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
