It’s that time of year again – which is seriously, seriously insane! Time to hang up and fill the Advent calendars that Michael and I made (click the link for the ‘making-of’ post) when we realized that a Christmas tree and living in a one-room cabin really didn’t go well together. We’re in a bigger place now – yay! for completed additions/renovations – but we still aren’t doing a tree this year (life is a little overwhelming, but hopefully 2024 will feel a little less schedule-driven).
As I have since 2016, I’ll share my #ChocolateForBreakfast advent treat shots/posts on my Instagram account, rather than spamming my blog feed. Though I now have Instagram feeding onto my Facebook page as well. But! Here is a screenshot of my December 1, 2023 treat!!
Desbarres Monte Grande 72% Guatemala. Chocolatiers are based in Ontario. Awards: Silver from the International Chocolate Awards in 2020 and 2022. Tasting notes (via the bar): caramel, banana, and citrus. Tasting notes (MCD): immediately fruit forward (the banana, I guess?) but quickly resolving into an almost pungent citrus, heavy on the lemon zest. Creamy, smooth chocolate. Tasty, but definitely a challenge to my palate.
Money is crazy tight for all of us right now. Rent, etc, is way too high. Food and groceries are crazy outrageous. So we’re going to be celebrating a quiet holiday season. Doing our advent calendars and our Christmas movie and homemade pizza Fridays, but no tree or presents or expensive travel. I hope you will all find a spark of joy to ease you through the season. And, fingers crossed, hopefully 2024 is a bit … smoother, and easier.
If I remember, I’ll post my holiday baking round-up aka later in the month.
Do I have any idea how long that series is going to be? Or how I’m going to brand it? Or if anyone will even read it?
No.
Do I vaguely regret making readers expect recipes from me every time I post a picture of anything dessert (or food) related? So much so that I actually carefully curate what I do post?
Yes. So much yes.
Am I considering using the main character of the new series’s (currently mild) obsession with ice cream (and milkshakes) as a way to justify buying an expensive (compressor) ice cream maker? And therefore, in order to fully justify the purchase, having to write up even more recipes?
Very much yes. On both counts.
😂😂😂
This post has been brought to you by MCD being pissy about having to wait 24 hours to chill her ice cream base and freeze her ice cream bowl. This dissatisfaction is also known in many philosophical circles as ice cream-blocking.
I wanted to share another chunk of my alt-universe urban fantasy WIP with you today (19,357 words and going strong), but I’m feeling just a teensy bit overwhelmed between writing new words and getting Endings and Empathy (Amplifier 6) off to the proofreader. Let alone all the regular admin, etc.
Oh! And Julie (producer) and Erin (narrator) just dropped the audiobooks for Dowser 1, 2, and 3 in my inbox! So, while those are going to take some serious time to ‘proofread’ (in the evenings), anyone who participated in the Kickstarter will be pleased to know they are almost ready!
Anyway, a friend of mine, Thomas, send me this old photo yesterday (like old, old) of Michael, me, and my darling friend Janine attending a salmon BBQ before taking in a play at Bard on the Beach (aka Vancouver’s Shakespeare in the Park).
First, ugh, we all look so insanely young. And second, yes, I’m eating. I’m always eating whenever someone randomly turns a camera on me. I suppose you’re all not that remotely surprised, but seriously?
😂😂😂
Photo by Thomas. From left to right: Michael, MCD, and Janine.
I could probably dig through my old photo albums and share a photo exactly like this one once a week and not run out for the rest of the year. My Dad especially specialized in these ‘perfect’ captures (like seriously, he deliberately stalked me during family gatherings to get shots of me eating)(a weird pastime)(that I won’t take the time to read any meaning into).
At the beginning of September 2022, I rolled over my three-year anniversary of having drug (and therapy) resistant chronic migraine. The ‘and therapy’ addition is my own, the diagnosis is via my headache specialist and took over two and a half years to get – because that was how long it took me to go through every therapy and drug currently avail in Canada (there is another new drug pending approval, and I’m on a waitlist for it).
Yes, I’m in constant, unrelenting daily pain. Some days I’m quite functional and the pain is at a low simmer. Some days I’m lucky if I can string two sentences together (literally, in conversation, and on the page). Those two extremes are rare. Usually, I fall somewhere in the middle, aka functional for a few hours scattered throughout my day.
One of the most difficult struggles I’ve had with chronic pain is the inability to maintain a schedule. And even when I try to arrange my days, or even get a few days to flow in a row, it feels like the smallest addition/complication can throw me off.
Take today for example. My pain is present, closer to distracting than a low simmer, but I’ve worked through worse many times before. I have a massive to-do list which is almost entirely my own fault – I decided to release two books with only thirty days in between and somehow convinced myself that I could also write the next book (Amplifier 6), run a large scale promo on another book (Amplifier 0), and overhaul my ‘store’ at the same time. In the background, I’m also budgeting/arranging my upcoming Author Tea with Hailey Edwards (May 27, 2023 in Vancouver, BC), brainstorming/budgeting for a Tenth Anniversary Kickstarter for Dowser 1 (Feb 2023 for the Kickstarter, June 2023 for the anniversary), and getting the audiobooks for Archivist series going. Also, I’ve been asked to send in proof of my Medical expenses for 2021 to Revenue Canada. Add in (attempting to get) daily exercise and a daily walk with Molly (approx 2 hours of each day).
And I was doing okay with all of it, prioritizing.
Then yesterday Michael cranked his neck and went down for the day. I lost the writing but stepped up with the household stuff (though I forgot to let the chickens out of the coop until 11:30am, yikes) yet still managed to knock several items off my to-do list.
But today the gutter installers are here. Getting new gutters on the cabin before the rain sets in is going to be great! I will no longer get soaked coming and going from my office. But Molly Millions isn’t pleased. I’ve had to put her bark collar on her (which I hate almost as much as she does).
And now I’m way off – no story in my aching head, no motivation in my aching body, and utterly frustrated by my inability to get into, then maintain, a groove.
I used to be so resilient. Way, way back when (when I was still a screenwriter/indie filmmaker) I once had a (male) film/literary agent cite my ‘focus and drive’ as ‘not necessarily a good thing.’ And even then daily pain was almost a constant in my life (bursitis, tendonitis, and headaches).
Hence my realization today. Life is constantly chaotic – random injuries, taxes, gutter installers, barking/anxious dogs – but chronic pain makes those things much much more impactful than they are on a ‘regular’ life. At least, on the fairly ‘regular’ life I felt like I once led.
I know there is a lot of literature about ‘spoons’ and only having so many to allot to each day, but I can’t seem to rectify that concept with my own expectations, my own wants/needs/dreams.
Anyway, this was just a long post to say a short thing:
I see you. I know you. I am you.
Take care of yourself. And I will try to do the same.
Love and Light,
Meghan
Sunset over Vancouver Island, taken from Salt Spring Island, September 1, 2022.
In case you haven’t seen my posts on my various social media platforms, I had a hysterectomy (everything but ovaries) almost two weeks ago. I’ve been taking my pain meds diligently and reading a book a day but getting seriously restless. This afternoon, I’m doing some slow walking on my treadmill desk, which in turn spawned some slow, slow writing on a short, short Kandy story that I was hoping to include in Moments of the Adept Universe 1 but didn’t quite make it.
Needless to say, my publishing schedule is now even more delayed than usual. As are my newsletters, etc. But I’ll get back to work on Amplifier 5 as soon as I’m up for it.
Here is a tiny Kandy snippet to tide you over (hopefully).
I stood on the land of the pack of my birth and felt nothing.
The gate had been open, but the long drive was filled with vehicles so I’d parked my Jeep on the street and walked. Walked until the behemoth of a house loomed over me. The white siding and columned front porch showed signs of age for the first time in my recollection. The dusty pink roses woven through the trellis that stretched up to Justin’s bedroom window on the top corner didn’t quite hide the broken cross brace midway up. And I could see that the untreated splintered wood had grayed with age.
Five years and five months of age to be exact.
I’d broken that trellis the last time I’d sneaked out of Justin’s bedroom. Though he’d asked me to spend the night, and nothing happened clandestinely in a house occupied by adult werewolves, no matter how stupidly large that house was, so sneaking around was just a game.
Just a game.
Fooling around with Justin and Dedra at the same time.
Pretending I wasn’t committed to anything or anyone, least of all some imposed sense of place, or status within the pack. The pack I’d been born into, bred into really. Bred to be the best of the best.
At the time I’d thought that walking away was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, ever have to do.
I’d been wrong.
And not for the last time.
Because it was possible — no matter that I was happy as I could be in Vancouver and within the loose structure of my pack of choice — I wasn’t going to be able to bring myself to walk through the front doors, let alone jog up the few steps leading to them.
My mother was dead.
– A Moment of Reflection (Moments of the Adept Universe 0.8), first draft
So here is a great example of something I should keep my mouth shut about, but I’m going to waste my time responding to. Ironically, I was just talking about the grief I get for the perceived length of my books, and the pressure that negative (and erroneous) feedback puts on my ability to write those books.
So instead of writing new words, I’m going to respond to the latest accusation that I write NOVELLAS and charge FULL PRICE for them. Also the exact definition of a cliffhanger.
As you can see above, this reader is incredibly disgusted by my cliffhanging, novella-length books, which I have the audacity to charge full price for.
So let’s address these accusations.
First, a NOVELLA is 17,500 to 40,000 words in length. (here is the wiki link if you don’t believe me). The average length for an urban fantasy novel is 70,000 – 95,000 (Ilona Andrews often blogs about needing to REDUCE their word count for traditional publishing).
Here are the WORD COUNTS for my FULL-LENGTH books (yes, I’m seriously wasting my time now)(in reading order):
• Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser 1) – 68,000
• Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (Dowser 2) – 82,061
• Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (Dowser 3) – 85,621
• I See Me (Oracle 1) – 72,483
• Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser 4) – 68,538
• Maps, Artifacts, and Other Arcane Magic (Dowser 5) – 73,782
• I See You (Oracle 2) – 77,029
• Artifacts, Dragons, and Other Lethal Magic (Dowser 6) – 90,548
• Champagne, Misfits, and Other Shady Magic (Dowser 7) – 74,500
• Misfits, Gemstones, and Other Shattered Magic (Dowser 8) – 73,550
• Gemstones, Elves, and Other Insidious Magic (Dowser 9) – 91,443
• Demons and DNA (Amplifier 1) – 76,984
• Bonds and Broken Dreams (Amplifier 2) – 92,296
• Mystics and Mental Blocks (Amplifier 3) – 83,640
• Idols and Enemies (Amplifier 4) – 103,026 (also includes The Music Box – an extra 4500 words at no extra cost to the reader).
• Misplaced Souls (Misfits 1) – 91,661
• Invoking Infinity (Archivist 1) – 106,557
• Compelling Infinity (Archivist 2) – 88,680
As you can see NOT ONE of the books I charge so-called full price for is a novella. Nowhere near, in fact. The first book in a trilogy is often a little trimmer (Dowser 1, Dowser 4, Oracle 1, Reconstructionist 1, and Dowser 7) because it is the ‘first act’ aka the set-up. And is often balanced by a much longer third book (Dowser 3, 6, and 9, etc)
PRICING
Dowser 1 is FREE. Dowser 2 and 3, Oracle 1 are $3.99. All my other full-length books are $4.99.
The average price for an urban fantasy novel? (eBook, USD): $3.99-$16.99, but most indies charge $4.99-$6.99.
And, highly ironically, the two books I call novellas, The Amplifier Protocol (Amplifier 0) and Awakening Infinity (Archivist 0) are actually short novel-length but I charge $3.99 for them. I also gave away Amplifier 0 and Archivist 0 for free on my blog (serialized). And, at one time or another, the Dowser box set (three books), Oracle 1, and Reconstructionist 1 have all been available for free.
And, even more ironically, my cost to produce a novel (not including an audiobook which adds $3500-$4000) has tripled in the last two to three years and I HAVEN’T RAISED MY PRICES. It costs me (depending on what cover artist I use or extras I include, like the illustrations in the Archivist series): $5k- $7k to produce the eBook and paperback. Minimum. To be completely transparent, I earn approx $3.70 on a $4.99 book. So … just to put it all together, I have to sell 1350 – 1890 eBooks just to break even.
None of my books end in an actual cliffhanger – as in the story abruptly stopping with no resolution, aka with the main character literally hanging off a cliff by their fingernails. Teasing where the story goes next IS NOT A CLIFFHANGER. Even in DOWSER 8, the main storyline is resolved. It just isn’t resolved to some readers’ satisfaction. The second book in a trilogy (so Dowser 2, Dowser 5, Dowser 8, Oracle 2, Reconstructionist 2) traditionally ends on a low note – that is the PROPER structure for a trilogy!! And even then, in my books, the main storyline is ALWAYS resolved. Hence no actual cliffhangers.
It is highly ironic, that the hate mail I got after Dowser 8 directly contributed to me not writing any more Dowser books, and no longer writing trilogies even though I love the structure. Nasty notes/reviews/etc took Jade away from me, and I will be forever bitter about it. Which is probably why I just wasted my time writing this blog post.
So … I hope whoever decided to write the nasty review accusing me of charging novel prices for novellas and ending all my books with cliffhangers is happy she got my attention. That she got me angry. And that instead of writing new words, and therefore releasing another novel sooner than later, that I wasted my time writing this blog post. I hope she also enjoyed getting (at minimum) Dowser 1 for free.
I hope she enjoys the fact that she has most likely galvanized me to raise my prices (since my own costs have more than tripled).
But one question? If you are so DISGUSTEDby paying for my so-called ‘cliffhanger’ ‘novellas’, why keep reading them?
Yes, I know, I shouldn’t read reviews, but when I’ve just released a book I often pop over to see how it is being received. This was staring me in the face when I did so this morning.
End Rant.
Lunch.
And then, I will attempt to get some new words written.
So … I just released my twenty-seventh full-length book (so not counting novellas or shorts)! Insanity. Michael and I crunched the numbers over coffee/hot chocolate this morning and Compelling Infinity (Archivist 2) came in just 19 units shy of breaking my release day record! Not bad for the third book in a relatively new series!
I’m so, so chuffed that you have embraced Dusk’s series! Thank you to everyone who preordered, bought on the day, and/or ordered the book from your library. And an extra thank you to everyone for sharing the series/books with their friends and family!! Oh, and reviews at your retailer/site of choice are welcomed and appreciated!
MCD’s 2022 book forecast … in notebooks.
Moving forward into 2022 I have five books/series in the works (though two are long-term side series), but if the headache holds I’ll be lucky to get three written. I promise to do my best!
Ideally (if I can manage to write steadily six days a week) here are my upcoming releases:
Moments of the Adept Universe 1 – Jan/Feb 2022
Amplifier 4.5/5 – May 2022
Amplifier 6 – Sept 2022
Archivist 3 – November 2022
Misfits 2 (aka Kandy’s book) – December 2022
I’ll also be looking into getting the Archivist series done in audio, leading up to the release of book three (hopefully in the latter half of the year).
I also have a fun Moment of the Adept Universe story idea (maybe a novella?) that I hope to release as a ‘treat’ in May/June. Again headache dependant.
The side projects are a new multiverse urban fantasy and the space opera I keep toying around with.
Memo is still doing sketches for the Adept Universe bible, so I will keep releasing those throughout the year as well.
As soon as I get my hands on the bloody envelopes I ordered over a month ago, I’ll add the Archivist giclee illustrations to the store, and then the oracle card sets that everyone keeps asking for … just as soon as I can get it all organized (but my main focus MUST be new words).
Thank you for all your support through 2021 – it was a really tough year! – and I hope we continue to have fun together through 2022!
Thanks to Kim and Dwayne at Wrinkles R Us we have happily expanded our family with the sweet, adorable addition of Molly Millions, a miniature chocolate Shar Pei. Molly has been home for just over a week now, and is pretty much chewing everything, but almost sleeping all the way through the night in her crate – so yay!
Molly Millions the Chocolate Shar Pei in Meghan’s lap, on the way to the ferry (which then got canceled, forcing us to spend our first night together in a Vancouver hotel).
Namesake: Molly Millions aka Razorgirl is a character from Willam Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy (first appearing in Johnny Mnemonic). This science fiction (cyberpunk) series is one of my all time favourites, specifically for the character of Molly, the epically complicated female recurring character. Strong, loyal, moral, yet cold, cynical, and even vicious when needed, Molly, a cyborg mercenary/bodyguard always somehow falls on the ‘side of angels’ when given the choice.
Molly Millions on the ferry home, cold in the ‘pet room’ because we weren’t allowed to stay in the car for the 3.5 hours trip.
Molly Millions, finally home and getting some comforting cuddles from Michael on the couch (while watching Meghan in the kitchen).
Molly Millions the Chocolate Shar Pei. Eight weeks plus one day.
So you can all pretty much assume that all my social media accounts will simply be Molly Millions spam hence forth, with the occasional mention of a new book. 😂
Well … just in case you were wondering how my day is going, my menopause specialist just informed she’s tapped out, and referred me to the Chronic Disease Clinic in Vancouver – which is a rather crazy scary name BTW. It will only take 18-24 months to get an appointment – so much YAY!
Yep, 6+ months of hormone therapy (not including the 4 months of birth control before that) and it only makes the constant headache consistently worse. Sigh.
My headache specialist is likewise tapped out, waiting on a new class of drug to be approved in Canada. Three rounds of the botox (spaced three months apart) has not helped.
So – about to roll into my twenty-fourth month of daily constant pain – all that leaves me with is eating well, exercising as much as possible, and possibly trying to cultivate a daily mediation practice. For the foreseeable future.
Maybe the Goddess of Menopause will decide I’ve suffered for long enough and ease off on the headache (and the other symptoms while she’s at it).
I’m also emailing the massage therapist after I publish this update, because as of next Wednesday I’m fully vaccinated!
In other nicer news, my house is getting cleaned for me today. 🙂 I added 1300 words to Archivist 2 before lunch and my appointment (which isn’t a lot but I’ll take it). And here is a pretty picture of my desk buddy:
Leo the Silver Shaded Persian curled up on MCD’s treadmill/standing desk (tucked behind the treadmill control thingamajig).
After being delayed for months thanks to two engineers who were giving Michael the run around (literally not answering emails and dodging phone calls), we finally passed structural this week after a simple ten-minute walkthrough and not a single note/extra/change (because the place is already overbuilt and Michael knows what he’s doing).
Anyways! Passing structural means that Michael can get to the part of the job he loves doing — all the extras. Such as building the bench into the niche/bookshelf for my office.
MCD’s office niche/bookshelf – framed!!
So hopefully there will be quicker updates going forth … roofing, siding, windows, and the garage door are all on order. In a few weeks the plumbing and electrical rough-in … etc!
Fun! Fun!
And … the view from a seated position (will probably be a bit higher when finished … that’s Vancouver Island (Crofton) across the channel, BTW.
