Shadows in the Bloodline

I’m still working on the rough draft of Shadows of the Bloodline. I have some edits from a Cozy Mystery that is under my pen name (Elliot Droit). That will wait until I’m done with the rough draft of this book. There seems to be little interest in my Cozy series right now. I have to focus on that later. Book sales are tricky. I understand the psychology of the average reader, because I’m one of them. For me, when I go to Amazon and look at a book, I check things before I buy the book (unless it’s KU, then I might just download it blindly and start reading). I check stuff, like the total review points and the number of reviews. If the book has only a few reviews, that just means the overall average is not very reflective of the book, only of the few that have already read it. I also understand that it takes approximately 100 readers before one review will show. Which means it takes a long time before enough reviews are available to show the real value of the product.

Yes, I’m wandering off the beaten path. What I’m saying is that four Cozy Mystery books, with zero reviews, is not going to attract any readers. Well, there are a few, and the price of the first book is at 99 cents, which is temporary. I’ll leave that book discounted until a few reviews appear, then I’ll put the price back to the regular Kindle price I’m using for that set.

Back to Shadows…

This book is coming along pretty good. There are two major twists in this plot, so I’m being very cautious about how the story approaches those twists. And… I can’t say anything else about this story. If you’ve read RUSTY’s Memories, you’ll get a setup of where Shadows in the Bloodline will start. These two books are a solid back-to-back story. Once this story is done, I’ll be free from any further writing commitments.

Book Commitments

And what does it mean when I say I’m free from any book writing commitments? It just means I need to make more commitments. Right now, I’m thinking about Daphne Blazefire books 2 through 5. Or, Dangerous Cargo through Supercomputer. I have a decision to make. Will I create a second edition of each one and bring their story quality up to match the other three books? Or, will I start a new series? I’m really struggling with this decision.

I did some math on the sales figures and determined that if I could get the read-through rate up to something like 70% (which is lower than the read-through for some of the books), the series would be a hot seller. The number one killer of the series is the first drop-off, where the read-through from book 1 to 2 is around 28%. If you’re hating on me because you loved book 1 (Novis Termina) and consider book 2 (Dangerous Cargo) a snooze-fest, just skip ahead to RUSTY’s Memories. I see a lot of people have done just that. They probably looked at the book blurbs, or maybe they read the preview pages and determined RUSTY’s Memories was newer, causing the read-through for that book to exceed 100% (in other words, more people are reading RUSTY’s Memories than Supercomputer).

What’s in the Works?

I might decide to do what most authors do: write a new series. I’ve been noodling on possibilities for that. I have a directory on my computer with 80 stories/series ideas to write. Some have partial stories I tried my hand at before I published my first book. I could blow the dust off any of those story ideas and turn them into something cool. I also have just ideas I wrote down for stories I’d like to write, but couldn’t start because I was in the middle of writing another series. Sometimes I just think about something completely new, and ignore the stories I already thought about in the past. Believe me, when I say I will never run out of story ideas. I suspect I’ll always have a hundred ideas for other stories that will never happen.

I thought about writing another chronicle, assuming that chronicles can be read in any order, but people still read them in order. In other words, it doesn’t matter if I do a series in a chronicle format or just tightly couple them as though they are one long story.

I could also write the first book of a new series, then rewrite one old Daphne book, then do another book for the new series, etc. It’s kind of painful to write that way because I have to keep shifting my mindset back and forth. Also, I’ve tried it with the two series, The Archons and The Traveler Trilogy. I had to cut the Traveler series down to a trilogy so I could continue to focus on the Archon books. Those two stories are completely different, with distinct characters. Not doing that again.

Well… Back to writing Shadows.