Dammit! It's fricking October!

This post has gone through multiple iterations since I've come back from the GCLS conference back in July, and it's only because I'll think of something while typing, and I either get distracted or hold off on posting because my idea is a good one, thinking I would use the post to announce it because I'm always working on something. Usually that's not the case, but this time, I have a couple of things to announce lol.

Uh...since this is going to be a recap of my summer pretty much I'll put this under a cut so it's not a freakishly long post. I hope you all had an enjoyable summer, and I hope the next few months are a complete nightmare. Onto the good stuff!

No Blog Post In June and No Newsletter In July

I guess I could arrange to have a small newsletter sent out this month, but I still don't have much to put in it. So, blog post it is. I needed to do one anyways.

Got the edits back for Outside The Game, so I'm off to do some rewrites to address the issues my editor pointed out. Not sure how long it will take, but I'm going for it. This means the edits for Grisly Politics have been placed on hold for the moment. I also started another course for school, so my plate is looking a little full. But I'm going to manage by golly!

Lats weekend, I went to the Golden Crown Literary Society's conference, which was held in Downtown St. Paul, MN. The hotel was right next to the Mississippi River, which was nice and my friend and I had a great view of it from our room. The conference, like last year's, was fun. My friend and I actually went to the awards banquet this year. We went exploring in the mountains of Colorado last year and missed it. It was a good time and definitely not a sprint of an event. It was my first time going to an in-person awards for author like things, so definitely a lesson learned situation. I mean, I'll go to the ceremony again next year, but I'll probably take the occasional break from it because I don't have the attention span for that lol.

I was also on a panel at the conference. My friend asked, and I said, "Sure, why not?" Lol. That's my response to a lot of things these days. The panel was about trans and nonbinary authors in Sapphic fiction. It was a great panel, and definitely opened the door for a much needed discussion because it exposed the lack of recognition for trans and nonbinary authors in queer spaces. It also posed a question of how writers in the trans community should be recognized? Like a book is fine. You can nominate it for the category/genre it fits in and go for it, but what about those books that don't fit the realm of Sapphic fiction and the author themselves? Like for myself I'm a transmasculine genderqueer individual, who has written Sapphic fiction, but I also have a book where my main character's love interest is a trans man. What if I want to nominate that book? What category would it go in? None of my work is considered straight, but definitely nuanced. Like Dax isn't straight and Eliza is definitely not straight. So I wouldn't want to nominate Murderous Profession and it's subsequent books for something that would fall under that label, but it's an interesting thing to think about. Even more so for books with nonbinary characters.

I'm not sure if any of that made sense, and I edited this post to the best of my ability before posting, but this is something the panel and the trans and nonbinary meetup that happened at the conference triggered in my head. I've also got some other GCLS related news, but I'm waiting for the ball to get rolling on that one. I'm finding myself getting more involved with this organization, and it is all happening inadvertently, but I like the org and it's a welcoming community, which is something I was worried about when I went to my first conference last year. I'm a pretty masculine looking individual and get perceived as cis male consistently, so I had my reservations, but they were for naught and now I'm an enthusiastic supporter.

Anyways, moving on, made new friends at the conference and I might be at Charlottesville Pride selling my books with the Sapphic Lit Pop Up gang. Depends on how it all shakes out. While I feel like I don't have enough books to peddle, I've also realized I need to find alternatives in building up my readership since the old way of tweeting and just letting those posts do the work for me is no longer viable. Oh! I am now on Instagram. Apparently I've actually be on there since at least 2018. I completely forgot I had the account, but you can follow me on there now. It might be my new favorite way to interact with readers and fellow authors.

Let's see, I know I said I was going to have a reader magnet out, but I haven't been able to get it edited. Editing is such a fucking pain in my ass, but it needs to be done. I'm going try and do it in-between things, but we shall see. If worse comes to worse, I'll offer up one of my existing books for free and people can choose which one they want when they sign-up for my newsletter. Might go that route until I have this magnet finished.

Any who, hope we're all having an enjoyable summer and are staying cool. Be on the look out for a newsletter in August.

Until next time....

-DJ Small

I'm An Idiot

The heading of this post doesn't pertain to all of it, but I just realized something. I have my blog set up on the RSS feeds of my Amazon author and Goodreads pages. Why am I an idiot? Because I don't fcking post. All these people could be coming to the blog and all this jazz, but why come if I haven't posted since Obama was in office ( I miss him.). Any ways, I'm going to set up a schedule and blog more frequently. 

If you haven't read my prior post, Fate Unseen, the second book in The Last Pureblood series has been put on hold. I need to reevaluate my approach with it, or I need to do something differently. I won't go into it, but in my last post, everything has been explained. I'm hoping when I go back to it with fresh eyes the problem will jump out at me and I can fix it. We shall see.

In the meantime, I have been working on The Adventures of Swift, which is exclusively available on my Patreon page and Gumroad. I'm up to episode 11, and I've complied all the episodes into one document for editing. I say look for an updated chapter 1, and chapter 2 around the end of January or February. I've also begun developing a novella series centered around the world of professional women's football. How this happened I'm not 100% certain, but I'm sure boredom while being around my football watching family led to this. Anyways, it's just in development, but I'm excited to start working on it.

Oh, I've also continued my review of the physical copy of Murderous Profession. When I tried to put all my focus in Fate Unseen, everything else went to the wayside and this was one of those things. I'm going to be working on that over the next week or so. If I decide to do a small batch run of signed books, it will be a part of that.

Speaking of, I did a poll on Twitter asking if I should do a small batch run of signed books and all 5 participants said yes. I'm going to do another poll in my October newsletter to try and get a better read. If you're interested, sign-up for my newsletter, and you'll get it when I send out the October one on the 11th.

I did an author-y thing this week. Fellow lesfic author, KD Williamson, has a YouTube channel where she and other lesfic authors talk about their work and a variety of other subjects, including rating hot sauces. She had me on her channel this week, and it was a wicked good time! It was my first time doing something like this, and if I had PR people they'd be like, "We think you did good, but could your ass sit still next time?" My sauce was Marie Sharp's Pure Mango Habanero Pepper Sauce. It's a milder sauce because I am not one for anything spicy. I live my life at a 2. But other than discussing hot sauces, we talked about being queer and black, me being a trans man who writes lesfic, and a bunch of other things. If you want to take a look it's below.

Two more things then I will be done. First thing is, after being out for 4 years, I have made Pool of Lies 99¢ on all platforms it's available on. I'm not sure if this has expanded to Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and other platforms the book is distributed to thanks to Smashwords, but I know on Smashwords, it's 99¢. 

Lastly, Murderous Profession will be a part of Kindle Unlimited until the end of October, and is on sale for 99¢ until the end of the month. There will be a surprise free day on Amazon for Murderous Profession. How will you know when it is? Twitter and my newsletter. Newsletter subscribers will know the day before and the day of. 

All right, I actually didn't do too bad for this post. A reminder has been scheduled for 2 weeks from now to post again.

Remember to review the books you read, especially those written and published by indie and self-published authors. And please, please, please, PLEASE! Make sure you're registered to vote and remember to vote, if not early, then on November 3rd. It is crucial. Check your voter registration here. I also implore those who live in states where voter suppression is quite obvious to keep checking your voter registration frequently because things have happened.

Also thank you to the witches and Karma for the miracle you performed 😉

Until next time....

-DJ Small

*leans against wall, huffing and puffing* Goodness....January Is Almost Over

I would say happy New Year, but at this point, it would be supremely awkward.

I honestly have no idea where this month has gone, but here we are. Just a quick blog post to let everyone know I'm alive.

Fate Unseen is getting put out of its misery this weekend, if not the beginning of next week. I have taken some time off from work to dedicate my life to it, so that is exciting. Once I get it to my editor, I'll be doing a cover reveal. Newsletter subscribers will see it first, and a few days later, I'll make a blog post about it. I hope I don't forget to do that, but I'm sure someone will keep me on track. Teaser chapters will be posted on my Patreon once I review my editor's edits. If I'm happy with the chapter, it'll go up as soon as I'm done with my review. Remember, I only put out 3 teaser chapters.

For book release time frame, I am looking at April or May. Way later than I wanted it to be, but that's fine considering how much I was struggling to ge Fate Unseen edited. I'm surprised I'll get out in the first half of the year.

Once these edits are done, this thing is going to get going like a steam roller, which means I'm going to be gassing up the heavy machinery. I'm plotting a story currently, and I'm going to get the first five episodes of Adventure of Swift written and edited. That will probably be making an appearance around late summer. Since I don't have any big trips planned, I should be able to stick to that. This is a year of frugal living for me since I splurged all last year. Oooh chile!

In exciting news, I'll be doing my first "event." I won't be doing a panel or anything, but I will be at QFX East in May, peddling my hard written books. As we get closer, I'll be able to let everyone know what the exclusives will be and how you can get them. I'm excited and nervous about this, but I think it will be a good time, and I'm excited to meet everyone.

Oh, price drop announcement! All my books are available for $2.99 at all eBook retailers, or it should be. If there are any issues let me know. I'm working on getting Murderous Profession in paperback format. It'll probably come out the same time as Fate Unseen.

Going completely off-topic, I'm sure everyone as heard about a major writers' organization taking a hard nose dive and imploding on itself, and while absorbing the facts and tea spilling of this clusterfuck, it made me wonder why there isn't a dedicated queer writers organization. I know these things take time to get off the ground, but like queer writers have to exist as a subset of  these bigger organizations and fight twice as hard to get some kind of recognition. I know this is the same story with other marginalized groups, and that these bigger organizations have resources and whatnot, but at the same time, why the hell don't we give it the old college try?

I'm sure someone out there is grinding the gears for that, or I at least hope they are. I think my only criteria would be that the organization not be restricted to one genre, because I'm not exclusive to one genre, and secondly that it broadly covers the entire queer spectrum.

I have a lot of thoughts on that, and I'm not sure if I'm going to bite the bullet on that one. I would need a helping hand or two because I want to write, and y'know, do hood rat things with my friends.

This post has gotten away from me, but I actually had thoughts and news this time! Seriously though let's all get excited that Fate Unseen is getting closer to being out in the world, and I'm anxious to know how everyone feels about it. Things get a bit more supernaturally, and Avery faces a whole slew of obstacles.

Also get pumped for Adventures of Swift. This was almost a Swan Queen fanfic instead of being an original story, so there is a bit of a zeal in it because Swan Queen is one of my 5ever ships.

All right, I'm off to edit. Remember to review your books, especially for those written by indie authors like myself. Oh, and enjoy the rest of your January 😊