Royce's Random Thoughts

On a less mopey note, I got another nice comment and fave on Good Landing. I'm not quite sure why this hits everyone so hard. It's a short story that I wrote shortly after the loss of the ColumbiaTwilight Zone episodes. Nevertheless it's the one that has received the most faves and comments.

I think it's because it is a short story. A longer one would just dilute the impact. At a bit under 3,000 words it's short and punchy, and though the treatment is fantastic it's about a real world event and real people, unlike the furry denizens of my science fiction universes.

Anyway, if there's one story that makes me believe I can be a "real" writer, it's this one.

Summary: Much, much, much better month than the last. Especially given that the first day of May I got 2/3'rds the sales I'd recieved in April. Also gained a dedicated fan who made a nice TV Tropes page for the while Red Vixen Adventures.


Things to Do: Still waiting on the cover art for Blooded (no pressure Nez, I know how it is). Got an opening partly written for the next Ali and Salli story, but I'm lacking a resolution to the plot.



Sales Report:


Captive of the Red Vixen: 3

For Your Safety: 7

Good Landing: 13 *

I Fought the Claw & the Claw Won: 2

Mimsey's Tale: 4

Prisoners of War: 2 (1 DE)

Shadow of Her Sins: 6

Shadow of the Red Vixen: 4

Teal's Bargain: 1

The Dragon's Companion: 2


Total Paid Sales: 31

* Free ebook

Summary: Flat sales this month on CotRV and SotRV, leavened by better than average sales on Mimsey’s Tale and I Fought the Claw, plus a really bizarre run on Good Landing that I just can’t explain.
Things to Do: Still working on Shadow of Her Sins. Up to around 9k words and a firmed up plot. IN the meantime I’ve been doing a series of Batman related fanfics which have gotten the attention of Ryk Spoor, who is encouraging me to expand them into an Elseworlds proposal for DC! Not sure how that will pan out but I’m going to try to work on a formal outline this month in-between the drabbles.

Sales Report:


Captive of the Red Vixen: 3

For Your Safety: 1

Good Landing: 75 (2 CA) *

I Fought the Claw & the Claw Won: 13 (1 IT)

Mimsey’s Tale: 12

Prisoners of War: 3

Shadow of the Red Vixen: 2

Total Paid Sales: 34

*Free ebook

Summary: A slightly better than average month, spiced up by the release of Mimsey’s Tale and a very unexpected six sales of The Dragon’s Companion, and nine of For Your of Safety for some odd reason. Usually I only get two or three at best.

Also, I had my first Canadian sale. Which was immediately reversed. Cheap socialist bastards. ;p

Things to Do: Working on a short story for Naziha to pay for the Mimsey’s Tale cover, then it’s back to grinding on I Fought the Claw.


Sales Report:


Captive of the Red Vixen: 6

For Your Safety: 9

Good Landing: 18 *

Mimsey’s Tale: 5 (1 IT)

Prisoners of War: 3

Shadow of the Red Vixen: 5

The Dragon's Companion: 6

Teal's Bargain: 1

Teal's War: 2

Teal's Choice: 1

Triumvirate: 1


Total Paid Sales: 39

*Free ebook

Summary: This has been the best month I've ever had, frankly. It started with the long awaited (by me at least) publication of Shadow of the Red Vixen. To celebrate this, I switched CotRV over to Amazon Prime and offered it for free the first five days of the month. I expected I'd get a few downloads, but the response was pretty overwhelming, with over seven hundred purchases domestically and quite a few internationally.

Meanwhile, SotRV sold extremely well, with twenty-five copies domestically and one Prime lending download. The $2.99 price tag I put on it doesn't seem to have been a factor in sales at all.

This leads to an important lesson. That 70% royalty rate from KDP made a big difference in my profits. Normally I'd expect about $15 to $20 in profits every six weeks or so. Now I'm looking at over hundred dollars when everything is added together. Small change by professional standards, but pretty good for an author of silly Furry sci-fi.


Things to Do: I'm working on the next story in the Red Vixen Adventures, Legacy of the Red Vixen which involves Mel and Rolas' n'er do well daughter getting into trouble, exiled to Planet Dull, and then finding amusement when she discovers her mom's old hobby. It's going slowly, since I've been fighting to get time to write, and then motivation as I fight my now usual winter depression.

Meanwhile I intend to use the profits from this month's sales to commission new covers for Triumvirate and Good Landing from Nez, just to make them more professional looking and bring them in line with my other works.

After that I'm going to poke more at the For Your Safety universe and see if I can't get an anthology out of it. I figure there might be two books worth, the first concerning the Groupmind's gentle conquest of humanity, then the "War of the Ring" as their charges awaken on their new home and make their displeasure known.


Sales Report:

Captive of the Red Vixen: Paid 7 (1 DE), Borrowed 3, Free 768 (48 UK, 13 DE, 4 FR, 1 IT)

For Your Safety: 3

Good Landing: 26 (Free)

Prisoners of War: 10

Shadow of the Red Vixen: Paid 26 (1 UK), Borrowed 1

The Dragon's Companion: 2

Summary: Interesting month. Domestic sales were up compared to last month, but international sales were way down, with nothing from the UK and one German sale (POW again. Big surprise), plus my very first sale from France.


Things to Do:

1) In the home stretch now for SotRV, inspired by Meg's wonderful cover art. May or may not finish in the next couple of weeks. At any rate it should be going out to beta readers prior to the end of October.

2) On the horizon is In a Goddess' Hand, the sequel to Prisoners of War, since that's been selling very well. Which is easier than it sounds, since I've got bunches of loosely connected scenes between Rolas and a new character who gives him Teh Healing Sexxors helps him with his trauma from the previous book. Just need to clean it up a bit and write an ending.

And get cover art. Always with the cover art…

3) Speaking of which, I came up with the idea of a simple but effective one for Good Landing to replace the current piece of Photoshop crap I've been using. After Christmas I might bug Nez and see if she has a commission slot open.

4) Not going to do NanoWriMo this year unless I get really inspired to get cracking on Warbird. May try to set aside the time for the aforementioned IaGH editing though.

5) Far Future: For Your Safety keeps digging at the back of my brain. I'm going to have to see if I can come up with enough stories for an anthology, or perhaps a series of short publications.


Sales Report:


Captive of the Red Vixen: 7

For Your Safety: 2

Good Landing: 33*

Prisoners of War: 8 (1 DE)

The Dragon's Companion: 1

Unexpected Diversions: 2 (1 FR)

Total Paid Sales: 22

* Free ebook

Blah month. Sales are still down on CotRV, but oddly my sales of Unexpected Diversions picked up from their usual 1 or 2 per month average. Absolutely nothing on the rest through, aside from the usual Good Landing free downloads. CotRV's sales would have been worse, but I did pick up one international sales from Amazon.de. Yays for German furries.

Captive of the Red Vixen: 4
Unexpected Diversions: 4
Good landing: 45

Future Goals: Still need to push forward on SotRV. Page length is approaching CoRV, but I need to firm up the plot.

Writing: Proceeding painfully slowly with Shadow of the Red Vixen. Currently on page 22 and I'm just about ready to have the4 plot show up. But finding uninterrupted time to write is difficult, so I tend to write maybe a half page at a time every few days. I might try to write some short fiction instead, but I'm short on ideas on that front, and the problem of cover art haunts me as always.

Sales: Relatively slow month. Couple of sales from third party vendors on Smashwords, plus a direct one for Unexpected Diversions. Amazon was a bit better, but I only had a few scatters sales, and even missed my monthly average on CotRV. Which I'm translating as I really need to get cracking on SotRV

Sales Breakdown:

Captive of the Red Vixen: 9
Demon Eyes: 1 (8)*
Good Landing: (104) **
Teal's Choice: 1
Unexpected Diversions 4

* 1 commercial sale on Amazon, 8 free downloads on Smashwords. I expect downloads on Amazon will spike once the price is updated to $0.00.
** Free downloads.

Two sales on Unexpected Diversions so far, which is good.

Good Landing is scaring me though. It's gotten over six hundred downloads and currently #238 on most downloaded e books overall. To put that in perspective, haikujaguar 's latest freebie topped out at around #300.

Now if someone would just review the damned thing.

Find it here. I'm not going to say it's a bargain at 99 cents (it's free at Smashwords) but at least it's a start.

Edit: Captive of the Red Vixen now uploaded and in the conversion process. I'm saving the Good Stuff until I'm more certain of my skills here.