Indie author shout out: Hey, hey everyone! Come take a walk on the cyberpunk side with Tyro Vogel's novelette, Extatica. Wild and strange and sexy, all wrapped into one. [please note: mature audiences only] Available at Smashwords, pay what you'd like!

Word of the week: cantankerous \kan-ˈtaŋ-k(ə-)rəs, kən-\ - adjective - (hear it!) - :  difficult or irritating to deal with 

Two Months, Too Little, Too Soon to Tell

Hark and hear ye, thus and so, lo and behold and other random old exclamations connected by conjunctions!

Two months since the release of The Perfect Player, two months since Marisa and Locrian, Donovan and Eden, Lamont and Daft, Throe, Abigale, Ariana, Kahlil and Tayib have snagged the hearts and minds of those I’ve lovingly coined as “my underground readership.”

Yes, a modest cluster of actual readers—many of whom I know, though some of whom are still strangers—truly like my novel. Even those who aren’t fantasy readers! And here I was worried about its reception. Well, you know . . . demons and death and destruction and all that, it’s hard not to worry . . .

So how fairest the book thus far, you ask? Well, it fairest fairly well, thank you. Absolutely by no means is it a lifestyle supporter; not even a decent paycheck, really. Modest returns, all told.

Honestly, if I were forced at popgun-point to sit down and figure the amount of time spent near-perfecting the book in relation to the amount of profit its taken in? Well . . . let’s just say minimum wage has never been that low.

Not even close.

In fact, no one in his right mind would ever work for such laughably pitiful wages.

Fortunately, authors aren’t usually in their right minds, and readers often benefit from our crazy love for writing until our fingers fall off and our minds turn to baby mush as we forgo sleep and sustenance . . . um, well, everything except coffee, that is.

But you know what? After much hemming and hawing and grumbling and fuming, and strong (albeit brief) disappointment in the work-to-monetary reward ratio, I’ve come to accept what I’ve always known in my heart: the story lives because of its readers.

Currently, it’s in the hands of 640 people (both sold and through giveaways) . . . and that’s 640 more readers it has now, than if I’d continued to crack my skull against the brick wall of trad-publishing rejections.

So, where to now? Best advice I’ve ever heard: Release your first book, start your second. Sounds simple, right?

Yes . . . well . . . um . . .

*ahem*

Hmph! Right. Go ahead, you try working with a cantankerous red-haired teen who flatly refuses to crawl out of bed until she feels so inclined, then demands her story be told in first person—period. [insert spitting action here]

*sigh*

At least I’d managed to talk her out of a retelling in present tense . . . for now.

Word of the week: penis \ˈpē-nəs\ - (hear it! - wait, actually, no need for that, never mind) - noun - (as defined in the medical dictionary under Merriam-Webster) : the male copulatory organ of a higher vertebrate animal that in mammals including humans usually functions as the channel by which urine leaves the body and is typically a cylindrical organ that is suspended from the pubic arch, contains a pair of large lateral corpora cavernosa and a smaller ventromedial corpus cavernosum containing the urethra, and has a terminal glans enclosing the ends of the corpora cavernosa, covered by mucous membrane, and sheathed by a foreskin continuous with the skin covering the body of the organ.

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Today’s readers are so lucky.

Yes. Lucky.

Why do I say this?

Look around you. There’s a veritable smörgåsbord of indie authors out there. Anywhere we turn, another one crops up.

And some of them are good—really good!

A long-time friend of mine (a reader, not a writer) told me she’s sick of reading the “same old, same old.” You know, those novels that so strictly adhere to some formulaic concoction or another, one can pretty much predict, scene for scene, what’s going to happen, when, and how.

“Cookie cutter” novels, I call these.

And they can get really BORRRRIIIING.

So, I seek out Indies. Good Indies. Indies whose books often don’t follow these “cookie cutter” patterns but deviate from the norm and weave plots so intricate it’s nearly impossible to disbelieve the story worlds, even when magic and a gazillion other improbable things abound—tenfold! 

The Royal Wizard

And here, today, I’d like to feature one of these excellent indie authors whose fantasy world (like another prominent fantasy indie I featured last year) has captivated my fussy fantasy mind with her novel, The Royal Wizard, and believe me, I’m really looking forward to reading more of her work. 

So please allow me to introduce the wonderful, talented . . . Alianne Donnelly!

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I blame high school for setting me on the path to becoming a writer, and for you reading this oddly composed post years later. Not in any direct way, mind you, but as a byproduct of sucking so bad as to make my soul wail in heart wrenching sobs against the mind-destroying conformity of all-girls catholic school uniforms (which are nowhere near as fashionable as the adult magazine industry would have you believe). Okay, so I mixed a few metaphors there, but you get the point. High school bad. Daydreams good. And boy, did my daydreams bloom.

Interesting factoid: the more you distance yourself from the everyday, the easier it is to look down on the world and imagine shoving it under a running faucet, scrubbing it clean, and then bedazzling it in fantastic hues of awesome. My subliminally transmutative travels took me to places far and wide, from the ancient forests of Northern Europe to distant planets millennia in the future. I dabbled in magics and DNA recombination, military strategies, political intrigue, and above all, love. One should always dabble in love. It’s the funnest thing in the world. Until someone gets hurt. Which they do…

Anyway, long story short, hi. My name is Alianne and I am a dreamaholic. [Pause for the obligatory, “Hi Alianne.”] Now, having taken the first step to introductions, I should probably spell out that I am not crazy. I can’t be. I have a website, look: http://aliannedonnelly.com Although, that’s what they all say, so I don’t know how you’ll be able to tell the difference. I write paranormal and fantasy romance, which you can read about at the above stated site, or purchase at any reputable e-book retailer (hint, hint). At the moment I am battling some very unruly characters in Blood Hunt, the fourth book in my Blood Series. She’s insane, he drove her to it—they’re a match made in heaven! My beta tells me this is my best writing yet so I fully expect it to hit all the Bestseller charts the first week. ;) But by the time you read this, I’ll probably have finished it and moved on to Dragonborn, book two in the Dragonborn Series. This one’s all fantasy, dragons and magic and its official tag line is, “When demons fly, the world will burn.” If all goes well, both of these should be release-ready in 2014. I am crossing all my fingers and toes that it may be so.

As you might have gathered, I’m not very good at talking about myself or my books. The lovely hostess Kimberly left the questions frustratingly free-form with a few guidelines, which I’ll bet she's regretting now. ;) Her one rule was that I had utilize a rarely used word somewhere in my 2-5 paragraphs, so, to adhere to protocol and avoid her wrath, here I go:

Penis.

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You can download Alianne's books at Amazon and Smashwords. But even better, (everything's listed and linked!) from her website: aliannedonnelly.com