Tag: fantasy

Like a drug..

February 14th, 2024

Now that I’m starting to get reviews from my ARC readers I realize that I’ve doomed myself! Let me set up how this went down.

I was looking into what it took to become known as an author on Goodreads so that I could add my book to the site. I wanted it to be on Goodreads before launch day. As I was clicking around the site I found that one of my ARC readers had already added my book onto Goodreads, and they had already reviewed it! I stared at the screen in shock for a full couple of minutes, it took me by surprise! The fact that someone, a stranger, took the initiative to fill things out and add a book onto the site when they had no obligation to really stunned me.

And then to top it off they reviewed it with 4 stars and two chunky paragraphs with their thoughts. I almost fell straight out of my chair! The intense high I experienced by knowing one human on this planet read my story and liked it that much, I rode that high for days afterwards! And now? All I want to do is get my next book out there!

I understand there will be people who don’t like it, and I’m sure I’m not prepared for that, but in that moment you could have had someone tell me to my face it was awful, but I was numb with excitement!

A good review on my book was all it took to make my week. And now I’m off to work on my next book, because I need more of that shit lol… Life is a vicious circle some days.
Words and a sad song

February 12th, 2024

Creating content to market a book across a variety of social media websites is wild. Something may do great on one sight but completely bomb on another site, and there are no instruction manuals to tell you what works where.

Trial and error. Research. Crossing all the fingers and just hoping it hooks someone somewhere to the point that they are interested enough to click a button to learn more about it.

It’s a learning adventure.

Here’s something I put together tonight. I’ll know by tomorrow afternoon how it does in all the places. If I haven’t said it lately, thanks for being here.

@authorchelseab
Modern day fairytale retelling focused on Little Red Riding Hood. #BookTok #fyp #debutnovel #indieauthor
♬ Somewhere Only We Know – rhianne
Tiny speed bumps

February 8th, 2024

A learning curve. That’s how I’m describing the journey of becoming a self-published author.

I just discovered the importance of requesting a physical proof from Amazon before the book goes live. It took maybe a full 48 hours between ordering my proof and having it arrive at my front door, which was a lot faster than the four weeks I was expecting.

At first I ordered it just to see my book in person, but as I took it out of the package I realized why it was such a good idea. The cover looked darker than the original art work, and there was a small gap on the top and on the left hand side where the cover didn’t quite get placed correctly. An easy fix, but one I would have never known about if I hadn’t ordered it.

And then I opened it up. I have a few copies of my book document, and I uploaded the one copy with no copyright page to Amazon. Ooops. I also, for whatever reason, didn’t think that the double spaced lines would show up in the physical copy, and yet it did. The chapter header spacing was all funky as well.

All these things are very fixable, but it makes me so glad that I thought to order a proof a month before I want to publish the book. I can take the time to fix all of these things, and maybe get one more proof just to be sure.

So that’s my advice to anyone who is looking to self publish. There is no one else out there looking out for your book. If you want to put out a quality product, you have to be the one to put in the work for it to become quality.

Be proud of what you put out, but make sure it’s exactly how you want to present it to the world. It’s so tempting to just finish a story and then hit publish, but your words, characters, and worlds that you’re creating can wait the extra few weeks it takes to shine it up.

This is my debut novel. It will set the tone for my career. Once I hit publish it’s out their in the world and I will be proud of the work I put into it.

Back to formatting,

Have a great night, and thanks for being here.
Why Fairy-Tales?

February 5th, 2024

“Why are you into fairy tales? What is so intriguing about kid stories?” It’s a fair question, so here’s my answer.

I’ve always enjoyed thinking about the statement “writers write what they know”. I like to take that sentiment further. I truly believe that all writers sprinkle their writing with tiny bits of the truth. It may not always be on purpose, and sometimes they may not see the real world connections, but I feel like it’s always there somehow. That little bit of truth can be powerful or inspirational.

I’ll preface this next part with a statement of my own – my brain is a strange place sometimes. Back to the point. Fairy tales were created long ago to teach children important life lessons. But my brain started wondering, was that all? Or was it also because these story tellers of old had met such unique characters in their travels that they had to write stories about them.

Was there a Little Red Riding Hood in some small mountain village that, maybe, was hidden from the rest of the planet. Maybe a pair of brothers found it by accident during their travels, and upon leaving the village they decided they needed to use what they had seen as inspiration for their stories.

I know it’s really far fetched, but these are the thoughts that gave life to Awakening Fate almost a decade ago. If these people did exist a lifetime ago, it would stand to reason that it’s possible they have real life descendants walking around in our society today. These descendants wouldn’t even know who they were related to, but they would be carrying around the blood of fairy tale characters, and that idea is just wonderful and magical enough, I had to write a story about it.

Awakening Fate is book one in a trilogy, and the cast of characters that the reader doesn’t meet until book two is full of ‘what if this character existed’. And I’ll state it here, I understand that I use the Grimm brothers as a basis for the story, but they didn’t write all the fairy tales and they didn’t reference all of the characters I used in my books. I know that, but I know some people will point it out. That’s okay, just think of them as a jumping off point.

Anyways, Awakening Fate will be out March 5th, 2024 on Amazon, and maybe some other places, too. I hope it finds it’s audience.

Thanks for being here at the start of it all.

Author Chelsea Biddiscombe

Old tales. New magic. Unforgettable journeys.

Tag: fantasy

Like a drug..

Words and a sad song

Tiny speed bumps

Why Fairy-Tales?