ years since I started this, I've stored up a bunch of story ideas and this is the point in my life where I'm going to do my damnedest to get them onto virtual paper
I've made Bookseller available for FREE on as many eBook retailer sites as I can (some are a little sticky about publishing anything that is categorized as Erotica or Romantic Erotica) and intend to keep it permanently free. Unfortunately, when publishing to Amazon for the Kindle, you cannot publish anything at a $0.00 price point. The minimum price writers can set for their work is $0.99. You can try to get the might 'Zon to Price Match against other stores where it is free, but this is sometimes a bit of a hit-or-miss thing. 
If Bookseller is still listed at 99c when you look for it, feel free to grab a free copy of it from any one of the other stores: iBooks Store, Nook, Kobo, 24Symbols, or Angus & Robertson.
   
   
You can also find links to all of these from The Bookseller's Story Books2Read listing:https://books2read.com/alex-slade-booksellers-story
If you like what you read, please consider leaving a short review and rating on the site that you do grab it from - every positive review helps to get me motivated to write more. And if you want to get advance notice of when the next bit of my smexy writing is going to come out, join the Alex Slade Readers list here: http://bit.ly/Alex-Slade-Readers.
Thanks for all the love shared so far - I truly hope that this is the first of many small steps we'll be taking together.
Alex-xxx-