Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet as of late; life took an unexpected turn and I was left stressed and busy for a little while following my trip last month. Things seem to have smoothed out and now I can devote more of my time and energy to writing and editing, which I love. =) I’m REALLY SORRY I haven’t been able to get my fourth book out as promised, but it is important to me and I haven’t forgotten. I appreciate my readers who have picked up each subsequent installment and I wanted to be sure this next one wasn’t just dashed out but is still quality. I too get frustrated by series that keep you waiting a long time, which is why I’ve tried to be good about releasing each of my books within just a month or two of one another. Still, I’m really sorry for this last delay (even more so because iBookstore dropped the ball on “The Air I Breathe” and it got into the distribution channel six weeks after I submitted it instead of the normal two or three).

If you’re a reader who also participates in Goodreads you might have heard about the scandal concerning one of the erotica groups on that site. It seems several of the moderators of the ‘Keep Calm and Read Sexy Romances’ group plagiarised from the books “Easy” and “Beautiful Disaster” to create a book “Amazingly Broken”, then manouevred the group into agreeing to read it together, thus helping to propel it to the top 50 in Amazon within a few days. Apparently it sold like hotcakes for five or six days before the deception was noted. The book has subsequently been pulled from Amazon and people are flocking to get a refund.

As I mentioned in a previous post or in comments, it becomes apparent fairly quickly that there is a bit of a game afoot with regard to book promotion. One Goodreads poster mentioned she was approached to read and pimp “Amazingly Broken”, (which it sounds like she did). People on boards have complained (or said they’ve observed), how negative reviews get voted down on Amazon and good reviews pushed up, or noted how many reviews sound similar or ‘zombie like’. I read a fair amount of erotica for comparison (and read reviews and previews of a lot more), and sometimes write reviews under an alternate name and I’ve seen this game play out. This is one reason why I always am begging my readers for reviews; it is difficult to overcome that pressure, (at least I’m finding it a bit difficult, even after publishing four books). This scandal at Goodreads perhaps illustrates how easy it is to fool people online, even in a large community full of ostensibly savvy readers and netizens. Unfortunately the moderators of the new group have decided the group needs to read “Beautiful Disaster” ; I think it should have been put up to a vote and frankly, I would prefer to find a gem that hasn’t been discovered yet as opposed to a populist book like “BD”. I’m not going to read it, and instead spend my time trying to make book four the best it can be! I hope you’ll hang around for a bit longer while I get back into the swing of writing and editing.

Warm regards and thanks for stopping by!

Holly

UPDATE: I was wrong and they decided to read “Beautiful Bastard”; somewhere I saw BD mentioned, I must have mixed it up!

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

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

Copyright

Cover design copyright Holly Blackstone; cover art copyright SRP (GrindingMetal). Use without permission is not authorised.

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

All rights reserved by Holly Blackstone/Linlithgow Press. This preview is intended for the enjoyment of Holly

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.

One of my website’s visitors, Michelle, posted earlier that book #3 in the Liliana Batchelor series was on iBookstore/iTunes and I confirmed through my book distributor Lulu that is the case!

Book #3 is available now through Amazon, iBookstore/iTunes and Lulu.com and will be available on Barnes & Noble shortly. If you read it, please be sure to stop by again and tell me how you liked it! =)

Best,

Holly

UPDATE: The Air I Breathe is actually book #3 in the series; I’m currently working on book #4

I’m waiting for a friend to finish the cover for the first book in a new Cyberpunk erotica series and hope it will be ready for release within the next week. I’m currently finishing/editing book 4 in the Liliana Batchelor series, which I anticipate will be released before the end of June.

Check back soon for a sneak peak at the new cycle and an update on the release of the next volume in Lily & Stuart’s saga. Thank you for visiting and please remember: if you have a moment review my books! Even if it isn’t a 5-star review I value the feedback

So because I thought it was a good idea and two readers mentioned concerns about formatting and errors, I took a look at my first book, “An Accidental Affair” and I have to apologise. I’m sorry the formatting and the handful of typos that a re-read of the book uncovered. There were multiple passages (perhaps as many as a dozen) that should have been italicised to show that they were Liliana’s interior thoughts and they weren’t formatted that way in the final document; this makes the book a bit difficult to read. I also found a sentence later in the book where several words were omitted, (and several other errors).

I’m sorry about that. I re-read the books multiple times and “An Accidental Affair” was my first published ebook. I was nervous and during the process to get the manuscript ready for conversion to epub and other formats (which required formatting and other changes), mistakes were made by me. I got caught up in various little administrivia items during the process and I missed these.

The good news is I have fixed them now. I re-read the book, fixed the bad italics, at least two homonym mistakes, (turned off spell checker as a result!), and remedied other typos, etc.

I requested through Amazon a review of the book; if they deem the changes ‘major’ they will email readers and if they decide the changes are ‘minor’, they will make available an update through the Kindle reader application/device so you can get the new book updated free of charge (in either case).

I am still trying to understand how iBooks and B&N treat revisions and how they push them to their customers, and if I find out anything useful on that front I will let you know.

I realise you have a lot of options in front of you when you decide to purchase a new book and I am humbled that so many readers selected my book, despite the fact that I was a brand new author at the time. I hope the fact that I took the time to re-read and remedy my mistakes shows you I am dedicated to making your reading experience a good one and if you have any other concerns please email me at the address at right or post in comments.

Thank you and happy reading!

Holly