The New Era Of DJ Small

Another blog post yay!!!! I've been bitten by the author/publisher bug, and I'm diving head first back into publishing. This was brought on by my recent therapy session and re-reading the fucking 2nd Detective Miller book. It really is such a great read. Like what Dax and Eliza go through is just....everything. I want to talk more about it, but I also don't want to give too much away. Here, let's see if I can write out a horrible, on-the-fly, blurb for it.

If there were two things Detective Eliza Miller can count on,the first would be murder happening in the city, and the second would be her inability to have a stable relationship.

Having just wrapped the case of a councilwoman with mayoral aspirations, Eliza wanted to spend an inordinate amount of time with her boyfriend, Dax Collins, and recover from spending every waking moment of the last week in trying to get justice for the councilwoman. Unfortunately, her big mouth and the city had other plans for her.

In the midst of what could possibly the end of her relationship, Dax is once again a suspect for murder, and because of their relationship, Eliza is not on the case. Not knowing the case's progress and what leads Detectives Chorpa and Oswald are investigating, Eliza does everything she can to prove Dax's innocence, again, while still hoping to repair the damage she has inflicted on their relationship. That's if she can get Dax to talk to her.

What do we think? Again, this is just an off the wall blurb that I tried not to put too much thought into. As you can tell things are going to get a little (a lot) angsty with Dax and Eliza, and honestly, it is a much needed development between them. They've been too cute and perfect, and that's not real life, is it?

Because of this burst of creative energy, and my brain's cooperation, I've actually started on book 3 of the Detective Miller series. It picks up a couple of weeks after book 2. It's only 500 words in, but it's something. Can't wait to get further into it, and throw some new curve balls at Dax and Eliza.

Oh! Before I leave the topic of the Detective Miller series, I wanted to let everyone know that Murderous Profession will be coming to paperback as a buy direct from me exclusive. I'm going to also include a cute standalone story as a bonus for the paperback release. Just a cute little slice of life short story that takes place between books 1 and 2. It would be considered the first story of the Murderous Interludes short story series. These will be stories that give a snapshot into Dax and Eliza's life. They'll be short and fluffy. But I just wanted to let everyone know about that before I forgot.

Changes are coming! They're coming in a big way too. Since I've pretty much neglected my author brand the last few years, I'm redoing everything. Social media, newsletter, website, and logo. All are getting a facelift. I've actually made a new logo. I think I'm going to keep it permanently.

 

What do we think? It's an improvement of my last one, and actually a more accurate representation of my writing and publishing persona. As you all can see, the logo is a phoenix. Unlike the old one, which was also a phoenix, but the style of it probably made it hard to discern. This one leaves no room for interpretation. It's a phoenix. Why the phoenix? I've never explained this, so I'll take the time to do so.

Every time I write a story I put all of myself into it and making sure the story is doing what I want it to, so by the time I finish it, I'm reaching pretty much the end of my metaphorical life for that story. Once it's out of the editing phase and into the publishing phase, I've pretty much died and am just putting it out in the world. However, death is not an end. Because either a thought or some rude bolt of inspiration strikes, and I'm reborn and investing every part of myself into another story. So, like the phoenix, I rise from the ashes of my old story, ready and excited to create another one. Hence, the phoenix as a logo. Plus, I love them.

I also mentioned the website getting a facelift. It's getting a major facelift. I'm changing platforms; bringing my online store to the website instead of Ko-Fi, which isn't a bad platform, but my end goal has always been to make my website the one-stop shop for all things DJ Small. So, by bringing my online store to my website, my readers won't have to go elsewhere and I can test out how I feel about doing this all myself. Lots of testing and seeing how it goes with this one folx. I apologize for any glitches and what the fuckery.

Newsletter...lmao. Goodness. I just don't know what to put in them. So, I'm only going to use them to announce new releases, goodies, and whatever else. They'll be inconsistent and there will be 0 method to my madness. It's all madness, all the time lol.

This brings me to social media. I am no longer on Facebook or Twitter. If you see anyone on there claiming to be me, it's not me. I'm only on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Tumblr. To be quite honest, if you just want to stay up to date on my new releases, goodies, and where to ambush me at, sign-up for the newsletter. Yeah there hasn't been one for a while, but I'm slowly coming back to it. Give me some time.

I have found a new book printer, and possibly a new distributor for my books. It's Lulu.com. I want to say a writer friend mentioned it to me, but I could be making that up. Either way, I did a test print of Murderous Profession, and it came out great, but I have some things I need to tweak because I used the same files I was going to use for KDP, but Lulu does things a little differently, so I'm going to fix those and hopefully have a paperback out for Murderous Profession by the end of summer.

Well, this certainly was a better blog post than I intended. I only wanted to announce that I was getting a new logo, but then more things happened, which is so exciting. I wanna say thanks to everyone for sticking with me, and I'm hoping to put a book out this year. It has been a while, but I've made some changes, 

All right, that is it for me. Remember to always rate and review your books, especially the ones from your favorite indie authors. Indies can't get popular without people talking about in some way, shape, or form. So, leaving a review is telling a stranger weather they should get the book or not, and don't you want to be a bad influence on people 😏.

Until next time folx....

 DJ Small 

*Waves From Under A Pile Of Blankets* Heyyyy........

It has been a while. I know it seems like I've vanished off the face of the Earth, but like most USians, I had a hard time processing the election, and that coupled with my normal depression and some family things, made existence painful. Now with the coming of Spring, well, Summer at this point, and a move, I'm hoping I'll be able to get back into the writing and publishing game.

Before I jump into what this post is truly about, I wanted to say I went to Queers and Quills over the Memorial Day weekend, and it was an interesting event to be at since the only writer events I've been to has been GCLS, which is about sapphic books and the authors that write them, who are primarily women identifying folx. So, going to an event where all of the queer community represented was interesting, but also a little refreshing. The queer community isn't a monolith, but sometimes we fall into the pit of putting ourselves in cliques, especially now and in the US. You can see it in the way people interact online, but if you go out in reality, the vibes are different and you forget how enjoyable it is being amongst other queers.

Anyway, it was a great event held in Portland, OR. It was my first time in the PNW and on the west coast so I was super excited. This was the first Queers and Quills event, and they did their best to include as much diversity as possible, but there were some areas where I thought they could do better, however, I also didn't attend many panels. I didn't like the scheduling of them. At most you got to go to 2 panels a day for 3 days, and that third day didn't have any panels. Maybe they'll evolve next year and figure it out, but outside of the event hanging out with some folx I know from the GCLS was a good time like always.

Anyway, want to find out what I've been up to before this weekend? Of course you do!

I would love to say that I've been working on Fate Unseen or Outside The Game, or even Grisly Politics during this time, but the sad fact of the matter is that I haven't. Listen, when I say it has been rough, I mean it has been rough. There was a full month where I came home from work, and went in my room and stayed in bed for hours on end, except to pee, which was infrequent because I wasn't taking care of myself. So, finding the headspace for writing has been such a back-burner of a want for me. And like every time I talk to my therapist, I'm like I want to get back into writing more than anything else. Not because I want to publish, but because that's my outlet, and not having it has me feeling listless.

Anyways, let's talk about the other side of this. As I said up top, I'm easing writing back into my routine. Current goal is to write at minimum a sentence It's about the small steps, and I think that's what my therapist has been trying to enforce in me, but I'm such a worldview kind of thinker and I get lost in the weeds. So, by taking it one sentence at time, I can re-kindle my love for writing. And being amongst my fellow writers this past weekend also helped reinvigorate me a bit because I want to be able to talk about my work. Like yes, I have four books out, but I would love to talk about my new stuff too. I have so much excitement about my forthcoming work, but I can only talk about it to a few people. So, we're going to take this a step at a time, and hell, if any of my readers want to hold me accountable, I'm all for it. You can now find me on Bsky.

Oh, one thing I've been thinking about while I haven't been actively writing is protecting myself as an author. Between the plagiarists, pirates, gen-AI, gen-AI sloop, and the capitalists publishing has become a bit of a nightmare. I've come to accept that the books I already have out in the ether have been pirated or scraped for LLMs what have you. That's how it goes. For future books though, I want to be more prudent, and more in control of how my books are distributed. Don't know how I'm going to do that, but I do know all future work won't be on Amazon. Except for the current series because that's not fair, so if you are a fan of The Last Pureblood or the Detective Miller series, the future releases for those series will be on Amazon.

 As for anything else, I'll be going through draft2digital, but excluding Amazon. If you are someone who uses Kobo or Scribd, my books are available on their subscription plans as well. I learned that the other day. Oh! And this also includes the Kobo app, so if you don't have a Kobo device, you can still get your books through there. I also want to say I have books through bookshop.org, but I can't be sure. However, if I do please get them through there. I'm actually going to sign up to become an affiliate because I love what they're doing, and they support indie bookstores. Print books for all published works will continue to be offered through Amazon, but I'm working on creating a store for you to purchase through so you don't have to purchase through those people.

Well, this got away from me, and it took almost two weeks to type up, but I've finally posted a fricking update. Maybe I'll do it again next month.

 Happy Pride!

 

-- DJ Small