Tasha's (aka Beren) Journal

My new vampire novelis ready to start posting :)

I will be posting the first chapter on Wattpad tomorrow (Tue 19th Sept). I'm doing all the last minute things today like getting the announcement posts ready for social media and our newsletter. It's going to be fun posting it weekly to see how different it is to posting a whole book at once.

There are going to be two chapters per week: one on Tuesdays and one on Fridays.

Be interesting to see how well this Wattpad thing works.

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 at beren (at) dtwins (dot) co (dot) uk 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)

According to the articles linked below Adobe Digital Editions 4 takes information about any ePub you put in your library (including ones that have no DRM so are nothing to do with them) and sends it in plain text, over the internet to their server.

Adobe is Spying on Users, Collecting Data on Their eBook Libraries

Adobe’s e-book reader sends your reading logs back to Adobe—in plain text

Adobe Digital Editions caught calling home with user logs

This is very worrying.

I used to use Digital Editions to check my ePubs when creating them for Google, but I've now swapped over to a reader called Bluefire which doesn't send information places. I also use Calibre for most things, but like to have a backup for file checking. I don't think I had any trouble actually, because I'm still on Digital Editions 1.x :), but I'm not taking the risk.

Why does it need to know what page you read when just to do DRM checks - which is what they are claiming?
and
Why is it sending all the info in plain text where anyone can read it?

Of course it is possible that it's simply really, really lazy coding and no one could be bothered to put in an if clause to check to see if the book was actually DRM enabled and add in an encryption algorythm ... but given that there seems to be overkill on the data, I'm doubting it.

I dislike DRM intensely anyway. Pirates can remove it in seconds (even I know how to do it so professional pirates can do it without blinking), so it's useless for that, so all it does is piss readers off. And it also gives sellers a hold over the reader that is just plain wrong - Amazon deleting people book libraries anyone? I don't like being told I don't actually own something I paid for when if it was on paper I would.

Yes you need some way to track library books, but recording what page you're reading and in what order seems very dodgy to me - how is that anything to do with, have you had this book longer than x no of days? Also, some people are reporting that if you add a false host to your host table for the server Adobe are sending to for the logs, the library lending part still works fine. Not sure how that works as all about DRM then?

The only time DRM is ever on books by Wittegen Press is if the publishing platform has added it without our permission (W.H.Smiths used to do that before they went nuts and removed all self-pub books and I think Apple do - but I've never successfully opened a book from iBooks so I wouldn't know). Sometimes we don't get a choice, but on places like Amazon and Smashwords and Google where they ask first, we make sure it isn't added.

So I spent most of Friday and the weekend designing a cover for Soph's short story (which she hasn't finished yet, but is getting there). I'm really pleased with it.

Sorry, I can't show it to you because that's her privileged and she hasn't decided on a title yet so it's incomplete, but I'm very happy with the way it turned out. It's dramatic!

The more covers I make, I think, the better I am becoming and I keep looking back at the older ones and thinking I need to redo some of them. I love making the covers, which is why I do it and don't pay someone else (other than the fact that it's cheaper).

I use every resource and piece of advice I can find to improve. My latest find is this site: Creative Indie. It is truly awesome and I found it because I was trying to decide what font to use and Derek Murphy (the designer and owner of the site) has a post called 300+ Fool-Proof Fonts to use for your Book Cover Design (an epic list of best fonts per genre) and it's so, very, very useful.

I also have a new book called Digital Manga (picked it up in The Works in town, but have linked to their website) which has some very useful techniques that can be applied to all sorts of digital design as well as manga. I love The Works, they have all sorts of wonderful art books for such reasonable prices.

YouTube is also wonderful for techniques. So many wonderful artists out there ready to share their knowledge. I have learnt so many new things since starting this whole cover design stuff.

So this weekend Soph and I are going to be at TLWLexicon, a literary festival in Faversham, Kent, along with lots of other lovely authors and creators. Check out the TLWLexicon website for all the details.


This is the festival's first year and there are going to be panels and presentations and dramatic readings and huge amounts of fun.

Soph and I are doing two panels on the main stage, one on Sat at 4pm and one on Sunday at 12 noon and we will be in the 'everyone' panel both mornings as well.

Saturday's panel is called '"Self-publishing" or "Independent Publishing"' where we will be nattering on about the percieved differences.

Sunday's panel is called "Creating worlds and building audiences" and is just what it says on the packet.

Basically we're going to try and tell everyone the things we have learned as publishers and authors in the shark pond that is the self publishing world today.

We also have goody bags to give away with bookmarks, keyrings, sweeties and other nice things in them, and all you have to do is take the flyer with all the money off codes as well to get it - so win/win :).

If you are anywhere near the south east of the UK this weekend this is going to be a lot of fun, so come see us and all the other lovely people involved. It's only £1 to get in and under 14s go free.

Sorry this wasn't up yesterday, for some reason Amazon told me I had successfully published, but it was only showing up on the US site for hours. Everything seems to be up and running this morning though.

I actually wrote this one last year as a commission at http://PennyDreadfuls21.com and it came out of it's 60 exclusivity period on 24th Dec, but, truth be told, I totally forgot about it until now :). My commissioner asked for modern setting, male/male, a vampire and a human in a situation bringing them together with conflict from one or both that meant they really didn't want an entanglement. This short story is what I came up with.

Please be aware it has mature content.

Title: Out of the Frying Pan
Author: Tasha D-Drake
Price: US $0.99, UK £0.77, EUR0.89

Dan works his magic with food as a new up and coming chef, what he does not need is his restaurant being destroyed by an explosion and ending up trapped with the UK's hottest food critic in what's left of his kitchen. When vampirism enters the equation it makes things a whole lot worse.

Our main site's running a little slow this morning (I assume Dreamhost are up to something) so here are some direct links in case it fails to load.
Amazon US | Amazon UK |Smashwords

Y'know what I think I might really loathe publishing books.

I'm not talking about the overall publishing experience, of course :), I'm talking about the whole loading of books into Amazon and Smashwords. It's rather exhausting.

( A little more of my moaning ;) )

Indies seem to be everywhere these days, which is a wonderful thing because we are seeing so much good fiction popping up that, in the old days, we may never have had a chance to read.

However, we all know that some of the fiction are shining diamonds and others are on the side of coal. This is where readers are a gift from on high.

Did you know that a very large percentage of independent book sales are on word of mouth recommendations? By that I don't just mean happening to mention a book to the person sitting next to you on the bus (although that works too :)), what I mean is recommendations via Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

If someone sees someone else saying how good a book is, especially from a friend, they are much more likely to try it out.

Retweeting, reviewing on the main sites, liking book pages, rating books, tagging books, all of these are amazingly helpful. As are personal reviews, whether you Tweet e.g.
I love Indie Book No1 http://link.to.indie.book.no1 
or
Just finished Indie Book No2, couldn't put it down http://link.to.indie.book.no2
or post a recommendation on your LJ, Blog, Facebook or Tumblr.

It really can make a huge difference.

Think of it like a snowball rolling down a hill, each mention is more snow added to the ball, it gets bigger and bigger, but if it runs into a patch where there is no snow it starts to melt.

So next time you read a book from an independent publisher or an independent author, if you enjoy it, please consider recommending it somewhere you hang out online. It doesn't have to be an in depth review, a one liner will do, just try and remember to throw in a link if possible so that everyone will be able to find it.

Personally I have a collection on my Kindle labelled "to Review/mention" so that I don't forget which ones I want to mention. In that spirit here are a couple I've enjoyed:

( Recomendations )