Gabriella West

For Smashwords Readers Only…

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Gabriella West

I don’t often do Smashwords-only deals, but because the site now allows authors to set public coupons for their books and showcases them in a Special Deals section, I decided to set my novels Elsie Street and The Pull of Yesterday both at 99 cents with a coupon (which you don’t even have to enter anymore–discount appears at checkout!).

The site is rather clunky, but I have always felt fond of Smashwords. I particularly like that they pay monthly now. While my historical novel Time of Grace has been Amazon KDP/KU-only for several years, I look forward to putting it back in wide distribution via SW in mid-September. (For those readers who have a Kindle Unlimited subscription and would like to read Time of Grace, now’s a good time.)

More writing news: I will have a cover reveal for my new book–an LGBT historical novel set in Medieval England–coming soon! At the moment I’m sitting tight till my beta reader reviews it and reports back. I thought I would be finished by the end of June, but for me, novels always hit a curious block at the halfway point. So I’ve had to have patience with myself for not wrapping it up quickly. I hope the book is better for the delay. It is certainly going to be longer than I thought, about the length of Time of Grace.

Expect to see something new from me in September, anyway, barring the beta reader giving me a thumbs-down!

Posted in LGBT, Self-publishing, Writing | Tagged beta reader, coupon, cover reveal, Elsie Street, historical novel, Kindle Unlimited, LGBT historical romance, September, Smashwords, time of grace | Leave a comment

Some Thoughts on Charlottesville as the Eclipse Approaches

Posted on August 14, 2017 by Gabriella West

download I don’t have anything particularly profound to say about the tragic events in Charlottesville this weekend except to say that my greatest fear after Trump was elected was that there would be blood in the streets. And so it has proved. Heather Heyer, 32, a Caucasian woman who was there to support the counter-protesters, was killed by a car driven into the crowd by a young white male neo-Nazi from Ohio. But it could have been anyone of any race who died. The point is, they wanted to cause havoc and fear, and they did.

My greatest hope? That decent people will fight back. And they are. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe gave a news conference on Sunday to declare that the violent Nazi protesters were not welcome in his state. GoDaddy dropped The Daily Stormer–it was news to me that this organ existed–from being hosted on their servers. The president was forced, belatedly, to give an insincere speech condemning racism.

(Perhaps he will also be forced to drop Steve Bannon now. Anthony Scaramucci appears to think so…)

“Blame lies at the top,” I wrote on my Facebook page after Heyer’s death. It is strange to speak out. Pointless, perhaps, and there is always a fear of repercussions. One would think that there was only one “right side,” and Joe Biden tweeted this over the weekend, but in this political climate, it appears that evil has the upper hand. For now.

At any rate, one of the things I enjoy is reading Austin Kleon‘s newsletter. He’s the author of Steal Like an Artist, and an eclectic guy who lives in Austin, TX. This well-written piece by Ross Andersen in The Atlantic inspired by the upcoming solar eclipse on Aug. 21 appealed to me, and I thought I would share it. I am not particularly interested in the eclipse, actually… but I enjoyed reading about the historical implications of such fear-inspiring natural events. Did you know that eclipses often preceded the death of powerful kings? Alexander the Great went so far as to execute a “substitute king” after one such eclipse!

Nowadays we feel more awe than fear at the sun being briefly blotted out, but nature has a way of pointing out our basic insignificance.

I hope that these traumatic times allow the country to come out morally stronger. We are seeing good and bad duking it out in such primary colors right now. There will be more chaos to come, and more people emerging who view, as Littlefinger does in Game of Thrones, chaos as a ladder.

Posted in News, Personal | Tagged Austin Kleon, Biden, chaos, Charlottesvile, Game of Thrones, havoc, Heather Heyer, nature, neo-Nazi, solar eclipse, Terry McAuliffe, Trump | Leave a comment

Another promo!

Posted on July 16, 2017 by Gabriella West

Time of Grace2 My LGBT historical novel Time of Grace is free for two days, Sunday, July 16 and Monday, July 17 on Amazon. Although Time of Grace has been in the Kindle Unlimited program for a while now, I’d like to take it wide by the end of the year so that it will be available once again on Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Google Play. This will probably be the last promotion on Amazon that I do for the book.

The summer slump that many indie writers complain of has been worse than usual! I think people are too exhausted by the political shenanigans in D.C. to read. (I’m personally hoping that the horrendous health-care bill will be stalled indefinitely.)

A reminder that my ADHD memoir, Connecting the Dots, is half price on Smashwords till the end of the month.

Posted in LGBT, Writing | Tagged Apple, connecting the dots, free promo, indie authors, Ireland, summer slump, time of grace, women | Leave a comment

Summer/Winter Sale on Smashwords

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Gabriella West

SW SW sale It’s nearly the end of June, so I enrolled a few of my books in the annual Smashwords Summer/Winter sale! Although the “winter” part of the name refers to the Southern Hemisphere, it could also refer to summer in San Francisco, where Karl the Fog has been very active lately. But I digress…

Here’s what Mark Coker of Smashwords says:

The sale represents a massive collaborative marketing event for Smashwords authors and publishers. Each author and publisher – simply by promoting their own books – helps expose those same readers to the thousands of other participating books.

For one month only, readers can discover tens of thousands of special deals 25%-off, 50%-off, 75%-off and 100%-off (FREE!). So whether readers are looking for a great beach read or something to keep them cozy on a cold winter’s night in front [of] the fireplace, they’ll find it here.

You’ll find it July 1st through July 31 on the Smashwords.com home page. Writers, here’s the link to enroll:

https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/sitewidePromos

From my catalog, my AD/HD memoir, Connecting the Dots, will be 50% off, and The Pull of Yesterday, book 2 in the Elsie Street series, will be free all month!

I have been working on a new book in the historical fiction/historical romance genre, and I hope to have an announcement about a pre-order soon.

Posted in News, Self-publishing, Writing | Tagged ADHD, connecting the dots, Free, San Francisco, self-publishing, Smashwords, Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale, summer in California, The Pull of Yesterday | Leave a comment

Here’s a quick link to an upcoming erotica promo that looks interesting–I know that at least two ebooks feature historical erotica, if that’s your thing (and it kind of is mine!).

Memorial Day Weekend Erotica/Erotic Romance Deals FREE & $0.99 May 26-29

Books are a mixture of free and 99 cents.

Also for Memorial Day Weekend, my memoir It’s Not You, It’s Me is back on Amazon and will be free on Sunday and Monday, May 28 and 29. For KU subscribers, it’s always free 🙂

It’s Not You, It’s Me is essentially a lesbian breakup story. As one reviewer said, “It’s Not You, It’s Me” follows the raw, exciting, and painful trajectory of a “wrong” relationship. We’ve all been there. West slowly and deliberately lets us walk with her down this path, knowing things will end poorly but hoping we are mistaken.

As time has gone by, I see this relationship through different lenses. Now it seems to involve a lack of foresight on my own part more than anything else. It has taken me nearly twenty years to come to this insight, though!

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Gabriella West | Leave a comment

Please Don’t Buy My Book (says David Gaughran)

Posted on May 4, 2017 by Gabriella West

Happy Spring! Ever thought about Amazon’s also-boughts and how it affects your writing sales? Author David Gaughran shares his experiences.

Posted in Writing | Leave a comment

Read an Ebook Week 2017

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Gabriella West

ebookweekorange Tomorrow, March 5, brings the start of Read an Ebook Week on ebook platform Smashwords, which is where I started my own self-publishing journey in 2011. According to the site, “This [their catalog] is the hub of the action, where you find over 70,000 multi-format books regularly priced at free every day, and thousands more that are free or deep-discounted exclusively at Smashwords during Read an Ebook Week only. Browse the catalog by discount categories of FREE, 75%-off, 50%-off and 25% off.” I will have three books available: My M/M novel Elsie Street will be free, the sequel–my latest book–will be 50% off, and Connecting the Dots, my AD/HD memoir, will be 75% off. Just use the code you find on the book page and enter it at checkout!

I usually pick up something good to read at this sale myself. Browsing the LGBT section is always fun.

This year for the first time I read Mark Coker’s interesting 2010 interview with Rita Toews, the Canadian lady who created Read an Ebook Week. I shouldn’t have waited so long to do so! If the indie ebook movement has a foremother, perhaps it’s Rita.

Other than that, there’s sadly not much to report these days with my writing. I’m still a little too caught up in the political turmoil surrounding Trump’s presidency 😦 I do have some ideas, and perhaps I’ll be able to publish something later in the year. I will certainly report back here when I have something to offer folks… In other news, Kobo has come up with a new subscription service called Kobo Plus, which is only available in Belgium and the Netherlands at the moment. I’ve enrolled two of my books in this and if I see any interest, I’ll enroll more. I was pleased to see that a state of California online library service called Califa picked up a number of my books in December!

Posted in LGBT, News, Self-publishing, Writing | Tagged Califa, connecting the dots, ebooks, Elsie Street, Free, Kobo Plus, LGBT, library, Read an Ebook Week, Rita Toews, self-publishing, Smashwords | Leave a comment

Now that we’re into the second month of the new presidency, I find myself feeling a mixture of emotions. Exhausted, first of all, as the pace of everything has speeded up. Enraged at wretched cabinet picks like DeVos–that’s a given.

And yet energized. The success of the Women’s March was a total surprise to me–I hadn’t been following that particular grassroots movement. On the day after the inauguration, a sea of women gathered in DC and around the country (and in many international cities). I was stuck at home proofreading a dystopian novel about zombies taking over after a global disaster. And yet–I felt cheered and comforted by this mass peaceful gathering, the sea of pink. My spirits were lifted.

I’m linking here to the Pussyhat Project site, which I just discovered.

Even the the Resist movement does not continue on this peaceful route, at least it started out this way. And the only reason it might not continue this way is that the current administration wants chaos.

Humor (like Melissa McCarthy‘s amazing genderbending Saturday Night Live run as press secretary Sean Spicer!) is sustaining me at the moment. And my gut feeling is that this administration will not last very long in its current form. I don’t see it. Because everything’s so speeded up. This is truly the first Internet presidency, with all the destabilization that implies, the first US administration where things happen at the speed of light on Twitter.

The courts are still there, and they have pushed back the powers of the president. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Al Franken are there, outspoken. They are two of my heroes right now.

I’m certain there are more outrages in the works. Yet I remain vaguely hopeful, because I see that few are fooled by what is happening. We don’t quite live in a police state yet.

Women and people of all races are engaged. The media is disgusted. And the sinister truth about what may have happened in the run-up to the election continues to emerge.

Update: Want to go march? Filmmaker Michael Moore has set up a Resistance Calendar. It’s pretty impressive.

Posted on February 13, 2017 by Gabriella West | Leave a comment

I’ve posted before about All Romance eBooks, which I’ve always regarded as a nice little niche market for my work, despite eccentricities like taking $1 off my royalties if they paid me through PayPal, and constant “sales,” not to mention a long wait for royalty payments.

Truthfully, nothing seems solid or healthy in the world of indie publishing, and I was struck by the sudden shuttering of Torquere Press recently. Ellora’s Cave was another notorious example of a mismanaged company which ended up badly letting down its authors.

But sadly, All Romance eBooks has joined the ranks of the baddies. In an abrupt and shocking email entitled “All Romance Closure” yesterday, head honcho Lori James told writers that the site would be going dark on December 31, 2016, and that the company would not be able to pay its fourth quarter royalties. She offered 10 cents on the dollar to authors.

Authors and small publishers who made a great deal more than I do on the site must be incredibly pissed at the news. I’m still shocked and saddened that once again a female CEO has shown, let’s say, disregard for the people who publish with her.

I will genuinely miss ARe. For authors who are righteously angry and feel utterly betrayed, this excellent blog post by Celina Summers that I came across on Facebook today will perhaps give some pointers going forward. Them’s fighting words!

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Gabriella West | 4 Comments

Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2016 by Gabriella West

When icicles hang on the wall, etc.

Christmas is here, a time of year when I feel inexplicably content and happy much of the time. As I’ve gotten older Christmas has become less about “getting stuff” and feasting, and more about memories. Somehow it all adds up so that Christmas is a satisfying time even if the joys are very modest and small. My most vivid memories of Christmas as a child are of the tree brought home each year by my stepfather and set in a battered red pail, which my mother filled with rocks to hold it up…then beautifully decorated it. And her banana bread, which she baked every Christmas morning and which we ate while we opened our presents.

I’m linking to an article by Garrison Keillor which is just lovely, and speaks to his memories of his own mother and her love of Christmas, even though her mother died when she was seven and she had no memories of her. Keillor’s grandmother died young of scarlet fever in the early 1920s, and so did my great-grandmother, around the same time, leaving two young children. As Keillor writes, “What you do for children is never wasted: this Christmas will live on and nourish them long after you have faded away.”

I’m grateful that my mother passed her love of Christmas on to us. That was the best gift she could have given.