publishing

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My writing: an update

I feel really strange.

I finished both the series that have consumed my brain and my time for the last fifteen years. Living Fae’s final volume, On the Edge, is in the last stages of formatting and might even be published about the same time as this post. The Skilled Investigators has reached a conclusion although my betas might ask me to expand bits. They usually do. I’m one of those authors whose word count goes up after editing…

On second thoughts, I’m going to hold back on publishing On the Edge. It isn’t a Christmas story and could get overwhelmed in the general riot at this time of year, and I’ll be publishing my Christmas offering so that friends not signed up to this blog can get it on Smashwords or Amazon.

Harlequin (Living Fae) and Genef (The Skilled Investigators) have lived in my head since their inception. I got to regard them as perfectly real and as good friends. Now I’ve told their stories and don’t quite know what to do with myself. I have a suspicion I might be lonely.

That’s not totally true. There’s another novel that has been languishing on my hard drive… it needs some care and attention but basically, it’s written. And it could possibly be the start of another series.

I haven’t only been writing the two series, of course. I’ve managed quite a few short stories, and a fair amount of fan fiction. I have also written poetry, reviews, and meta about writing. All in the last quarter of 2019.

I posted a poem recently (poems always get more reactions on WordPress than anything else I say) and I also posted (on AO3) a story for a Secret Santa exchange. My giftee liked it so that’s a plus and so did the mods! I can’t link anyone to it or say anything else until the author reveal which I believe is on Christmas Day. I published The Road, and the collection Beating Hearts, I wrote about typos and about reading mm romance, and I edited and amended a short story that I gave you for free (Hallowe’en Changes). Then I got another short story ready to post for you for Christmas (watch this space). So I suppose I’ve been busy.

All the same, Harlequin and Genef are going to leave a huge hole in my life. There is a vacancy in my brain for at least one more character to move in. How do I advertise for new tenants?

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The Road. My new volume in The Skilled Investigators.

The fifth volume in my Skilled Investigators series is ‘live’ on Smashwords and Amazon.

In this volume, Genef, the female elf trainee detective, and her elf mentor Rath have been sent undercover to the neighbouring human kingdom of Norveria to investigate the murder of an elf. They find more murders, abductions and violence. They make friends with human Officers, and meet prejudice against elves on their road trip. Scratch stays in The Kingdom initially (after all, a dragon can’t exactly go undercover) but later visits his family in the mountains near the capital of Norveria and helps to solve the case and arrest the criminals. There’s a map of The Kingdom and Norveria under the Skilled Investigators tab here on my WordPress site.

I’m feeling quite pleased that the formatting and uploading needed for self publishing are becoming easier every time I have a new book out. I reckon I’ll be expert just as I run out of plots!

The series will finish in the next and final volume which I’m currently writing. It’s called The River and takes newly qualified Genef back to her home village where Scratch finds himself investigating kidnapping and murder under Genef’s supervision. I’m not quite half way through but I’ve already created the cover… (I find Photoshop a great distraction that helps me procrastinate!!!)

Sales are not going well. I think the books cross too many genres and I find them hard to market properly. I happen to like fantasy, dragons, female detectives, murder mysteries, elves, a sub plot with a gentle mm romance and general alien/fantasy world building. That doesn’t mean the series will appeal to many readers! I think when I have the six books published I’ll make a ‘box set’ of ebooks, change the blurb, tags and pricing and start marketing all over again. Any advice welcome!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/990200

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Beating Hearts! (My new ebook.)

My latest book is available on Amazon and Smashwords. As the blurb on both sites says, it’s a collection of short stories and flashfics – all with a supernatural or paranormal element and all with an mm romance with a happy ending. I wrote the original material in response to prompts at various times in a Yahoo writers’ group I belonged to; it’s a group to which I’m eternally grateful because I learnt a lot and made friends I am still in touch with. The stories have since been expanded, edited, and brought together to form a collection with a fantasy theme. A couple of the stories contain slightly more erotic material than my usual work so if you go to Smashwords to look at the book, be sure to allow the site to show you adult content. I had fun writing the stories and hope some of you might have fun reading them! If you do, I’d be wildly grateful for a review on either site. I often seem to get links wrong so if these don’t work I’d suggest looking for my name.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/987045

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Recommending a selling site: Clare London’s blogshop.

It’s not often you get so many posts in a row from me, but I can recommend Clare’s summer blogshop which showcases and gives links to a variety of summer themed lgbtq romances including my own Flying Free. Go and visit!

https://clarelondon11.blogspot.com/p/summer-2019.html

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Sale!

I’ve entered all my books in the Smashwords July sale.

I’ve also re-priced some of them so that the prices are consistent. That means that on Amazon (and usually on Smashwords), all the novels in the two series are $2.99, the stand-alone novellas are $1.99 and the short story (Silver Chains) is $0.99.

So in the sale, the novels are $1.50, the novellas are $0.99 and the short story is free.

The coupon for the sale price is automatically deducted if you make a purchase.

I’ve noticed that even over yesterday and today the free short story has been taken by quite a few people so obviously Smashwords readers do look at the sale lists, and hopefully it will get my name as an author better known.

When I’ve finished the two series (Living Fae and The Skilled Investigators) I plan to market them as boxed sets but that’s some way off.

Anyway, if you’ve fancied giving my work a try, now’s a good time!

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Flying Free is published.

Flying Free, the third volume in my Living Fae series, is now available!

I was surprised at the speed at which Smashwords accepted it into their ‘premium’ catalogue and therefore shipped everywhere in various formats. Usually they take a few days, and this time they didn’t. So I am now scrambling to get this post out!

Harlequin is the narrator for the various sections in this book. He is still on Alderley Edge with his lover, Yarrow, after Yarrow’s time in Tara but before Harlequin’s. He tells the stories of some of his siblings. Peasblossom, Columbine and Cobweb all find romance and the book is hard to categorise as the romance is both same gender and opposite gender.

Whilst the main focus is on the various love affairs, there is an underlying theme of a family saga and although there is foreign travel, most of the action takes place in midsummer on the Edge. There are fairies, goblins, humans, unicorns, cats, etc.

The story probably won’t make sense unless you’ve read the first two volumes, Growing Up Fae and Tales from Tara. However, there is helpful (I hope) page on my WordPress blog with a glossary and a timeline, and the fourth (and final) volume is complete and with my editor.

Buy links:
Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TGH19MS
Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/945685

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Sale! (and some freebies)

I’m participating in the Smashwords Read an e-book week sale. All my titles have been discounted by 75% for one week, running from 3rd to 10th March. That means some of them are free and the rest are at silly prices. The discounts will be automatically applied when you add a book to your cart.

The Lord of Shalott (a novella) FREE
Silkskin and the Forest Dwellers (a novella) FREE
Silver Chains (a novella) FREE
Three Legends (three short stories) FREE
The Skilled Investigators (series):
The Scroll (book 1) FREE
The Market (book 2) FREE
The Crown (book 3) $1
The Lantern (book 4) $1
Living Fae (series):
Growing Up Fae (book 1) $1.25
Tales from Tara (book 2) FREE (I wouldn’t recommend reading this without reading book 1 first)

This is a pricing experiment to see if I can tweak my marketing somehow. No guarantees it will happen again so make the most of it if you’re interested in what I write!

Go to https://www.smashwords.com and search Jay Mountney in the search box at the top.

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Silver Chains

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Shameless advertising. A short story, outside my ‘normal’ style. This one’s a contemporary May/December romance and is 99p on both Amazon and Smashwords. It’s been up for about 48 hours but then Smashwords had a hissy fit when I mentioned my Amazon page in the ‘about the author’ section, though Amazon didn’t seem to care about Smashwords. That delayed things a bit while I hastily edited so that Smashwords would send it out to other platforms.
Incidentally, I wrote it ages ago and it first saw the light of day in an online zine under the title ‘Angus’ (the main character) but I now have the rights back and have done some edits and changed the title. I know some of the zine group follow this blog and I wouldn’t like them to buy the story and feel cheated.
Links:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/924818

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Tales from Tara

TALES FROM TARA: fantasy mm with solstice celebrations. Yes, that’s right.

And yes, I’ve managed two books out in one month, which explains why I haven’t actually been doing a lot of writing these last few weeks.

‘Tales’ is the comparatively short second volume of my Living Fae series. In this book (40k words) the ‘heroes’ leave Alderley Edge (separately) to spend time on royal guard duty in Ireland, meeting (and romancing) all kinds of other fae. And celebrating the winter solstice, of course, in the underground palace.

So it’s suited to the season, and if you don’t know the story so far, you can get a lot of information from the Living Fae page here (my WordPress account) or you could buy Growing Up Fae…

The story is erotic without being explicit if that makes sense, and I hope it gives a taste of magic to readers.

The buy links for Tales from Tara are:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/913151

If you have problems with the Amazon link (Amazon is behaving strangely at present) try my Amazon page – just type Jay Mountney into the search box.

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My new novel is out.

The fourth volume in my Skilled Investigators series is now ‘live’ on Amazon and Smashwords.

For anyone who has no idea what I’m talking about, the series features a mix of fantasy and crime with a trainee female elf detective, and has a sub plot of gay romance between the detective’s brother and her training mentor. There’s also a telepathic dragon. But I think you’d need to read the first book first, because I never intended the volumes to stand alone.

If you click on the link at the top right of my WordPress site you’ll find a map of The Kingdom to go with the book.

I’m really pleased because for the first time, neither Amazon nor Smashwords had any issues with my formatting and I didn’t (so far as I know) forget anything. That bodes well for later this week when I have another book to publish.

Here are the links – at first for Amazon I could only get a live link for the US site which then redirected me to the UK one. Go figure… Then I managed to get a UK link but at least one friend found it didn’t work. The only reliable answer if you want to use Amazon is to type in my name (Jay Mountney) and my author page will show you all my books including this one.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/911587