Small as she was, Shady’s weight on his hip might as well have been that of the whole world.

Cuddling his daughter, Tristan stared at the coffin as it descended into the grave.

Hope was gone.

She’d somehow fallen while going down the cellar steps. Betty discovered her, but it was too late. Knowing that it had been a quick death was of little comfort.

At least it hadn’t been Shady who’d found her. Tristan didn’t know how he would’ve handled their daughter finding her mother dead.

Dead. Dear Lord, why? Eyes closing against the burn of tears, he kissed the small head resting on his shoulder while hugging Shady a bit closer.

Briefly, Tristan thought of adopting her out to a Wolven pack. At least then, she wouldn’t have to finish her growing motherless.

Tristan hadn’t ever considered loving any woman but Hope from the first time he’d seen her. He didn’t know how to continue without her.

Better figure it out. Eyes opening, he gently set Shady down before leading her closer to the grave’s edge. The rose she held was crumpled, but he didn’t think Hope would mind that.

It fell, and through the painfully tight grip of his daughter’s hand, Tristan felt the shudder that wracked her. Head falling back and sinking to the ground, Shady howled.

The sound was thin, wavering and caused the short hairs on his neck to rise. Dropping to one knee, gathering his daughter close, he broke into sobs. 

***

Intrigued? Head on over to ShadowConnor.com, register for free and read the rest!

As part of my ongoing efforts as an independent author and ‘educating’ newbies and/or readers about what sort of results come from being one, here is my round up for the first two months of 2010.

Historically for me, ebook sales tend to be low and slow until April through October, with June through September being my best sales months. Note: I’m lazy about promoting my titles except when something comes up that I could really use extra money to take care of.

(Note: I have medical bills to take care of, so 9 of February’s sales have been through my Payloadz store, via heavy whining on Twitter. All other sales have been through Amazon).

I’ve also changed prices on my ebooks downwards by around 25 to 76 cents on most titles. So instead of prices ranging from .99 to $5.25, they’re now .99 to $4.99.

Results for ‘Set Resurgence Free’: One $5 donation = 1 sponsor so far.

Web fiction ‘tips’: $14 (also in response to my whining – thanks to everyone who has bought or tipped! )

Downloads for the CC licensed, previously published version of Feral Intensity have now matched my total sales of that title. It took two years to hit 90 copies sold; it’s taken exactly 26 days to hit 90 copies downloaded (from here and Smashwords).

At this point in time, neither web fiction nor Resurgence donations have been miserable failures. I will continue reporting on both to see how they do. The Resurgence drive ends April 30, so 61 days more to go. (Note: I did put $10 of the webfic donations towards the goal for it, so actually have 2 sponsors so far.)

I’m an Operation Ebook Drop Author. Operation Ebook Drop is a group effort by a few hundred authors, started by Ed Patterson. Basically, we create and disperse 100% off coupons for our titles listed on Smashwords to active duty military who have ereaders.

From this, I had 8 downloads of my titles in January, and 15 for February.

Since adding my freebies to my blog here between the 2nd and 8th of February, Shades of Gray has had 20 DLs; Solo Mission 19 and Playing for Keeps 14. Over on Smashwords, since July 29, 2009: Shades of Gray has had 1755 DLs, Solo Mission 203 and Playing for Keeps 243.

And there you have it, folks. My total earnings for January to February have been $60.25 after distributor take or transaction fees, with a total of 189 copies going out.

Considering it could be zero, I’m going with ‘not bad’! :)

Amid the dire predictions for publishing, the fumbling about with ebook pricing and the growing hysteria over book piracy, one thing has become perfectly clear: authors need to adapt.

What may not be so clear is that authors can get paid for their work without restricting either availability of it or readers’ convenience.

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I haven’t seen a big announcement about it, but last week, while making changes to a few of my ebooks distributed through Amazon, I noticed the following:

Personally, I immediately switched all my titles as shown: Do not enable digital rights management.

Hit the ‘publish’ button, and now they’re all DRM free at Amazon. It only took a couple of days.

Since people are still talking about Kindle versions of ebooks being DRMed, I think this has slipped under the radar. Most of those who choose Amazon as a distribution platform likely aren’t aware they now have a choice.

Just thought I’d try spreading the word a bit.

Let’s start with my personal definitions of each, be they wrong or right:

• Paranormal – Ghosts, spirits and psychic phenomena.
• Supernatural – Demons, angels, miracles, unexplainable by science religiously related stuff.
• Preternatural – Vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters and other not human sort of critters.

Because those have been my personal definitions of the above, I was a little surprised when I noticed that some readers who’d purchased Dark Cravings from Amazon had tagged it as a paranormal romance.

My reaction was pretty much ‘Huh?’

I mean, there are werewolves and vampires in it, not haunted houses or psychics.

So I sort of checked around and discovered that pretty much any book with any non-human type characters that have a romance as part of the story are categorized as paranormal romance.

I thought ‘okay, I guess’ and went about my merry way.

But there are weird things that strike me as stuff to muse upon, and so I’ve mused over that for a few months now.

I would personally term Dark Cravings as more of a dark urban fantasy. The existence of vampires and werewolves isn’t common knowledge, hence the urban bit. The main character has had some pretty awful events occur in her life due to certain werewolfish circumstances, and the vampires aren’t your average suavely debonair types, which is where the ‘dark’ bit comes in.

There is a romance in there, yeah. But it’s not what I would personally describe as a paranormal romance.

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