Sherri Cornelius

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Sore throat. It started the other night when the a/c was broken and we had to leave the windows open. Someone was burning brush or having a campfire and the smoke, and it irritated my throat. Then I was distracted with problems, but it came back full force last night. So I don't know if it was related to the smoke or if my immune system couldn't keep up with the stress. Oh, I know--stress related heartburn.

I was having really scary computer problems, like, blue screen of death problems. If I'd had a Windows cd I probably would have wiped the drive and reinstalled Windows 7. As it happens, though, I don't have an installation cd so I had to work around it. I ran diagnostics, virus scans, repair utilities. Finally it grabbed enough of a toehold to install some automatic Windows updates, and two rounds of that seems to have fixed whatever error had occurred. I was just on the verge of installing Ubuntu when it started working properly again. Windows was scared, I guess.

So I made a repair disk and now I'm backing up my data. I might keep Ubuntu handy in case Windows goes kaput again, and I'll probably try it out via thumb drive. I've always wanted to try it. There were a few days of panic as I tried and failed to do schoolwork on my other two computers. One is 8 years old and barely runs, but the newer (yet still old) laptop has a bad DVD player. I kept having to hop back and forth and work around the kids as they claimed their computer time. Finally I looked at my syllabus to see what exactly was urgently due this weekend, and I saw I had already done it. Oh. Okay. Whew.

A sequel to Skin & Scales is starting to gel, but I don't know when I'll be able to write it. S&S is getting a few downloads and starting to collect reviews, and the two free shorts are still getting regular downloads. I'll be submitting S&S to my library system's HQ for possible inclusion in the collection. That would be pretty darn awesome. I need to buy some more copies to have on hand for sale.

I'll have to fit in a nap somewhere today, as the teenager pulled some shenanigans last night which kept me awake till 5 a.m. Ah, high school. Hopefully this is a lesson learned and not the beginning of a pattern. It's a good story, but I won't tell it until she's grown.

So that's what's happening here. I'll be working on my website later, getting links and pages working and adding stories if I have time. Fun stuff.

I’m taking this publishing thing sloooooowly. Don’t know if you noticed. I first published Mon Petit Ami in October of last year, distributing through Smashwords. I learned the ropes, trying out the coupons and reviews and changing the price. It was free through nearly every retailer—B&N, Kobo, Sony, Smashwords—and racked up about 400 views over the next 6 or 7 months.

Amazon, however, is the whiny, uncompromising kid on the playground who is ready to take his awesome toys and go home if the other kids don’t play his games. Ergo, Amazon doesn’t give you total control over your pricing when you self-publish and you have to like it or lump it. The lowest they’ll go on any publication is 99 cents, regardless of length, unless you cast some magical price-matching spell which I was never able to figure out. So my little 1500-ish word story languished with no sales, unsurprisingly.

So I started to wonder how the story would do on Amazon. I had a half a year’s data on Smashwords, et al, and several good reviews from complete strangers, so I thought it was time to play Amazon’s game. The only way I could get my story on Amazon for free was to give them exclusivity, so I did.

I found out a lot from my 3-day free promo. Before I did this, I’d thought the reader pool among my friends had already been exhausted. After all, MPA had been free and periodically promoted for many months. What I didn’t realize was how many of my friends have Kindles and would download my story once it was pretty much effortless. I ended up with 77 downloads over three days on Amazon, a number that took about a month to reach on all other platforms combined, maybe a bit longer.

How eye-opening is that? No wonder people play by Amazon’s rules. They have awesome toys.

Now that this promo’s over, I expect my new downloads to drop back to zero. A dollar is just too much for a story this short, especially since it’s my only publication and bears an ISBN from Smashwords—a bias I’ve seen in the Kindle forums that can’t be dismissed.

One anonymous person gave me my first review, for which I am grateful. Reviews are like currency, so every star, whether it be one or five, helps. This one happened to be a fiver.

If you’re a Kindle user who’s been dying to read my short story, MON PETIT AMI, but not dying enough to download it free from Smashwords or pay 99 cents on Kindle, well now’s your chance to download it to your device for free. FREE, I tells ya. Finally. But only through Monday.

I wish I could charge .29 for it, but they won’t let me.

So download it now! While it’s free!

The fate of the world hangs in the balance!

The world thanks you for your support!

(and so do i)