Happy Friday, friends!
Today is my last Friday of "freedom" before I'm heading back to work fulltime. It's definitely bittersweet. Money is sort of necessary to pay bills, I'm told, but I'm really going to miss sleeping in, walking my dog, and thinking about my characters all day.
By the end of this month, it will officially have been one year since I began my publishing journey. And so much as happened along the way! Just for fun, here are my year 1 stats:
- Conventions Sold At: 3
- Books Published: 6
- New Books Written: 3.5
- Word Count: 424,562
- eBooks Sold: 1273
- Paperbacks Sold: 234
- Kindle Page Reads: 897,335
So close to one million page reads! (For reference, that's about 2200 books read cover to cover given the average length of my books.) But hey, the month isn't over yet. Maybe I'll get there by the end of December!
Speaking of December and page reads, Amazon told me they're promoting Friendly Fyre through the month of December, so that's pretty neat! Basically this just means that the book is 50% off through the 31st, which will save buyers a ground-breaking two dollars and fifty cents, but still lol. If you want to grab a 50% off copy, now's your chance before Book 2, Fyre Fly, publishes in January!
This last week I sold books at another convention: this one was a winter maker's market at a local senior center, which is code for "Boomers shopping for Christmas presents." As I was setting up my booth, I began to realize that I was on average three decades younger than most other people there, and was beginning to wonder if I'd made a Grave Mistake. Indeed, no one even spoke to me for the first hour of the event.
And then, something changed. An elderly woman came up to me and excitedly pointed to the trans flag bookmark I had sticking out of Friendly Fyre. She told me, "I have a granddaughter who is trans. I didn't know there were books like this!" She was so excited to see trans representation in a fantasy book, and she bought a copy to give to her granddaughter.
After that I had a guy who noticed the nonbinary flag and was excited to get a copy of Nye for his sister's nonbinary kid. I had some others come up to me and point to a bookmark as they told me "I don't know what she identifies as, but she has a pin with this flag on it," and I helped point them to books with bi characters. Throughout the day, I sold to a handful of young queer people, but I sold even more to older family members who wanted to support their queer relatives. Honestly, I'm tearing up a little just writing this; it was such an unexpectedly wholesome experience.
I'm not delusional - I'm sure there were people there who weren't ecstatic to see my giant "QUEER FANTASY AUTHOR" booth. But no one said a single unkind thing to me that whole weekend, and everyone that stopped to talk or buy a book were the most kind, supportive people. This may sound a little silly, but it restored my faith in humanity just a bit. We've got a long way to go, but I think we're gunna be alright.
Okay, okay! Enough mushiness. In other news, I have all 4 of my paperbacks in a silent auction! It's to support a non-profit writing convention I volunteer at, WriteHive. So if you're a reader or a writer or just interested in checking out some book schwag, I highly recommend you check it out! I'm offering a signed copy of each of my books, (I'll also throw in some stickers,) and I will ship internationally* for whomever wins the auction! A decision I may come to regret!
(*delivery of said books depends on US customs deciding not to destroy them in transit)
That's all I've got today. It's getting chilly here (which means it's perfect Boba weather) but for everyone without a built-in winter coat, I wish you pleasant weather and better company.
Best,
~Kia
Boba Tax
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This Is The Section Where I Promote Other Authors!
This week I've got just two books to promote: one free to download, and the other free on KU!
Free Book:
My Three-Year-Old Is A Barbarian: Necromantic rituals, murderous ogres, battle-scarred rangers: not a typical Saturday detention for unsuspecting teaching assistant Petra and her delinquent teen charges. Despite being summoned to a world where everything threatens to shuffle off Petra's mortal coil, the hardest part is convincing her toddler-turned-orc that the battle axe is not a toy.
Free on KU:
Burning Skies: Having failed to prevent the Blackness from Beyond, Kalindra and her companions flee the frozen north. The dark powers that chase them from their lands seem unstoppable, yet Kalindra is resolved to fight until her last breath, even if it means chasing a false hope rather than surrendering to her doom.
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