Change of Plans

We’re at the end of September and I see I’m falling short of republishing my Green Crystal series of books. As I mentioned in January, I planned to release the six books one by one this year.

Except for the third book, each one is a short story about my main character Vree Erickson dealing with the complications of magic in her life.

I rewrote and published books 1 and 2 without any problems. But not the third book. Originally, that book was three short stories in one, hence its title “I I I.”

As spring became summer, I tried to make the three stories work for the series, but I ran into continuity problems as each story turned out unrelated to the series’ main theme. No matter how I tried to force them to fit, they didn’t.

By autumn, I knew “I I I” wasn’t going to fit the series no matter how hard I tried to make it so. So, I’ve decided to extract it and move on, which means I’ll have to make some minor changes to the first two books’ back pages where I’ve listed information about the series. I’ll also have to change my Books Page here at my blog. But mostly, I’ll have to fix the cover information after book two.

So, with October less than twenty-four hours away, I’m preparing my workspace for the next book, “The Curse.”

Will I finish the last book by December as planned? Probably not. But stranger things have happened.

“Night of the Hell Hounds” is the first short-story book in the series. You can buy it at Amazon at the never-changing U.S. currency price of 99 cents. It’s a really quick read at 4,060+ words (or 24 Kindle pages). Here’s the link: www.amazon.com/dp/B00AY2K1H6.

“Trespassers” is the second short-story book. It’s also at Amazon at 99 cents. It’s a quick read at 7,690+ words (or 41 Kindle pages). Its link is www.amazon.com/dp/B00B1UOE7S.

An interesting aside from hitting that brick wall when I tried to rewrite “I I I” was meeting a fellow author who also self-publishes. The topic of pricing came up and we discussed the option of making books perma-free at Amazon and all the hoops the company makes authors jump through to do it (apparently for their own sadistic amusement). I will pursue it, but likely next year.

We also discussed how to price our books and found a formula where some self-pub authors in the U.S. price their books by words published. In one example, which piqued my interest, was the idea of charging a dollar for every 10,000 words published, and ten cents for every 1,000. Thus, a 10,800-word book would cost $1.80, and a hefty 90,700-word book would cost $9.70.

It’s an interesting formula and one I may pursue in the future.

Meanwhile, it’s time to rewrite “The Curse” in between getting this old house ready for winter.

Until next time, peace and love.

Steve, 9/30/2023

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This post “Change of Plans” copyright © 2023 Steven Leo Campbell at stevecampbellcreations.com – All rights reserved.

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