Reading my own books

I’ve been publishing my own books since 2012 and have 35 books out, most of them in four series. That’s quite a lot of books to keep tabs on when writing series with continuing plots and recurring characters.

I try to keep good notes on what characters look like and where they live, but it took me a while to pick up the habit, so earlier books don’t have those. Some details I don’t think are important to write down, only to learn my error later. I check out the pertinent bits, but continuity errors occasionally occur.

However, I seldom read entire books, not even the previous one in the series in preparation for the next. I don’t have time for it, and rereading books that I already know well seem pointless when there are so many new books to read.

The only exception was several years ago, when I read and partially rewrote the first three books that I’ve published. They sorely needed refreshing, but my writing has improved a lot since too, and I think they and other early books of mine could use another rewrite.

But this month, I’ve read three of my books. I started with It Happened on a Lie, a stand-alone contemporary romance that I first published in 2014. I had a vague recollection that it wasn’t very good, so as I prepared to upload a new cover for it, I read it through.

To my surprise, it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. The ending is a bit abrupt, but it’s only a novella, some 25000 words, and the romance concludes well, so it didn’t matter. I did consider writing one more act, but it seemed to have everything it needed, so I let it be. I did make some changes though.

The novella was an experiment in length to see whether I could write a complete story in as few words as possible. While the characters were surprisingly well-developed for such a short work, it had led to cutting corners, like omitting names of speakers in several places, creating confusing conversations. It wasn’t a big task to add those. And now I can rest easy knowing that even though it isn’t exactly a masterpiece of romantic fiction, it’s not bad as I thought.

Last week, I read two of my House of Magic books, Saved by the Spell (book 2), and Magic by the Book (book 4). I’d started writing book 5, thinking I can build on events in those two books, but then it turned out I had no recollection of how they ended. I especially couldn’t remember the fate of the bad guy in one of them. So a reread was in order.

Saved by the Spell was published in 2021, but I’d completely forgotten what happens in it. I didn’t remember a major character, I’d forgotten the antagonist’s motivation, and many plot twists came as a surprise for me. I have no idea what past me was thinking, but the present me would’ve written a different story.

But it was fun to reminisce. It was nice to see where the characters had been, and how far they’ve come since. I spotted some errors too, like an embarrassing typo in the first chapter and the colour of one car changing. I think I changed it back in the subsequent book, but I need to check.

Magic by the Book came out last year, but it was full of details I’d forgotten that I need for the upcoming book to avoid continuity errors. They were good details for planning the plot too, something that I’ve been struggling with the whole month. Now I think I’m ready to tackle that task.

All in all, a good exercise. And I think I’ll continue with it. This year I’ll publish P.I. Tracy Hayes 12, which might be the last one in the series—for now. It’ll be nice to remember the journey and wrap up some things in the last book, and if inspiration strikes, maybe plan for the future books too. Or maybe a spin-off…

Do you reread your own books? Do you still like them, or has your style and tastes changed since writing them?

Another less productive week

I’m writing a blog post for a second week in a row, which definitely hasn’t happened in years. For lack of interesting things to write about, here’s another recap of my life.

Last week, I made a resolution to work on my WIP, House of Magic 5. That didn’t happen. Mostly, because I didn’t feel like it. The cold that had bothered me the week before was mostly gone, so I can’t blame that anymore either. I did think about it a lot though, and I’ve resolved a few issues that were keeping me back.

I wasn’t completely idle. I wrote several hundred words to a book that’s been a side-project of mine for about a year now. It’s on a back-burner and won’t be published until the next year earliest, so it wasn’t exactly a pressing task. But often when I can’t get my writing to work, I go back to it, tweak it or write a chapter or so.  By the time it’s finished, it’ll be either brilliantly polished or a weird mess.

I also redid the covers of the Two-Natured London bundles. I create my own covers and my skills aren’t always up to the task. But I recently figured out how to give the boxes a more 3D effect, so naturally I had to fix the old covers. They’re not perfect, but they’re better than they used to be. You can find them on Amazon only, as they’re on Prime, so members can read them free.

I read a couple of books, one of which, Stars of Chaos, a Chinese boylove steampunk novel by priest, I liked enough to review on my blog. The other was a review copy from Edelweiss, but it was a disappointment and I barely managed to finish it, and only by skimming a lot. I was in a minority though. It has over twenty thousand reviews on Goodreads and most of them are positive.

I read a couple of mangas too, one of which wasn’t even a free review copy, so my decision to cut back on them is on a second week of solid failure. And that’s not even counting all the Korean webtoons that I subscribe to.

Lastly, I tinkered with a miniature library that I got as a Christmas present, the kind that will fit into a bookshelf. It’ll take forever to finish; it has so many tiny parts that need to be assembled. My shoulders are in a constant pain for bending down to see better what I’m doing.

So, there was my week. Today, I’ve already opened the WIP file, so there’s a good chance this week it’ll see some progress. I’ll let you know how it went next week.

Back to routines

It’s not easy to restart a blog after a long absence. Especially since the absence is mostly due to having nothing interesting to write about in the first place. I still have nothing, but I can always update about my life.

Author's workspace—clean.

I’ve spent the past ten days suffering from a cold (no covid or flu, thankfully.) It came with a relatively high fever (for me), a clogged nose, and a cough that will probably stay with me for months. Needless to say, I didn’t even open my WIP file, which puts my already unrealistically tight writing schedule to jeopardy.

Admittedly, I likely would’ve struggled writing it even without the cold. My work in progress is House of Magic 5—still without a title, though I kind of know what it’ll be. Book 4 ended with a bit of a cliffhanger that readers didn’t like, but which I wrote anyway, to prompt the series to a new direction. And now I’m not happy with where I pushed it. So, until I come to terms with it, the book won’t happen.

Magic by the Book by Susanna Shore

I did write something though, namely book reviews. I had a lot of time to read between naps, and I finished three novels and a longish manhwa. The books were all from the same series by Marie Brennan set in the Legends of Five Rings game world. I haven’t played the game, but I’ve enjoyed all the books set there that I’ve read. If you’re interested in my reviews, you can find them here, here and here. And I finished a couple of mangas from NetGalley, so my decision not to download so many of them this year is faltering already.

I also wrote thousand words to a book that I had an idea for one night when coughing kept me awake. It’s one of those books that’ll never advance farther than that, but it was a great opening and I had to get it out of my system. And I wrote an opening to a short story too. That’ll likely suffer the same fate as well.

The Restorer's Home Omnibus 2 by Kim Sang-yeop

I finished updating the new covers and revised files of my contemporary romances. They’re up on Amazon already, but it’ll take a week or so until they’re on other marketplaces. No one’s commented on the covers yet, so I don’t know if people like them as much as I do.

The new covers

And I finally joined the Alliance of Independent Authors today. I’ve meant to for years, but I’ve never got around to doing it. As a self-publishing author, it’s nice to have access to professional help should I ever need any. And they have all kinds of great resources for writers too.

The Night Parade of 100 Demons by Marie Brennan

This week, I really need to focus on my work in (almost) progress. It currently stands at about 500 words, half of which I’ll probably delete. I’ll let you know how it went next week, if I remember to update this blog. I also have a long list of books to read, some for NetGalley and Edelweiss, some for purely my own joy. So, a busy week ahead.

My 2023 in review

In my review post of 2022, I promised to write more blog posts in 2023. And then I didn’t write any—on this blog anyway. I wrote 52 posts on my book review blog, so that’s something, though far short of the total I read last year, 230 books by the Goodreads count, most of them manga and other comics.

So already this year is off to a better start.

The reason I didn’t write anything here is two-fold, like my year. For the first part of the year, I suffered from the worst writing block of my career. Usually, I can write at least something. Now, I had nothing. It was likely caused by exhaustion, as I published several books the previous year, so I tried to rest, but it wasn’t easy. Once I had my writing mojo back on, I still had nothing to write here. I considered writing about the writer’s block, but didn’t do that either.

I started writing again around May, and managed to write and publish three books. The fourth that I published early last year, Magic by the Book, House of Magic 4 I’d written already the previous year. I wrote and published The Perfect Hoax, Reed Files 2; Tracy Hayes, Vacationing P.I., book 11 in P.I. Tracy Hayes series, and Beloved Warrior, Two-Natured London 8. They’ve all been well-received, though it’s early days for Beloved Warrior yet.

Last year was the first in eleven years as a self-published author that I was able to pay myself a little something too. So far, everything the books have brought has gone to the expenses. It still wasn’t much, 3300€ for the whole year (about $3500), so not exactly a living. But it’s encouraging, and hopefully will only grow from there.

As for 2024, my twelfth year as a self-publishing author, I have a busy year planned. I’ll publish four books this year too. There will be House of Magic 5, P.I. Tracy Hayes 12, Reed Files 3, and Two-Natured London 8.5, if everything goes well. The start of the year hasn’t been auspicious though, and I’m already a bit behind the schedule. Hopefully I’ll catch up eventually.

2024 will also see new covers for old books. I’ve created new covers of my stand-alone contemporary romances. They’ve barely sold a copy in their entire existence, so putting effort into them might seem redundant. But whenever I get stuck in writing, I tend to turn to creating book covers. This time I was inspired by a stock photo series, purchased them, and went with it. The result doesn’t necessarily represent the books very well, but I don’t care. They delight me, and no one buys them anyway.

I haven’t uploaded the new covers yet, but here they are for your delight too. There will be an official cover reveal later.

I won’t make any promises concerning this blog for this year. I won’t be able to keep them anyway. But hopefully it’ll be more than this post. I wish you all a good year.