Book 3 – “The Air I Breathe” FINALLY at iBookstore!

I received a report that iBookstore had “The Air I Breathe” but did not receive a link. It can take four to six weeks for the book to appear, and so I wasn’t able to press on why it wasn’t listed until after that waiting period had expired. When “And Laugh at Digital Butterflies” – which was released later – showed up on iBookstore, I was worried that “The Air I Breathe” had fallen between the cracks and it wasn’t merely because of a backlog of book reviews.

I made contact with reps at Lulu, who then talked with iBookstore. Well, shaking the tree worked because the third installment of Lily and Stuart’s story, “The Air I Breathe”, is available at iBookstore here!

As always – I’m sorry I’m such a broken record – please PLEASE rate the book on iBookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble… wherever! People look at reviews, bloggers become interested in books, the ranking helps visibility and sales… it helps so much!

Sometimes authors and publishers stack reviews and inflate good reviews up and mark mediocre and negative reviews down in order to pump up a book. I’m not looking for any rigging of rating; I hope my books are moving and enjoyable and I would like honest appraisals. If it’s not a five-star review (you can’t please everyone completely all the time), I am okay with that, and welcome useful criticism and observations. (I’ve learned that hard way now that being defensive isn’t the best tack, too.)

I hope you enjoy the series and characters and value your honest opinion and continued interest. I want happy readers.

THANK YOU and enjoy book three. =)

Holly

“And Laugh at Digital Butterflies” on iBookstore/iTunes (w/link)

I’ve confirmed that Apple has finally pushed the first book in my cyberpunk erotica series, “And Laugh at Digital Butterflies” to the iTunes/iBooks store.

Unfortunately the preview file at Lulu appears to be corrupted, so I’m publishing the first few chapters here while I work through the problems. Thank you for your patience!

 

And Laugh at Digital Butterflies

Book 1 in the Sine Qua Non Cycle

Holly Blackstone


Copyright

And Laugh at Digital Butterflies

First Edition

Yet Another Lesson in Humility…

So I posted the first book in the Sine Qua Non Cycle last night, “And Laugh at Digital Butterflies”. The process is I go to Lulu, create my project, use their tools to create an epub and they post it for sale at LuLu.com and after some review, submit it to Barnes & Noble & iBooks(tore). I then take that epub, go to Amazon and jump through their hoops so they can create a Kindle compatible ebook which then takes 12-24 hours usually to go live.

Well, because of the way the background is on the cover (the ones and zeroes), and the different compression methods Lulu and Amazon use, the cover thumbnail looks fine on Lulu but not on Amazon. So I had to bug my artist friend to tweak the cover until we finally decided to take the ones and zeroes out and change the title colour so the thumbnail would look okay. This was a royal pain, as you can imagine and took several hours yesterday with all the back and forth.

When what turned out to be the final cover came, I didn’t proofread it; I submitted it to Amazon and saw that it looked much better and uploaded it and my book was now in the pipeline. What wasn’t readily visible because of the size of the thumbnail was that in the redoing of the title ‘butterflies’ was spelled ‘butterfiles’ – in very small text the ‘i’ and ‘l’ appear similar so that if you don’t look very closely you’ll miss it.

The end result was that this morning, still bleary eyed- I was woken up by my artist who was frantic to tell me he realised that butterflies was spelled wrong.

The good news? Amazon’s turn around time is great and after only about 6 hours the new cover was up… or was it? Well no, it wasn’t and this time it wasn’t me but Amazon (except it WAS me in a way because I should have triple checked). Yesterday while uploading the various covers for preview I noticed I had to load a few of them multiple times for the preview to correctly reflect the new file. Well this morning in my bleary eyed state I know I uploaded the correct file but

Introducing – “The Sine Qua Non” Cycle: Now Available at Lulu & Amazon!

I’ve been working on this book for some time and I’m pleased to introduce the first book in the Sine Qua Non Cycle, “And Laugh at Digital Butterflies”.

It’s early in the 22nd century and Abigail Pritchard is a ‘jock’; a talented and well paid programmer who specialises in custom sex-themed virtual realities for the wealthiest and most discriminating clients. She’s fairly content and successful but her world comes crashing down when a mysterious client turns out to be Dyson Pearce, the world’s first trillionaire and President of Stratosphere Futuristics, the planet’s largest space exploration and development company.

Confronted by an offer she can’t refuse, Abby feels lost as she tries to navigate the alien world of super successful men and women. She’s startled by the jealousy and betrayal she experiences and further confused by the insane attraction she feels for Dyson. Abby must confront various ghosts – including her parent’s unsolved murders – as she finds her way in this new world.

This is the first book in a series. “And Laugh at Digital Butterflies” contains crass language, explicit sex (including instances of BDSM), and adult themes. It is nearly double the length of my other offerings, at 135,000 words, but is only $1.30 more.

Currently it is available at Amazon and Lulu. It is up for review at iBookstore and nook.