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#le bec de corbin just looks so sexy

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new here but am wondering what your current WIP is about? if you don't feel comfortable I understand!! love your blog btw <3

Omg thank you so much!!

My main WIP right now is WIPVII (placeholder name until I am forced to actually name it).

It is a lower YA (for 13-15 year olds) low/no magic fantasy (takes place in a different world) with a romance subplot.

It's a (high/late) medieval western European-inspired setting, specifically the year 1333 CE in southern England - I try to be somewhat historically accurate because it makes the setting feel a little fresher than leaning on the medieval European stereotypes common to a lot of fantasy. But alas, there is only so much research I am willing to do (and I did take some liberties because, dammit I wanted a masquerade ball).

The WIP draws inspiration from Shakespeare comedies (Cymbeline, Twelfth Night, The Tempest etc), Alfred Tennyson poems (in particular "The Splendour Falls"), the Robin Hood myth, and fairy tales and medieval epics in general.

[More below the cut]

The blurb:

Two kingdoms long at war have laid down their arms at last, but peace hinges on treaty that can only be sealed by the marriage of the eldest son of the King of Dian to the eldest daughter of the King of Cithidy. But Isolda de Angenet, the princess of Cithidy, has gone missing and she does not want to be found. In disguise as a peasant boy, Isolde (known as Aldus) accidentally falls in with a ragtag group of bandits - and Henry, a knight with a mysterious past - who have been sent to find the missing princess and deliver her to the outlaw lord Hob. But there is some larger scheme afoot here. Once more, a Cithian army marches reluctantly toward Dian and Isolde fears the only way to stop it is to return to her old life and join the husband she has never met in Dian. Isolde has forsworn this marriage but unless she can find another way, she fears she will have to choose between her own freedom and peace. In the meantime, Henry is hiding something and Isolde will find out the truth, hopefully before Henry finds out who she really is.

Some other things about this WIP:

The name: WIPVII is just WIP + the roman numeral for 7 (VII). I refuse to properly name this WIP until I am forced to, so WIPVII is a placeholder name. I have a lot of WIPs so I number them from oldest to newest to keep track of them (this has nothing to do with the order I choose to work on them). This also means, when a WIP doesn't have a name yet, I have a convenient placeholder name ready to go! WIPVII is 7 because it is the 7th WIP I thought up.

Status: I am currently 60% of the way through my 3rd draft.

Word count: draft 2 was 77k and I am expecting draft 3 to be similar (around 82k because I added some description and worldbuilding and the prose is more flowery). I am aiming for 80k, give or take 5k.

WIPVII is meant to be a standalone.

--

The was inspired by the premise:

A princess runs away from an arranged marriage and ends up falling in love with the person she was supposed to marry (neither of them know who the other really is).

-- this is technically a spoiler, but they way the story is written I think most readers will guess the twist looong before it comes. And honestly, I think the story is a lot more fun if you figure it out well in advance. I am a sucker for dramatic irony.

#wipvii #ask answered

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Obviously ignore this if you want but I saw you mention that you recently got published (congrats!!!) and I had a question. I'm still far out from that, but I know how to write and can research how to publish but I don't know how to market. Not only am I autistic and not charismatic, I want to solely use my pen name and distance my writing from my face because of my professional life. Do you know how to actually get people who might like your book to notice that it exists as an indie author with no previous following? Thank you if you have any advice!

Hello Moshke!

Thank you so much for the congratulations! It's taken longer than I expected but the realisation that I'm published is finally beginning to sink in! It's very surreal ^_^

I honestly don't know if I'm the right person to give advice on marketing as, at the moment, my book's been out just over a month and I feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark, but I wanted to give your ask due consideration and, despite my hesitation, I think I still have some tips that could hopefully help.

The reason I think I might have at least some relevant tidbits is that I'm also writing under a penname and most people don't seem to realise that.

Now, in my case, it's not about privacy it's just that don't like my given name enough to see it on book covers :D So I don't mind talking about it, but marketing your book under a penname isn't that much different to how you would market the book under your legal name.

Tip No. 1

Establish your pen name as a functional pseudonym now. Don't wait until you're ready to publish.

So, this stage was a little backwards for me. I come from the age of internet use where you did not give your real name online, under any circumstances, so I've always used various "online names".

By the time I decided that I was going to use "Arista Holmes" to publish under, anyone who knew me online already knew me as Ari. Even my best friend offline will sometimes call me Ari when we're chatting, so it had become as much an actual nickname as an online pseudonym.

But that's exactly what I'm getting at. I'm not pretending to be "Arista Holmes", I am Ari. A writer in her 30's based in the south east of England. The same way I'm Josie to my mum, or Jo-jo to my Godmother.

Tip No. 2

Don't think about it as marketing your book, but as creating an author "brand".

I'm using "Brand" here in the absence of a better term, because I absolutely hate thinking about this as a "brand", but what I mean is think of your Penname as something people will google search.

In fact, Google search your pen name.

As I mentioned, I'd been using "Arista Holmes" online for a while, and I had accounts all over the place that I didn't necessarily want coming up when people looked up my books.

(I will deny spending my youth on Neopets, it's just TOO embarrassing!) 

But jokes aside; Google your pen name. See what comes up. Scroll through all 20, 30, 50 pages of google. Some asshole looking for some embarrassing post from your teen years won't stop at page five, and neither should you.

Shut down any accounts you find, or if you want to keep them, change the username to something else. The only non-publishing related account linked to Arista Holmes now is my AO3. I figure it's still writing, so no harm in leaving that one up.

Tip No. 3

Set up social media accounts now; Be as consistent as possible across all platforms.

Now, and I want to put this in big bold letters:

Having accounts on all the socials does not mean you will be active on all of them.

Or use them at all, in fact.

Having accounts on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, Youtube, etc etc etc, just means that if, by some miracle, you make it big and draw in fans you'll also inevitably draw trolls and by making the account with your pen name; it stops them claiming that username and pretending to be you.

It's a form of pre-emptive protection.

On that note; Be consistent across your accounts. Use the same profile picture, use the same header or banner, use the same colour scheme, use the same "About Me/About Author" description, and (as much as possible) use the same username format.

That last one won't be possible on all platforms. Some of them don't like periods/full stops. Some don't like underscores, but try to be as consistent as possible.

For example my account on here is author.a.holmes, most other places I'm aristaholmes. I'd change it, but at this point, I don't want to break all my links.

Tip No. 4

Author Pictures Are Not Required.

I'm adding this point here because I mentioned profile pictures in the previous tip. Author Pictures Are Not Required.

Don't get me wrong, they're often highly encouraged, and I can't deny that they give a humanising effect to the author, but that doesn't mean you actually have to show your face.

I've chosen to put my face on my "About The Author" page in the back of my book, but that's a personal choice. You don't have to add one at all! It's only more recently that I've seen fiction author photos in the back of books.

Until about... 15 years ago? Ish? I wouldn't have expected to see an author photo unless the book was non-fiction.

If you want to add a picture of you, but don't feel comfortable or can't because of real world problems, consider an artist's caricature instead. Go one step further than a pen-name and give yourself a pen-picture! Jenna Moreci uses an artist's interpretation as her profile picture/logo, and Lemony Snicket only had pictures of the back of his head for ages.

If you do decide to commission an artist though, do explain to them that it will be included in your books, that you'll be selling, as they will probably want to add a commercial licence price to the artwork; But if you explain why you're having the caricature done I imagine most artists would be very reasonable about it.

***

That's all my tips for setting up and marketing yourself, as the author, under a pen name... but I can already hear the voices in my head muttering that I've not really touched on how to get people to find you once you've set up the pen name, and the socials, and your website etc.

And it's because I personally think that if you're writing under a pen name you need to establish it as an entity in its own right before beginning to try marketing it.

So, moving on…

Tip No. 5

Find your place on the great, wide, interwebs...

I mentioned I'd been online as Arista Holmes for about 8-10 years prior to deciding to publish under this name, but once I did decide to publish I went and made all my author socials (just like I mentioned in Tip No. 3)

That was in 2020 and it was part experimentation, and part letting people find me. I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep up with multiple social media's, and I also knew I didn't WANT to, so I made the socials and I started posting on each platform and figuring out which platforms I liked. Which ones were easy to use, and which ones got me the most engagement with other people.

For me, this turned out to be Tumblr and Instagram. Twitter and Facebook are like graveyards for me, and Tiktok is only a little better, but your mileage may vary.

I cross post consistently with Tumblr, Instagram, because those are the places I get the most engagement... but I also maintain a blog on my website and any big pieces of news (such as asking for ARC readers, or publishing my book) gets posted across ALL platforms because, well, I live in hope that one day my tiktok will go viral lol.

But honestly, the multiple socials literally eat up so much of the time I could spend writing; I highly recommend picking two, three at most, and focusing on them.

But what do you post? I can almost hear you yelling <3

Tip No. 6

How to market when you're shy/introverted/not-charismatic/or any other thing you feel is holding you back.

You're going to want to throw something at me but lean on your strengths. It sounds so simple, and I know it's not, I'm sorry, but here's what I mean by that.

When I was still experimenting with all the socials to find the ones I liked, I stumbled across an image. I want to say it was here on tumblr but, honestly, I don't remember and at the time I was neck deep in every marketing and promotional blog or article I could find trying to figure this shit out.

It was called "The Periodic Table of Content Marketing".

I don't know why this helped me wrap my head around marketing, but it did.

I read over each of the types of marketing and I started getting idea's.

Ebooks... I'd heard about people doing reader magnets for newsletter lists.

Interviews... I've seen authors on podcasts. I'd seen people on tumblr interviewing their characters. I could do that.

Trends... What are popular tropes if not trends of the moment?

And I suddenly realised that this silly little graph was all the different types of marketing I could do, broken down simply, and laid out neatly, and I could pick and choose not only the bits I was comfortable doing, but the bits that I was confident with.

I'm never going to put my face on a tiktok video and lipsync to popular songs, but I could write a 12,000 words short story prequel to my series and make it exclusive to newsletter subscribers.

That was something I could do, because it leaned on my strengths; My writing.

Because I haven't said it yet, but two years ago I'd have described myself very similarly to you.

I'm not charismatic. While I'm not autistic, I am painfully introverted. I have severe social anxiety. I'm not funny, I can't talk with strangers casually or easily. Talking about my book more than once a week feels like I'm bragging or being pushy... But I can write.

So I started looking for opportunities to share my writing, and let it... not speak for itself, but let my words draw in the audience. It still took a bit of pushing on my part, I would look for tag games where the user had left an "Open Tag" and I'd hop on those and share some words.

This is part of the reason Tumblr is one of my favourite places to network with writers and readers, because the tag games let me share and tease content without having to push through my social anxiety all that hard.

It's a slower, organic, audience growth but it's definitely my preference.

The content I shared on here, produced to play tag games, I quickly realised that I could copy it onto a pretty image in canva, and share it on instagram easier than I could condense a paragraph into the twitter character limit, or make it look appealing on Facebook's janky system.

And the more writing I shared, the more people commented and followed. And the more they commented and followed, the easier it was to talk to them. And then I started getting asks. That was nerve wracking and sometimes they'll still sit there a couple of months before I can make myself answer them.

(Sorry Sleepy and Avra, if you're reading this! I'll reply soon, I promise!)

Have I gone off topic here? I kind of feel like I have but also... not really.

If you feel like your writing is your strength, lean on it. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Show your hand with your words.

By the time I set up my mailing list and offered 'Whatever Happened To Madeline Hail?' for free, I got 12 people to sign up straight away. I don't know if that's a lot, but it was at least eight more than I was expecting.

When my book launched, I received 14 reviews, and sold 20 copies the first month. Again, I don't know if this is a lot, but it was a whole hecking lot more than I'd hoped for.

I don't know if I'm good at marketing, and maybe someone will reblog and reply to this with better advice, or tear apart what I've said, and if they do great! I really hope it helps you or someone else down the reblog chain because, as I said at the start, I'm really just stumbling around in the dark and hoping I somehow get it all to work out lol

But I do just have one more piece of advice, that isn't really my advice...

Tip No. 7

Fake it until you make it.

You're a writer. The beauty of the internet is that we have time to stop, and think about the words we're writing in response to someone.

I'm a shy, introvert, who doesn't know when to shut up when she gets started talking about writing (Or at least that's what it looks like based on the length of this post...)

But 99% of people I speak to online don't know I'm an introvert. They don't know that after sending an email I have to go back to bed for a few hours to recover my energy, or that I can't answer a phone without feeling nauseous for the rest of the day and it's because when I'm online I'm Arista Holmes, and I can write my responses in the same way I write my characters.

I'm not saying I'm not being me, I am, but I'm also being given the time and space to be the confident me I want to be, rather than the nervous wreck I actually am.

Write your socials, and market your book, as the you that you’d write if you were dropped into one of your own books.

Fake it until you make it.

Handy Resource List For Marketing:

Periodic Table of Content Marketing

Jenna Moreci's Youtube - I take her writing advice with a huge chunk of salt, but her marketing advice is top notch.

Bethany Atazedah Youtube - Co-wrote a Marketing For Authors Non-fiction series, but a lot of her youtube videos contain good, free, advice too.

Self-Publishing With Dale - If you want to market effectively, keeping on top of the current trends and changes in the market is important. Self Publishing with Dale is the best way I've found to do that; He really has his fingers on the pulse of the Self Publishing Market, and even if you're not publishing yet, checking out some of his videos can teach you loads about what to do, but more importantly, what NOT to do.

Michael Anderle's 20Bookto50k system - I didn't mention it as a tip but the BEST form of marketing a book is to write the next book. Michael Anderle talks about his theory that is you have 20 books published, your backlist of royalty income should net you around $50k a year. The hour and a half talk changed my whole marketing outlook and is why I'm focussed on a slow grown, more organically sourced, audience rather thank paid advertising.

Abbie Emmons Youtube - I'm not sure I should include Abbie in a list of marketing resources as she's often more about the writing side of the craft, but her videos have been invaluable to me, so she's just worth checking out in general.

#i swore i was going to stay away from writing advice tumblr this time around

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hi!! i'm so sorry i didn't realise it was you on this blog, very nice to see you again and we're now mutuals <3

<3333 yay!!! ahhhhh

I honestly didn't know how to approach you. I was like, "I could send an ask/dm but maybe it doesn't remember me... which would be really awkward." So I was just hoping we'd end up interacting and eventually the situation would sort itself out.

Then I saw you reblogged that one post just now and I was like, "you know what would be funny?" Alas, it seems you got the not-so-subtle hint!

But yeah, don't apologize. How were you supposed to know? haha

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before the poll, a quick definition of terms:

"mutual" - you found this post from a mutual (on their blog or your dash) "following" - you found this post from someone you're following, but who isn't following you "random" - you found this by scrolling through someone's blog, who you don't follow. this includes people following you "For You" - you found this on the For You page "recommended" - you found this in a "Check out these blogs" popup, or a "recommended" post when looking at a different post "other" - you found this post some other way. comment how? "reblog ✅" - you're going to reblog, queue, or schedule this post "reblog ❌" - you're NOT going to reblog, queue, or schedule this post

with that out of the way:

#uhhh we used to be mutuals but then I deleted that blog #so now I'm following prev on my new blog but we haven't really interacted here yet #prev if you see these tags hi! we shared our nanowrimo accounts like 2? years ago #my old writeblr url name contained a synonym for dragon in it #but anyway idk how to answer this poll...

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Fuuuuuuck Tumblr has me doxxed. Why is it showing targeted adds for one of my former harp teacher's concerts???? Help

#prev tags #fuuuuuuck good point

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In the last 2 weeks, I've named 2.5 characters. That's faster progress than this cast has ever seen!

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uh oh she's trying to write a novelette of the literary fiction variety based on her favorite readings from her american literature class and her own personal fears and anxieties!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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THE UNWANTED SACRIFICE - WIP INTRO

Fastyma's life was all in preparation for one moment: her death. From the day she was born, she was marked to become one of the yearly sacrifices to the all-powerful dragon, Tharzalia. When she was between 16 and 20, on a year where the Central Region was expected to provide their sacrifice, Fastyma would die by Tharzalia's hand so the kingdom can be safe from her wrath for another year.

But, Fastyma's sacrifice does not go to plan. The kingdom once again finds itself in peril, and worst of all, Fastyma doesn't know why. All she knows is that her duty is to die for the kingdom, and Fastyma will do anything to make sure that comes to fruition.

After all, what does she have to live for, anyway?

~~~

FEATURES:

A protagonist who just really wants to be eaten by the dragon

An obnoxious bard who makes everything difficult for everyone

Gods shenanigans

Fellas, is it gay to teach the doomed girl magic?

No one knows what the royal family is up to, honestly

Why does everyone want to go to the Northern Ranges??????

~~~

This is the new WIP I'm currently drafting while doing final big edits for Ghosts of the Steel Road! Feel free to ask me anything about it at any time. Not sure when I'll exactly post snippets of it but I do plan to at some point, as long as I'm happy with the writing.

#wip intro

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I think the only fear I have with phei of the wind is that it won't hit emotionally at the end. I think the theming and plot and aesthetics and everything will be great with some light tweaking, but the ending is such a precarious thing emotionally that I just hope it manages to work. It's 120000 words that all come together in a single sentence.

The only way to know is to finish it and throw it out into the world I suppose

#god I want to read your book from cover to cover so badly

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Listen, we're talking sloppy first drafts here (and I have just fixed the wording on this for the second draft), but there's a possible reading of this sentence that interprets the old man as being the one to giggle like a debutante, which I enjoy.

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God I've been getting so much material to "fill in the blanks" for a new Act I chapter (not actually new in concept, but it was only ever partially drafted Back In the Day) and yet I still only have the opening scene officially "on paper" (ie. in the chapter draft doc).

This chapter is very important to include in the final because there are a couple of scenes that I think are CRUCIAL to the development of Gabriel's romantic feelings for Jeff. Like, I've obviously been getting away with not including them (the chapter where Gabriel realizes he's in love with Jeff being a different chapter that's been in the book for the last few versions), but ultimately I think it would be a disservice to the story not to include them. These scenes are also super intimidating to me because they're meant to include a lot of very intricate and, at times, very subtle character work that I need to really nail in order for the scenes to come across properly and enhance the following stages of the relationship. As a result, 90% of everything I have for this chapter is currently in my notes app. 💀

I know the answer to getting past this conundrum is simple: just draft the fucking thing and go from there, like I always do. But for whatever reason, this one feels larger than life for me - maybe because it's been a part of the story in my head for SO LONG. But getting through this one is really going to be like levelling up for me, representing some kind of real growth as a writer.

Or maybe I just need to remind myself of my longtime motto when it comes to difficult (for me) scenes: "if you wrote Sixteen Minutes, you can write this."

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A word from Bisan to the students of the U.S. in their campus solidarity encampments.

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Whoever invented "open in app" links that redirect you to the app store instead of actually opening the app even when you already have the app installed on your phone should be involuntarily turned into a beanbag chair

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People of writeblr, what's your favourite thing about your current, most active WIP?

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Two Truths and a Lie Tag

Thanks for tagging me, @winterandwords! :D

Rules: make a poll with two truths and one lie about a WIP or character, and have people select which option they think is the lie. The specifics are up to you.

I'll do this for Evelyn from The Circle of Little Animals:

Tagging @kaylinalexanderbooks, @lordfenric-writes, @scarvenartist, and anyone else who wants to do this! :D

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Two Truths and a Lie Tag

Thanks for tagging me, @eccaiia! :D

I'll do this for Gilbert Millner from Uneasy Money:

Tagging @akindofmagictoo, @ellierenae, @aalinaaaaaa, and anyone else who wants to do this! :D