The Books Are Back! Pippa's Journal

Hi, my name is Pippa Jay, and I like trying to achieve the seemingly impossible... >.<

Update

So, my main publisher closed on the 1st of May, taking down five of my newest titles with it, while I'd had the rights back to my debut novel Keir since January 2014. After deciding not to re-release the final book I had with Breathless/Lycaon (Zombie Girl) and having already scheduled Keir for re-release in May AND with three of the titles in contests that required them being available to buy, I set myself the challenge of re-releasing five books in the space of one month. That's less than five weeks, or more than one book a week. *insert maniacally laughter here* I was also setting up the six week SFR Brigade Summer Cafe event at the same time, trying to coordinate over forty authors in different categories, each with their own inlinkz and rafflecopter codes.

But I love a challenge. And so, here we are almost at the end of May, and I have achieved my goal! It wasn't all plain sailing. Between copyright issues with Amazon, the slowness of Kobo, the often mindboggling difficulties of Smashwords, formatting issues at D2D and the PITA that is ARe (one day I will get an upload right on the first attempt), there were days I wanted to reconsider the whole going indie thing.

Have I mentioned how stubborn I am, though? Yeah. I am not a quitter. Right now I'm still waiting for a few retailers to finish publishing my scifi romance adventure Tethered after the new cover reveal Friday and when I started uploading it as well, but otherwise all the books I've had the rights returned to me for are now available again at some, if not all online book sites. And as a bonus, they're all at a lower price than previously. Yay!

Better still, the print proof for Keir arrived on Friday...and it's perfect! Well, I wouldn't expect anything less after Danielle Fine's work on it. ^_^ And you can now buy it from the CreateSpace estore HERE, or it will be coming to Amazon shortly, then further retailers over the next 6-8 weeks.

Add to that all seven weeks worth of posts for the SFR Brigade Summer Cafe are also written and scheduled to go live, which leaves me clear to help with any technical issues for participants, checking links, pimping it, and picking winners at the end of each week. Yahoo! Once again total chaos has been tamed into organized calm. Well, mostly. :P

So what's next? As well as running the Summer Cafe over June/July in collaboration with the SFR Station, Keir's Fall - the sequel to Keir - will be off to my editor. I'm hoping for a November release for that, but after putting myself under a tad too much pressure to get Keir out on the date I set, I'm not making an official release date until we get close to the end of the edits.
For July I'll be finishing off a superhero short during Camp NaNoWriMo for a proposed anthology to promote the female superhero in response to Marvel's continuing campaign to cut its female heroes from the merchandising. Grr!
August is my proposed holiday - I'd love to catch up on my reading, and I have some awesome books waiting that I've neglected for far too long - and summer holidays for my three monsters.
In September I have BristolCon, where I hope to have three or four of my titles in print (Tethered and Restless are definites, though with their old covers, and I have Keir. I'm currently debating whether to add my superhero romance When Dark Falls to my print options) and I've volunteered for my first ever panel. Public speaking? Eeeep!
Come October and I hope to have Keir's Fall close to release, and will be starting edits on a novella set between the two Keir novels to release early 2016. I haven't decided what to do for the November NaNoWriMo yet, though the options are overhauling book three for Keir, or a sequel to either When Dark Falls or Tethered. Decisions, decisions...
And December? Well, I have a winter solstice SFR short I'd love to release in time for Christmas, or there's another Venus Ascendant novella to go with Terms & Conditions Apply. With my current sales for Keir, financing either of those shouldn't be a problem for a change, but instead time constraints are now the issue...
So I'm probably looking at those two last projects as 2016 releases, along with book three for Keir, and a secret project I'm starting on in January for a June release. That should keep me out of mischief, right? ;)

Happenings

This week is half term holidays for my three little monsters, plus my hubs has booked the week off and it was a Bank Holiday Monday. So I'm mostly off the internet this week. Next week I officially begin the edits for Keir's sequel - Keir's Fall - and on Monday the SFR Brigade's Summer Cafe begins! Check out the SFR Brigade blog HERE for more details of the sumptuous feast of scifi romance we're preparing for you!