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!

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 

August Got Away From Me

No blog post or newsletter in August. Or maybe there was a newsletter. Hang tight. There was one! So I'm not doing tremendously horrible. There won't be one in September. I'm actually contemplating on shutting down my newsletter, and starting a Discord server to distribute news, new releases, and the like. It's much easier for me to maintain that, and I don't have to come up with content. I'm shit at coming up with content. I'll probably make a final decision on that at the end of the year.

Still chugging away at re-writes for Outside The Game. I lost all motivation to work on it or anything for that matter, but I'm going to get back into it this weekend, and try to get out of this fifth chapter and get into the sixth. A part of the lack of motivation is due to work. Going into the office 3 days a week and then staying until 5 or 6P and dealing with traffic is just exhausting. Miss the work from home days. With all this being said, will this book come out in 2024? Probably not. I want to have my editor go through it one more time. If anything, it will be a Q1 2025 release, which I am okay with. I've always given myself grace in that regard, but I also get mildly annoyed.

I started outlining a new story, but I'm not going to talk about it. I'm determined to put out a standalone novel after I publish Outside The Game and Grisly Politics. I've got all these series and my standalone offerings are pretty slim, so I'm going to try and beef them up. Actually, now that I'm thinking about, I should probably start writing my Scandal-esque story. It's in its "outlining" phase, but that's all right, I know where it's headed and where I need it to go.

Let me talk book distribution for hot second because it has gotten fcking wonky because of Smashwords being brought into the Draft2Digital fold. I'm not seeing a difference on which stores my books are available, but the thing that is rough is keeping track of reviews. Now, I do my best not to read them. They're not for me, however, I use to them go gauge how a book is performing, especially on sites outside of Amazon because I'm stepping away from them as a distributor. So, figuring out how to consolidate reviews across various platforms is a conundrum I need to brainstorm on. Other than that, if you find yourself at a lost on where to purchase my books, you can always head to my Ko-Fi shop and buy them directly from me, including signed autograph copies.

I don't think I have much else for this month. Everyone is gearing up for Spooky season to kick off the holiday season, so I hope you all enjoy it, and I will be back in October with a new blog post. Hopefully. Remember to rate and review the books you read, especially those by indie authors.

Until next time...

-DJ Small

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

Newlsetter Is Out On The 10th

(If you're reading this on Facebook or through my Goodreads page, I recommend visiting my actual blog so you have access to the links)

I have this issue where I do something, and another thing is effected by the thing I'm doing, but I don't realize the connection until it's too late or like minutes before the thing I'm doing takes effect. In this case I'm talking about my newsletter dropping on the 10th, and me needing to post a blog post before it does. Fortunately, math irritated me into doing something else and I realized I needed to make a blog post before it does come out.

Reason for the early newsletter is because I enrolled Murderous Profession into a group promotion event on Bookfunnel, and it doesn't go past my preferred newsletter sending date of the 15th. So it's coming out on May 10th. If you're in the market for a new book and/or looking for a new author to check out, click on this link to peruse some books featuring queer characters. Oh, and they're all FREE! I made sure this group promo was well rounded and wasn't inundated by MM fiction with hard-bodied half naked men on the cover. So go take a look.

Speaking of Murderous Profession, I've started edits on Grisly Politics the second book in the Detective Miller series. I am super excited to be back in Eliza and Dax's world. These two are just so much fun to write and develop. I'm also going to be working with the same editor, so hopefully the second book should flow seamlessly into the first one. At some point this week, I'll take a pause on editing it so I can edit the short story I've written as a freebie for my newsletter subscribers and exclusive on Ko-Fi. If you'd like to receive it once I've released it, you can sign up for my monthly newsletter or become a supporter of my Ko-Fi page.

Other than that it is going to be a mellow month, especially since the PWHL playoffs are happening and the championship game is going to be around the corner, so I am super distracted, especially if I'm entering the bloodbath that is going to be getting tickets for the championship game.

Before I end this just wanted to say I out out a call for pre-release readers. If you're interested in becoming an Alpha or Beta reader or want to join my ARC Team, go to this page and sign up. I figure I might get a few pre-release readers established since I'll have a couple of books ready for critiquing soon. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me or reach out to me on Facebook or Discord.

Until next time....

-DJ Small

This Is A Late Post....

This post is soooo late. I started writing it on the 8th, but now it's...whatever date I decided to post it, and boy is that a gap. I have no genuine concept of time. It's a social construct anyways.

Newsletter went out on the 15th, if you're not signed up for it, you missed out on my "interview" with fellow indie author, Luc Dreamer. I use the word interview loosely because I just sent him some questions and he answered them. The interview wasn't long, but I wanted to showcase another trans masculine author who writes in the realm of Sapphic fiction. He was a great sport about it, and I had fun doing it.

Will this be my only interview? Probably not. That newsletter needs something to go into it, and sometimes I run out of ideas. However, it's not going to be a monthly occurrence. I also have my question corner as well where people can email or submit questions to me. So, if you have any questions or comments for me, email me or you can submit one through the contact form on my website.

I also announced in this month's newsletter that I've finished my second round of edits and have found an editor. She won't start working on it until July because she has her own obligations and commitments, but I'm super excited to have my part of the edits for Outside The Game completed. Well, for a little while. Next up is going to be Dax and Eliza, and I'm super excited. However, I'm on a bit of a break due to education reasons lol. I'll jump into them as soon as I pass this damn final.

I'm hoping my new editing process will make things move along smoother, and my new editor also does things in chunks, so she'll edit a chunk and send it my way for review. Either way there will be a new book from me out by December. Hell, it might be out in time for football season.

Last thing, I put out a call to start building my ARC team and I'd like to gain some beta readers as well. If you're interested in getting a free book in exchange for a free review, sign-up here and choose "Join The ARC Team". If you want to read my book while it's in the final stages of editing and proofing, and would like to provide feedback on the overall story, you're going to sign up at the same link, but check beta reader on the form. Beta readers I'm capping to 3, but the ARC team is open to all who want to help me out in the review department.

I'm still in the process of writing my reader magnet, which is fancy author talk for a free short story, and it is close to being done. I did some things and I ran into a dilemma which required me to take a step back from it. I should have it done hopefully by the time I leave for GCLS in July. If you're a newsletter subscriber, it'll come directly to your inbox once I've finished, and if you haven't signed up for my newsletter yet, sign up here and you'll also get my new short story directly. Or you can wait until later and get it when you sign-up. It's up to you.

All right, I think I am done on this one. Next month I'll have my shit together, and get the blog post out before the newsletter. Time really got away from me this month lol.

As always, review and rate the books you read, especially the ones published by indie and self-pubbed authors. Until next time peeps...

 

-DJ Small