Just The Facts, Ma'am: There is A Lot this month. Like, A Lot A Lot.
First off, I’m going to boost my Patreon (patreon.com/ce_murphy) because
1. through some kind of system malfunction Amazon hasn’t paid me since October, so this is a GREAT time for new patrons! O_O and
2. there will be things available on Patreon that non-Kindle-using-readers won’t have any other access to, due to stuff I’ll discuss in the Behind The Scenes section.
Second, I have a (mostly) new short story available! “Keys” was originally published in a collection that I don’t think anybody read, so it’s now been re-released as an e-story for everyone!
“Keys”
a fairy tale of The Rising
Not so very long ago came the Rising, and the death of the world as it was. There are old tales to be remade in this new future, and echoes of the past that resonate through time.
Rich men survive in every era, and the wealthy baron they call Bluebeard is no different. He offers wealth and comfort and education to the youngest sister of a large family…but what price the keys to a kingdom?
Available Now!
Amazon (affiliate link) || Apple || Barnes & Noble || Kobo
and THIRD, I got the rights back to my Old Races short story collection BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER, and have pre-orders up for that now!
BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER
Collected Tales of the Old Races
Ancient rivals, worst of friends, best of enemies: dragonlord Janx and master vampire Eliseo Daisani are the threads upon which a tapestry of lives and loves are woven across the centuries. From the coldest Russian nights to the heat of Chicago’s greatest fire, nothing brings the immortal adversaries together–or tears them apart–like a woman.
And there is always a woman….
Preorder Now!
Amazon (affiliate link) || Apple || Barnes & Noble || Kobo
Behind the Scenes: O. Mai. Gad. It is The Future. 2020 is, like, 100% The Future. Happy New Year! :D
This year (assuming the freakin’ error with KDP *PAYING ME* gets sorted out), I’m going to start experimenting with Kindle Unlimited. I’ve been reluctant to do this, because some of my readers don’t use Kindle, but they’re about…15% of my monthly self-publishing sales. In theory, KU would make up for that loss of revenue by a *considerable* margin. Because, see, to be enrolled in KU, you can’t have your books available on any other platform. Amazon will crawl the web to make sure you don’t. It’s a bitch. But Amazon is already 85% of my sales. KU could potentially boost that by…IDEK.
I’m not delighted by that. I would really, *really* prefer to be able sell at the most profitable margin across all platforms. Obviously.
But real talk here. Every time we’ve gotten financially stable, we’ve had to move–7 times in 14 years–and it’s wiped us out. Rent keeps getting more and more expensive and getting our feet back under us has been harder each time. And there’s a real chance I’m cutting my own throat trying to make sure my readers can get books on the platform of their choice.
Believe me, I *get* the moral stance against using Amazon. I do not condemn anybody for it. I hate that cutting some readers out is a potential way to make more money.
But, and I think this is understandable, I also hate wondering whether we’re going to run out of fuel oil or be unable to pay the electricity bill.
So for the moment I’ve already pulled RAVEN HEART from non-Amazon platforms, and I have plans to release it through KU. I’m writing other paranormal romance to be released through KU. At the moment I don’t know how much farther I’ll go, although my inclination at the moment is to try re-releasing the Worldwalker books thru it, just to see what happens. I can always pull them out, if it’s not worth it.
It’s clear to me that in an ideal world I’d develop a pseudonym *for* KU. It’d be Murphy Lawless or Cate Dermody, probably, depending on whether I went all-in for PNR or if I started writing a bunch of fast-paced spy stories like THE CARDINAL RULE (which, honestly, is probably my stronger suit, although PNR is huge fun to write).
This does play into the “who has time” problem, tho. If JUST releasing CE Murphy books with no particular rhyme or reason to them–not a long-running series, just a short story here, a two-book series there, etc–did the trick, honestly, I’d yank everything off other platforms.
Of course there’s kind of only one way to find out if it does the trick.
SO. Bringing this around to the first section...I’m just saying that if a person were to support the Patreon at $5 a month or more, there would probably be early access to un-copy-edited stories & books that might not be available elsewhere. Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps. We wouldn’t, under the circumstances, want to be too certain about this, but...it seems very likely, is all I’m sayin’.
A Bit of Chat: After all that, IDEK if you want a bit of chat. :) I’ve finally finished re-reading Michelle Sagara’s terrific Chronicles of Elantra, just in time for the newest book to be out later this month. There were three or four books I hadn’t read at all, so that was wonderful, to just sink into it. I’ll write up a more thorough impression on Patreon and on my blog.
After reading like 15 of Michelle’s books I felt like I didn’t know how to read anything else anymore, but my Kobo said “Lo, re-read DRAGONSINGER”, so I did, and I still love it. I’ve re-read the whole Harper Hall trilogy now, and similarly, will have More Thoughts about it on Patreon & the blog.
I’ve been watching Crisis, and I have to say in the 3 episodes I’ve seen so far, there have been plenty of pretty good moments and cameos but the one that brought tears to my eyes involved Kelly, and I reckon that will make sense to those of you who’ve seen it without spoiling those who haven’t. :)
Other than that I’ve been grinding through a to-do list that somehow keeps getting longer and longer and longer, which is pretty dismaying. >.< And now I must go supervise homework, so I’ll see all you good people next month. <3
-Catie
