I have a new book out! I know, you're shocked, nothing about this post gave that away before this point did it 😉🤣. Admittedly there has been no build up to this, but that's because I have to admit that I moved the schedule up on this one pretty sharpish.
Regina Harker, immortal, vampire tainted, descendant of the famous Mina, has spent her whole life preparing for one mission: destroy Dracula.
Mina Harker (nee Murry) was changed by Dracula's attentions and so were her descendants. Reggie comes from this line of vampire hunters, nature's definitive balance to the darkness. Her whole life has been building up to this one mission in Romania, to face the evil that started everything for her family. Unfortunately there are others with their eyes on Dracula too, and Reggie has run right into them. She must make them allies or remove them from the game before she can face the ultimate foe.
Mina's Children is entered into Amazon UK's Kindle Storyteller literary prize, which I didn't know about until an email came through this month, and the entry period is 1st May - 31 Aug. All entries have to be new books, so I went full speed on editing Mina's Children, which I have been meaning to do for a little while.
Now some of you may recognise the title as one I published on Wattpad in 2018 as part of their Open Novella Contest, where it came in the top 5, and it is based on the same novella. However, this is a new version which has been edited to be the beginning of my series Dracula's Heritage, as well as having three completely new chapters at the end.
Dracula, the greatest vampire to have ever lived, is like no other undead before or since. Always returning from death no matter his adversaries, it will take a coming together of remarkable individuals, each one themselves the result of a ripple left by Dracula in the world, to bring an end to his latest dreadful plot.
Mina's Children is a contemporary paranormal action adventure, inspired by Bram Stoker's classic Dracula. I have always loved Dracula, being a vampire fan, how could I not, and some of the film adaptations of the story are easily in my top 10 vampire films of all time. I will admit this series takes as many liberties with the source material as most adaptations, but I hope it will appeal to fans of the Count.
My apologies to those who prefer to use sources other than Amazon, but to be in the running for the Kindle Storyteller prize, the title has to be in KDP select and exclusive to the platform. However, this does mean I can offer it to read for free via Kindle Unlimited.
It is also available to purchase for the introductory price of $0.99, £0.77 for the eBook & $6.99, £4.95 for the paperback.
It would be wonderful if you were to pick up a copy, or if you could even just visit the book on Amazon - because both will help Mina's Children's rankings and how much it will be seen. This in turn will help it in the competition. Thank you so much for your support.💖
Of course, as always, while vampires survive on blood, reviews are the lifeblood for authors. If you enjoy the book, I would be eternally grateful if you would leave a review at Amazon.
💜Thank you so much for dropping by.💜
Q. Do you have a book in Amazon's Kindle Storyteller prize? Let us know about it in the comments so we can check it out.
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I am really excited today because, for the first time I have a novel out in paperback! I have had short stories in other people's paperback, but never one all to myself.
Happy Dance!
Having been publishing in eBook form for several years now I am very used to the rigmarole involved in that, but preparing for print is another step up again. We still need the description and a killer title etc, so I won't go into those here, but these are steps I went through in addition to that.
It is possible to pay for all the formatting and cover work, but of course that incurs significant costs. This blog post is all about DIY and a few of the things that had me scratching my head :).
Where Shall We Publish Our Paperback?
If we are already using KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) to publish our books we really only have two choices:
There are other options out there, but I only looked into these two.
KDP
CreateSpace
Pro
Con
Pro
Con
Kindle & Paperback are linked (still waiting for mine to link, they say it takes up to 48hrs)
Don't have lower cost proof copies
Higher royalty when bought directly from CreateSpace site.
Paperback is displayed on Amazon, but is not linked to the Kindle version if you set up the Kindle version first.
If you are a prime member postage is free.
Don't have member rates for author copies
Offer lower price proof and author copies.
Postage is quite high if you want it before just under 2 months is out.
Lower royalty rate.
Distribute to other vendors.
It worked out cheaper and quicker for me to publish on CreateSpace, wait for it to appear on Amazon.co.uk and order a copy from there because I have Prime than do it direct from CreateSpace.
These are the prices for my book:
Author copy price = $3.63
However, postage was:
Standard Shipping $4.88 Estimated Delivery Date: Mon, Mar 20, 2017
Expedited Shipping $7.99 Estimated Delivery Date: Tue, Feb 14, 2017
Priority Shipping $14.38 Estimated Delivery Date: Mon, Feb 06, 2017
Since this was a proof copy I wanted, I wanted it quickly, so my only option was the maximum and then it still wouldn't arrive before next Monday, total cost £14.42.
As it is, I ordered from Amazon.co.uk for £8.99 and it was here yesterday.
For those living in the US, theses costs may be considerably cheaper, I'm sorry, I have no idea.
However, if I go up to say 10 author copies, for a promotion or something, then it is cheaper to go through CreateSpace, especially since I hope I would be organised enough to order in advance :).
Since I could change my book to be KDP later, I went with CreateSpace to begin with, in case I wanted author copies. Then CreateSpace was having a problem with my TAX number and was telling me it was going to withhold 30%, so I gave up and switch my book to KDP. If I want author copies I'll create a new edition on CreateSpace later with a new ISBN.
KDP documentation also says it doesn't have author copies yet ... so they may add them.
Once a book is transferred to KDP it is no longer available on CreateSpace because of ISBN issues.
Next time I will just go straight through KDP.
Formatting the Book - Not As Easy As Kindle
It might seem a pain sometimes for us to format our books for Kindle, but, trust me, that is plain sailing compared to what needs to be done for a print book. Luckily for you and me, KDP and CreateSpace offer very nice templates to help.
However, before you can download a template, there are some decisions to be made:
Print type: Black & White or Colour
Paper type: Cream or White
Trim Size: They have many, they recommend 6x9 in as the most popular, but you can pick a different one if you would like.
Bleed Settings: needed for images and illustrations.
Cover Finish: Matte or Glossy
I used the KDP templates because I started setting my book up there first before I realised about CreateSpace. CreateSpace offers you a particular template when you pick the trim size.
The easiest option for us novelists is to pick the formatted template with sample content. We then have to replace the content within the template, but it makes it a lot easier to see what we are doing!
So we have are template, now we have to get our book into it.
Save the novel manuscript as plain text. We do not want any of our current formatting to get into our new template.
Copy each piece of content into the correct place in the template. i.e. front matter to front matter, chapter to chapter, back matter to back matter. If there are too many chapters, delete the spare. If there are not enough chapters copy one of the template chapters and paste it in until there are enough.
Make sure all the chapters are numbered correctly.
Manually enter the table of contents with page numbers for each chapter. Now many novels do not have tables of contents and the advice I saw and went with is that if our chapter headings are just numbers, a toc is unnecessary, but if our chapters have titles, it is usual to have a toc.
The template deals with margins and opposite page positioning, and chapter title spacing and everything like that, so it makes life much easier for us. We can get a professional looking finish without knowing everything about the setup.
The Cover - Also Not As Easy As Kindle
A normal book has a back and a spine as well as a front, which makes the cover for a paperback trickier than that of a Kindle book.
The really tricky bit is the spine and making sure it is the right size. There are formulae for calculating the size, but luckily for us, KDP have templates again. So, if we are designing our own cover, poping along to the KDP templates page and downloading the correct one is by far the easiest solution.
Tip:The 'Page Count' is the number of document pages in your book, not the number of leaves (physical book pages with a back and a front), even though when KDP tries to explain page count it uses 'page' for both the number of pages and the number of leaves and is utterly confusing.
Then we just use this template to build our cover, taking account of the guide lines.
As is says under their instructions we need to save our covers as print quality PDF. In Photoshop this is easy:
Choose 'Save As'
Pick 'Photoshop PDF' from the Format options.
The 'Save Adobe PDF' option dialog will come up - choose '[Press Quality]' from the Adobe PDF Preset list.
Click 'Save PDF' and it's done.
Proofing the Book
Right, so now we have our cover and our manuscript, so we can upload both into KDP or CreateSpace. We have to have both to convert and then proof the book, even though the downloadable proof doesn't have the cover in it :).
In both cases we can preview the book proof online, including a 3D rendering of our cover, so we can check how it looks. This is all well and good, but definitely download the PDF proof as well.
In KDP there is a link to download this right in the previewer. There is a PDF icon at the bottom of the screen which when clicked allows us to download the proof.
In CreateSpace, we have to wait until our files are approved and then there is an option to download the proof in the same place as the online launcher.
Now here is the most important thing I learned when proofing my book:
Print out the proof.
Not kidding, you would not believe the number of errors I found because I went through it with a red pen on paper. They were only tiny errors, like one wrong letter on a 'his' or an 's' on something that shouldn't have been a plural, but they were there.
Tip:To make it easy to find the errors again when we are making the corrections, noting down the page number on the front of the proof every time we find one is the way to go.
Some things to look out for that you normally wouldn't in a Kindle doc are:
blank pages - the only place we should have blank pages in in our front matter to make sure everything is in the correct place and that our first chapter starts on a page facing us.
page numbers in the table of contents - mine were all a page out from about 2/3rds through because I had moved a piece of formatting and forgot to recheck the numbering before uploading the file.
Once we have made all our corrections to our master manuscript and re-uploaded it, we are ready to move on to pricing.
Pricing the Book
There is really only one way to know how to competitively price our book, and that is to check to see what other paperbacks in our genre are being priced at.
Unfortunately for us, print on demand is more expensive than mass market paperback production, so we are never going to be able to be competitive with all those big names who have their paperback at ridiculously low prices when they first comes out. Don't stress over this, there are plenty of other authors, self-pub and tradition pub who also don't have this advantage.
When we have set up our book on KDP or CreateSpace it will have a cost to print per unit. This is how much it costs to produce the book and depends on size, print, paper and number of pages. This cost is taken right off the top when the book is sold.
Then there is the percentage KDP or CreateSpace will take as their cut. I tried to understand how they worked this out, but I have no idea where the number came from, so I just believed them. This is added on to the cost to provide the minimum book price.
If we sell our book at the minimum book price we get no royalties. Possibly useful for having a sale at some point, not much for making a living.
What we need to do is pick a price for our paperback that has how much we would like to earn tacked on the top. Both KDP and CreateSpace helpfully tell us what our royalty will be for any price we pick, so it is easy to see.
I went with $10.99,/£8.99 because it left me some wiggle room if I want to take it down to do a sale etc. later. KDP and CreateSpace will calculate prices for us just based on the dollar amount, but it looks more professional to have the more expected numbers.
Press the Publish Button
All that remains is taking our courage in our hands and clicking that publish button.
On CreateSpace there is the option of ordering a proof copy before publishing, which can be a good idea if the shipping doesn't take forever or cost the earth.
On KDP we can only get a copy after it is published, but never fear, it is going into a huge pool so the sharks shouldn't find it too quickly. Order a copy as soon as it is live and check it as soon as it arrives.
Then market like there is no tomorrow.
~*~
Dead Before Dawn: The Vampire Curse
by Natasha Duncan-Drake
Max Statton's life will never be the same again.
While in Moscow for the premier of his new movie a terrifying encounter reveals some nightmares actually exist. Attacked by one of the city's resident vampires, Max is bitten and infected. Only a team of local vampire hunters prevent him being dragged into the violent underworld of the undead.
Fighting for his very existence, Max must resist the vampire curse with the help of Yulia, the hunter's doctor. But with his humanity slipping away, Max only has two choices: ask the hunters to end it, or risk becoming a monster.
When Yulia offers him a final, desperate, kill or cure option, Max must decide if he has the courage to take it. He wants his life back, and the idea of telling his friend and co-star, Gian Bossard, he's sort of in love with him, doesn't seem so frightening after vampires. However, Yulia's solution could just as easily send him to a worse hell than the one he's living.
I am seeking pre-release reviewers for my new book to post during the launch week which starts on 21st Feb 2016. When you boil it down the new book is gay romance with telepathic figure skaters, so if you like that sort of thing, this is the book for you :).
I can provide an ARC of the book in PDF, Kindle (mobi) or ePub.
There was an earlier version of the story published as part of the giveaway games anthologies, but this one has been re-polished and it has grown by a third, so it is a lot different to the original. If you think you've already read it, you haven't :).
This will be an Amazon only launch (have finally caved and am trying out a new system) so the reviews would need to go there, thank you.
You can drop a comment with an email where I can contact you or drop me a line via the contact form in the left side margin and I will get back to you.
Many thanks to anyone who is interested.
Title: The Machine (Rise of the Gifted) Author: Natasha Duncan-Drake Rating: PG13 Genre: Contemporary SciFi, Romance, Gay Length: novella (22.5K)
Rafe Derouet used to be a world class, British figure skater competing against his arch rival, flamboyant American Louis Hayes. A catastrophic knee injury ended his career and now all he can do is look on from the sidelines, commentating where he used to be a star. He hates Louis and wants nothing more than to see his nemesis go down in a blaze of failure.
Then mysterious men in black with guns take over a press meet, trying to arrest Louis, awakening something dangerous in their target, and setting in motion events they cannot control. Most shocking of all, Rafe finds out Louis can literally read his mind.
Dragged into a murky world of government agents and x-files by one of those x-files, Rafe finds his world view completely changing. And, along the way, his hatred for Louis proves to be something else entirely.
Now Rafe just needs to survive so he can decide what to do about it.
If you are interested in being a pre-release reviewer for other Wittegen Press books as well, we have a reviewer pool mailing list. Simply fill in this form at the link below to apply and we will add you to the list.
Today my new book is out - Dreams and Reality. Superheroes, an alternative reality, a bisexual lead, lots of action and some steamy male/male and male/male/male sex make for an exciting and fun read.
The book already has two 5star reviews over at GoodReads.
Dreams and Reality is the long awaited second book in the Dark Reflections series which I began publishing back in 2012. Truth be told this languished 2/3rds done on my hard drive for over two and a half years because it stalled while I was writing it. I just didn't know how to make it into the book it could be. Since I didn't want to disappoint my readers I put it on a back burner and moved on to other projects.
Then, at the end of last year, I was suddenly struck by inspiration and I knew how to plot had to go. It took me a while to wrangle it into something that I could be proud of, but now it is, so I present to you my new book.
The first book in the series, Me, Myself and I, is a permanently free novelette on all the major eBook sites, so it can be downloaded anywhere. Just click the link and you will be presented with options.
However, you don't have to have read Me, Myself and I to enjoy Dreams and Reality; all the pertinent information is to be found as you read.
~*~
About the Book
Title: Dreams and Reality: Superheroes, Sex and Surreality
Series: Dark Reflections
Author: Natasha Duncan-Drake
Word count: ~50K
Genre: Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Gay, Bisexual
Published: March 30th 2015
Tristan Havering believes all the crazy things he experienced in an alternative dimension, real-world version of the superhero saga ‘Power Up’ were a dream brought on by concussion; he’s about to find out how terrifyingly wrong he is.
Four months after the steamy, narcissistic liaison he shared with Devon, the supervillain he plays in the movies, dangerous things begin spilling over into his world, and Tristan has no choice but to believe the impossible: superheroes and supervillains are real.
His only hope is Devon, mercurial and unstable, once driven completely out of his mind by his own power, but will he help Tristan a second time? Tristan has no choice but to frantically reach out and return to Devon’s crazy reality or face insanity at the whim of a power he cannot hope to control.
Chapter 1 Part 1 of Dreams and Reality read by Natasha Duncan-Drake
~*~
FREE Book Offer
If you leave an honest review for this book where you bought it I will give you the follow-on short story ‘Oh, Really?’ absolutely FREE as a thank you. Simply fill in the form below to point me at your review. None of your details will be shared or used for any other purpose than contacting you about the free book.
My new vampire novel, Advent is out today. No Twilight style vamps in this book, the vampires are all nasty, but there is some romance, a lot of action and plenty of fangs. Buying options are listed below.
Every hunter knows a vampire bite means damnation.
Every hunter knows killing a victim is an act of mercy.
Every hunter knows there is no cure. Every hunter is wrong.
Nate Lavern became a hunter at eighteen and was well aware of the golden rule until he met Lexie. Lexie is a white witch infected with vampirism and when Nate was infected as well she showed him her secret for staying partially human. Together they hunt vampires, protecting the unsuspecting general public, but their magical solution is beginning to fail.
Their only hope is the Avebury ritual, little more than a legend even in hunter circles, and requiring four ancient relics. They are running out of time and must find out what is truth and what is myth; what is real and where it has been hidden.
You do not need an eReader to view this publication; there are Kindle aps available for most devices as well as formats for other eReaders, devices and PC. Please see FAQ item 11 for more info.
Excerpt
Conflict enveloped him in less time that it took for a normal human heart to beat. Part of his mind screamed that Lexie's reaction was a warning and he was close to the edge. Another part enjoyed the fear he could see in her eyes. His rational brain told him that this woman was his friend and sometimes lover; his vampire instincts told him this thing before him was a shell of a human being fit only to be slaughtered. "Nate," Lexie's voice would have been steady to a normal ear, but to Nate's acute hearing the slight quaver was obvious, "you're scaring me." "Really? I'm so sorry." But he wasn't, not in the slightest and he smiled at her. "Oh crap, fangs," Lexie said, the fear was evident in her voice. She took another step backwards.
If you read and enjoy this title, please consider reviewing it at Smashwords or Amazon or one of the other eBook shops. Thank you.
