Sherri Cornelius

The first two stories I e-published, I didn’t do any promotion aside from tweeting and facebooking and blogging. And really, not a lot of that. They were short stories, and I intended them to be free from the beginning. This in itself ensured they would be downloaded. People like free stuff.

With SKIN AND SCALES I decided to go a different way. First of all, I decided to charge a book price for it and see what happened. (Very little, of course.) Second, I put it straight into KDP Select instead of offering it on Smashwords first. The benefit of KDP Select is that Amazon Prime members are able to borrow the book for free, but the author still gets a small royalty. I had no borrows on the short stories while they were enrolled, but I thought people would be more likely to borrow a book. (Apparently not my book.) Third, I intended to publish it quietly and just let it sit unpromoted, but I got caught up in the excitement, especially when my mom virtually shoved a couple of twenties in my hand for a Facebook ad. So I tried it, expecting nothing but an education and receiving what I expected. It was an interesting and enlightening experience. The results were definitive, and I quit before I hit $20.

So now I think what I need is some reviews. My theory is that any review is good for business. Even a solid 3-star review would indicate that people were reading it and it isn’t completely awful. A 1-star review would keep people engaged and on the page, though I presume I would need a couple of higher stars to counteract it.

TOMORROW only, April 10, SKIN AND SCALES will be free for download on Kindle. This serves a two-fold purpose: to allow the folks in my acknowledgements to get a free copy and to garner a few reviews. I hope everyone who reads it will at least throw a couple of anonymous stars up there. Don’t be shy! If one person breaks the ice, others will follow.

If you don’t read weird stuff but still want to support me, you can recommend the book to your weird-loving friends. If you don’t have a Kindle but still want to read it, you can download a reader for your computer or smart phone here.

Thanks for all your support!

I’ve been rockin’ it at the library. They say I’m a “quick study.” And indeed, much of how they operate hits me right in the instincts. It seems almost too easy. The time I spend there doesn’t feel like work.This is great for the prospects of my being able to handle a second job.

Or maybe when I finally get Black Veil Angel out in the world, I’ll sell a million copies at five bucks a pop and then I’ll just be working at the library for fun.

Haha, I’m so funny.

But even figuring I won’t sell a million copies (or even a hundred) I’m still on track to publish BVA by, oh, say, March-ish. I was thinking about entering the Amazon Breakthrough Whatever, but I realize that this book is not for that contest. And so I’ll continue with my little self-publishing venture.

My main goal here is to finalize BVA in my mind. When I put Mon Petit Ami out there, it was after years of going back to it, over and over, trying to fix it. It rarely left my thoughts. I put it “under the bed” permanently four or five times, only to find it as an itch in my brain some time later. Probably every person reading this has scratched that itch once or twice.

Then when I needed a piece to experiment with on Smashwords, it seemed like the logical choice. Imperfect, yes, but fairly solid and fun. I straightened its hair bow and pushed it onstage, and you know what? The itch left me. I published it over a year ago and not once have I had the urge to edit. NOT ONCE. I rarely even think about it anymore. I’m free! I’m hopeful this will be the case with BVA as well.

And if a few people get a little enjoyment out of it, all the better.

It feels good to be writing again, even if it’s the clinical, critical kind of writing that is editing. This isn’t rewriting. I’ve rewritten enough. This is taking out stuff I’m not sure of and filling in the gaps..with, by the way, fresh and untainted writing. A good piece to stretch my legs on after all this time, and when I’m finished I might even start a new book.

No pressure.

Suddenly I’m very busy. I’ve gotten used to having no schedule conflicts—indeed, little schedule at all—because for the past few years almost everything I do is school-related, and they don’t overlap things. I’ve also gotten to the point where if I get showered and brushed by lunch I’m doing well. It’s not that I sit around all morning, but only that I have nowhere to be.

I can feel this changing permanently.

Part of it’s my choice, like tackling some big repair projects around the house, and part of it is out of my control. My daughter has become involved in more extra-curricular activities in middle school, and my son will be there next year. This is on top of the back-to-school season. Another commitment I’ve made is to take charge of my health, which means appointments with various doctors. (I had my first lady doctor visit in about eight years, which tells you something.)

One small (and yet huge) step is volunteering at the library. I started Tuesday, and today it seems like it could have been a dream. I often dream I’m straightening shelves at public places for no pay. Really. I fear I’ll go back in there and they have no recollection of me.

My regular times are Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I have a name tag and my own drawer and everything. On my first day, the lady in charge of volunteers showed me around backstage. It felt strange to pass through that doorway, the one that reveals just a glimpse of the library machinery, and one I’d never considered I might enter. Turns out the working part of the library is almost as big as the public part, only instead of wide spaces and neat shelves, the rooms are stuffed with desks, and papers plaster every surface, horizontal and vertical. It’s wonderfully shabby; clean but impossibly cluttered.

After my tour I was handed off to my boss, (Darlene? Deborah? Oh crap, I’ve already forgotten her name…Yay, got it!) Dorothy. She showed me how to read the shelves, which is basically fixing all the books the patrons thought they were putting back in the right place but didn’t even get close. I will be working in the children’s section, where the shelves are always in flux. So my normal job is to read the shelves, but the each employee I met seemed gleeful about the possibility of using me for her own special projects.

I always suspected my hodgepodge of skills and interests would be useful in a library, and now I know for sure I should have been a librarian from the beginning.

This is a big step, knowing that I can work around people. As far as I can tell, they don’t use any air freshener anywhere in the building, aside from the public restroom. The employee restroom smells faintly of cleaner, but not air freshener. When I finished reading the Beginning Reader shelves my eyes were googly from the shelf reading, but otherwise I felt fine. It could change, I suppose, but at the moment I think I could spend all day in that building and feel fine.

Of course, I would like to work full time at the library someday. But for now, I’ll call it an internship. At least it’s something to put on my resume, and I get to help out a favorite institution.

Now I just have to hope ebooks don’t make libraries obsolete. Would be just my luck to find my perfect job only to have it stop existing. *crosses fingers*